This is a time for bravery.
Not the human-cannonball kind.
Not the free-diver nor the free-soloist.
At the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater the Milky Way is rewound,
fast-forwarded, collided with nearby galaxies, as though nearby made
any sense in this unreal landscape, both alien and, in moments of insight,
Stare out a window, any window, until your eyeballs loosen
and you spoon them out of your skull like two warm eggs.
Be sure to keep at least one nerve and one blood vessel
attached to the bowl of pudding that rests on your spine.
That one could read a poet’s collected works
in a single sitting.
That barely a handful are worth reading again.
Keys, wallet, phone.
The Collected Works of Federico García Lorca.
Moleskin journal and ballpoint pen.
Mahogany chess board, Rubik’s Cub,…
I am awakened too early. I cannot be awake.
The growl of my neighbor’s leaf-blower is what prehistoric man,
cowering in his cave, cowered from.
How do you forgive your neighbor?
Remember when bumper stickers read
Free Tibet or End Apartheid, and we agreed?
Remember when there was just one war on TV,
like a movie whose plot you knew by heart?
For the promises I never made, or kept; for the
friends I wronged, or let down, or lost touch with;
for doors I failed to hold open, grandmothers who
bore their groceries unaided,…
Last night I caught a dole of doves
robbing me of sleep with their yapping.
They accused me of such terrible
things—an oppressor of birds…
For once, I throw my lot in with the rest.
At the bleak store that sells tobacco and liquor,
two bucks buys me this slip that feels sinful and
foolish in my hands…