Inside every human is an element of holy something-ness and I can not tell you when it is triggered but when it is you know it because whatever triggered it becomes the most important thing in the world and you can not name a reason why except that it proves that you are human.

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I watched a video of Albert Ayler smile and I felt it. I heard Jon Bekoff play and I felt it.

I once fed a stinkbug to a praying mantis and then I ate a small piece of the wings and legs of the stinkbug that she had not finished and I felt it.

I listened to Hazel Dickens's voice and I felt it.

I took a walk in the snow and I felt it.

I watched a video of Jimi Hendrix and wanted to get to that place and I felt it.

I danced all night with a bottle in my hand

and I felt it.

I worked in a coffeeshop where people would line up to the door to get a sandwich that would probably take too long to make because they have work in ten minutes and can you please double toast it and put an egg on it even though this sandwich never has eggs on it and I'm going to stare at you while you make it until it's done so that you feel the pressure of how important it and me are but in between the business people who are giving me glares is a kid my age with the coolest jacket you've ever seen and hair for days and I felt it.

Have you seen the pinecone dance the tarantella? They say her dress was made by two hundred chickadees in the willow trees. They say when she danced the grass could be heard cheering from the tippy top of the ears of the rabbits in the bushes in the corner of the grove in the hollow by the cave near the path towards the pond where the fishes weave banana peels into slippers so fit you could walk right up to the bouncer and they'd let you in without once looking at their list.

 

I haven't seen her dance the tarantella but we were partners for a square and the carrot band was fire. We spun round and round and round till the lights in the sky and the lights in the room and the lights behind our eyes all matched shades so bright the clouds would part and whoever might live

beyond the heavens would come out with their partner in crime and have to rescue us back and place us on our feet.

​

You've seen the hall.

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You know the corner in the basement where we grabbed a glass of water and took off our banana peel slippers and tried to find our coats, the pinecone and me - can you imagine me dancing with the pinecone? - well it happened.

And I swear, when the pinecone dipped me low - and I mean real low - so low I tasted the salt of the sweat of the mantle seeping through the crust of the Earth - so low I shook hands with a root - so low I heard the reverse birds that build their nests at the ends of the branches of the roots below ground - and oh how they're dirty - I felt the magic of the night.

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Oh how you should have seen it.

We were stars back in the day.

We were stars.

Below every tree is another tree in reverse

complete with birds and leaves and treehouses and berries so plump and ripe you could sell them at a farmer's market and people would wear their hippest farm-y clothes to take the pressure off spending a lot of money.

Sure they're all covered in dirt but all life is.

Below this tree is a tree in reverse.

It lives in the air and is filled with roots and worms and the bones of those who were eaten by cats.

 

I lived for sometime in the underground air place where I found a buried treasure. Inside was a map and a single piece of paper with a telephone number. The map had a single arrow facing up so I climbed and climbed and climbed until finally I broke free from the air and climbed into the dirt and took a breath of beautiful beautiful air. A payphone was nailed to the tree. I put in my 37 cents, the last money left on the face of the Earth and dialed the number. A troll answered and gave me directions to a house deep deep deep high in the sky of dirt.

 

I've been climbing higher and higher and

sometimes I manage to look down and see

the tippy top of the trees.

I hear my mother singing to me to come down.

I hear my father wailing on his guitar and from that I know they need me but instead I keep climbing.

Follow my directions completely:

There's a boy in the clock

mounted there on the wall.

Take two steps to the west, no further, no less.

No bread, no onions, no garlic, no mess.

There you will find the boy in the clock on the wall.

It's in the kitchen chiming.

You'll hear the boy rhyming

to the song of the kettle and the beat of the hob.

Sing three songs of hope, one of sorrow, one of dope, and five that you loved as a child.

He'll come out if impressed, stay in as protest,

or he might come out for a sob.

And if he does then hug him.

Comfort and love him.

It's hard to watch the world when you're small.

The same force that burnt Sodom and Gomorrah

Is the same force that burns the hills of California

Is the same force that wears red

Is the same force that wears blue

And one and two

And one and two.

Have you seen the nest of those boys in blue?

They proudly pour out and swarm down and run on

both sides till you can’t pick them out of your head

but your friend needs you and your friend

to help pick them out instead.

One lane murders and one lane watches.

One collects guns and one collects swatches.

One wears red and one wears blue.

One is obvious and one might be you.

Have you seen where they cruise

and perhaps you’ve sipped their booze.

Now they’re in my house – they’re in my shoes.

If you find yourself fastened in the forest

and you struggle to make yourself free,

Go call Marina and Hank's dog Honey

and she'll find you 'tween the trees.

​

And if you find yourself fastened in the cavern

after you promised you wouldn't go down,

Go call Marina and Hank's dog Honey

and she'll pull you back to town.

​

But if you find yourself fastened in envy

and you wish that dog was yours,

Remember that Hank and Marina

love that dog down to her core.

Who told you that you were nothing

in the shadows of greatness

surrounding you, you're lost

like a child in the grove at dusk.

​

You're a puppet.

A gross puppet - not human

And while the big kids play you hold your own strings

and play with your arms and legs

and heads and hands

till you make yourself dance your gross little dance

and everyone hates you, you gross marionette.

​

Who told you that?

That you must cut your own strings off?

Nobody did.

​

When inside is a sailor boy

young and brave and beautiful,

dancing from yard to yard

with salt in his eyes

and sugar in his soul.

​

He lives for adventure, for love, for the sea

He lives inside you, he lives inside me.

I feel so honored to be in this world

To have played the fiddle while you danced

To have danced while you played the fiddle

To have been lost in the rotations of this world

L’Shana Tova

1.

When I don't know what to do

I fall silent

under a weight

above my eyes that presses meditation

and steals my lips

and weightens my soles.

​

Or else I scream in agony

of a ship twirling unfurling

with winds screaming happily

to see the boat go hurling.

​

Where on one hand my feet feel heavy

there I can't see the ground.

Why is one half calm in prose

and the other ungrounded in poetry?

​

2.

Where did my voice go?

Its storm has dissipated into air

and covered me in wax -

wax heavy with the mass of reality -

I love it.

​

Let me float in place

covered in wax

weighted by time

massed by space

imprisoned by the pleasure

of living without voice.

When the fiddlers played

God was shot with a golden arrow

And fell into a thousand pieces

And fell to Earth from heaven

And landed in the Earth

And fell into the holes where seeds live

And seeped into the drink

And seeped into the food

And seeped into the brine

And the people, lost in their timorous humanhood,

Knew not what had fallen into their sustenance

And dined on the blood and soul of God

And fell deeper into the sponge of the Earth

And fell deeper into the sponge of the sky

And fell deeper into the sponge of themselves

Deep enough that they forgot their timorous humanhood

And they were free

Somewhere in the carnage of America

hides that old disheveled house

'tween the forests turned to pastures

where the pastures turned to lots

and the people lost their voice

in the concrete pours and not

a soul could remember

who lived before them now

that they've turned over every house

except that old disheveled house

and I walk into that house

where haunted paper curls

and cats meows are heard

and people play their fiddles

and sing their songs of old

and the trees outside dance two-steps

to accordion-playing birds

and the mold is so delicious

on hotdogs, toast, and curds

and the haunted house grows louder

I live inside this world.