A few hours after Des Moines
the toilet overflowed.
This wasn't the adventure it sounds.

I sat with a man whose tattoos
weighed more than I did.
He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.
His Electric Ladyland lips
weren't fast enough
and if pitch and melody
are the rudiments of music,
this was just
memory, a body nostalgic
for the touch of adored sound.

Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.

You hope a forgotten smoke consorts
with lint in the pocket of last
resort to be upwind
of the human condition, that the baby
sleeps
and when this never happens,
that she cries 
with the lullaby meter of the sea.

We were swallowed by rhythm.
The ultra blond
who removed her wig and applied 
fresh loops of duct tape
to her skull,
her companion who held a mirror
and popped his dentures
in and out of place,
the boy who cut stuffing
from the seat where his mother
should have been—
there was a little more sleep 
in our thoughts, 
it was easier to yield.

To what, exactly—
the suspicion that what we watch 
watches back,
cornfields that stare at our hands,
downtowns
that hold us in their windows
through the night?

Or faith, strange to feel
in that zoo of manners.

I had drool on my shirt and breath
of the undead, a guy
dropped empty Buds on the floor
like gravity was born
to provide this service,
we were white and black trash
who'd come
in an outhouse on wheels and still

some had grown—
in touching the spirited shirts
on clotheslines,
after watching a sky of starlings
flow like cursive
over wheat—back into creatures 
capable of a wish.

As we entered Arizona
I thought I smelled the ocean,
liked the lie of this
and closed my eyes 
as shadows
puppeted against my lids. 

We brought our failures with us,
their taste, their smell.
But the kid
who threw up in the back
pushed to the window anyway,
opened it 
and let the wind clean his face,
screamed something 
I couldn't make out
but agreed with
in shape, a sound I recognized
as everything I'd come so far
to give away.

Third period was dodge ball with rocks, 
and if you were hit in the head and cried, 
you were reasonable and they enrolled you 
in AP history or math, but if you were hit 
in the head and didn't cry, you were advanced 
to dodge ball with guns, when if you were hit 
in the head and didn't die, you were either 
an angel or meant for a life in crime, 
is how it was explained to me years later
by a woman with the most beautiful wings,
I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing, 
as I am, or into it differently, as I am not

We were robbing banks on Saturdays 
instead of going to the farmers' market, 
so I hadn't had my raisin bagels in weeks, 
and woke up late one night from a dream 
of a crocodile in our bed and realized 
what a mistake we'd made, so now we rob banks 
on Sundays, when christians and catholics 
and football lovers are speaking to their god, 
who answers with touchdowns and sacks, if at all. 
Our garage full of money, enough to buy 
a Bosch dishwasher and not worry about 
how much it costs, to send our cats to Tahiti 
if they want, and to fund a revolution, though only 
a small one, say in Liechtenstein or the Bronx. 
We're rich. Not corporate malfeasance rich 
but soulless day-trader rich. Still, being rich 
without raisin bagels was no way to live, 
fresh ones made by Mary who owns a german shepherd 
named Carl. Who wags more than I do, though I
don't have fleas. It's not really money 
I'm after: I hope to open a vault one day
and find a scroll or box or glowing orb
that reveals the secret of happiness
and saves me from measuring my life
against the lives of others, even dogs. I mean,
Carl wags like every moment is a cheeseburger
and Mary has just called him a good boy
for scarfing it down. Three bites, tops.
Whereas I nibble and nibble and nibble
and never actually get to the end 
of the thing, or sometimes, I think, even the start.

Was it my turn to vacuum the collective unconscious? 
I liked Jung better than Freud, though I thought 
A. J. Foyt kind of nailed human psychology
by speeding around and around an asphalt track, 
as if proving we're getting nowhere fast. Never learned 
what A. J. stood for. Adjacent Jamboree? Adamant Jehovah?
Ascendant jumping is my kind of jumping, though I wish 
there wasn't the attendant fall. One of my favorite typos:
collective unconscience, as if there's a pool 
of unethical behavior we all swim in 
from time to time. Sorry: since 
there's a pool of unethical behavior
we all swim in from time to time. With Jung, 
I'll admit that when I come across his idea 
of the anima, I do think enema, but only because rhyme 
gives me no choice. Like skull and mull. Toking 
and joking. Ocean, a potion of motion. Love 
and dove and glove. Vagina and thank you. 
Morning and mourning. Yes and bless 
my wife for promising not to die. 

