If they didn't have the guts

to grab what was right 

in front of them

like a man, he barked,

that was their fault.

He saw the fish,

cleaned them out

right down the gold

in their back teeth,

and made them 

thank him for it.

He vacuumed out the register

with a bent smile,

tore up his tab,

and spat in the face

of the one guy

who had stepped forward

with hesitant justice.

"Go ahead, loser,

take a swing at me",

he sneered,

"put it right here",

as he jabbed his middle

finger

to his chin.

He then put the swag

in a tablecloth,

and laughed as he

stripped them of the

last of their

expired-code

dignity.

It closes in on him

when the last life preserver

has floated away,

and the molecules dance

in his ears,

and distant, unearthly

rooster shrieks

sound their absurd

proclamations of

midnight harem ownership.

There will be no

Get Out Jail Free Card,

there will be no

overtime,

there will be no

recount, there will be no

favors for Old Times' Sake.

And if he has any items

to declare, 

he better get

off the Potassium-Argon clock,

because someday

he won't be around

for them to

not notice.

She was a real pyro,

I mean a rock-'em-and-sock-'em

give 'em both barrels

KAPOW of a woman, 

five feet five, spittin' out nails

like pumpkin seeds,

a goddam piss and vinegar 

QUEEN

ridin' a runaway freight train and

laughin' like a maniac.

She had a body like a knee 

to the groin,

eyes colder than rebar,

and a face that packed more punch

than a friggin' PROM night.

And when she kicked me

face first through the

bar room window,

I was thankin' my lucky stars

that she'd at least left me

one cigarette,

three dimes,

and her number

so we could crank it up

next time

I was in town.

They walk by me

suddenly,

as if they had appeared 

out of 

the miasma of an

all-obscuring fog,

their features only

sketchy in appearance

but filled with portents

and signs, 

sometimes heavy 

with meaning

and affect,

sometimes only

fleeting and hurrying

their way out my

bemused attention.

Some of them can still

make my heart race and my

lost fire flare up;

others are carrying

Rwanda machetes,

ready to make me howl

silently once again, and

still others are mere

elements of a crazy pastiche

composed of the detritus

of the mundane.

They are all suspects

in the Great Conspiracy,

and all of them

are to be mistrusted,

as I make room for new

walkers

ready to surprise me

on other rainy mornings.

No faded monster

from that time 

when our softly naked skin

was open to its

razor wire predations

can be allowed to win more

degraded triumphs

over us.

It cannot be allowed

to reprise its fetid act

again and again.

We must see its face,

and know that it

can no longer reach us

with its scabrous arms.

We have no time to let its

tired, ancient barbarism

drag us away from the

life we have built in defiance

of it, and from those who now

feed off of the love we have

paid such a dear price

to nurture and preserve.

We cannot let it drag us into its

indigo lair once again.

We are bigger than it is now,

and every day we live

in contempt of it,

laughing at it, 

despising its broken grip on us,

is a day when it can no longer

make us cry out

or freeze our legs in place.

We are needed elsewhere now;

we have no time to allow

that which no longer is

to keep us away

from that which can

still be.

A despised, hated empty suit,

grown weary with rapine 

and fog-clouded judgment;

unwanted, useless machines

sitting in joyless snow;

old titans crumbling under

the weight of brazen avarice;

masses living in fear of

being swept into canyons

whose floors cannot be seen;

grasping, clutching appetite,

its open maw obscene with

voraciousness;

warriors in distant horizons,

left to deal with slow motion

catastrophes;

blind "prophets" yammering

poison into frightened ears;

lives dragging on in routinized

mindlessness;

seething hatred straining the

leash of weakening restraint;

paper houses swept away

in torrents of foolish regret;

massive hopes placed on

slender shoulders.

It is the Child

of distant upheaval, having

erupted from Gaia's womb 

with insolent energy,

hot tempered and restless,

a brazen interloper 

in the community of land. 

Blasted into submission

by the implacable depths

and relentless skies,

ravished by raw life,

it was made yielding and pliable,

a malachite gemstone 

surrounded by the arms

of its adopted mother.

Come stand in its 

indulgent night

with me 

and feel the

strength

of its 

gentle infinity.

Mama

Mine
I go
Look what I do
I want that
I like it
Can I have more
You promised
(mad at you)
I know, I know
Hey, let go of that
Here, you can have some
(aren't I good)
Do you want to walk with me
(I like you)
Why do I have to?
(you're unfair)
Christmas is my favorite time
(I get presents)
Did you get all the problems done
(I can't do this myself)
Yeah, she thinks she's so special
(wish she liked me)
Should I go out for football
(then people will like me)
If you loved me you would
(I want you and you should help me with that)
Sure, I'll do it for you
(you owe me)
Well, Mom and Dad, I know you two
haven't been happy
(how can you do this to me)
(good, I'm sick of you two fighting anyway)
(you son of a bitch Dad)
(screw both of you)
(I'll never cry in front of you)
I got in!
(I'm on my way)
This homework sucks
(I'm in over my head)
Yeah, I'll go to the party with you guys
(Maybe I'll get laid)
(if not I'll just get really wasted)
I can't right now, I'm really
into Karamazov.
(I've finally found something worth reading)

(I can't believe all the bullshit I've wasted

my time on)

He's the best professor I've ever had

(he knows more than I ever will)

(he makes me forget all this other crap)

That was fantastic

(I hoped you liked it too)

(But I got off anyway, so...)

So tell me all about your day

(I don't care really)

(But I like you, and you care)

(So I'll listen and pretend to be interested)

It will be you and me forever

(Love is great)

(I can't believe you really love me back)

(It's too good to be true)

Yeah, work was good today

(it was a complete pain in the ass)

Sure, Bill, we'll do it your way

(idiot)

That's the most beautiful baby ever

(and she is)

(and she's ours)

(and I'm scared as hell when I hold her)

(how could I love anyone this much)

OK, we'll move to a bigger house

(hey, whatever you want, babe)

Tell me about your day

(just as long as I don't have to tell you

about mine)

So how long was dad alive after the heart attack

(oh my God)

(Daddy)

(why have you left)

(I should have returned your calls)

(thank God that's over)

I'll do my best, sir

(it's about time)

(finally some decent money)

(now what)

I know I should listen more

(whatever you say)

Hey, we both decide on the kids' schooling

(they're just as much mine as yours)

(another power struggle)

(I know what's best)

We'll get through this

(God, please just make everything

come out all right)

The doctor said it's benign, dear

(thank you God, I'll be better now)

(darling, I don't know what I'd do without you)

(she really is everything to me)

Well, now you know what a hangover is

(stupid kid)

(serves you right)

(I should smack you)

(please don't hurt me like that again)

I've never been so proud of you

(you're the best daughter in the world)

(my baby girl)

(how did I get this old)

The woman you're marrying is terrific

(she's just like your Mom)

(I hope you know what you're doing)

(now maybe you'll stick to a real job)

We don't seem to make love as much any more

(am I losing it)

(it's not like it used to be)

(I guess you're bored too)

(I get so tired now)

You don't have to call me sir or Boss

(but don't forget that I am)

Movin' a little slow this morning

(I didn't do anything and I still hurt)

So I guess that makes you Grandma

(my God is he gorgeous)

(it's better this time around)

(another part of my youth dies)

I want to thank everyone who's helped me

out over the years

(I never want to see half of you again)

Sure, retirement is great

(what the hell do I do now)

(I guess my contribution is finished)

(if it went by that fast then how much time...)

Yeah, my kids are the best

(but they didn't always listen)

(couldn't they have done better)

(hey, their problems are theirs, not mine)

You and me to the end

(who else would have put up with me)

(there's parts of you I'll never know)

(I miss the fire)

(I miss how many times we could do it

when we were new)

(you've always been there for me, and I don't know why

but I'll take it)

(I'll forgive you if you forgive me)

(You will always be the definition of love)

(I'm so sorry for the times I let you down)

(I hope I've been good to you)

Six months, is it?

(Please God, not yet)

(I'm not done yet)

(Just let me see her wedding)

(I'll beat this)

Oh, that's better

(it's really, really good to not hurt)

I love you

(I don't know what it all was)

(I don't know what's ahead)

(thank you for loving me back)

(you're more than I deserved)

Darling

(the light is so beautiful)

He had helped turn Edo's books

into luxurious white ash that night,

and the heat they generated

as they gave up the ghost

had buffeted his B-san as if the air itself

had grabbed them by the lapels.

His nostrils had never recovered

from the scent of over-done bacon,

and he asked why he had been assigned

the role 

of angry Yahweh.

