The Next Step

You fucking pig

You loser

You have no idea

What you’re doing.

This young police officer

finally laced on the handcuffs.

“The first step...” they told me.

They were incredibly white

and kind,
but it was obvious 

that the first step was getting out

of the handcuffs.
And I did.

I took them up on their advice,

went back and found the people

I had hurt by simply being present
in their lives
and I said:

I’m sorry I’m a pig fucker.

I’m a loser.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

And they smiled and let someone else

lead me away;

they wanted to see if I'd figured out the next step;

they wouldn't be the ones flying through the air 

if I hadn't learned a damned thing—you can count on that!

Well, I never took that step,

but I haven't fallen over either.

As they float away to marriage land
I look up the wedding dresses

and yell:

"If you’re going to heaven, you owe me one! 

Show me those panties! Just one last time!"

And they do,
but in a medical way,

and I see handcuffs stashed in the lace.

That's smart, I figure.
but sadder than hell too.

Mental Health

There is no such thing as mental health

(Though it can be a hell of a friend)

There is only what you do.

You walk from one place to another

punch a person in the face

and wake up.

The couch has been peed on.

Your neighbor’s tortilla press

is sitting in the sink

and the workday is half over.

The phone rings and rings.

You turn it on.

Worried little voices

come out of it.

They tell you:
i'm here for you

i understand
i understand
we'll get to the bottom of this.

you understand. 
Don't you?

to water.

Serving

you take your first job

and you’re on time the first day

and then you start to show up late

and your boss,

a bad man who’s going bald,

begins asking

why you’re always touching your face

and corners you

asking why your hands are always dry

when you leave the bathroom.

but after a few months

the coworker with the ass

has ridden in your car

and you’re relaxed

and smooth while taking orders.

the job has become second nature

and at the end of your shift

you begin taking boxes of beer

out the back.
because when you’re serving,
you're always a few pegs removed

from the bigger things,
the responsibility

the top

so it makes good sense 
to get fired

and get the hell out of there.

it’s not logical,

once you’ve been a server,

ever to be one again.

but if you're the type that's accustomed 

to pretending to wash your hands

and taking boxes of beer 

out the back, 
you'll find

it’s not exactly logical 
doing anything else 
either.

On Being Tiny

after a sleepless night of sin

i watched this fellow

named

neal degrasse tyson

break open the universe and lay it out square.

he wasn’t like the dapper and spectacled atom bombers

who shouldn’t even have been allowed to die,

or the big, genial, contemporary geniuses,

the Hawkings and Dawkins,

who write books.

nothing could be worse.

with neal it was simple. 
he said

the three most abundant elements in the universe

are the three most abundant elements in the human body.

they exist in the same proportions.

carbon, which is number three
can make more molecules and chemicals 
than all the other elements combined.

numbers two and one are

oxygen and hydrogen.

blah blah blah, but you have to know

where the elements come from. 
it's those giant melting pots: the stars.

as the commercials came on
i started thinking differently about space
and ever since
night has been distressing

not because we are so far away from everything else,

but because we are already everywhere.

this, neal said, 
should give us a sense of belonging.

well fuck me, i thought, and turned off the tv.

In the End

“What’s the end of the Old Testament?”

“What do you mean?”

The woman brought her leg up onto the couch. “I mean I haven’t read it.”

The man nodded seriously.

“I know the New Testament is all Jesus,” she said. “The Old Testament is Moses and Genesis. But what comes at the end of the Old Testament?"

The man’s eyes went up to the ceiling and sat still. The woman leaned forward, drank some wine, and then placed the glass back on a see-though coffee table. “I don’t know!” the man blurted out and they both laughed.

Then he talked about his upbringing as a Unitarian Universalist. It was a very liberal upbringing with a focus on social justice and tangible human values. He liked black people. He was totally comfortable with anything. And on and on. And then she said the same things back to him in a different way so he would see that he that wasn’t any smarter than her. There was lots of enthusiastic head nodding.

