Woke up French. Je suis Bob. I live in a little town 
in the south of France. So small it doesn't have a name. 
I own two donkeys though one likes to be called a burro. 
Voltaire used to vacation here. He'd look out to sea 
and think, I am Voltaire and you are not. The sea 
would look at him and think, Shhhh, shhhh.
I'm really an electrician who lives in Farmington, MI.
I woke up hungover, which isn't recommended for an alcoholic. 
First drinks in twelve years. It was like riding a bike again 
without a seat or handlebars all the way down a mountain 
made of ice. I'm really the poet writing this poem. So far 
it's taken me far away, given me a trade and brought me 
most of the way home. You can never go home again 
if you were never there in the first place. I woke up 
in the middle of the road, between a bear and a pack 
of coyotes. Under all of us was the caption, What's wrong 
with this picture? a) None of us were smiling. 
b) All of us were smiling. c) If you look closely 
at the stars, you can tell they've been photoshopped. 
Nothing's that beautiful. Or everything's that beautiful.
The bear is pointing at her heart, as if to say, 
I am the divine. I could feel it, the sense of living 
outside of time. Maybe today is the day 
I'll show up for my life.

Candles play with shadows
as if they're kittens.

Gramatically 
this could be confusing.

Anagramatically 
this could be a mess.

There are only two anagrams
of my name: obb and bbo.

Sometimes I look out the window 
and see the window 
looking in at me, 
searching for a way out 
of trying to find a way in. 

So yeah, we're all stuck.

Together. 

But not stuck together.

Political poems are terrible. 
Boo hoo -- people are shits.
Power exists. Democracy in action 
is mostly democracy in traction. 
But not this one. This one's 
amazing. This one's 
going to change everything 
or at least its socks. 
They were yellow, now they're greeeen.
I need all the es 
because they're really green. 
A better poem would be barefoot 
and make you smile winsomely, 
whatever winsome is. What is 
winsome? And don't say, 
win some, lose some. Ever. 
In any context. To me. 

I only enjoy chess without pawns—
when the two sides go at it like sex
at one thirty seven a.m.—no pretense
that real contact isn’t wanted—
similar to the oboe player below us
feeling obviously big things
about the planet and his soul—
about leaves being open mouths—
about all the rooms one has to cross
before someone on the other side
lifts a corsage that smells remotely
like yes—if a game of chess
can be over in six seconds,
we can find the time to stand
in front of the statue of Balzac
holding hands—resisting the temptation
to call him Ball Sack—before we realize
it’s really Andre Gide—that it’s really
unimportant who is dead in bronze
pretending to be alive—more important
which is the best street gyro
of all the street gyros—which pocket
has the napkins to wipe the tzatziki
from your face, more lovely
than any tumbling routine—
each of us not going anywhere
we don’t look over and find the other
simultaneously arriving
to the conclusion, “I’m so glad
you’re here”—if you were anything
not human—anything
without a pulse—you’d be a bicycle
and I’d be the wind
trying hard to stay on
and not so much succeeding
as never giving up—I’m not sure
why I turned you into a bicycle
but I did—words are amazing—
you are amazing—you are everything
the world has to say

A memory. I'm in a tall building.
My forehead's pressed to a window.
I'm looking at a boat on fire in a harbor. 
Someone's behind me holding a gun to my head. 
An alarm's going off
and a woman's climbing the building 
across the street. She's naked. 
There's a tattoo on her back 
of a woman climbing a building, 
and so on, and so on, 
all the way down to a speck of dust. 
You have very good eyesight, 
I hear myself think, even though hearing 
isn't actually involved, is it, 
but we don't read or see our thoughts 
either, so much as touch them 
like braille. Brain braille. 
Let's not think that again, I think now, 
in what will become a new memory 
very soon. I'm late for something 
but can't figure out what. A funeral. Wedding. 
Belief in god. Fear that my life's
an irrelevant part in a sitcom 
that was canceled after three episodes.
The person holding the gun 
asks me to pick a number between one 
and infinity. Infinity, I say.
I am right. I begin to cry
but never quite finish.

Cows are cool enough to be born
wearing their leather jackets—the milk ones
behind us are quiet and scholarly
over their plates of grass, while the beef ones
below often scream like they’re young
and watching The Shining for the first time—
it’s as if they know the blades are coming
and scream’s not quite the right word, as saying
I have cave paintings on the inside of my skull
tells you I hail from hunter-gatherers
but isn’t meant as a description
of the actual decor—the thing
about the screaming is it makes me order
a bowl of beets and mushroom soup
at the restaurant when otherwise
I might have asked for the waiter’s heart
on a spike—it’s a rhythmic sound
that has blood and rust deep inside it—
almost a catching of breath
on razor wire or waking from a dream
of falling down an elevator shaft
to find you’re naked and have
to give a speech while falling
down an elevator shaft—it makes the bucolic
creepy in the dark and creepy
under full sail of sun—but not the milk cows—
the milk cows are half ton whispers—
their udders seem to levitate
and meditate—I look at them as clouds
that have made emergency landings—
that have slightly more modest ambitions
for rain and shade but nonetheless
are still eager for a life as weather—
this is just a little of what it’s like
to live in what we call “the country”—
think of it as a painting in a museum
that sometimes smells of shit and sometimes
a bear walks through the painting
and mauls the dew and sometimes vultures
weave a circle in the air and you wonder
below them, are they here for me
and I’m overdressed for the demise—
as I’m telling you I plan to wear
a tuxedo, both to yours and mine

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.