"It's a mystery

known only to Him", came

the sage response,

and he was at rest,

knowing that the crab boil

in the canal

was not his fault.

His body swayed unconsciously

as the fiery righteousness

engulfed the tremulous morning,

lifting him to lofty plains of

sunlit imaginings.

He closed his eyes as the

Spirit whooshed and bounced

all over the room,

now caressing him,

now slaying him,

now tearing laughter out of him,

now crushing him,

now putting him in the Upper Room

where he spoke in words

unheard in millennia.

Transported back to terra firma,

he saw the sanctuary

in surprising, gentle clarity,

and headed out into

the irrelevant Ordinary.

The onlookers

gawked at him as he set up 

the tattered display (the one

with the frayed posters)

and began in earnest.

Words flooded from him in

Mississippian volume, lapping up

the sandbags that guarded his

bemused audience.

He then flung buckets 

of explosively colored paint 

in all directions, like a canine

dadaist shaking off 

the wet remains

of the Louvre. 

The Pollockized watchers  blinked 

in unanimous bafflement.

He paced and ranted, reciting

every line he could remember,

punctuating his thespian odds and ends

with St. Vitus dances of abandonment.

He sent up acrid smoke signals;

he bashed log drums with mad delight;

he fired multiple flares 

into the puzzled sky,

ululating all the while,

and for the big finish, he stylishly

severed a non-essential toe.

Drenched and gasping, lying in

spent prostration, he said,

"well?"

A voice replied,

"could we see that again?"

Three Haikus (Shichi)

Motionless I sit

contemplating unreal dreams;

the wan future shrugs.

Swirling ghosts grimace;

I laugh at their countenance.

Their faces dissolve.

Blessings fall quickly,

the waiting land shares their joy;

verdant smiles respond.

It is now merely

a shadow imprint,
a blind-sided image fixed indelibly

on a ruined wall.

Was it ever more

than two absurd dimensions,

and two absurd people,

proclaiming endless fealty

and devotion

while all the while

Fat Man

was getting ready

to party?

She waits for the world

to pass away from her patient

endurance, and sets her eyes

to a time beyond time,

and a place beyond self,

where the wearying

ordinary trials

of entangled lives

can no longer hold imperium

over her.

She yearns for the

Presence which speaks to her

in a soundless voice,

engulfing her in the ecstasy

of solitary Oneness,

and freeing her at last

from the tyranny of hours

and the stale trivia

of tomorrow.

She will be dissolved in its

ineffable Truth,

and her coarse body

will have no more import

than a cottony 

seedling 

cast away

on an anonymous

midsummer afternoon.

Soft specters

visit him at night,

curling up next to him

in unutterably tender,

yielding love,

needing nothing

but his warmly proffered

nearness, 

and never failing to

speak to him

in voiceless words,

expressing all with

an easy sigh of

contentment,

happy to let him have

dominion over

the tiny kingdom

of the welcoming bed.

It stood before him

both invisible

and impervious.

He had bloodied himself

countless times

in mad

rushes up its quietly murderous

slopes. 

On every occasion

he had ended up 

dazed and shredded

at its indifferent foot,

a spent, dejected knot

of confused, helpless

bewilderment.

The dried remains of his 

tiny assaults had begun to

reveal tantalizing hints

about its true dimensions,

but he no longer had the

ability to rouse himself

for another Banzai charge;

it was easier just to make camp

and play dark music in the

waning light, opening

weary scars

once again.

They moved through the frigid

landscape where they had slain

the life-giving ones

for more seasons than their

sacred tales could account.

Father North lashed them

more mercilessly than they had

ever had known;

huge offerings

were left at the side of

the trail in tiny, heart-drenched

bundles.

The lead men could see

the herd receding in the

distance, barely visible in the

dancing white sea that engulfed

them.

The elders quickly gathered,

and pointed eastward,

toward the future.

They would venture out onto the

endless ice, and follow

the prey

to the ends of an earth

they were sure

lay just past the farthest ridge

in the faceless

distance.

It wends its way

through the labyrinthine forest

and sings of its lost origins deep

in the cool remnants

of hot-blooded sensation.

Ruled by the giddy dictatorship

of sheer caprice, it bursts

through helpless walls of

accumulated yesterdays

like a tank round splintering

a log, waiting for its chance

to take its place

among the strange creatures

that have made their hurried debuts

on the wet stage

of the eternally receding 

now.

He could feel himself

unclenching, like a fist relaxing

after someone pulls the plug

on a simmering brawl.

He unfolded from his defensive

crouch,

and as he did the deflated demons

slid off his back in helpless

confusion, protesting feebly

in the morning light.

Breath filled his being once again

and the ossified seals on his

heart were sundered.

He stood, relieved,

silently contemplating a future

that once again seemed to him

filled with possibility, 

rather than the

grim decay of lost hope

and trembling dread.

And as he looked at the

youngest one, her toddler face

filled with pirate-like mischief,

his smile

became an easy laugh.

All my energy is going into the election.

I'm a political junkie and right now my on-line life is centered around getting Barack Obama and Joe Biden elected on 4 November. So if my output seems very severely limited, that's probably the chief reason. I hope to post once and a while, though.

He can set down

the rusted, pock-marked razor blade

that he has used so often

to gouge out pieces of his

fear-riven corpus.

He has drawn enough blood with it

to inundate a thousand tight chested

nights.

It is still possible

that he could avoid

its final shuddering cut,

if he can decide, finally

that it is beneath 

his dormant

contempt.

They couldn't see the final scene then,

when they both inhaled in surprise

at that first random meeting,

never expecting anyone to grab them

by the neck with such happy ease,

sensing the presence of

one who was different from all

the rest of the boys and girls

they had frittered away countless

empty hours with.

They talked until three, and he

ran his near-trembling finger

along the electrified fence

of her right hand, wanting to make love

to her right then and there, but

knowing it was too soon,

even though she wanted him

inside of her more than any other

wish she had ever conceived.

Long telephone calls dominated

the days that followed; their desire

overflowed and swept over the

flood plains of their restraint

on their fourth date.

It had all happened so

unpredictably, and now lives

that were only possible in theory

had been launched, and children

loved more intensely than either of them

could ever have known it was possible to

love anything

were drifting casually through

the lived-in rooms of their

warm house.

Did they have any inkling

of the moment

when he would look up

from the hospital bed one last

time, and his eyes would once

again be 20 years old,

and that in that last instant

all that had been

would be swept away

and they would once again be lost

in the soaring newness

of each other's hopes?

He smiles with frozen grace,

letting his sweet glazed mind 

drift into Elysian Fields 

of numb delight,

blocking all poison tipped

spears, deftly tip-toeing

through fields of 

antipersonnel mines

aimed directly at his gut,

wearing wonderfully efficient

earplugs that screen out

the cries of the wounded

until they resemble only

a distant chorus of sighing,

bearable lamentation.

He will live in bouquets 

of vinyl flowers and wax fruit,

happily embracing his narcotized

mannequin and congratulating himself

on bringing the dead tree

Hallmark card

to life so easily.

I could hear the voices

in the after bedtime darkness

but I couldn't quite make out

their smoke-embedded

words, nor catch the drift

of the deep-hued sentences

not meant

for me.

They were  distant signals

from another world,

spoken in a language

that was still largely

Mayan to me,

harbingers of the times

I would be speaking

in tones of reminiscence

or cynical bitterness

or casual eroticism,

sending out my own

mysterious messages

to other open-mouthed

listeners.

Their story began in desiccated hills

and fields stripped bare so utterly
that even the rats starved,
the glorious aftermath
of rancid war, blind revolt, and ravening
soldier-locusts.
Tender minds that should have nestled
in warm repose to hear bedtime stories
saw adults ripping their teeth
into the tough hides
of dead neighbors.
Wandering helpless from the corpses
of exhausted parents,
they clung to each other in the
maelstrom of the dust-covered Gehenna,
their numbers thinned by the machine guns
of the proud, blocking Chekists.
They lived by stealing from the dying,
hiding in the indifferent forests,
and learning to forget the last remnants
of kindness.
Their children, born of rape,
and careless whores,
shrieked with delight as they
terrorized the soft little intellectuals
from Moscow, kicking in the faces
of the politicals who tried to stop them.
They ruled the camps, using kids
as bets in card games, and cutting
off the heads of anyone stupid enough
to object to their missing rations.
When the betrayed soldiers flooded in,
the former rulers were deposed, but their
descendants found new empires in the
concrete slab prisons, and the tattoos slithered
across their muscled torsos to keep score
of every plunging knife and cracking skull.
Now, the great grandsouls of the
original Children’s Crusade
rule the nights with shiny automatics,
collect the protection money from trembling
shopkeepers, and smear the pavement
with the brains of those who have had
a less distinguished patrimony.

