And in other news

The reporter tosses gruesome headlines 

at the camera.  

I can tell she‘s reading

the teleprompter

line for line. 

Her blond hair drapes down

her chest, stopping on her heart. 

She has a good make-up artist.  

Together they can rule the world.  

“Ten shot dead,” says she

as if the sorry dead of ten 

were a sorry nest of mice.  

I can’t imagine her

as somebody’s mother.  Real life

reeks too much for her.  

Real life smells like tuna.  

But she drones on. 

Ten other victims wounded.  

And in other news, the Lakers win

another round.  

And  I think, she ought to say,

People, people

This is the 34th mass shooting 

so far this year.  

She ought to add—And the year is just beginning. 

She should say this in a voice that’s breaking.  

She should touch her heart and say,

I cannot bear to talk about the Lakers.

For that, come back another day. 

But there’s no chance at all 

of changing how she 

arranges her words 

till they taste ok.  

She forgot what truth sounds like.

The pay is that good.  

Follow me

 They’re all gone now

and Self, we have almost forgotten

the excitements in this house

Three generations. 

Three merry, quixotic kids.  

A black Lab that loved salads.  

The baby suddenly 

on the scene (after the daughter parachutes

into skid row)—and then 

there are more of us 

to fall in and out of love with 

every day.  

Every day. 

More dental visits, more hands to hold,

more apologies, more praying in the middle of the night. 

In the night.  

Blurry days between one decade 

and the next. 

Sometimes doves sing in our windows, 

sometimes cop cars stop by.   

Sometimes silence just waits 

out there. 

Waits. Waits. 

Grandma dies. 

The kids find mates.  

And one copper sunset, the husband 

sits still as a moon rock.  

A moon rock.  

And for the first time, dear Self, 

you make coffee for one.  

Just one. 

And for a long time, you read the paper feeling 

him in the next chair 

until one day truth 

seems less paranormal 

and you remember his green chili omelettes 

only on his birthday.  

His birthday. 

And then you ask and ask and ask

when should we leave that house 

and we wait and wait 

for a signal

from the forest, from the ball of yarn, 

from the olive oil, from the twigs, 

from the dead squirrel on the sidewalk.  

On the sidewalk. 

Until that rainy night 

it comes in the candle, 

in the red halo of the wick. 

The house looks different. 

Less familiar. Less young. Less ours.  

Less. Less. Less.   

And we are overcome with the vision 

of  a small boat, a light wind on the boat, 

a motor humming:  

Follow me. Follow me.  

So we empty the closets, 

pack the trophies, 

shut the blinds, 

and lock the doors  

Lock, lock,  the doors.  

And I remember him. 

Dear husband, Where do you 

sleep tonight? Tonight? 

I want to believe. 

Believe. Believe.  

We will always love each other

 I am the master and all he needs 

is a gentle Please clean up your room 

and he cleans up his room and 

when I say, Let’s give these Canada geese a chase, 

he becomes the wind.

From his Halloween bucket he offers me treats.

I only take candies I know he doesn't like 

and he says: 

 

We will always love each other because 

we don’t like the same things. 

Of that boy there is nothing now. 

Not a hair of him, not a finger print, no forensics. 

Just photos and diary notes 

remain as my proof 

to the cops he was really here.

 

All of him carried away with his small teeth 

by the Fairy in her talons. 

And then a bold freed slave appears at the door.

Bushy and tall, demanding his rights, some appalling.

So sudden. This manhood. As sudden

as the strike of a match.

It takes a while to recover from a death, 

from grief. 

 

But I do. 

Already he redecorates the bedroom

and uses his unmade bed for a hamper. 

Yesterday I say, Welcome to my home. 

It was starting to get lonely.

Breaking News: Kroger to buy Albertsons

Another merger, just as the prophet 

     Marx predicted.

Capital never sleeps. 

     In continuous motion

to suck all that its forked 

     and flicking tongue 

can reach in its craving to beceome

     multinational, multi-planet--

all-dominant universes —Black Holes.

     (Let's give them names--Walmart. Chevron. Disney.)

And we the ruined shops and souls 

     are their fuel.

And we are the stars that twitch then

    vanish over their event horizons, 

torn into invisible bits

    where once we were whole beings 

who created all manner of gods and angels 

     to save us from all manner of hells 

but who are helpless before a force

    that swallows light itself.

All my life, the numbers who suffer grow

Nor can the little ones escape.

In fact theirs will be worse:

the climate will sweep away their bodies 

like wind sweeps up the sage brush

but still they angle for jobs that will kill them. 

The lettuce fields, Quick Stops, 

the meat packers and

old secretaries and truckers with bad backs

and huge co-pays 

who cannot retire, 

and again 

railroad workers are told, 

Sorry, no sick leave! 

Those are the rules. 

And so they all wait for another 

planet to roll by

or maybe Heaven.

All my life, the world makes 

more and more of those 

who sleep in bunks, who will never own, 

whose lives must fit beneath a tarp. 

Not enough to go around.   

Not enough baby formula.  

Not enough insulin.

Not enough warm coats.

Not enough schools without broken windows.  

Not enough. Not enough.

Just little fixes that don’t fix.  

A high-interest loan, food stamps,

and reminders to say

thank you, Pfizer,

thank you, Elon

thank you for not taking everything,

for leaving the cheap couch

from China, this hand gun,

the crystal meth, 

this last frozen pizza.

