I want to answer
every one of these poems
as if they were letters
in my inbox, I, a minor
celebrity with no staff;
I would get up early
and read each one;
I would encourage you all
to not despair, or ever
stop writing, and above all
to realize, there is no shame
in wanting, hurting, being
over wordy with petitions,
baring your soul, or
hurling your visions
into the poemsphere;
we are mutually stuck
and this is such a great way
to get traction

the last time I saw Moon,
standing naked
in the holding tank,
he was screaming
at the top of his lungs,
he was screaming
for the man to relent,

he had come to
the end of his road
and he was pleading
for a chance to return,

but the man just jeered
and pushed him, brutally,
over the edge;
my brother has gone,
my father, too,
no peace in their final hour,
turning the last corner,
their discovery abrupt,
horror and headlong descent;

can Lazarus plead
the rich man's cause?
though no bridge
may span the gulf,
might prophets yet
reach living ears,
the risen Jesus,
glorified?

Before the time
that men besought
themselves to write
their tales,
there was a man
who dreamed up
letters.

He sat alone
beside a rock
upon a prairie
conjuring ideas
that swirled within him;
the more he thought
the more the thoughts
demanded words;
the more the words
demanded letters,
the more he thought.

Soon he found he couldn't stop. All around him charcoal scribbling began to appear. His friends laughed and said, "What is that? Even a child can draw stick figures. Those are just scribbles." They couldn't see the pattern. The letters were just crazy lines.
Once when he stood before them and read the scribbles they laughed some more and slapped their legs and thought him a clever storyteller. But they never dreamed he had written those ideas down.
The prairie turned white and he would walk around stamping the letters large, with his feet, in the snow. And they laughed some more at him stamping in the snow. And when the spring came, he took the shoots of the new reeds and soaked them and rolled them between two special stones and sharpened a feather to a narrow point and with the syrup from a dark blue flower, he etched his letters as tiny as he could onto the dried papyrus. And the young ones, the ones who could see his markings without squinting, were silent and watched him and wondered.

"What are you doing?" asked a bright-eyed girl.
"I'm keeping my thoughts," the young man replied. "Want to try it?"
"No," she giggled. "I'm afraid. They may make a fool of me if I keep them."
"Oh, **," he said, "you may be right. There's risk in this endeavor. But not much now, since I'm the only one who can see them when they're kept."
"Then I shall sit with you and see what you have done."
The two sat upon the rock and the young man asked, "Would you like to have a name?"
The maiden giggled again. "I have a name," she said. "It is Ariel."
"It is good to know you, Ariel, and with the birds your mind does soar, but would you like to bring your name down to the earth where you can see it?"
"See my name? That is strange, this thing you say. The name I have is only there when another says it."
"But I can make your name appear upon this rock."
He put his hand upon the rock and looked into her eyes.

I thrash any poor schooner
whose plight I encounter
and toss their bounty to the winds;
me, I sail with the words behind me
as wind, I have worlds to conquer
I’m off to anywhere, Malta?
a Burmese mountain top?
the beleaguered streets of
South Chicago, a brothel
in Yokosuka, the sties of Iowa,
the fertile fields of Mendocino,
meet me there, and we can talk

religious conclusions
are often correct
though disdained
by profusions of
the charged intellect;
the reason we’re here
is not so mysterious,
we’re products of a God
who is often less serious
than we hoped he would be;
he may be just curious
like you and me

things seem to be
looking up in dreamland;
my assassins, usually appalling,
must be on vacation, and
there is more flying,
and less falling;
the big green puddle
coming from under
the refrigerator
receded on its own,
and the wild fox
running around
on the living room floor
found his own way out
through an imaginary cat door,
which is why
I didn’t get up
this morning
at the usual time, but
turned over again
and dove back in
for more.

████ when █ ██████ feeling,
██████ a ██ ███ ██████ reeling,
and ██████ in a ██████ today,
I ██████ ███ or ██████ to say.