He jumps frantically,

trying to see the source of the distant
cries and moans that have
disturbed his magenta night
and awakened the grinning
demons from their shallow
rest.
His heart races in tempo
to his helpless fear,
going too fast in the straightaway,
and heading dangerously
for the wall.
He strains his ears, climbs
on to a ridiculous little
stepladder, and holds up
a sparkler to signal his
profound concern.
Engulfed in Plastic Jesus compassion,
choking tears seize him, and
while walking into his bear cave
he almost trips over
the darkened figure gasping like
a washed up alewife
near the moss-covered entrance.
He once again shakes his head
in noble despair
and unloads a .38 clip into
the faces of the
screeching devils.

It takes all of his effort

to keep the balloon fully inflated,

so that it still casts the same

impressive shadow

on the easily awed onlookers

who throng in wet clumps

below it.

And around his torso he can feel

the cold fingers digging their

jagged nails into his reflexively

clenching rib cage,

reminding him that the day

is approaching

when the last of the gas 

will sputter out

and his altitude

will dip low enough

for all the rubes

to get a good look at him,

and either lynch him,

laugh at him,

or simply bury his

comically withered

body.

No one will mourn you

if, 

in the blindness of your stumbling,

maliciously indifferent,

odyssey,

you let the only refuge you 

will ever have 

slip through your 

idiot fingers.

There will be no solemn line

of pensive, drawn faces,

no whispered expressions

of consolation,

no embraces and perfunctory

offers of "anything I can do."

It has been given to you 

by accident.

You were made from it,

but not for it,

and if you squander

its ageless inheritance,

there will be no rescue,

no escape,

no harbor from your 

self-generated

storm.

And from the outside,

no one will notice

anything different,

if they ever noticed

anything

to begin with. 

I still don't know

how he came through the scalding mist

of his own fear, 

he who was so lacking

in skin that it was as if all of his

huddled nerve endings

were fully exposed to the 

merciless taunts

of a world cheering for his self-immolation.

How did he survive the axe-blows 

to his flimsy skull, the ones that 

rendered him 

a flailing,

helpless refugee 

in the Minotaur's Cave

of his own life?

Was it a world grown suddenly

merciful,

or was it he who grew more

merciless

and resigned to the futility

of hope?

He hurls his vaporous roars

through the dank atmosphere

of his airless room,

tearing out fearful trails of

glistening viscera in 

the fevered landscape

of his imaginary battlefield.

He triumphs inexorably

over foes who will never know

of his humorous, impotent

existence, and the red-hot

explosions of his stammering

Two Minute Hates

stir the detritus

from the bottom of his

cup of ranting misery.

He murders his enemies

in hellishly creative ways,

celebrating his paper-doll

savagery

from the safety of a life

grown rusted

from lack of use.

It goes in and out of focus,

sometimes taking the shape
of a sketch done in a night of
schizophrenic inspiration, its
seemingly errant lines forming
a simulacrum of reality without
actually quite reaching its shores.
At other moments it
shatters into a living mosaic,
each jagged, colored tile just
going along for the ride,
happy to be part
of the picture,
and not giving a damn
whether it makes the sale or not.
Now it seems to be resolving into a
watercolor done with
an amateur’s skill
and in great haste, its overlapping
edges of streaked, ragged color
all that will be left to show
for an exhibition
that didn’t exactly pack ‘em in
and where the best piece
turned out to have been hung
upside down.

They flowed into each other

and intermingled their struggling 

miniature universes of

raw-nerved feeling,

pleading for understanding,

searching for ill-defined experience,

wanting in some way to be more

than what they were, waiting for

something to happen, indifferent

to its contours, 

looking for their place

in a world whose true dimensions

would have hammered them flat

had they known them.

They shot wounded venom at each other

and always embraced afterward, if only by

moments of silent forgiveness.

They celebrated each other's victories

and told each other truths and secrets

that were reserved for the hidden hours

of night.

No one made them angrier

than each other,

but each one realized

in his own unfinished way

the love they both felt

(though never speaking of it)

and they came to understand

that neither of them

would have wanted to take those

first real steps into manhood

(toward a world of other universes)

with anyone else.

I'll Be Back on 30 July

I need to focus my mental energy on my new book on the relationship between the evolution and nature of consciousness and the nature of human history. No, I won't be finished by the 30th (maybe 10 years from then!) but I need to do some things on that front.

You have not read the last of my semi-epic verses!

Sorry I'm in a Dry Spell These Days.

Guess my mind has been elsewhere.

He walks through

the carcasses of their vanished lives,
picking up the shards of their
workaday afternoons and
running his rude hands
over their intimate
confessions.
He is a god watching them
from their flowing birth
to their incontinent death,
judging them at every turn.
He will speak for them;
they can lodge no protest,
nor offer their own plea bargain.
He will hold them up to the light,
thinking that he has exposed all,
never realizing that they
were clever enough
to slip through his fingers
before he even knew
who they were.

The paper storm

swirls over me in frenzied
silence,
its mind-numbing flood
of words threatening
to break the dikes
of my tendon-stretched
comprehension
at any sweat-stained moment.
It hurls ideas at me like
multicolored, disembodied
bricks, and bashes me
with vicious squalls
of hot-blooded assertion,
storm-driven little factoids
that drive themselves into my brain
like straws in an oak tree,
and tsunamis of
half-blind visions
and quick little glimpses
of the descending sacred.
As the eye passes over me,
I plot my strategy for
snatching pieces from it
quickly enough
to make my stand
before I am no longer able
to stand at all,
and to give my account of its
garbled message
before I have no voice left
to express it.

I have never understood

how they could
stand in the wistful daylight,
their heartbreaking young faces
overflowing with courage and strength,
their eyes filled with longing
for glorious annihilation,
and tie the sacred scarf
around their heads,
climb into
the flying funeral urns
and hurl themselves
at the other brave young men
in the hopes of reversing
the foregone verdict.
If there really were a hell
its deepest and cruelest recesses
would be filled with all those
who have convinced
the young men
of a thousand eras
that their greatest task
was not to grow into
honorable old age,
but rather that the
zenith of nobility
was for them to throw their
shredded, severed guts
into the endless river
of squandered human
tomorrows
for the sake of battles
that no amount of
priceless young lives
could ever be
worth.

They stood there

in the fading daylight
of the Burnt Over District,
weeping the most disbelieving
tears ever wrung from human
eyes, while the laughing
mockery of their neighbors
still burned in their ears.
"What, not gone up yet? Wife didn't leave
you here to burn, did she?"
Brother William wept more bitterly
than all the rest.
He had counted
the twenty-three hundred weeks
so carefully; how could He not
have come with a shout
and ushered His flock
to Eternal Life?
Many shook their heads
at the spectacle, and concluded
that some people just didn't
know how to read the signs and
Scriptures accurately.
Didn't they know the End of Days
wouldn't be arriving for at least
five more years?

He gazes at the old pictures

in the dusty history text
and sometimes he wants
to jump into them
and see for himself the
crimson aftermath of
Antietam, even at the risk
of destroying the last remnants
of his childish romance
with that distant carnage.
He wants to
rub shoulders with the Hasidim
on the sidewalks
of 1900 New York,
to smell the stench
of the horse-infested streets,
and to know that these people
were real, that the day
in which they lived
was as physical and as warm-blooded
as his is.
He wants to feel the breeze
coming off of San Francisco Bay
on that day in 1890 when the town
was still raw and pulsing
with the energy of naked money lust
and thick-muscled power.
It's all right there,
if only he could plunge into them
and look around for a while.
The only condition he asks for is for
the portal to stay open long enough
for him to grab the edge of his desk
and pull himself back into
the 3-D cinema
of right now;
he wants only to be a visitor,
not the guy standing
second from the left
for someone else
to wonder about.

In those scenes

I always handle it better.
I always face down the idiots
and drown out the frenzied
combatants
with my outraged roar.
I always show the stern face
of hoplite courage
and I never cower
in helplessness.
I always have so much
easy confidence,
and adulation for my
shining performance
washes over me
in iridescent waves.
And she's always there
for me in wicked passion,
left in happy exhaustion by my
matchless abilities.
There is only love,
comfort,
triumph.
joy,
security,
vengeance,
and
laughter.
The scripts all have
Frank Capra endings
and the man basking
in the screen writer's
sugared sentimentality
is always Our Hero, The Kid,
The Man, The Winner.
Too bad the actual film
was ad-libbed
from start
to finish.
I could have been
a star.