In another life I was a weed, a grocery list. 
A crescent wrench or crescent moon. A fall 
up a ladder. The diary of a dog 
written in urine. A song sung once 
from a mountain to a different mountain 
across a valley that turned to listen.
I was me with smaller hands or you 
with better posture or a maitre de 
dressed in rain. A guard in Auschwitz? 
Many someones were. Everything that has happened 
happened for a reason, such as because. 
When the moon dies, it'll come back 
as a flashlight, then a scholar
of Ahas. There are moments, you know,
when it's best to cry harder or help someone
cry faster, deeper, like a trench
digging its way through their heart
to get to the other side of not knowing
what to do or say or how to lift
the coming tomorrows. Was I ever that person
or the kind of flower that knows 
when to knock on a door? 
In the future, I may be excellent 
or beautifully forgotten 
or beholden to a warlord 
who can't tie his shoes. I have one word 
for this possible life -- slip-ons -- 
and four words for anyone who decides 
to love me: good luck with that.

The TV that had been left on was playing a commercial 
full of beaches, bikinis, and sun when she peeled off 
the condom someone had thrown at the screen. 
Her job cleaning rooms at the Sable Hotel 
pays for the car that takes her across town 
to wait tables at The Parthenon, which covers rent
for the apartment where she lets out dresses 
and mends the knees of pants that have bent too often 
to the god of clean floors. Time being infinite, 
all she needs is a fourth job to pay for everything else. 
One of the women in the ad looked 
like she must have looked twenty years ago, 
if she was right when she touched her face in the mirror 
behind the TV that she was younger and beautiful once 
and didn't know what was coming. Then she cleaned the mirror 
of her face by walking away. The rest of her shift,
she repeated the word vacation in her head and imagined 
the ocean touching her body softly and rhythmically, 
a liquid clock of a billion hands. When the word Tahiti
came to mind, she said it out loud to the bed 
she was making, as if asking it to come away with her. 
The bed said no. Not no so much as nothing. 
Though it looked perfect when she was done, ready 
for sleep or sex or dreams, but only after 
she gave the bedspread a quick tug in the left corner 
and smoothed out the last wrinkle with her hand.

I am Pol Pot’s mother. He comes over for lunch. 
I give him some kind of chicken. 
Tell him to sit up straight. Chide him 
for not visiting more often. I bet Hitler 
found time to visit his mother every week, 
and he killed way more people than you have. 
Mothers, eh Pol. May I call you Pol? If not, 
I’ll call you Pot, or just dead. But dude: 
doesn’t dictator sound as if it should be spelled 
d-i-c-k-t-a-t-e-r? Yes, I’m calling you an asshole potato. 
And isn’t the power of language amazing 
when it comes to changing nothing? 
Can’t change a light bulb or sheets. 
I love going to bed on or with clean sheets. 
It’s as if I’ve been reborn. Like I’m some kind of Phoenix 
or Tucson, a western city where it doesn’t get dark
until three hours later than it gets dark here. 
Not sure what time zones have to do with murderous thugs, 
though wouldn’t that make a great name 
for a football team? Who’d ever want to play 
the Murderous Thugs? Probably the Sadistic Crocodiles. 
Whatever. Let’s cram all the dictators, past, present, 
and future, into a locker and wait for evil 
to devour itself. Evil. Tastes like chicken. 
Only because everything does. Especially chicken.

You know you’re an introvert if the word party 
makes you think of sitting in your car 
wondering if you should go in 
or lifting your hand to knock on a door 
and turning around. How often I’ve wished 
humans had anal scent glands 
and just sniffed each other’s butts 
and knew pretty much in that moment 
if they liked each other, then wagged 
or barked and moved on to chasing sticks. 
Well actually just the one time in this poem 
but I like the idea enough to apply for a patent. 
It doesn’t help to imagine people naked 
and tattooed with Marie Antoinette’s nipples
or to think that everyone is thinking 
everyone is staring at them 
or to postulate that shyness 
is narcissism minus the ambition 
to rule the world. I’m happiest alone in a room 
writing poems, though not usually poems 
about being alone in a room writing poems, 
and will grant you that staring into the mirror
of language every day is the shortest 
and most honest résumé I’ve ever written. 
Turns out I look exactly like the wind 
and have the same address, and feel most days 
like a tumbleweed staring at a map. 
I know. I mixed metaphors and can’t possibly
be the wind and what the wind pushes around.
I can only impossibly be those things
for another twenty or thirty years
according to actuarial tables, which look lonely 
without actuarial chairs.