The woman thanked the man for dinner. They both said goodnight. The door closed and the man’s apartment became normal again. It was still too early to sleep. He tried to read. He poured a glass of wine. He wished he’d kissed her. But nothing matters.

Thank You

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why i love Mountains

i have been in this dusty town for eight months. long enough to get going, i figure. there are mountains. i love mountains. for me they’re as impossible to ignore as cleavage. they sit behind the town. on top of one is a bowl like a volcano, and in the bowl are two tall trees. i can see them from far away. the mountains look close, but they’re far away some days. i can see no houses or roads on its sides and i don’t want there to be any. imagine! trees in a bowl on top of a green mountain! i wonder if it fills with water when it rains. maybe there is a pond there with mountain-borne fish. i look at it every day and it doesn't disappoint. in the morning low clouds drag across its face, stretching like the backside of a wave. when i'm coming home from work, the sun is flat, hitting it square, like a spank. it’s blue before the rain comes, and gray afterwards.

but my love for mountains is not unconditional. i realized this in the dry season. i had thought that nature was a sort of alternative to the city, and mountains were like nature’s palaces. looming above ours. but now that it is dry in the city, the palaces of nature are burning. the tops of mountains are the closest to the sun, the farthest from water, and the farthest you can get from life. it begins with the wind. it is a hot and dusty wind that tastes like smoke and pollen. it blows into town from the hills where the fires carve odd shapes. like an alien planet. then the yellow weeds push up through the faces of the hills that are black from the fires. they shimmer in the heat from the sun and disappear behind a haze of smoke that is dark and purple like rain. a hot kind of shade. 

i wouldn’t be surprised if all the animals came down from the mountains into town. it would be like Jumangi, but they would be more like refugees. lines of monkeys coming across the bridge into town. the other day i saw vultures gather around some dogs, scare off the dogs, then pick at the ribcage of a dog that the dogs had been eating. more dead dogs then. it’s a dull feeling of death winning the battle in the middle of the day.

i could have saved myself plenty of anguish by walking over and seeing what my special mountain was all about, or asking someone, but its scary. so i protected the image of the crater-top with the fish still swimming around, until i could no longer hold it inside my head. first i wanted to know its name. and then i was told it had no name. “What?” they replied. “Oh that,” they said. and hell if i didn’t find out that it was owned by some goddamned coffee plantation. i wish i’d never asked.

i was driving out of town the other day and i passed my special mountain. on its flanks there were well-established places with gates and barbed wire with guards that i would have to talk to, and charm to surpass, only to see what i no longer wanted to see. the top wasn't green, but yellow. the trees on top looked like desert palms in a terrible, drying wind. i don’t know what i had expected. just a dark and narrow trail leading to something unique and beautiful everyone else had missed. then i would see about that bowl and those two trees and the summit tidepool with the cloud fish, and so many other things. i still believe it's all there. there’s just no telling until you’ve been, and that's why i rarely go.

Half a Cow

when you haven’t got a trailer

the easiest way to move a cow 
down the road 
to sell

is to put its calf in the back of a pickup

and drive.

that cow will run through a city street

packed with noisy smoking red-eyed people

without batting an eye.

that cow will gallop over a rickety metal bridge

so long as it can see the calf.

you can go 20

and you won’t lose the thing.

the most difficult part 

is covering up the calf in a tarp 

once the sale is made.

you only have one shot at it

and it has to be quick.

because if the mother catches you,

you’ve sold the other man

half a cow

at full price.

The End of That

i was living with a beautiful girl.

she had been gone a week

and when she returned,

her scent and feel seemed to have been gone forever.

i had treated not seeing her very lightly.

now everything was just right

but i wanted more.

we got each other worked up

in front of the tv.

and then i walked her to my bedroom,

excused myself,

washed up in the bathroom,

and pushed the condom wrapper from the night before

deeper into the garbage.

by the time i got back to bed

i’d learned several things about her:

she had an explosive temper,

an eye for detail,

and a scent and feel that

i would never find again.

and that was the end of that.