Having had a little bit of enough

Perhaps we should stab an evil person

and then go to a church or temple or mosque 

and ask one of the holy people we find there 

to excuse our behavior based on the idea 

that it was the knife's fault.

Probably we should stare at clouds instead

and tell each other which dead president

or extinct species of beetle

that one over there looks like. No,

the other one. The other other one.

Reading the news these days 

make me want to put my head 

under a lawnmower for the peace and quiet. 

Also a bit of the suicide 

would be nice. Just a dab.

I don't really want to die

with my boots on. First

I'd have to buy some boots and second

I'd have to go to the boot store

to buy some boots and third  

I'd have to buy a horse to go with the boots

and I don't have enough room

for my depression as it is, let alone 

my depression on top of a horse. Evil people 

doing evil things. Maybe what I meant to say

is we should stab an evil person

with the stuffed bear they were probably denied

as a child. Whatever. We have to try something

don't we, to make this a better world?

Not a batter world, not a bitter world,

not a butter world, although I can see merits

in all of those. A better world. And no,

not a world where you can bet 

whenever you want on whatever you want, 

though we seem to be going down that road. 

Vegas will let you slap dough down 

on anything, even the when and how 

of the apocalypse, though not the why. 

There's no mystery to the why: because. 

And what would a better world look like?

That's easy: different. 

When kaboom isn't news (always) 

It's useless to speak of peace. Firstly 

we don't know what that is. Secondly 

we don't want to know what that is. Thirdly 

I like to count. As long as there are

          a) maps

          b) men

          c) men with maps

          d) sticks or stones or guns or any kind of metal 

              that can be hammered into a pitchfork or blade

there will be war. Then again it's useless 

to make my bed, since sleep 

will take it back to the wild, but I do. 

Or to kiss my wife, as she will immediately 

and at all times I'm not kissing her 

be unkissed, but I've accepted the challenge. 

Kiss is a word that sounds 

as if it's trying to be a snake. 

You think we'd be afraid of the hiss 

in kissing but we're not. Many are afraid 

of blacks if we're white, of communists 

if we're capitalists, of the left handed 

if we sign our checks the right way, of Jews 

because isn't it fun to have someone to blame 

for poverty and crime and high humidity? 

An accurate definition of human 

would cast a spotlight on the word 

stupidity. I'll tell you who I want to kill: 

the bastards who make fun of the saying, 

Make love, not war. They should be shot 

or hung or tickled to death 

with confetti raining down 

on their naked bodies in the parade 

we'll throw for everyone 

not coming back from the war 

that never happened. If we ever have 

one of those.

Baby adult steps

Fighting tyranny, for example, doesn't work. 

You might as well try to teach the sun 

to be afraid of the dark. It's too big a goal. 

Like what school of bench pressing 

begins with a million pounds on the bar? 

You start with ten, a hundred. You eat an orange, 

take a dog for a walk, think of irises 

as a manifesto, go to a rally and burn a candle 

and chant a chant. Extol the value of hair 

to skinheads. I don't want to read Mein Kampf, 

but if you want to read Mein Kampf, 

I won't piss on your lawn. A purpose, I guess. 

A reason to cross the room. 

Looking at a single tree as my responsibility, 

a pond as needing me to go to bat for it 

when the city council wants

to change the zoning laws. 

Do we really need a heliport, maam,

or a center for advanced barbecue studies, sir? 

Maybe we do. Maybe I don't know shit. 

But ignorance is the cause 

that makes me want to keep a go kit handy. 

My ignorance. Yours. Imagine if you learned 

one new thing every day. The balloons 

inside you would rise a little, 

you'd be more interesting to cats, 

and soon wonder if the world 

will ever stop surprising itself. I say no. 

I say zither is a fun word. I say 

burning books is attempted murder. 

How often does an idea that goes up in smoke 

return as a fist? Little things, such as stopping 

as you're about to throw the match 

or considering you may be wrong

about the best movie ever made. Casablanca,

really? Wrong about almost everything,

just like me. Except trying harder. To listen.

To hold doors open for otters 

and ghosts. To understand what leaves 

are saying to the wind. To be deserving 

of the giddyup of your breath. 

Ode to not knowing what comes next 

2:30 in the morning and I want

a really big cock, like a garden hose

to unroll and flop over the edge

so I can pee without getting out of bed.

I'm warm and comfortable and hate

my bladder so much I'm thinking 

of sending it back to high school.

I get up to pee, come back to bed,

fall asleep and dream 

I'm on the roof of the Tate Modern 

eating a bag of Ruffles. 