He walked out into

the tingling air
and ripped the top of
his own skull off, laughing
at his presumption.
A Pandora's box of raving
lunatics erupted from his
brazenly open cranium, only
to wither in the heat of the
lounging day.
He sat comfortably on
the pock-marked battleground
and looked around it
with unaccustomed calm
as the Harpies died their
unmourned deaths.
An enigmatic smile crossed
his face, and he could almost sense
the soft-focused
Florentine countryside
framing him.

He had seen many hunts

and met the shivering test
of many winters.
Now, he had crossed over
to the New Land, and
many heavy tasks
had to be borne.
His woman understood why
she could not come into
the Cave of Dreams,
and stood in brave sorrow
at its mouth.
His kinsmen bore him in
and carefully arranged his
no longer stiffened body
in its intimate crouch.
The shaman ordered the
traveling brother's head
pointed toward the north,
and around the Traveler
was arrayed a tender ring
of magical flowers,
to delight him and guide him
safely to the other realm.
A spear was placed in his hands,
the men offered him good wishes
and they solemnly ordered him
not to kill all the deer
before they could join him.

I don't believe in

the mythology of fate,
the predetermined script
held in the hands of those
to whom the gods themselves
bow in helplessness.
But I am glad nonetheless
that the churning Universe
created us in its blind
ferment,
and allowed me the privilege
of meeting the woman in the
quilted coat on that dreary
February night,
an event that changed
the biography of one
individual from the story of
withered pipe dreams
and dark loathing to
one where the light
of fragile hope was again
reborn, and a chance at
redemption
miraculously resurrected.

It does no good

to think that you know
when in fact it will
always be a mystery novel
with chapters missing
and characters appearing
with deus ex machina
improbability.
The best you can hope for
is to sign the armistice
and to find your place
in the arms of those
who have forgiven your
trespasses
as you have forgiven
theirs.

They wrap around me

like invisible spider silk,
encompassing my being
with more threads than
I can possibly know
or even hope to count.
They were spun 
in the separation of gravity
from the rest of the birth process.
They were spun in the RNA world.
They were spun by the spike-furred
little animal that retreated, terrified,
into the trees to escape the
carnivorous wrath of the saurians.
They were spun by the hungry woman
using her lousy spine to stand up in
the tall grass.
They were spun by the tribes making
epic journeys through
landscapes of sun-blasted cruelty
and ice-stormed
mercilessness.
They were spun by
desperate men and women
casting away
all they had known
and running to embrace
glittering promises.
And they are now spun by
multitudes of strangers
from every landscape
ever known
and every time ever experienced,
and I spin my own web for them,
(although neither of us knows it),
and they are just as entangled in my
blind struggles
as I am in theirs.

In the present

they flood me
with great, windshield-paralyzing
sheets of words and blinding walls
of imagery,
so I push down the corridor
and the flood diminishes somewhat
but still roars at me at near-gale
strength.
So I push
farther and the torrent seems to
settle down some more,
and I need my searchlight
as I head into the
darker reaches.
In those nether regions the
voices dwindle to a few,
(though sometimes astonishing
choruses sing at me in brief
eruptions)
and I have to take their word
for what I'm seeing.
And farther back there are only
shredded paragraphs,
then disembodied sentences,
then words floating like
wreckage,
and then all is silence
with only bones and
shattered pottery
lying about in
taunting
disarray.

I listened

to both of them
speaking to me
through the veil
of the darkening years,
their words pinning me
helplessly to the ground.
He had witnessed his family
taken in the selection,
and later
rained down upon him
in gray ash.
And the One Whose Name
Must Never Be Spoken had ceased
to exist at that moment.
She stood at the gates of Birkenau
with tears of gratitude in her
joyous eyes, feeling an
overwhelming closeness
to Him, and knowing for the
first time how the Lawgiver
had felt seeing that which
was beyond sight.
And I realized
in hearing them
that there were arguments
in which I had no right
under heaven and earth
to say anything.

Its cathedrals are not

the product of leaden,
patient devotion,
but rather were
brought forth
by the unconscious,
multi-million year
unfolding
of an island's
birth pangs.
Its spires loom
with unperturbed
authority,
and in its
impossible cliffsides,
myriad valleys, and
sudden, darkened
sea caves
can be found
the refutation
of all that is
ordinary,
and the reward
for patient
surrender.

(In honor of the Na Pali Coast)

Three Haikus (Roku)

Pictures of old days
wrap their fingers around me.
I hear faint echoes.

A darting gecko
seeks protection in our home;
Kane shelters it.

We bid fond goodnight;
we embrace with practiced love;
we are one spirit.

He spoke a language

descended from the tongue
of Cicero and Ovid,
and he stepped ashore
on the sweltering beach,
clad in a sweat-drenched
dark cassock, wearing
his savior's tortured body
around his neck, and
marveling at the alien landscape's
ferocious greenery.
The rough men were bringing
the tools of conquest off the
ships, and
a group of luckless
donkeys had been landed
to carry the
shining excrement of the pillage
to come.
The man the others
called Father asked if he could
borrow one of the animals
to explore.
"Bring it back alive" was the blunt reply,
and together the tired servant
and his temporary master set out.
Clutching his magic beads and
murmuring appeals
to the ominous heavens,
the holy man and his mindless
companion pushed into
the tangles of foliage for
more than half an hour.
With a start, they came upon
a group of men as naked as
Adam before the Fall, and for
a moment that spanned centuries,
they stared at each other with
frozen amazement.
Seeing the living embodiment
of their legends in front of them,
the reddish bronze men fell to
the earth prostrate, and chanted
their humble welcome.
"God has delivered me", the rider said
in a barely audible rapture, and he
knew that the New Jerusalem
could not be far.
And holding his head high,
with the Divine Countenance itself
reflected on his face,
he rode the starved little donkey
toward those whom he would
baptize into the Kingdom,
and the bare-skinned welcomers
leading them
quivered with anticipation
at introducing the centaur-god
to their soon to be enlightened
brothers and sisters.

They are never confronted

with comfortable dilemmas
or too many options.
They have only one choice--
to get up and crush the
vertebrae of their backs
into dust to have enough
to swallow each night
so that they can rise,
and ignore the complaints
flooding in from every part
of their pack animal bodies,
and repeat the process
until,
when they are no longer able
to bend wizened hands to the
task,
they are thrown onto the pyre
to be mourned and wept over
in the interval between
shifts.

It quietly branched out

and linked
and created
a fine-meshed
net, day after day,
until, finally,
like an old television set
fading into view,
from it
emerged
the first,
primordial image,
as remote now as
the caves at Lascaux.
It is an anxious woman
with a soothing voice,
reassuring the sick
little boy
in the
strange setting
of the hospital room.
Is he summoning it
from the recesses
of soft-edged time,
or is it merely a legend
recalled from an early
hearing around the
campfire?

She sings

into the blueness
and her voice is heard
by no one,
only the scurrying,
indifferent
chameleons.
Her song is like
none other ever
heard
or imagined,
an impossible
glory
that she will never
sing again,
nor even be able
to remember.
Its reality will die out
with the last note,
to remain
forever unknown,
but part of the
universe's
heritage
nonetheless.

"We'll need salt."

Nodding his assent, the
dour assistant added it
scrupulously.
"The soil can't be too
heavy with clay" the first
one said, superfluously,
as No. 2 was already
selecting the dirt
with rigorous care.
"Add the water slowly",
was the next command.
The able partner poured it
artfully.
"The trace ingredients will
be a problem."
"I'm on it," the other
replied, never taking his eyes
off the carefully measured
spoons as he added their
idiosyncrasies.
After all had been done,
they hit the button and
the glutinous mass was
folded and stirred
vigorously.
The first one said, with
unsettling gravity,
"Now, this is tricky.
You've got to pour it in to
the mold juuuust right."
Beads of sweat dotted
the assistant's forehead as
he carried out the delicate
process with infinite
care.
Relieved that the hard part
was over, they slipped the form
into the waiting oven
to let the heat transform it
overnight.
In the morning, the two
returned and carefully
freed the figure from
its temporary encasement.
Once the last of the mold
had fallen to the ground,
No. 2 stood in inexplicable
rapture, unable to
tear his eyes away.
Cursing himself, No. 1
said, "I meant to tell you--
don't fall in love with her."
"Too late," No. 2 said,
as the Tigris and Euphrates
coursed down his face.

