After the yelling,
my fist through the sheetrock,
you emptying the loaded dish rack
onto the kitchen linoleum,

and how we glared
at each other, gladiators
breathing heavily,

you stopped me
at the door
carrying my suitcase
and teary eyed
asked,

“Do you still love me?”

I stared at you in silence,
then put down my bag,
and held you
with that unspoken “Yes”
burning in my chest.

Sat on a stool at a
greasy spoon counter,
being sized up by a
veteran big rig jockey
with road hard eyes.

After hearing my story
he nodded,
stuffed a forkful
of biscuits and gravy in,
and chewing, said:
“What they don’t tell ya at truck school,
driving’s just one kick in the head
after another.”

I nodded,
the way a rookie does.

He wasn’t wrong.

Now, fifteen years later,
I see it’s all like that,
truck driving or not:
one gritted teeth
******* puckered
sliding on black ice
toward the guardrail
moment after another.

And at nightfall,
formerly hiding in bottles,
shot glasses
and blackouts.

These days,
hiding in words,
like standing naked
on a not too busy
street corner.

A few people glance
as they walk by,
and I wave.

Step outside from the cool
and feel a heaviness
to the desert air,
a rare bit of moisture
that brings out scents
of pine and sage
and garden flowers.

White cloud tops billow
high into the blue,
shades of grey underneath,
but no sheets of rain yet fall
against distant brown hills,
no jagged light cracks
like a whip
across the eggshell sky.

At the park I stop to sit
beneath a pine tree.
Three crows glide in,
land in the branches above
cawing noisily,
peering black eyed down
through olive needles
and prickly cones.

No breeze tickles
skin or sways grass
as the clouds darken
and swell.

And I wait.

And the crows wait.

And the desert,
finally,
outwaits us all.

To be more like the machines
and gadgets that surround us,
the newest incarnation of gods
spun from nightmare threads
of loss and starvation
then slavishly served.

To have a memory
like a video camera,
to never be lost
like a GPS map,
to be an efficient little worker
steady as a robot arm,
to crush enemy bones
as relentlessly as a bulldozer,
to weather insults
as dispassionately
as your virtual assistant,
and be as immortal
as photos in cyberspace,
forever smooth cheeked,
outlasting any marble statue.

Not forgetting
birthdays and car keys,
stumbling down dead end
hotel hallways,
limping on a sprained ankle,
calling in sick or hungover
bedridden with shaking,
nose broken by a drunken
bar brawl head ****,
or crushed by that woman
just rolling her eyes,
and walking away.

And not this
trembling skeleton draped
in withering flesh clicking,
ticking like a broken clock,
springs uncoiling,
winding down.

We scramble and race,
controlling and perfecting
and finally break ourselves
against the steel idols
of our own creation,
like John Henry
hammering his drill.

Kicking a dark pebble along
in early slanting light,
it tumbles oblong
clattering and jumping
across pavement cracks.

A final kick
and it crashes
into the bright red curb,
splitting in two
along some invisible fissure.

The jagged pieces
rock momentarily
on their rounded backs
like overturned turtles,
then lie still.

Sometimes I read
something I’ve written,
and not so long ago...
a couple of months,
last week,
or ten minutes,
and think:

“Man, you are really
full of ****!”

You want them to love you,
to fall into your depths,
dive into you,
you mud puddle,
you pothole full of last night’s
***** rain.

You don’t really feel that way:
you’re hollow...
a gourd,
a dried up well,
a stringless guitar
in a pawnshop window.

But it’s easy
to make something up,
almost as if deception
were a built in feature.

Doves feign broken wings,
Possums play dead,
Chameleons blend,
Anglerfish dangle their bait,
and men and women,
well...

This...."flaw"
carved by necessity
into our bones,
and written in our blood.

Yet we are shocked
when we are deceived,
like being surprised
every time we see
another person’s face
and discover it has a nose.

We watched that couple
in the restaurant,
whispering venom
across the table,
shaking their heads,
then chewing their meal
in sullen silence,
looking away.

I reached across our table
and squeezed your hand,
as we agreed, “Not us.”

And we were right.
We didn't make it
halfway to that...