I finished reading and slipped to the back of the crowd.
“I didn’t know you wrote poetry.”
We were both surprised.
I thought everyone wrote poetry.
Years ago, a friend and I floated down a river in Missouri,
love taking shape in the air between us—
“I’ve noticed you don’t speak with proper grammar,” she observed, approvingly.
“John Dryden can go fuck himself,” I replied,
“The way people speak is what is magical about language.”
I ain't worried too much about grammar—
But I spell as good as I can.
Grammar’s like color theory:
useful, sure, but not the thing itself.
It helps you tell the difference between
"I liked what she said"
and
"Her words caught me,
held me up in the light of her living."
My brother, when we were kids, would irritate our mother
Saying “I gots a new basketball,” looking her right in the eye.
I never cared much for the word myself—
But I wouldn’t have punished him for speaking his truth.
She wanted us to bear the markers
of civilized society,
But–
As Ross might have said,
I gots no time for that.
I’d be shocked
To find anyone
who never sang in place of speaking.
original poem
So Many Reasons Why
When they diagnosed me I was in the middle of my divorce
Astonished at how I had come to find myself
In that time and place
I told my girlfriend I was extremely lucky. She said, no, I had worked hard to get where I was.
I watched a Palestinian child sob and shiver
On the dirt floor of a hospital tent
Her skin burned away. No anesthetic. No triage. No comfort.
I try to imagine what that feels like.
I fail.
My mom likes to say she worked hard to get where she is. She wasn’t lucky.
I think about Victor Jara. Somos cinco mil.
I try–and fail–to imagine how it feels
To sing for a better world,
And be forced to play guitar with no fingernails.
Maybe knowing you are forsaken is worse.
Maybe it’s the fingernail thing.
The national guard shot four year old Tanya Blanding with a tank while she hid in her living room.
A cop shot twelve year old Michael Ellerbe in the back.
Cops only come for me with warnings about driving too fast.
I’ve never even seen a police car at my parents’ house in the sticks.
My parents both told me I worked hard to get where I am.
They didn’t like hearing me say that I’m lucky.
When Adam and I got arrested
The cops knew his dad. (“Aren’t you Hot Rod’s boy?”)
They booked us and charged us and a few weeks later
The court case vanished into thin air
My parents say it wasn’t luck–it was because they hired a lawyer
When I was a child I had a good friend
His dad, in childhood, had been my dad’s good friend
My dad would take me into the woods and teach me to identify
Trees and plants and animal tracks
His dad taught him to buy his Sunday beer on Saturday and huff gasoline to get high.
I once drove by my friend’s house–not too long ago–intending to stop
I passed by instead
That evening my phone rang again and again
Where was I? Where was my friend?
His parents and siblings had been murdered.
The cops held him and did everything they could to get him to confess.
He still can’t convince himself they were wrong.
When I was a kid my parents bought an acre of land from Dad’s uncle for one dollar.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 