You think I'm gonna stay

on the floor, don't you,

lying there in fetal submission,

the last of my fight circling the drain,

this time down for the count.

You don't know me, you son of a bitch.

I've taken on bigger, tougher, meaner, uglier

bastards than you and I've

cold-cocked them all.

So smirk all you want, pal,

because I'm about to knock you on your ass

harder than anyone ever has.

Just ask that group of swollen-faced idiots

lying spread-eagled on the arena's seats.

That is, if they wake up any time soon.

It was Nagumo's

metal ripped, blackened fleet pulling into port
in the middle of the death black to hide from the shame,
the shocked eyes, and a humiliation that screamed out in the silence
for seppuku.
It was the doctors
sewing up the last of the dead man from Brookline,
sealing the grim package,
and sending him back on his seven mile high journey to the
waiting catafalque, so that no one could see
the shredded remains
of the insane violence
that had been born
in the pathetic loser's
desire to be someone.
It was the last dregs of anything that resembled dignity
melting away in the cheap hotel as the mewling john crawled on the floor
begging to be hit by the bored,
leather-strapped
woman.
It was the man of power lying in his bed
wide eyed in fear, feeling as if barbed wire
were being dragged through his brain and watching
his poses and gestures
laughing at him obscenely.
It was all part of the ancient abyss
that lies between the shimmering image of celebrated day,
and the bleeding, sweating, against the wall, no-holds-barred night
of how things really are.

He said to the kid,

"tell them nothing.

Never let them know what you feel.

Never tell them your business.

Don't tell them anything about your past.

And never say, 'I love you' first.

Got it? That kind of crap is for fools

and pussies."

The kid nodded,

and kept the tradition going

of staring at cold coffee cups,

passing out in the bathroom, and

dying in front of the TV.

They are men now

or rapidly becoming men,

but in my heart's evergreen forest

they will always be my boys, the ones I

kind of

sort of

understood because I had been, in a different world,

one of them and I KNEW

how fierce their

desire and their

rage and their

sorrow and their

fear and their

uncertainty were and I KNEW

why they laughed in unleashed, unself-conscious

shockwaves at

dirty jokes and

stupid comments and

nasty putdowns and I KNEW

how hard it was to work up the nerve

to talk to that girl with the sweet face and nice legs,

and I KNEW

that I couldn't tell them

how much I loved them for that

because they wouldn't have understood.

And no matter how many beards they have grown and

children they have fathered and

burdens they have borne

and sorrows they have survived,

they will always be 16 or 17

and aspiring to more muscle than they had,

and burning for girls,

and dressed in rock t-shirts

or sports jerseys,

and not doing as well as they thought in hiding

from me and

(God forbid!)

from each other,

how vulnerable or in need

they actually were.

I was surrounded by a rope

twisting around my uncomprehending body,
and not knowing how it had happened
or knowing how to unravel myself I turned
and found the knot tighter so I
made a new loop in it and that made it
even stronger and then from there I moved
blindly, going in haphazard directions,
not knowing where they led, and every move I made
seemed to simply make the original tangle
more interestingly configured
and harder to see the base of,
and all of my strategies and tactics
only made it fasten its grip
in more cleverly elaborate
ways.
And I want nothing more than to do a Hercules number on it
but I'm not sure which knife to grab,
or even if I would know how to wield it,
or how I would live
without the knot's
comforting familiarity.

We know human life and

human society are filled with problems. They always have been and they always will be. It may strike many people as simplistic to note this, but I think that in this seemingly mundane observation is hidden a more fundamental question: why is this so? Why has it been so hard for humans to create a reality that isn't saturated with difficulties? Why is human life so messy, so confusing, so hard to understand, and so hard to manage? Why are humans so utterly split on questions of ultimate truth? Why is there no consensus whatsoever about what a genuinely good world would look like? Why are so many humans plagued with psychological difficulties and a sense that life is a continuous uphill struggle (quite apart from issues of ill health or material deprivation)? To me, the examination of the nature of human reality and the circumstances surrounding it begins with such questions.

She lives in the certainty of

eternity and I am resigned to the prospect

of nothing.

She has felt the knife

more deeply than I and she is

not unscarred but she is still

standing,

and still unbreakable.

The world outside of our garden home

is beyond help,

but she transcends, resting on

the Nazarene, while I rage

in the futile sundown.

Her Zen essence will always be

a glass through which I see

darkly,

but I will always stand with her, whether I understand it

or not,

because she is not just Moon to my Sun.

She is the last face I hope to ever

see,

and I have no right

to ask anything else.