in hindsight our petty troubles
always appear overblown

(i’m hanging on)

and with a little perspective
we can smile and make jokes
of our foolish anxieties

(with sweaty hands)

a man glides down the street
on a bicycle
holding a short leash

a golden retriever just barely
keeps pace with a big grin

in my head i take a snapshot
and label it happiness

with a slight frown
i walk to work.

i was fine before you
i wasn’t but didn’t know
i wasn’t, you know? i knew
life was a winter then you
dropped a spring in my lap
and like that it just melted
away laid bare all the hidden
love to a love and green grass
grew here and a tree, a tree!
yes, i was fine before you
i wasn’t but didn’t know
i wasn’t my winter was free
of the dream of your spring
and a tree of my own.

If the world ends again
on us i hope it’s raining
on the soundless ripples
of a mountain stream.

I hope the water flows
down the weathered slope
to a village time forgot
where ancient wrinkled hands
that woke in pre-dawn darkness
will rub our backs and sing to us
in long-forgotten languages
(we’ll drift apart in lullabies
lost in socks and sheets).

If the world ends again
on us i won’t go riding
off to war i’ve had my fill
of flame and salted earth.

This time the air-raid sirens
will hold their breath
with me and hope
it’s just the sound
of rain it’s just some
huge and lonely thing
crying giant tears
on the soundless ripples
of a mountain stream.

When he was still little and proud
of his new stature his parents
kept paper dixie cups with floral
patterns hanging in a plastic
holder above the sink.

One day their parents were out
and the boys had a girl
babysitter watching them play
outside and when they came in
to get water his brother still
tiny asked her in mumbles
and motions for a floral paper
cup and she said, “No. They aren’t
good for the environment.”

In hindsight she was probably
right but when she turned
there he was drinking
from a flowering cup
and he felt her looking at him
in that uncomfortable silence
for them both and he knew
then in his little heart
something was coming.

this one is for the lovely
ones up all nights killing
themselves with the worry
what’s left with how many
more are left before it sets
in before some doctor
says the words what’s left
for the ones who can’t sleep
without that last little bit
for the morning for the ones
who can’t stop the ones
who are trying to grab it
the ones who once cared
enough to wonder and dream
still alive somehow breathing
within it and despite it
this one’s for the lovely
that the lovely ones die
for and you maybe you
over there if you’re there
and you’re listening.

the gifted child screams
in rage and sadness and frustration
at all the people there to help

the lothario with a limp dick
sits back on the pillows lights
a cigarette and watches the smoke

the artist cuts his meat in silence
at an upper east side dinner
table full of suits and money

and tomorrow we will all begin
again to fail in different ways
all the broken roads of life
fanning out in arching rays
spreading colors through the sky.

there is a voice that winds
the tightness in my chest,
that whispers over all
the reassuring smiles, all
the sympathetic offers of,
“you two will find a way.”

there is a voice that whispers
louder than the gust
a passing locomotive leaves
at the platform louder
than the distant rumble
of turbines on the tarmac,

it whispers cruelly winding
the tightness in my chest
to a point of pain

and of the silence seated
on that leaving train,

and of the shaking quiet
in that moving plane

it whispers,
“it won’t be okay.”

i had a dream from which i woke
bitten badly foot and ankles agony
this dream i bare of chest and foot
and dark of sun and dirt had reached
a place i thought of reconciliation
understanding all and here my friend
with me filthy garbed was throwing
coins up in an alley in a slum
upon the empty balconies of the poor
who struggled here for why he asked
in silence did he have so much
and they so little i as well appealing
reaching in my pockets found some bills
some small and one one hundred
saw a man half-blind with lesions
leaning on a cane went up to follow
his example giving up my bill at last
i faltered there and couldn’t choose
between the bills but the hundred
had already been seen and avarice
lit his leprous face and so it spread
from eye to eye infectious in the street
and all now gazed upon my hand and skin
gone milky white again they saw and so
i gave it up of course but void of joy
did i then learn a coin is something else
and as he leant to press a leprous kiss
upon my brow i in lonely falseness
stripped of personhood reduced
back to bitter turned my cheek away.

(ask the elders do the math
none return along the path)

land laid fallow moving on
to the brink and then beyond

pack your bags desert the base
set a hard line ‘cross your face

pass the oceans skip the earth
leave the land that lent you birth

walk the path above the stars
slip yourself between the bars

maybe there for all your talk
you’ll lose the track of what you stalk

and drift in darkness lost for good
reaping what you sowed and should

or maybe in that distant place
you’ll chance upon a lonely grace

and come triumphant from those lands
with something cupped between your hands.