Thank you for sharing the air.  

I understand the Deplorables

Those lives that every day peer

into burned out, low down, blood-spotted, 

dirtied air and flooded streets.

I  see them bury their young

from bullets or meth. 

I see what breaks them, 

what has been injected 

with capital’s 

hypodermic’s plunger.

I see their work schedules, the price of eggs.  

I see their souls scared

purple and blue, their lives fragile

as sea shells, 

and I understand why they move 

their hearts from their own chests 

into the chests of Trump, Jesus, Lenin, 

Hitler, Dr Phil.  

Because they are alone and unable

to get what they need, what we all need.

Because we all are the wrong age, 

skin, weight, profession, religion, gender.  

Even I with some privilege want more God/Marx/Magic, 

whatever lets people inherit their own Earth.  

Because it was not he/she/it who 

set things up like this. 

This obscene land of begging 

and obscene stealing. 

The Jeff Besos ilk who smash paychecks

of millions of bread winners 

to enlarge their own monster jackpots.  

And everyone who wants change 

is so afraid to burn down the banks 

because they tag you as Commies

or dummies. 

Because the politicians always say 

it’s the wrong time, 

the wrong candidate

 —but mostly the wrong time —

for health, 

for tuition, 

for teachers, 

for wages, 

for peace, 

for resistance, 

for everything. 

But it is always the right time

for Exxon 

for Lockhead 

for Harvard grads

for the F.B.I. and

for not  

burning down this house 

of emptiness and terrible crimes.

For not building a house 

of prosperity

that stretches to all the Detroits, 

that turns rivers transparent 

and blue again, 

and grows fish that aren’t leaking,

and furnishes fresh green 

things—bell peppers and apples,

and small farms to replace liquor stores,  

and lets air smell  like orange peels

and eyes light up again

for another golden age—

a post Wall Street uber alles 

renaissance—when

finally the gods 

step down from the sun

and fill the void again.  

All week the news keeps newsing ...

...more mass shootings—

5 in Ohio, 

7 in Texas, 

4 in Michigan...

A chorus of promises rains down 

from our leaders

during their permanent rehearsals 

for action 

against guns stacked

in basements,

in night stands,

in shoe boxes...

 

And so it continues 

to rain guns with more 

rain tomorrow

and all of this year

and all of the next...

So that chorus of promises 

worries me here in my kitchen 

where my flowers wilt in fear. 

We feel insecure when 

every day five guys

or fifty 

go soggy

in puddles of blood.

I go to bed and the next morning

the news starts newsing. 

More bloody rain

on the porch,

on the dance floor, 

on the dead's stiff hands

stuck in the air. 

Even now 

the shooters’ anger prowls

around our streets,

waking up our dogs. 

They are not elsewhere,

they are everywhere and

I weep because nothing 

will stop them.  

I beg the editors,

mayors, cops 

and the whole chorus shakes

their heads

and they think about it 

every day

then once a week

then once a year.

The guns drag them

on leashes

to count casings, 

and they all howl

and their tongues thicken

with thoughts and prayers

as rifles point at our beds

squat on our sidewalks, 

enter our schools, 

invisible till 

they stand in our door.  

I ate enough for two to three....

...every day since Thursday.

Snacked on bites of pie

several times each day.

At least three bags of corn chips

chewed & swallowed, too.

More than once I tell myself —

Go make a big green salad!

Then hand myself

a French baguette & creamy brie,

it having warmed on the counter

all these days & nights, starting

off moon round, then slowly carved

into this crescent.

My self and I discuss a walk.

    A refreshing saunter in the woods

nearby or the lake, various venues

come up often.  

We send signals

back-and-forth all day.  

The one who feels the guilt pretends,

even now, she’s getting ready. 

Just needs a bit more time.

And the microwave hums then beeps.  

gravy & rolls hot again.

A shame to waste the food.

Besides, the damage has been done.

Now the dark inhales the day

so no way am I going out.

Tomorrow for sure,  I swear to the

mirror and the mirror smirks back.

Too many promises have been made,

a quilt of them, bright and patterned, 

every sort of fabric sewn together

with faith in us, even in the liar.

Because this mirror 

has been surprised. 

We have amazed ourselves before.

Over toasted bagels make me think of guns


When you live in America

and you try to compose a poem 


 

about over toasted bagels,

 

you think about dying.



 

You want to think about 

how beautiful life is 

with its variety of bagels—blueberry, cheddar, pumpkin—


 

but the image of burned skin 

keeps on mocking you.  



 

So you think of the best bagel you ever had—

cream cheese, lox and sweet red onion 

but the words just don’t flow.

 


What flows is flesh fried 

by a bullet
 in isle 3

 and the last light that shoppers see 

reminds them of the spark from their toaster

that morning.  

What flows is:

 

Click. Click. Click.

 

Hole in the lungs.

Bone in the brain.



 

What flows are the blue lips.


 

What flows are lives spilling out 

all over the floor

 


in the bakery department.

 



Just one more spontaneous outburst
of gunfire 

in the supermarket down the street.  

 


There is a horrific thrill 

of watching 

bodies drop on the security cam

 


like the thrill of seeing a 747 crash 

because 

that could have been 
my flight,


 

my body

sprawling in the bagel isle


but today it isn’t.  


 

Not today.