There are not enough
   poems about manatees
If you are interested in human
   rights being kicked like a dog
   and justice being dragged
   through mud, you can find it
If you are interested in love
   that aches with a “burning
   heart” or a “bleeding soul”
   you can find it
If you are interested in death
   that holds out its hand
   to you like relief, or takes
   one too early, you can find it
But where, I ask, do you find
   a badger in a turtleneck?
Or a cup of coffee that doesn’t
   sound so self important?    
If you’re interested in the
   ocean or the sea or maybe
   a single “crushing wave
   of emotion,” you can find it
If you’re interested in God
  dying to save you, or God
  abandoning you to the darkness
  you can find it
If you’re interested in athletics—
   especially running towards
   dreams and horizons—and
   losing and winning, you can find it
But where, I ask, do you find
   a good left-handed centipede?
Or a wonderful, ice cold beer that
   doesn’t turn into alcoholism?
If you want to find a poem about
   how the “gray rain spills from
   the clouds like the pain”
   you can find it
If you don’t want to find a poem
   about rain you’ll still find it
   (cause those rain poems
   are everywhere)
If you’re looking for a poem
   about regret and forgiveness
   and cruel mercy making false    
   promises, you can find it
But where, I ask, do you find
   a barbarian ballerina?
Or a cigarette whose smoke doesn’t
   outline the shadows of a lost soul?  
Show me these things, show me
   a fat manatee, and I will finally
   take a deep breath and smile

They said the Storm was coming.
The sky was darkening, the sun was blotted out.
I heard only the wind, felt only rain on my naked body
The scent of the four winds permeated my nostrils
And I looked into your eye.
And I smiled.

They said the Storm was coming,
That the end is at hand.
And the children, eyes open wide with fear
Turned to their fathers, and their mothers,
To their sisters and brothers,
And they fled.

They said the Storm was coming.
I replied, “But there’s naught to fear!
These men will tell you nothing but lies!”
They turned to me, labeled me a heretic and a blasphemer
And they pierced me with ten thousand blazing swords
And I bled.

They said the Storm was coming.
So I fled from my home, taking nothing with me.
As I ran, the rains began to fall. Lightning rent the heavens asunder.
The glorious noise of thunder and water filled my soul
As I drank in the glories of what I beheld,
And I wept.

They said the Storm was coming.
And as the spirits of the Storm coursed through my veins
I remembered what those who pointed their fingers at me had said.
“The Storm is coming! It is not safe! Only with us can you truly live!  
Give us your silver and your gold, your sons and daughters, your staffs and your animals! The Storm is coming!”
But I am already here.

"I'm so sorry, bartender?"

"Is this a fear and apathy on the rocks? Because I could've sworn I ordered a **** and confident blended?"

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.