She kneaded it

and stretched it,
puzzling over
which shape looked best,
and then tossed it to the boy,
who let it sit
for the longest time
until, fully grown,
he did a body slam
right into the center of it.
The little girl,
picking it up gingerly,
thought that was
how it was supposed to look
until she read a fairy tale
that showed her what a happy ending
she could make out of it.
She thereupon set out
on a multi-decade quest
to reshape it in startling
new ways.
Upon seeing the outcome,
the people of the town
all agreed that this was
how it must have looked
since time immemorial,
until, many years later,
some started to wonder
why it had to be there
at all.
They broke pieces of it off
and rolled them into
amusing little cubes and triangles.
Eventually,
the restless motorcycle gang
stole most of it,
(ignoring the little
cubes and triangles),
and used it
to build their new headquarters.
Age killed the last of them off,
and the really bright kid
who was sorting through their
tattered clubhouse's remains
pounded it into a
wonderful pillar, covered with
beautifully detailed inscriptions,
all describing its eternal
and everlasting
nature.

Their sense of being solid

objects is deceptive,
a byproduct of
the rubbery-like blob
they slosh around in.
They are, in fact,
cloud beings,
shape shifting
and billowing
in thrall to unseen
crosswinds,
little universes where tiny
particles
jump and race like
children on the first day
of summer vacation.
Within them is the entire
twisted story,
buried in a quivering cap of
cauliflower-shaped gelatin.
They are walking, breathing
metaphor factories,
and the sum total
of everything
that they are
is merely
a Rube Goldberg device,
only with a more serious
punchline.

He was outdoors,

casually crushing walnuts
between his biceps
and his forearms
when he heard the
alarm.
With no thought
of his own safety
he crashed
through the plate glass
window,
spraying the room
with savage
bursts from his
pulsating dual Mac-10s.
As the last reverberations
died away he swiveled
his powerful neck toward
the kitchen, strode
over to the stove,
and sent the timer
to HELL where it belonged.

They surround me

on all sides
of the narrow-aisled
maze,
waiting patiently
for me
to forget
where I am,
lose focus, or
let my guard down.
They wait for me
to be distracted
or complacent
or tired
or simply confused
so that I'll run into
their razor-sharp
blades
again
and allow them
to have one of
their cheap
little thrills
at watching me
writhe.

They see the Golden Dome

where the Prophet ascended.
I see the depths of the human will
to believe.
They bow in prayerful rhythm
before the last remains of the
Temple.
I see a building ruined by
Vespasian's thugs.
They come seeking the place
where He pointed to the
Mount of Olives;
I look for his shadow
but see only tourists.

He is fetal curled around it,

holding it to his midsection
as if
it were a rabid animal
ready to gouge out
his insides
were he to lose control
of it.
No one on the outside
knows
how fantastically lethal
it actually is,
but the daily blood it draws
convinced him
a long time ago.
He will grip it right to the
last moment of his
sad little melodrama;
then, like a decapitated
machine gunner
at Verdun,
he will grip it even
harder.

He held the shiny glass object

in his 13 year old hands and raised it
into the sultry air.
A spectrum of multicolored light
emanated from it,
astonishing one and all.
Many voices expressed delight;
others looked at the miracle
with thinly veiled fear, as if
a darkly magical force
were at work
in the world of the everyday.
However they reacted, all knew
that a door had been suddenly
pushed open
into the Divine Mystery.
They knelt before the boy
and raised their arms to him
in tribute to his command of
unseen powers.
The boy-man was at once imbued
with sacred nobility, and he
knew that the turning point of
his no-longer humble life had now
been reached.
He would show them The Way
and reveal the Nature of Him
who sent the glassy messenger
of prophecy
to his hands,
hands that had been destined
to receive it
since the creation of time
itself.

She haunts the old office,

kicking up the dust and laughing
at the ones who sneeze.
She glides like Ginger Rogers
through walls
and twirl dances on the
desks of the infamous.
She looks at all the "secrets"
and stifles a yawn
before flying into the
Van Gogh night
to stand staring through
the picture window
that used to define
the sodden limits
of her world,
before her real birthday
finally arrived
to liberate her.
Smiling, she vanishes
like rainwater drawn down
by sun cracked ground
into the memories
of those who think
they knew her.

It takes me into its arms

and erases every desolate Monday morning.
It converts the memory of knife-cutting
Siberian wind into confetti.
It urges me to walk out of
the dessicated lake bed
of my stale anger.
It quietly gets me to turn off the
endless reruns of scenes that
cannot change however many times
I stab myself with them.
In its ever changing light
it reveals eternal verities,
and in its genetic Mardi Gras
it dares me to hope
of what might be.

The damning indictment

intensified into tornadic fury.
"He once used the word anthropology!",
the Prosecutor cried out.
Involuntary gasps issued forth
from the confused spectators,
who sensed the presence of sin.
"He knows the days of the week in order!"
"Bastard", a frustrated voice shouted
from the rear
as the judge gaveled
for calm.
"He once ate with a fork!"
Several women in the room
spontaneously turned into
pillars of salt.
And the final thunderbolt was
now hurled.
"He knows who's buried in
Grant's Tomb!"
And with that, the judge
rose from his seat,
walked sternly over to
the filthy miscreant,
shoved him down
on his knees,
pulled out a .357,
and converted
the wretch's head into
a Rorschach test
right on the courtroom floor.
Deafening cheers erupted,
and when they subsided
the smiling jurist announced
his upcoming campaign
for Governor,
the gun smoking merrily
in his hand.

It jumps and whirls

from tree to tree,
riding an electrochemical wave
like a crazed surfer on a big board,
zapping a whole forest
into a cerebral firestorm,
blasting open a bank vault
of shuddering introverts, and
ripping off the top of a circus tent,
exposing its weird, energetic denizens
to the shockingly bright sunlight.
Groups link up and shake hands
at a hundred summit meetings,
and suddenly the place looks
livelier than Reno on a hot night.
And with that, she leaps out of bed
and writes them an ending
that'll have 'em
begging for more

The pile glittered

in from of him,
its dimensions a rival
to the death house of Khufu,
and its appearance
no less breathtaking
in its exquisite obscenity.
Its construction
had drained
the mitochondrial fever
of every cell of which
he had ever been composed.
And now, it lay before him
on the windswept plateau,
the reason for his being,
and the consolation
of his solitary
contemplation.

His name was on everyone's lips

and from them praise that would
embarrass Caligula
flowed in a quacking river of
obsequious syllables.
He was "Great Leader and
Teacher",
"Our Inspiration",
"Towering Genius",
"Glorious Father",
"The Greatest Figure
in History", and
"The Pinnacle of Humanity".
His face adorned every bent-backed office,
every frozen classroom,
every starving farm,
every grimly hustling factory,
and every obedient home.
His statues graced every empty public park
and every darkened village square.
His words were heard everywhere,
pounded into the heads of the people
in endless hammerblows.
Delegations of fearful peasants
in colorful garb
crawled to him, clutching
declarations of fealty
in their decimated mouths.
Robotic parades, shellac-smile festivals,
coldly synchronized athletic displays,
and deafening rallies proceeded each
other in a continuous orgy of
groveling worship.
He Who Smiles Upon Us
had the power to show his love
for The People
in a dozen polar labor colonies
and a thousand torture chambers,
and a multitude of eyes and ears
and three million submachine guns
were ready to do his bidding.
And still he stood trembling
before the bedroom mirror,
fearfully suspecting that the
withered old man
that stared back at him
was ready to betray him
at any moment,
the one treacherously disloyal
traitor
he had never been able
to purge.

They dreamed of how it would be.

The young man
who had spent too many nights
in choking loneliness
pictured endless rounds
of erotic ecstasy, with himself at the
center of every erect fantasy,
a submissive, enthusiastic harem
at his tireless, red-hot command.
The woman who had struggled all her life
to be what other people thought she should be
dreamed of endless, sumptuous banquets,
of never-full days of exotic dishes offered
in endless, gloriously indulgent procession.
The man who had worked himself
into premature old age
only to find himself clinging to the edge
with calloused hands
imagined a jaw-dropping mansion
with a hundred servants at his
beck and call, a life of ease
and fantasy-levels of comfort,
surrounded by every object
the hungry imagination could
conceive of.
And the woman with the sunken eyes
and the body ravaged by the
never-ending outrage in her joints
and bones,
simply wished for some place
where it didn't hurt any more.

The huge, stumbling mass

careened down the road in a
deranged zig-zag
that bore no resemblance
to a planned direction.
They crashed into walls,
stunning those on the outside
of the seemingly eyeless flock and
splashed through muck-drenched
rivers, drowning the shorter ones.
All the while large numbers of them
shouted at each other
in rage, neck veins bulging,
teeth bared,
muscles tense and at the ready,
roaring out their opinions
about where they were
and where they should go next.
And the great mass moved on
toward the twilight,
most of its stumbling,
weary members
just trying
to keep up
as best they could.

