I Don't Know How This Poem Is Going To End

Usually I write backwards;
I start with the last line and then
back my way to the beginning,

But where's the adventure in that?
where's the surprise, the wonder
in not knowing what happens next?

tonight I set off with nothing,
a happy song playing through
noise canceling headphones,
laptop on my knees,
kitty at my feet,
small boy asleep in his bed

while I try to find the current
under the surface of a sea of white space

knowing that 60 times a second
my computer is checking to see whether I've written anything,
thought of anything,
how about now?
has he done anything yet?
was that a keystroke?

there are some days when you need to
just launch, closing your eyes,
unfurling the canvas
ready to plant your flag wherever you hit land
go wind, I'm ready; take me.

A Traveler's Advisory From Gleick, Mandelbrot and Heisenberg

If one wanted to know
the length of the coast of California,
for example,
the answer would depend on one's
size, intention, perspective,
frame of reference;
the answer you'd get driving a car
and checking the odometer
is perfectly fine, a fine answer indeed

Now walk it.

Off the asphalt
the edge of the earth isn't smooth
like a retaining wall,
the cliffs undulate,
jut out into the sea
then recede,
there's a coastline you never see from behind the wheel
and that's also good, quite good

Try this now:

Examine the cliffs, the rocks, sand
with a magnifying glass, microscope,
look at pebbles,
grains of sand,
flecks of dirt,
the shape of things and the space between them
and tell me how long the coast is now
or even if you know where it begins or ends

Still there? Still with me?

Then why not look
inside the pebbles, sand
flecks of dirt
by shooting electrons
at their smallest constituent parts
until you're looking at things
so small that shining light on them
sends them out into infinity
and the most you can know
is not where a thing is,
but only where it was

My warning to you is this:

The closer you get to me,
the more the chaos comes into focus,
but if you've been reading me for awhile
then you probably know this.

Bokanovsky's Process

The bell rang and I watched my son's class walk out, single file, lining up under the awning, against the lawn. Parents were on the other side of a chain linked fence, talking with each other, waiting for their children, making play dates, parking SUVs on the street. My boy was in the back of the line, holding a green happy face he was given for behaving well. Numerous other children were also holding them. They raised their hands as they saw their parents through the fence. Mine saw me, raising his hand. He walked towards me, smiling, backpack with the logo of a recent summer blockbuster movie hanging heavily on his shoulders. He handed me his happy face as we walked across the lot to my car. He said goodbye to a couple of his friends. "See you in a bit," he said. Soccer practice was beginning shortly.

My Television Will Not Fit In My Compact Car

The sun is up and it's a beautiful
Indian summer morning,
it's football season and my
neighbors are out mowing
their lawns before the games
start, their heads are down,
they focus on maintaining the line
with their lawnmower, stopping
at a hedge, turning deliberately,
coming back,
I am in my garage, an hour allotted to me
by a court order, deciding which
things will accompany me
in my next life

Late At Night, Trying To Keep The Wolves At Bay

I got woken up by a
piercing electronic beep,
14 quick beeps in succession,
then 3 seconds of silence before repeating,

I get out of bed where I'd
fallen asleep with Lovey,
comb the house checking
fire alarms

The sound is coming from
somewhere in a neighbor's
yard, I can hear it through
the fence, the paper thin walls of my house

I go back in and open a
beer, shutting the windows, which does
nothing, and consider the thin line
that separates us all from madness

Zero Period

I had gotten to school early and was sitting on bleachers on the south athletic field. There was a hole in the chain link fence that separated the school from the Beachwalk subdivision and I saw my friend David bend down, under the bar, step through the break in the fence, and walk towards me.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"About 7:50," I said.

"Okay." He sat next to me, putting his backpack next to mine. He kept his hand on it, looking out across the field.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"No, not really," he said. His eyes were scanning the field and across to the parking lot. "I got in a fight with some dude yesterday and he said he was gonna bring some friends here today to kick my ass."

"Oh," I said. "Who was it?"

"I don't know. Some guy."

"You think he's gonna do it?"

"No clue. But I'm ready if he does," David said. "Check this out." He unzipped his backpack, holding it open, pointing it towards me. I looked inside and saw a couple of books, a notepad, and a closed brown paper bag.

"You gonna hit him with a sandwich?" I asked.

"Look in the bag," David said.

I reached in and started pulling the bag out. It was heavy. "Don't take it out of the backpack!" he said. I unrolled the top and looked inside, and saw a black automatic handgun. The safety was off. I slid the safety on, then pressed a button to eject the magazine. David was staring across the field, scanning it. I tipped the magazine towards me, sliding a bullet out from the top. It was a real bullet, it curved up to a small reservoir at the top, and there were 4 indentations around the edge of the reservoir top that allowed the bullet to expand at impact. I slid the magazine back in, feeling a sharp click. I put the gun back in the bag and handed the backpack to David.

"I put the safety on," I said.

"Okay."

"Where'd you get that?" I asked.

"My dad. He gave it to me when he left Mom. He came in right before he left and handed it to me and said 'Don't tell mom I gave you this. But now that I'm leaving you're gonna be the man of the house. Don't use this unless you need to.'"

"Cool," I said. "So you actually gonna shoot this guy?"

"If it comes to that," David said.

"And you're gonna do that here? In the middle of school?"

"If it comes to that."

"Okay," I said. We both looked out at the field, at people walking across the grass towards the buildings. Cars were pulling into the parking lot, boys were talking to girls. The first bell rang. I needed to get to class but I wanted to stay and see how this turned out. David stared ahead, his hand inside the bag, watching.

