He's on a short smoke break standing
in an alley out back behind a McDonald's
when he see the milling homeless men
taking turns trying and failing to pull out
(is he sober?) a golden-handled sword
visible above the flaking dumpster's rim
and thinks: Let me try.

A smoker's cough keeps him up at night.
He'd look decades younger with dentures.
Sex, even solo, is a distant memory.
Perhaps here's an opportunity to reset.
Doubtful at first, he finds resolve
as he clambers atop the piled garbage
and grips the strangely gleaming hilt.

As he draws the sword up and out,
the circling men all bowed and kneeling,
he knows somehow he has finally found
a role he'd like to fill.

for an additional security screening.
A random number generator chose you, not fate.
So please step into this area discretely set aside
for your convenience. We'll keep your passport
and boarding pass. You won't need either
if you fail this screening. So hope the cat
wasn't prowling the nearby construction site
where they keep explosives before, hungry,
she brushed against you in the kitchen.
And hope your wife hasn't hoarded all her
grievances for an unexpected payback now
just as you're finally leaving to start anew
anywhere that welcomes people like you,
anywhere that doesn't require screening.

Approachable, self confident
As adventurers in a circus fun house,
Sheathed in black and the frank
Promise of intimacy, these flowers
Open their petals in the dim light.
Planted on a high stool or low couch
Each keeps a still full drink close at hand.

Still as zen acolytes, they wait
Patient as a garden in the dusk
For what nourishment night might bring.
Money feeds their vivid dreams.
On a beach in Spain, in a tony store,
They find pleasures enough to fill
The quiet intervals between commerce.

Money-flush men will step among them
Moving slowly, searching carefully,
They wander in this fragrant garden.
Their need will halo the woman chosen.
In rooms above they bare their needs
Groping both for pleasure and what might
Water and replenish their own inner gardens.

That's what city officials say.
They preach a narrative that it is.
In the hood, at the dirt fringe of a small lot,
men sit on rusted folding chairs drinking,
at peace with the fact that they might get shot.

Crime is down.
But not here.
Here it's not safe to go out,
to shop, to let children out to play,
to sit or stand in the sun and talk.

Crime is down.
On the stoops of derelict houses
quick-fisted young men spill about.
They don't feel it.
I don't feel it.

On a cracked plastic milk crate
a dignified man with one bad eye
stares into the distance and conjures
a safer place where crime is down.

Children were never of interest to me.
Their antics and jabber were too much for any spell,
white or black, to make a difference.

Likewise the beautiful young adults, all those crowned
or aspiring virginal princesses and their randy princes
only made me want to turn away.

My powers were always subtle: discrimination, taste,
self-reflection. I'd only burn with shame riding a broomstick,
wearing a peaked hat, or stirring a cauldron.

Cats though, of any color, I do mostly like.
Their silent moves and easy grace are both good models
for living quietly while in plain view.

Witches are all as different as the people we live among.
And as flawed. But we stand apart in owning our difference
and in our stubborn will that the world accommodate it.

Where I'm at, ain't never been easy.
Always it's every man for hisself.
My childhood was hard as breaking
rocks in the sun with ankles shackled.
Never had a chance here.

Ain't never been easy here.
Nothing ever better, often worse.
No good jobs, only dealing.
No real hopes. No dreams achieved.
Never had a chance here.

Ain't never been easy.
Minister say: you live good
and God will have your back.
God, he looking somewhere else.
Never had a chance here.

Ain't never been easy.
I wake worried.
That's my son's memorial.
He died there on the ground.
Never had a chance here.

On a rack the shirts hang clumped together
as if hugging tightly for a sort of tactile comfort
or perhaps fearing separation and solo outings.
One a bit apart looks vulnerable, limp and alone.

On their rack the pants all seem half hidden
each folded lengthwise and doubled on its bar
the side facing down in the dark and off duty
content to be represented by the side that shows.

Below, the shoes are all in line and neatly paired.
Sturdier and less crowded than the clothes, they are
securely coupled and almost serene in repose
as if each had definitely found its perfect match.

Used only on the more formal occasions
covered in plastic sleeves, the suits
seem on display like choice objects
you view in a museum vitrine.

