It’s not a question of
who
but a question of
where
I am.

I am the median between the street and the sidewalk
I am the threshold of every waiting room
I am the space between spaces
I am shadows looming
and fumes pooling above puddles
of spilt kerosene

neither seen
nor heard,
but felt
in the vignette of a dated photograph
the border between
fine
penciled lines

I am the mist after rain
I am scars
and streaks where tears have stained the shells
of crustacean people
I am crushing hangovers
and embers glowing

Who am I?

I am the
    spaces
       between
spaces

Stairwells and parking lots
unmarked graves
        condensation on a whispered word
     floating up into
     frigid twilight

          under an off-white
half-
                               moon.

Last night I dreamt I cohabitated with
Two beasts, both loved.
The one, a young lioness
The other a spry lamb
I had raised the both from infancy
But the lioness, who was then entering her adulthood began to size up the lamb.
And it occurred to me that in order to
save
the lamb from the lioness
That I must **** and eat it myself

It is the inescapable nature of a lion to
Hunt and ****
livestock
So while there was no scruple or problem for me to have these two animals,
They could not abide one another.
So I did it.
I slaughtered the lamb and cut it's flank and got at its tender meat
And I cooked it and served it with Marsala sauce and that night the lioness and I dined on the flesh of our old friend.

And I became aware eventually,
Between my ravenous gnawings at the meat
That the lioness was not eating.
She was
Staring fixedly
Directly at me.

She did not blink.

And I stopped feasting on the lamb.
And as I did I saw her eyes dilate
And she pounced across the table
And she gored me with her great claws
And split my gut and spilled my innards
And she ate me bit by bit still screaming
Still covered in Marsala sauce.

Before it was over I had but a breath in me and I cried,
"But why?!"
And I realized that it is the inescapable nature of the lion
To hunt and to ****.
Not just livestock, not just lambs.

She had hunted and killed us both.

We are balanced
Precariously
Over the vastness of the unknown.
Every day when we get ourselves up
We have a choice
To continue to walk the tightrope above the abyss
Or to let ourselves
Fall.
This can be both good and bad
Or one or the other
But the important thing is to remember
That the life of the tightrope walker
The fence sitter
The cliff hanger
Is one that is doomed
To regret.
We must cast ourselves in
If we seek to
See what life is and life is always
Unknown.

Like how
babies
laugh
at
nothing
at all.

The laughter that comes
as it pleases
without invitation
without joke
without ridicule
like something floating
on the rising
and falling
of the spring wind
the trees laugh
as they
bloom
like fireworks
without audience.
and the bees laugh
at their fortune
to have such pollen
they fulfill their calling
in collecting
and retrieving
the precious powdered gold.

They do what they are made to do
and they laugh
like children laugh
buzzing sweet harmonies on that same effortless spring
breeze
everything is laughing and reproducing
and the
season is
holy
and the
laughter
is
holy.

Did you hear that
so-and-so
was caught on film ******* into a bucket?
did you see
so-and-so's new
music video?
Have you
seen
those new
Nikes?
Did you hear
that child star
admitted
to doing
drugs?
Oh my god, I love this song it's on the radio all the time!
And the chorus line goes something like
"Up in the club, getting drunk having fun. Spending money like I don't care. All the ******* love me. This is what you want. This is where everyone wants to be. This is the definition if fun"

Is that really the absolute best that life has to offer?
They **** well write about it like it is.
And all the distracted people fall for it.
We humans are
so
good at distracting ourselves from anything of any importance.
Men no longer hunt-
they lift weights
and Women practically objectify themselves.
Art is dead.
Earth is dying.
And the people are perfectly happy
with buying things.
They spend their lives
seeking
sensation
and
feeling
nothing.

"Why do you box?"
I asked one of the gang bangers I coached at the gym one day.
"To stay out of trouble, I guess," he replied.
And all of a sudden I got kinda mushy over this kid and realized he really was in a
Hard
Place, trying to make the best of a
Bad
Situation.
And I said,
"Listen to me. Don't ever stop boxing.
School, whatever,
Work, whatever,
But whatever you do,
Keep boxing."
He looked at me kind of funny and
He said "why do you box?"
And I said,
"I've been doing this a while now.
Boxing's fixed me up through some
Serious ****.
So above everything else, above women and money,
Whatever you do,
Do not
Stop
Boxing."

I'll probably never know if boxing
saves him
like it
saved me.

But I do hope it keeps him out of trouble.

Everything I write is letters.
Letters to my future self,
my past self
my conscious mind from my unconscious mind
letters to dead friends
letters to living friends I can’t speak aloud to
letters to god
letters to everyone all at once
letters to you.

Everything I write is letters

ell
ee
tee
tee
ee
arr
ess

A book is made of letters the same way a body is made of atoms
letters make words
like atoms make molecules
and molecules make cells make tissues make organs make bodies

and then fire breaks us back down to atoms
to ashen dust

So try to see the individual letters
because that’s all we ever were,
anyway
bodies built of grains of sand

books built of letters.