I was an alien there,

a stranger in that chill, tired place.
It was as if the half century
spent there
had been a hallucinatory dream,
a vaguely remembered vision,
a series of black and white pictures
from an album lying dormant
in an airless attic.
I walked familiar halls and felt
no nostalgia,
only relief
that they were no longer
my day to day reality.
I reveled in the company
of those I knew and loved,
but I could no longer
be with them;
my true home insisted
on my presence,
and I was overjoyed
to obey its green, flowering
command.

I'll Be Away for a Week

Back at it on Wednesday, 21 May.

(Not that anyone will notice.)

I will venture back

to Flatland
(if only for awhile)
to see if it's recovered
from its winter
battering,
and to let my story
intersect
(if only briefly)
with those who
are still real in
my heart and mind
(if only sometimes
in distant memory).
It is now the
Temporary Destination;
I have escaped its
exhausted gravity,
and when I return
to the Garden,
it will be a homecoming
made more blessed
by the reminder
of what I have left
(if not who).

We shield their eyes

from the death camp images
and we erect as many walls
as we have mortar for
to keep the shapeless evil
of the lurking, unknown
others
away from them.
And if we're the people
we say we are,
we shield them from us.
We put our own hurt
and own fear
to one side, and we try not
to let them know about
the things that would make us
choke with shame
were they ever
to be revealed.
We want that nice, glossy picture
in the living room
to be their image of us,
no matter how much of a lie
it really is.
And they would be frightened
and confused
if they knew how fiercely
we pray for them
(even if we think our words
merely drift into an uncaring night),
or to hear us make a desperate offer
while lying in sleeplessness
(as if we were in any position to bargain!):
Lord,
if there is any suffering you demand of
us, put it on me.
And if you need to take someone
from our family,
please let it be me.
Their time for understanding
is not yet;
their epiphany
is still being constructed.

At first the line was flat

as the laughable little superapes
flailed at each other with long-haired
fists and sharp finger nails.
It budged upward a little when
they learned what a rock can do
to a man's head.
It was jolted when what was
once used to bring down a deer
was now used to tear through
a leather covered chest.
But muscle power bound the line's
rise, and even the gladius's
colorful career was
simply an elaboration
on a hoary theme.
The night labor of the
alchemists began the line's
ominous ascent.
Soon the missiles
became noisier and nastier,
and then, after the machines
began their deafening reign,
the conical demons became
monstrous in their
demented rage.
And when the man
with the ever-present pipe
became Death, the Destroyer
of the World,
the line shot straight upward.
The moment had finally arrived--
our greatest accomplishment
was finally
in reach,
and that which we are truly
best at
was about to receive its
well-deserved
apotheosis.

It is the moment that exists

at the cusp of forever,
in the microseconds just before
the act that can never be undone or
the words that can never be unsaid.
It is the moment
when a single kiss
may change the future
of humanity,
a single turning away
may seal the crypt of a heart,
when a hand is slowly
forming a taut fist,
or when the phrase,
"Go ahead, they'll never
miss it"
is being weighed.
Universes
hold their breaths
at these
pinpoints.

He is now deliciously

irrelevant.
He ponders great issues
related to the breeding of
fruit trees.
He is in crisis consultation
about that annoying lawn vine.
He is thinking outside the box
about the problem of getting
all 10 blocks piled up
before she knocks them down.
And he is going to write that
epic work
no one will read
that will explain
The Mystery
once and for all.
Ah, the poor fools.
What they will be missing
out on.

The unremarkable book asserted

that indeed it had all been done
in 144 ferociously action-packed,
miraculous hours
a few thousand fleeting years ago
in the not-so-ancient past.
It ridiculed the notion that
the great apes and we had shared
that vine-covered house
down the street
a long time ago.
There was nothing I hadn't seen
and laughed at
a thousand times before.
But then it said
that God would someday reverse
all suffering,
and make everything just as if
no scourge, no fire, no rack, no rape
had ever been experienced.
I closed the book in horror,
not only because I suddenly
hated whatever fool
had actually written that,
but because my resistance
to seductive madness
was low that day.

It can only be borne

(if it's to be borne at all)
by refusing to see
or recognize
most of it.
It can only be borne
by living in a space
so tight
and sweetly-spirited
in its gentle obliviousness
that the rest of it
just rolls off of you
like a wave to which
you have
your back turned.
The mirage of right now
and the gameshow
of right here
help keep the idiot cruelty
hidden from our
wishful field of vision
and let us
believe that the knife edge
cannot find those
who refuse to acknowledge
its
existence.

Wasn't everything supposed to be

taken care of by now?
Weren't we supposed to be drinking in
the earthrise from our homes on the
Mare Imbrium and bidding
tearful farewells to neighbors
headed for a now human-friendly
Red Planet?
Wasn't the savagery of the age-old
battle for control of
pieces of the earth's crust
supposed to be the stuff of a now
discarded barbarian epoch?
Weren't the ravages of disease and
senescence supposed to be as archaic
and incomprehensible
as Stonehenge?
And weren't all the infinitely
false caricatures of others
embraced by
of our pathetic ancestors,
manifested and elaborated in
blood-soaked detail over
countless centuries,
supposed to be receding into
a thankfully remote past,
as we basked in the glow
of Universal Brotherhood?
My God, what sort of idiotic,
delusional
children
were we?

I look down an ill-defined road,

its contours and extent
obscured by shifting patterns
of light, shade, and chance.
Its downward slope has not
escaped my practiced eye,
and I tread it warily.
I know that as I walk forward
my steps will become more labored,
my body will ignore my wishes more
and more,
that the irreversible law
of return to that
from which I emerged
will assert itself
without mercy.
And yet as I surrender the last
reflections of what I was in the
high summer of life,
my hope is
that I will enter into my true adulthood,
that I will know simple gratitude
more fully than I ever have,
that I will accept the losses
which now must come with something
resemblant of grace,
that I will treasure laughter and
the singing of the trees
with a fervor that belies my age,
that I will finally be able to
forgive and be forgiven,
and that I will know that even
though I never figured out what
all this was,
I never gave up trying to scale
the infinite cliffside.
And if I can have one last request,
(and isn't a condemned man entitled
to at least one?)
it's that when they find me,
I'll have a book
on my lap.

They spoke in hushed tones,

lest they violate the solemnity
of the timeless ceremony.
They watched in awe as the dancers
hopped around the striped pole
while slinging
hog entrails at each other.
The ritual toe wrestling contest
held them entranced.
The presentation of the
initiate in the deeply traditional
outfit of
clown shoes,
ballerina dress, and
a goat's head mask
elicited short, excited breaths
from both of them.
And the pinnacle of the service,
the ritual immersion of the initiate
in a vat of
honey and chicken feathers
(to symbolize his newfound
right to borrow fishing gear
from the neighbors)
was even more moving than their
professor had promised.
There were tears in their eyes
as they chanted "Great googlie mooglie!"
with the others,
and prepared to go to the
post-ceremonial feast,
the smell of the Ritz crackers
and assorted Jello molds
practically making them swoon
in anticipation.

They keep looking for him

to return with a shout
and an airborne embrace
for those who have held
true through all the
Gethsemanes of doubt
and fear that have rippled
through their kind
for so many expectant
centuries.
But I'm betting
his return won't be
in a blaze of triumphant
glory that overwhelms
us with the blinding light
of the earth-melting divine.
If it comes at all,
it will come as a quiet
arm around the heart,
one by one,
and the realization that
what matters
isn't whether the clouds part
and the angels sing
and the seals open,
but whether we
see a six year old
with
The Thousand Yard Stare
on his face
and say,
"Enough."

Entangled in the impassable

forest, I turn dejectedly,
only to find the way out
too obscure for me to discern.
With resignation and
quiet foreboding, I try to
clear a new path, and
for my trouble I am engulfed
in a sea of sticky grass
that rises above my head;
the land is intent on
drowning me.
I thrash and grapple with
the tangled mass
as the hot sun glares at me,
draining my sweat and my strength.
I finally break through
and find myself in a land
not my own,
and in my relief
at being anywhere
that I can catch my breath,
I no longer
bother to notice
that I am bereft of
hope.

I find its lack

of scar tissue
startling and unsettling.
It has no instructions,
and its uses are unclear
to me, although I've heard
whispered intimations
that it might fit comfortably
under the stairs.
It's right in front of me
but its visage is
too strange and
colorful,
too preposterously
bright
for me to grasp.
It's set off my
alarm bells,
because any day now,
I just know
the damned thing
is gonna blow up
in my face.