Content, I shut the light and close the door
on its citizens waiting to perform their duty.

lived youth with zest
later, older than I ever intended
lived age slower and with more care
life's passions fenced then
by inconveniences and forgetting
the once gifts gone now
out the stained door of ambition
down the splintered stairs of fortune
across the empty parking lot of life
to the blind quiet of a sepulcher

Car hits pole, occupant....
Forty-five minutes after midnight on a Sunday morning.
The crash occurred when the vehicle left the roadway and struck a pole.
Did it have a history of straying? Incidents of erratic behavior?
Police are trying to determine why the car left the highway.
Was it tired? Sad and depressed? A thrill-seeking model?
The single car crashed going 80 in the southbound lanes.
Perhaps it wanted company. Or, needed to be heading northbound.
The driver died at the hospital.
Might it have felt a premonitory existential dread?
He was described as a man.
Did it want recognition no accumulated mileage could give?
No name was released.

Taller than the metal filing cabinet with one drawer open that she stands at

the sleek brunette in her blue sheath with white lapels, hair in a tight bun, lips a vivid red,

half turns toward a man faced away from her and seated at a wooden desk beside a window

with a blind half up. Unaware, he reads a document held in both hands. To his left, night's solid dark

just visible through the window's bottom pane, beyond the building's blonde masonry.

The wall placards are edged in black.
The air is chill in the gloomy rooms.
Everything on display can be touched,
the details explored, conjectures made.
But not one thing can be repaired.

Even the nicest ones are not content
to be quiet. Wailing is what they do.
Preferably at night, but at any quiet time.
Wanting always to report abiding news
that death is always an approaching destination
for all of us with life to reach it.

Married four women. Divorced three.
On a visit that lasted years, did his best to drink up Hollywood.
Wrote stories of amoral intrigues filled with tough-guy dialogue.
Twisted love stories with sex were his double indemnity.

The weight of things
grows. In the kitchen
an old mutt attacks the dentist
eating from its bowl.
In a bakery one cannot enter
a naked woman sorts muffins
in the storefront window.
On the Street of Jewellers
the shops display unmade beds
evoking the disorder after lovemaking.
A man reading a book about sexual freedom
shuffles along the cracked and pitted sidewalk
past the homeless who sleep there standing up.
This reality might last forever.

A man decides to write a poem.
Why not? He's feeling good.
He considers some choices.
With a wink to grand guignol,
he might spin a tale about a cute small pig,
its drunken young assassin, and a hapless family man
who should have known better yet set it all in motion.
But he has no taste for pork today.
He imagines a poem with two hardworking angels
randomly flipping coins that, falling, rocket downward
to thin the population in a small American midwestern city
when they hit someone and, ironically, has the new dead
all unhappily joining heaven's long unemployment lines
because heaven's halo factory has filled its three shifts.
This offers all kinds of narrative possibilities.
But, to be completely objective, it is a bit twee.
Now, the man is feeling anxious as his imagination
fills with ideas with no apparent limits and he crosses
the boundary into the city of missed chances.

That's what the large yellow letters
fixed high up on a white wall at the gym
informs me. I find it reassuring that,
in this ostensibly judgement-free zone,
I have in fact been judged and found worthy.
This verdict rendered independent of whether
I confine my cell phone use to the lobby,
or wipe the equipment down after each use.
Similar to how we are kindly asked
to return the weights to where they belong.
It seems that some discerning unseen agent
recognizes that this is the place for me,
that I am now in the place I need to be.

Having imbibed too much
waiting impatiently offstage
all the long daylight hours,
night fell tipsily,
like a staggering drunk,
taking one step at a time
for as long as he is able,
but gradually losing altitude
and tumbling to the sidewalk
as the hours now ratchet
toward another dawn.

A young Mary, lithe and carefree, before the angel came.
A teen Jesus with a small mustache looking for his father.
The Holy Spirit climbing and diving on the wings of a dove.
God the Father, looking spry and dapper in a tux and top hat.
Family photos are all alike in showing us people and times
we can see and imagine but never really feel or know.