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.