The tangled limbs

were matched by voices
frayed from mad,
straining assertion.
No silken words
could stem the tide of
enthusiastic
bludgeoning,
now well advanced,
and the insipid pleas
of the well-meaning
buffoon wringing his
beautifully smooth hands
from a safe distance
were lost in the
happy uproar of
righteous murder.

He shifted uneasily

in his chair as the
young one,
still foreshadowing
manhood,
looked at him with eyes
that conveyed accusation
and betrayal.
"You didn't tell me
how hard it would be."
You wouldn't have understood.
You were more interested
in nap time and learning to walk.
"But couldn't you have made me
stronger?"
It was enough
just to civilize you.
"But there was no hint of
the suffering out there."
You weren't ready to know it.
"But you knew I'd find out."
We tried to delay that part as long
as we could.
"So why did you bring me here?"
Because we needed you so much --
we just didn't know it
until we met you.
And the boy-man
accepted
without understanding,
and secretly wished his
father would embrace him.

His manly cape

fluttered in the hot wind,
his compelling shirt
clung to his
heroic physique
as if it were greasepaint,
his tights proclaimed
nobility,
and the sheer magnificence
of his shoes
would have awed
all spectators
(had there been any).
And as he boldly strode toward
the searing, popping, steaming
lava field,
he almost felt sorry for
the poor son of a bitch
it was belching out of.

It spat out

remnants of gore
from its voracious mouth,
its lungs greedily sucking in
the night air as it stood on
the trembling mountain.
It looked with hate-soaked eyes
in every direction,
seeking signs of
threat and blood.
Seething and panting
in its bottomless fury,
it tore the cowering, shrieking
head
off of one final hapless "opponent".
It clambered up the final
dark pathway to the summit,
and standing on it in contempt,
it howled its victory
to the mutilated valley below,
the absurd days
of sapiens weakness
now happily forgotten.

Three Haikus (Go)

I drift without aim;
confused impulses take arms;
I amuse myself.

Old ties rekindled,
I revel in happy times.
Memory is kind.

Restless spirits walk;
I look at them absently.
Their faces are mine.

"All right,"

he said with a weary sigh,
already aware of what the
tiresome mob in front of him
was going to moan to him about.
"what is it this time?"
A spokeswoman, braver than
the rest, edged forward
in jittery hesitation.
"Could you just give us
a hint,
a sign,
a clue,
anything at all,
even an albatross
(if need be)
to let us know
what you had
in mind?"
He laughed at her
earnest gestures,
and then said
in casual irritation,
"How the hell
would I know?"

He stands transfixed,

letting the tropical full moon
bathe him in its viscous light,
listening to a world at rest
and asking himself
what grand culmination,
what great project,
what ultimate contribution
will be the denouement
of an uncertain life?
The trivial question falls
to the ground unnoticed
and unmourned,
as he watches the nocturne
in silence.

The madhouse reverberated

to the sounds of the frenzied,
terror stricken
wretches
wandering about it in directionless
panic,
pointing with wide-eyed
horror
to the grotesque cartoon figures
leering at them from every shadowed
corner.
And as the inmates
shrieked in comic-book
horror,
they never
noticed the sky
outside their
windows
cringing in fear
as fiery, howling
death pierced it,
laughing
in anticipation.

It sneaked up on me.

Just when I thought I had it
hidden under enough protective
layers of leathered, worldly armor,
enough coats of frost-bitten cynicism,
and a strong
enough facade of masculine detachment,
it assailed me
and the creaking buttresses
that hold up my fragile interior
collapsed under the merciless
assault of the song Always.
And there it was, the tender
surge of warm, salty feeling,
and the involuntary welling up
of my eyes, because she was
sitting next to me, and I wanted her
to know that what she was hearing
was really coming
from me.

I wish I could tell

how much of my fiery
venom
was really the product
of seeing
the bones of the
helpless being
crushed in smirking
indifference,
and how much was
simply the outcome
of neurons
gone berserk,
and the useless
frustration of
not being able to
eviscerate
the tired demons
that even now still
sit on my shoulder,
yawning as they stab me
with
bored, practiced,
nonchalance.

The obedient one reported,

"All the punchlines have been
delivered.
All the loose ends have been
tied up.
All the goal posts have been torn
down.
All the smiles are now umbrellas.
All mountains are now
molehills.
All dogs have had their day.
All souffles have risen.
And all the darnedest
things have happened."
He then held his breath, hoping
it was enough.
The Chairman replied,
"OK, but has everyone kissed and made
up?"
Crestfallen, the little man whispered,
"No, I'm still working on that."
And he slouched off
with slumped shoulders
and a tired heart.

We are the sum

of what we once were,
the product of selves
we never fully knew,
a swirling,
continuously evolving
concatenation of
moments strung
together through
the shadowlands
of experience.
The days elude us,
until we look back
at what we thought
was happiness,
and wonder how it
was
that we didn't
see.

They are no longer

at the bright, glowing center
of creation.
They were once
the definition
of reality itself;
now they are a footnote
in an unread book.
They will not be noted
for their glory-besotted
bloodlettings.
Their mundane concerns
will dissipate in the dull
unwinding of the clock.
Their imaginings and
deepest expressions
would be of no interest
to any mind from a world
beyond theirs.
Their single atom of a home
is no longer under the
eye of One who cares only
for them.
Their real claim to greatness
is that they're made out of
the same five-and-dime
stuff everything else is,
and they know it.

Their boundaries aren't perfectly defined

like the picture of an exotic
marketplace in
National Geographic;
they're more like
a moving sketch
where the lines
gyrate
in suggestions of
raw action
and loosely-defined
arcs of movement.
And as they judder
through spacetime
they usually veer
closer to Pollock
than Primavera.

No truly great

love affair ends with a simple
but eloquent letter.
It doesn't wind down over
a quiet dinner or end in an
explosion of angry, mutually
immolating passion.
It ends at someone's bedside,
with the other one looking on
in anguished helplessness,
finding whatever solace they
can
in the calm harbors of
memory
or the idealized
hopes of eternity.
Or it ends in the
news that leaves
someone shell-shocked,
feeling as if they
themselves had been
torn out of the book
of life, and contemplating
the Grand Canyon of
aloneness
that has suddenly opened up
at their feet.
And however hard the
parting is,
the true lovers
wouldn't have it any
other way.
They know how the story
of their intertwined love
must end.
But the quiet exaltation
they have found in the
celebration of their lives
together
makes them willing
to hold each other's
hands
until one of them
can no longer
respond,
at least in this world.

The woman over there

by the cafe
is being eaten alive
over the expense report
she faked.
The married man
walking past you
there is lashing himself
for thinking about his
old girlfriend in that way.
The woman by the news stand
just had a twinge about the time
in high school she lied to her parents.
And that guy whistling to himself
as he walks across the street
killed someone in '92 and the
cops never found out.
He's cool with it.

The chains

intersect everywhere,
bouncing off each other
at oblique angles,
changing the direction
of other chain conga lines,
causing collisions
that give birth to
multitudes of other
chains, all sweeping
forward
through spacetime
with blind, omnipotent
power,
passing through
unwitting recipients
who juggle them
artlessly and then
kick them forward
with unthinking
casualness,
blindly creating
the future.

When you're a male

it begins to stir in you
before you know what's
happening.
The ones you always
avoided
become the ones you
want to be near
whenever you can,
even though you make a
fool of yourself more often
than you admit.
Wild, hopeless, delusional
fantasy
rips through your
reveries.
You spring to attention
even in public times,
when the consequences can be fatal.
If your line of BS is good enough
you begin to live your dreams
in high school;
others simmer in frustrated
onanistic loneliness.
Unbargained for consequences
arrive with jarring suddenness.
By the time you're 18,
the ancient genes inside
you are DEMANDING,
INSISTING, that you
GET OFF YOUR
GODDAMNED ASS
AND DO SOMETHING
about reproducing them.
(And they kick you where
it hurts every single day.)
You find that competitors
roam the plains, stalking the
prey, ready to smash you down
in the hot pursuit.
(And even the closest buddy
can trample you without warning.)
You're at the top of your
game, but often without
a player on the other team.
You erupt in rivers; no wall
is safe.
Your lovers can't believe
that you want another one.
And then, through the decades
you find yourself
being given a less prominent
role in the game. You're
spending more time on the bench.
You search for something
beyond just destroying the bed,
as you try to imagine what it's like
in their head, and as the world demands
your attention to a wall with
a hundred different windows.
Hard lessons are absorbed;
younger men now carry the
action to its heights.
And then, finally, nature or life
or God or the Universe or whatever
starts pushing you off the field, as
your usefulness in continuing
the race shrivels to nothing, in more
ways than one.
And at the end, it's not pushing you,
it's kicking you with muleish hammer
blows, shouting,
"Get out, get out, get out! You had your
shot. Now clear the way!"
But memories persist
longer than one might think,
and maybe a few of them raise a smile,
if nothing else.