I'm surprised they taste the same 

on top of all that art. A man 

sitting beside me with a legal pad 

and pencil is drawing the Thames

and the drawing flows. I give him a Ruffle 

and he smiles like a horse 

must feel when it runs.

The next time I look at the clock

it's 5:30 and I need to pee again

with my slightly-above-average-size cock

so I get up and paw at the sky

for the sun, but without claws

that can rip the dark away,

I'm screwed, so I make coffee

in the dark and wonder if my soul 

is like the milk I stir in, something 

that cuts the bitterness. 

Now I'm writing this poem 

and telling you 

I'm writing this poem

in front of a picture of two arches

on the Brooklyn Bridge, which I've crossed 

with and without Whitman, with 

and without a desire to jump off, 

and with and with and with 

the hope that the heart's 

the right organ to celebrate, 

the right organ to bang on 

until that sucker sings. Are we there yet 

I keep asking the Earth

but it speaks a language

people don't seem to understand. On 

and on, we go on and on, above 

and beyond, and under the below. 

And I apologize 

for the product placement 

earlier in this poem and promise 

I'm not a spokes-poet for Ruffles 

or the soul. I can prove it:

The soul is the whisper of fog

to a leaf; the soul is a Zippo

that can light a cigarette 

underwater; the soul is a dream 

of our nipples and spleens, a matter 

of matter hoping it matters 

that petunias and clouds and gymnasts 

exist. See how wrong I am 

about everything I say 

but how I say it 

as if leaping off a cliff 

into the arms of the air? 

That's how you know I'm a poet.

Wanted to, wanted to, wanted to, didn't run

I've imagined a rainbow being raped 

without knowing what evil I'm really afraid of.

Let's say all of it. Let's say every person 

is an iceberg, with most of who they are

or what they want obscured from view,

and the ship that runs into that iceberg, 

and the cries of people trying not to drown, 

and the unlistening stars. Now let's consider 

a different notion to sing against this theory. 

Every person is a piano being tuned 

by a deaf woman who hears with her fingers, 

who loves the honesty of wood, who gives half

her bologna sandwich to her dog. It's not 

that I love you, since we don't know each other, 

I say to myself every day in the mirror. 

But I want to love you. I can't remember 

at what age I realized the jobs 

I was most qualified for — "introverted 

fuck up", "metaphorical thumb sucker" —

didn't exist, but when I moved on 

to "really good napkin folder" and "player 

of drums under water", I started to see myself 

as a viable weather system 

or a coordinated thrashing of grass 

by wind. Do you know the sound 

of hundreds of birds taking off 

at the same time, like the sky's 

drawing in air after holding its breath 

for a century? Neither do I 

but I'm determined to be that sound.

The definition of insanity

Wednesday and once again 

I've not brought peace to the Middle East. 

I'm not even trying, other than swearing 

at the TV and calling politicians idiots. 

I have gathered twenty dead bees

in a jam jar, an interesting alternative

to potpourri, and dusted the deer skull

on the mantel. But as far as settling 

ancient conflicts, nothing. How do you think 

of history? As something in a book? A thing 

you said on a bridge once

about the water flowing past

while holding the hand of someone you loved

and all of it gone now, the bridge, the river,

the hand? When I think of the Middle East,

I see a bear that's eating a lion 

that's eating a wolf, see people 

trying to murder murders 

that have already happened, 

as if to kill a way back to the dead.

The desire for blood is the desire for life

and how do we put an end to that?

With missiles and guns? Rape?

And what problem is solved

by bombing a hospital?

Only the problem of not having enough evil

that needs to be avenged. I don't think the dead

need more neighbors and friends.

We could make life out of their deaths,

write books about their jump shots

and overbites, use their old shoes

to carry moonlight out of the house

and into the garden where it belongs,

form a choir of our crying. War

should be fought by people brave enough

to listen, men and women trained

to stand naked under white flags

in the wind and rain, to argue

and dream of more humane ways

to be human. This is only a fantasy

if it never happens.

Hope

I found a spoon in the road, the handle 

bent up and over itself, the bowl charred 

on the bottom from flame. When I put my ear 

to a junkie's spoon, I hear waves 

swallowing themselves. 

In case someone had tossed the spoon away 

to implore a clean river to return 

to their veins, I gave it an honored place

under the sycamore where our cats are buried. 

Some nights the spoon eats moonlight, 

some nights, rain. Every day I try 

to believe in angels, and every day I fail.