That cloud does a mean imitation of a cloud, 
in that no cloud can sit still for a portrait 
or to learn how to drive a car, 
even if it has an automatic transmission,
though some people drive like a drunken cloud 
if you read the notes cops make 
at the bottom of tickets, including
“I feel so alone” on the last one I got,
for going sideways in a state of confusion
in a straight ahead with purpose zone.
My problem with cops is my problem with power:
few of us should have it because most of us
want it, and most of us are OK 
with stepping on ants. But clouds want nothing
but to get on with coming together 
and falling apart, beautifully 
if possible, though not to them, 
given their lack of mirrors and eyes
and all sorts of other things, 
such as the ability always, and the need 
sometimes, to scream.

Rain woke me by playing bongos on the roof. 
If I told you how early it is, you’d come over, 
slap my head and tell me to go back to bed, 
if you’re a good person with a violent streak. 
What this means is I probably think of poems 
as telephone calls and time as elastic 
and you as silly enough to be reading this 
when you could be making an egg sandwich. 
I like mayo, a bit of salsa, and agnosticism 
more than atheism since we’re probably 
both thinking about god, if only 
because I’ve just said so. Written so. 
The drum solo’s over. It’s weird 
how the end of noise catches my ears 
leaning in its direction, then suddenly 
gives them themselves and nothing 
to listen to, like a whisper 
taken down to the studs. What is the sound 
of the end of sound? And if a tree rises 
in a forest and there’s no one there 
to hear it devour sunlight, 
that’s a fine thing, like kneepads, 
raisins, and the Goldberg variations. 
While atheists are positive 
there’s no god, agnostics are positive 
Are we alone in the universe? 
is a less pressing question 
than What are you better at, loving, 
or being loved? 

My favorite cloud ever
looked like Lincoln
picking his nose, said
one blade of grass to another.

Whitman wrote a whole book about us,
said one American to another.

There’s a lot of chatter
in this poem so far
but not enough wrestling
with the concept of the soul.

But is it a concept
or a paperweight, 
and does something
of our lives persist,
other than the desire
to go on and on
wondering why we’re here,
and where is the emergency
apple pie, 
since these questions
can’t possibly be answered
on an empty stomach.

You really are alive. I know sometimes you think 
you’re not. That you’re a dream in the head of a stone 
or a bit of air whistling through a crack in a window 
forty two stories up. But you’re reading a god damned poem, 
so you better be alive, otherwise what a waste 
of consciousness or its doppelgänger, jazz tuba. 
Philosophers say we can’t prove we’re alive, 
but have you ever taken your suicidal car or bad back 
to a philosopher to have it fixed? Years ago, 
in the unemployment line, I met three philosophers 
and one king and one forest that had been bulldozed 
to make way for houses made from another forest 
that needed a lawyer if anyone ever has. I have, 
I don’t know about you. We should have sex, 
or lunch, or hope, just to get even with the abyss. 
Not the movie. I like the movie. The other abyss. 
Also goes by the void, or the darkness 
made of the feeling there’s nothing after this,
the shitty houseguest who won’t leave, who ate 
an entire black hole for dinner and complained
when there was no emptiness left for dessert. 

Caught a big fish years ago a pike two feet long 
without bait just a hook and my red shirt 
right from shore 

someone cut it open slopped the guts out cooked it 
we ate it for dinner later I saw another fish 
looking for that fish I figured in the unfinished 
house of my seven year old brain and apologized 
to the deaf ear of the water sincerely 
and never fished again except for love 

and moonlight and ice cream the next day 
after dinner when there wasn’t any 
in the freezer I walked barefoot in my red shirt 
again and always in those days a mile into town 
for a cone better than almost anything 
that’s happened since is how I remember 

remembering it even though I probably had shoes on 
and the water listened to every word I said 
and nodded now and then so I’d know 
it was paying attention and not just waiting 
for its turn to speak is how I learned nature 

is more civilized than civilization 
is natural or something I guess like that 
or different 

When I was eleven 
I watched a balloon escape 
a kid’s hand and wondered 
if I could do that 
for a living if I 
grew up. Eventually 
the question was answered 
when I started writing poems 
that were terrible 
in the end but elated me 
in their rising and floating 
away from my fingers 
and blood, each one, 
in their becoming, 
a shouted or whispered 
set of instructions 
for how to pronounce 
that most complicated word, 
yes.

