WARNING PSALM

You must not keep still, but vibrate, like any given crop or mineral. At least these things understand that
the center will hold, that the molten core is a far-off
goal to grow toward, but whose outskirts offer extinction. My God, that any of us makes claims on the absolute.
That only comes after the disaster. While we're in it,
we're as naked as Kansas. Do you begin to see that in our role as survivors of nothing, we give up
everything? The flash of eyes, the groping reach---truly, an international moment. Do you begin to see?
That in the muting of our differences, we might
lend ourselves to silence?

SACRIFICE

All the dead men in their fancy waistcoats flip you the finger, say, “Give up all hope.”
The cannibals are dining strictly on their own
and the lion lays down in King Tut’s country home.
The sun is always shining but you’re cold
to the bone, and you’re buying steak knives over the telephone
and you’re eyeing the lamb
and the cub and the kid
and you know you love them
but something’s gotta give.

CONSTRUCT

This is a house of worship. You can tear it down
any way you decide. You can say I was praying,
or burning inside. You can hand me the torch,
let me do it myself. You can tell me again
how innocent I am, once it’s done.
How I was chosen, how I was always meant
to be the one.

NAMELESS

Five dark winds collide, and from that, you begin
to weave and fabricate excuses, trying on one voice,
then another, until the right one fits. You are finding
your orbit, the anxious crowds in the air you breathe.
You are an incendiary cross-breeze, a napalm of second guesses. You lay the blame, seed the crop.
You gnaw the fox’s haunch, and call the help line.
You can’t help but wonder about the blank spot
on your diploma, the “X” that marks
the beginning of all things…

TIDAL

Guide me through this open mouth, the tidal scream,
a gathering of waters here at the broken sore.
I am slick with algae, my arm is up-thrust, I am a statue sunk to the bottom of this most available ocean, a convenient back-drop,
something to tell stories against.
I am the Roman, with nothing left in store.
I am the aqueduct that goes nowhere,
the barber with dull blades and the hot smear of shaving cream and throats
that live to tell the tale.
I am the sliver on the ice-choked river, the clanking of loose change.
God, believe this:
I am you without a name.

DREAMS OF EMPIRE #3

Look! It is late afternoon, and the sun breaks open
the window, lighting for a moment what is usually invisible, gold motes clutched into twining cloaks.
This empire of dust, which settles overmy kitchen glass, my scattered, entrenched laundry,
my eyelids as they flicker and doze.

Through me drifts the Revolutionary War scene
that actually happened down the street, the first fissures of the Manhattan Project,
Boss Tweed’s popped vest button long since
ground down past the salt of the earth.

I blink my eyes again. Just dust.

YOURS & MINE FIELD

What is love but the right to devour?

The black-out lights reveal
a yours & mine field. Step lightly now. Through the words, to the knives
dipped in water that can also heal.

REDACTED SCRIPT

Blank kills Blank, to seize the position of Blank.
But Blank was foretold the prophecy, and acted
against it, setting into motion a horrible blank
of his own blank intentions, that ended in
a blank, an unholy marriage, a dirty thimble,
and a renouncement of all blanks.
Blank follows…

EXPLORER

So, the moon launch launched of its’ own accord
and we followed, creating our own
chicken wire & papier-mâché replicas.
For a while we float, as made up as balloons, full of shut air and air sickness bags.
We love the whole idea of a backyard miracle,
that flight could somehow come from this.
But always, we end up with the end of the afternoon, us peering out at the burning spur beneath our window;
a tender strip of asphalt glowering with heat ripples,
a simple driveway waiting to be filled. Dad's home.

BLINDNESS

My family had a TV repairman, and I had no idea
how he sat in front of his own TV, blue-lit and repetitive, with lids barely fluttering beneath a great weight.
He had his father's name blazoned across the side of the brown van that pulled into our driveway sometimes, when trouble arose, when our reception was marred by oceans of static, licking at a sodden, sore wound that threatened to grow. This might be blindness,
but we are waiting for someone to tell us otherwise.