In times like these
I clean the gutters monthly
and the lint trap every day;
buy a time-share in the
Ojai Public Library, invest my life
savings in the Ventura Arboretum;
This is a time for bravery.
Not the human-cannonball kind.
Not the free-diver nor the free-soloist.
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 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…
I abhor the grass, the leaves that turn to blades
under the whetstone of heat, the worms, blind
and desperate and slippery, that wriggle forth
in the wet, the sucking of mud on bare feet…
I’ve been staring at the wall for hours,
wondering why the paint won’t peel off,
what’s holding the plaster together.
My son and I spent weeks assembling
a Lego car, 3,000 bricks of hard plastic
intricately connected to form a whole.
When you have run out of courage;
when every day is a loaded gun
and your hand is not on the trigger;
when you have given all you have
to give and still disaster looms;