The happy savages

stood there on the
moonless night,
stripped naked to the waist,
roaring with sanguinary
lust
in the ghostly light of the
mustard-gas yellow
lanterns,
automatics
held over their heads
by merciless arms.
They laughed at the prospect
of seeing their enemies'
faces being melted;
they longed for the
sweet stench of the
opposing army's corpses.
Once again
Hadar's cleverest
children
prepared to celebrate
a festive occasion.

I used to hope

that there would be a day,
some day
in the indefinable future,
when everything would be
explained, and the whole
tapestry would be
unwoven, the paths of
its interlacing
and interconnected
strands revealed in
all the simplicity that
only looked complex
to my unaccustomed eyes.
Every secret would be
revealed,
every private mystery
would be resolved,
every wound would be
healed,
everyone would be whole,
and everything would
finally
make sense.
I now hope
that we can figure out
a way for us to get
the yard in shape
before we get too old
to take care of it
ourselves.

"It could be worse for you",

he said. "Why, there are
stick children in Africa
being inspected
by vultures, as if they
were lobsters in a
seafood restaurant
aquarium.
There are people
praying to be released
from the agony of their last
withered hours.
Right now, two parents
are holding their lifeless
ragdoll daughter,
and there is an old man
forgotten and rotting
in a sunless corner of
an infested nursing home.

Cheer up."

It unfolds around us

in a sinuous way,
washing through our
heads in a wave of
rapidly erupting,
rapidly extinguished
flickers of energy,
its contours glimpsed
for an agonizing moment
and then, with impish
brazenness,
pulled away from our
helpless view,
leaving us bereft
and entranced
in the same
instant.

He looks at himself

looking at himself
and he tries to step
outside of
the infinity of mirrors
but the door is locked
and his image just keeps
reverberating
in an endless
identical
row, no matter
how bizarre a face
or rude a gesture
he makes,
and he shuts his eyes
and tries to take
a furtive peek
but the mirror is never
fooled,
not even for a microsecond,
and there's no way
to look behind it.

He looks so doggone nice

doesn't he?
Why, he just
radiates waves of
sweet, down-home,
country-style,
biscuits 'n' gravy love.
Only his diary knows
that his fondest wish
is to see the entire world
holding hands
in the sweet
brotherhood
of universal
rigor mortis.
He could finally
relax then.
It would finally stop
following him.
And he wouldn't have
to sing himself
to sleep
any more.

Everything returned one day.

No one had ever seen the like of it.
Skate keys from 1938 showed up,
all shiny and ready for fun.
That jacket the blonde headed guy
left in the theater was there, and it had been
dry cleaned and everything.
Armies of proud washing machines
rolled down the street
cheered by excited throngs,
ready for happy and productive
chores.
All the murder weapons came
back, too, serial numbers fully
legible again.
And people who hadn't been seen
for a while
made unexpected visits
at unexpected hours.

They are unseen

but omnipresent.
They are silent,
yet their words are
heard constantly.
They are ignored
but they run
the world.
They have disappeared
but their hands
still hold the reigns.
No one knows their names
but the future is theirs.
They are dead
yet they will outlive
us all.

For some of them

it will never be over,
at least not until the
final bridge has been crossed.
They will always live
in that steel day,
always see the beloved friend
turned into a spray
of raw hamburger,
always know the
ghastly exhilaration
of running through mad storms of
whistling death,
always hold the buddy from
boot camp as he breathes his last.
No day that followed
has ever meant as much to these
men, and never having been there,
I cannot know what that
particular screwdriver driven into
the brain feels like.
But I will always respect the
boundaries of the darkened room
where those memories reside,
and I will never casually urge
other men to find out
where the door to their own room
is.

She whirls in the darkness

in a dance of heart-stopping

grace,

her every lithesome move

the definition

of movement itself.

Her leaps and pirouettes

would stun the Kirov's

stars, but none will

ever sit in jealous awe

as she performs.

Her theatre is closed to all

and she would sooner

burn it down

than let a coarse and barbarous world

be blessed by her tender power.

You can set it down now.

You've carried it one hell of
a long time,
and I wouldn't be surprised
if it's made a permanent dent in your
shoulder by now.
I will admit, however,
that that old piece of wood
you've lugged around
for so many years
has really become part of your
identity, although maybe not
in the way you imagine when
you're alone and adding up
the outrages
that have been committed
against you that day.
You've been showing it off
for so long that even the people
who used to wonder
when you were finally going to reach
Golgotha have stopped asking
about it.
So you might as well dump it
in some place where it'll
be handy for the garbage men to pick up.
We got the message a long time ago.
Now you're just becoming a bore.

The days melt away

and so do I.
There will be no trace of me
some day
except for the records
kept in electrons
and those will die out
too,
forgotten in some
indecipherable corner.
Immortality
is a mug's game.
But ever since Gilgamesh
the suckers have been
laying down
the coin.

You'll miss them someday,

the gentle moment of holding that little girl
in your arms,
that moment of standing in the new light
of a forgiving morning,
the surge of strength you have to lift
those heavy branches,
or that tidal wave of ecstasy
in a shaded place
with the one whose love
keeps you whole.
They will pass through your fingers
faster than the time between vivid dawn
and looming darkness, never to
return to your hand again.
Never let the mundane world
sell you the lie
that they are too commonplace
to be worthy of your
surrender.

I used to say

that I wanted to see its true face,
no matter how terrible,
and drink its essence,
no matter how bitter.
But I never actually wanted
to do that.
Rather, from a safe distance,
one where I could get
something to eat
whenever I felt like it
and curl up with the cats,
I wanted to
read about
how other people had
had to march through Sheol.
I know that on one level
that makes me merely
a voyeur of the suffering
of others.
But I didn't will their agony
and I don't revel in the accounts
of the horrors that raped them.
And my going through them
wouldn't undo any of it
on their behalf.
I wanted to know
because I felt
someone should remember
what had happened to them,
however loathsomely
comfortable that someone was.

Every joy you have ever felt

in watching a little kid's giddy delight,
smelling a new morning's ineffable promise,
spooning with a special partner in private,
unspoken bliss,
having an omelette so good it deserves an award,
feeling your soul opening up like a crocus
on the first warm day of spring,
or embracing a friend you once thought
would never be in your sight again
but who is now vibrantly real in your arms,
is not an escape,
an aside,
an aberration in the scheme of an
indifferent universe,
or a denial of reality.
Each of those moments is a victory,
complete and total in itself,
over gray, exhausted despair,
an affirmation that the term real
isn't just reserved for tragedy,
and a reminder that life
is more than the sum
of its tears.

It was so much easier

when the roof was just a few miles high
and the magical constellations
glittered just beyond the top of the ziggurat,
rotating around us in a flattering,
glorious procession.
It was all so wonderfully compact
and understandable,
and we counted for so much
in the eyes of the wide-eyed
gods that stood in silent
judgment in the temples.
The dazzling nightly show
had been created with
only one audience in mind,
and those who watched it
and saw in it the realm
of the perfect,
knew that the only futures
it would ever predict
would be theirs,
and theirs alone.

It's a day for doing

on the spur of the moment.
There needs to be no plan,
no elaborate route
covered with cheery little
colored pins,
no map with notations
written in nice, clear
printing on the side.
Some days
I just don't care
where I'll end up.
And for some reason,
that's usually
when I find myself
in the places
with the most
interesting scenery.

Most of 'em

don't know where they are.
Most of 'em don't know
where they've been.
Most of 'em don't know
what they are.
Most of 'em don't know how
they got this way.
Most of 'em don't know
who they are
(if they think about it
for longer than a cigarette break).
Most of 'em have their hands full
just winning the battle of day to day.
Most of 'em wouldn't be able
to fill up a school notebook
with what they remember
from the days when they used
to own one.
For most of 'em, the world is
just "out there" and
other people are mostly "they".
But still most of 'em
think they know the score,
got it figured out,
know where they stand,
know what it's all about,
and by God they know
they're right
about the Big Stuff.
Whew. Must be nice
to be that sure.
Makes me kinda
jealous.

They think I'm helping

to prop them up.
If only they knew
the Cedar-of-Lebanon sized
timbers that they have placed
under me.
Some days, all that
keeps me from
wanting to vanish
into the lingering night
is the knowledge that
they might need me
(or rather, think they need me)
and I wouldn't be around
to offer them
my shopworn solace.