A Poem About The Large Hadron Collider

A football field under the surface of the earth
we've built seventeen miles of tunnel
and will try to understand the things we touch,
see, taste, are
by breaking them apart into their smallest pieces,
cooling these pieces off to the limits
of the second law of thermodynamics,
and then moving them with nearly one hundred million
pounds of magnets to almost the speed of light
and banging them together to see what they truly are made of

This is not a unique idea;

I've spent three years being broken apart,
the heat pulled from me,
collided into the pieces of me that are left
and I know nothing more about what I am made of
then I ever did

Liquid helium optional.

Einstein

It was late and we were laying on the couch
Lovey next to me
our teeth brushed
his leg over me, me holding his foot
I took one of his toes and pulled on it
my thumb and forefinger popping
and I pulled my hand up to my mouth
and popped the invisible toe in
like a ripe grape
then worked my way down to the piggie
that cried all the way home
and he pulled his foot away
and rolled over, offering me another foot
to eat from

the toes were delicious

Lovey said maybe I should hold your foot
and laid down with his head by my foot
holding it in his two small hands
and we watched television for a minute,
he went back to my end to get a pillow
and laid it, then his head, on me,
his arms around my leg
and too soon I could feel his legs twitching
and his breathing get heavier, rhythmic
and I turned the television off, watching him
with his eyes closed
and remembered that if together we could just go fast enough
time would stand still.

Brotherhood

I was wearing a bright red tshirt that advertised Taco Bravo, a two restaurant fast food chain in the San Francisco Bay Area. The line I was standing in coiled back and forth in front of the ride, and I watched the same people over and over. I noticed a young man staring at my shirt every time we passed each other, looking at the shirt, then me, then my small boy. We curved around and passed each other again, and he leaned in over the chain that separated us, careful to keep out of earshot of the boy, and quietly said "Taco Bravo, motherf-----". I nodded, smiling. This guy knows.

Polaroid: 39 Years, 102 Days

My boy's walking back to room 5
to write and draw,
cut and paste,
read, run, play,
make friends, enemies,
fight, love

I've given him everything I had
sometimes it was a lot,
other times not enough

for all the times we played
together
and I held his foot until he fell asleep

what I think about is this:
my mother's gone
my father's gone
and I don't remember anything that happened before I was 5.

For My Son On His First Day Of Kindergarten

This thought will probably never
occur to you, but I sat where
you're going to sit tomorrow morning
thirty four years ago to the day:
I sat indian-style
on the floor in the front row,
a red construction paper apple straight-pinned to my shirt,
I looked at it and told Mrs. Johnson my name was Francis,
not Frank

On September 3, 1974
in this place
I got to decide who I was

Where you're going tomorrow I can't come,
you can change your name to whatever you like
and you'll find friends that I won't know
and get crushes on girls that I'll never see
and be happy and sad and proud and hurt
and things will happen to you that you'll forget by the time
I pick you up at the gate at 2:22
but you'll remember them the rest of your life
and they'll be yours and yours alone

And it's okay,
I have the same things
and they're mine and mine alone

I'll share them if you want.

How Wonderful The World Must Be Someplace

They say now that it was
April 16, 1178 BC
When Odysseus returned to Ithaca
Under a orange sunset
The Pleiades ascending in the West

And I’m sure that
400 years ago
A many-times-great grandfather sailed with the Armada
Smoke in the sky, the Atlantic strewn with the
Wood of broken ships and the limbs of broken men,
The British fleet in flames off the coast of Morocco

But tonight history finds me
In a Courtyard, by Marriott,
Lombard, Illinois
Waiting for someone to knock on my door
And bring me salmon and vegetables
Sautéed in too much butter

They say we die one day a time
And this evening I’m choosing to die
While watching other people live

In Rome today
Men ran on crushed red clay
To determine who was the fastest
And in Vienna one country
Was trying to kick a ball into the goal of
Another country
And in the cradle of civilization
We were helping some Persians
Fight different Persians
I sat quietly
And watched a Asian program
Being subtitled into a different Asian language

How wonderful the world must be someplace

I took a cab to Chicago
And found a bar
Off State and Ontario
Where a man played piano
Against the front window
Under red neon

I watched him from the end
Of a long rectangular bar,
I was drinking gin
And he was singing Sinatra
And I lit a cigarette

His song finished
And I noticed a man sitting next to the piano
In a black turtleneck
Looking like a peaceful Eldridge Cleaver
Except for the eye patch over his left eye
And the thin blonde on his left arm

The piano man started playing
The Summer Wind
And he, then I, lit another cigarette
And I watched him shake his head slowly
Back and forth
Right hand cupping his scotch
Left hand cupping his blonde
And we drank together
And smoked together

And then before the second verse
The piano player looked over
And I watched this man
Take his arm from around his date
And reach for the microphone
And sing about the days and nights
That went flying by
Never taking his hand off his drink
Cigarette still lit in the ashtray
The blonde staring at him

I was transfixed:
Here, at last, was living!
I ordered another drink,
It was late but I would not go home tonight,
I would give my Blackberry to a homeless man
And throw my laptop in a dumpster!
I’d buy better clothes
And a cigarette case!
I’d stop drinking anything blended
And stop dating anything not blonded!

I would follow this man
From bar to bar
And do the things he does:
I’d stop driving cars with four doors
And travel with nothing I couldn’t carry in my pockets
I’d eat in darkened restaurants
With women in little black dresses,
My fingers mindlessly grazing across their legs
While I sent back wine that wasn’t good enough
And I’d put things on a tab, my tab!

I paid the bill and walked outside
And felt the hot September air
Blowing off Lake Michigan
And took the Ike back into the suburbs
To my chain hotel
And waited for my 7am
Conference call.