The day’s flashing a bit of skin to my left, 
or dawn, as scientists like to call it, 
is about to have its first bright idea 
of the morning, and even this faint glow’s 
like a trillion lit Zippos or bonfires 
having sex, don’t ask me, I just know 
the sun’s coming and how to change 
the oil on a 97 4Runner, the trick is 
finding a 97 4Runner and a reason 
to keep going when stopping 
makes a lot of sense, to rest, for sure, 
and maybe eat a quiche and apple pie sandwich, 
or wrestle the alligator in your heart, 
or tell this poem it’s not an alligator 
but your shadow looking at itself in the mirror 
and wondering where the time went 
and if the soundtrack 
to your frontal lobes 
is an all-flute jazz ensemble 
or train wreck in C minor, I know that tune, 
I am that tune and apologize 
for dragging you into this bog 
or tar pit or whatever this is, 
let’s start over and imagine 
a little painting, maybe five inches 
by seven of a shore and the sun 
looking over the shoulder of the horizon, 
the paint still wet and sounding like the surf 
touching and touching 
the beginning of something solid, 
what we call land but the ocean 
calls “not ocean”, and there’s a man 
holding a stick that was born 
in Europe and he’s thinking 
of jumping in and taking it home, 
and of the thing he’s trying 
hardest not to believe, 
that there’s a hole 
through everything, if you look closely
at the back of his head 
to see the expression
on his lack of a face

You shouldn’t put a hand grenade in a microwave 
without a plate on top of it 
to keep shrapnel from splattering 
unless you like cleaning up war. 

Is that too much or not enough 
figurative excess per square inch 
to suggest I think war is dumber 
than taking the SAT with a flame thrower?

But that’s enough violence 
with my coffee, I need a puppy
licking the face of this poem 
and peeing out of happiness 
that humans exist, as if we invented food 
and chasing sticks. We invented horrible things 

such as foreclosures and Wagner 
but also cheeseburgers 
are nice and staring at the sun 
to see if it blinks first
or ever.

A little bit of hammering
goes a long way toward making
the kind of noise I want my heart
to look up to—or have you ever
gone into a woods and applauded the light
that fights its way to the ground,
and the shadows, and the explosions
of feathers where blue jays
have been ripped into the bright
and hungry future of hawks—
and there’s this—writing an etude
by pushing pianos off a cliff
until one of them howls or whispers
just so—like a vagrant
slipping into a clean bed
or a man lifting a dying child
toward the sun and begging help,
rescue—if my eyes could speak,
they’d be mouths—the tongues
of my fingers ask to be words
against your skin—and when I
was a librarian, I lost my job
for exhorting patrons to sing
“Bye Bye Miss American Pie”—
it’s not what we do here, I was told—
yet I know this is a world
made by volcanoes, and don’t want
to keep this awareness of kaboom
to myself—so have picked up
my zither and begun walking
and strumming like an idiot
who thinks music is all
a body needs to feed itself—
and though I haven’t eaten
in years, I have been fed.

The woman I love
braids her hair. She’s Eve
and Eve means breathe, to give life,
my wife, from Eva by way
of the Hebrew havah. At dusk
I unlock her hair
from the curves it’s learned.
Overnight it remembers
a simpler life. Come morning,
she misses weaving herself
into a basket. If we had only
this one ritual, I’d still
think the sky of my time
on this planet,
but there’s more. We wake
and kiss and eat and kiss
and talk and kiss and walk
among cedars and grow lines
around our eyes and mouths
and kiss as our sex dries out
and falls down and touch
as if no one were ever evicted
by a snake from bliss, if you
(and I hardly) can believe it.

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been
 
confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was
 
and it turns out I’m OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars
 
painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that’s a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle
 
for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said
 
he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean
 
and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through
 
with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions
 
as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried
 
with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward
 
than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other
 
and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other
 
forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones
 
hear?

My younger brother was afraid of thunder,
lightning. My father bought a recording of storms,
put it on the stereo, and rocked on the love seat
with my brother over and over,
until the sound meant comfort, warmth.
Much later, my brother became obsessed with meteorology
and dreamed of becoming a weatherman.
When I finally connected the early fear
with the later passion,
we were looking down at my father in his coffin.
Not my father but his body. More like an echo
of his flesh. No weather on his face.
I’d seen him often in a suit but never wearing a vest.
Pajamas would have made more sense.
The soft rain of the talking all around us
was a cocoon I wanted to live inside.
I heard the metronome of my heart
and thought of Quakers waiting for silence
to open its mouth. Of the hope
just below the surface of the phrase, keeping time.