I have never awoken in the middle of the night inside

a burning house, an old black rotary phone ringing off

the hook on a table, although two houses I once lived in

burned to ashes, turned to smoke, the darkness of a past

misremembered, meaning embers, meaning nothing left.

Now is a moment in flames kindled by useless materials:

coffee, robins digging up a back yard for worms, books

piled high on a kitchen table, a poetry graveyard, full of

beautiful lines, ones to change your life, or even mine.

The poets dead, but their words alive, which is magic,

or, at least, a kind of ventriloquism lost on most people.

I remind myself daily that I am only a puppet this world

speaks through. That although ten percent of my weight

is blood, the rest of me is an inner Serengeti, a crystal

palace hosting a Great Exhibition of Mistakes, anxieties

vibrating at a frequency to break glass, an A.I. escaped

from a lab in Silicon Valley, the product of sub-atomic

collisions, and 99.999% empty space. No wonder I feel

lonely. No wonder we seek human connection. Already

this story is a fable, is fabulous, is becoming more true

with every passing moment. Here I sit at the Bureau of

Useless Splendour awaiting the day’s invoices. Its vowels

and bad checks. Its cruelty and oil changes. Its specials

and puppy mills. We have all done terrible things say

clouds rolling in from the East.The demise of Macbeth.

I think of myself as an existential handyman as I know

fixing the shower door will never fix life’s uncertainties.

Meet me in the cease-fire zone for the prisoner swap.

I promise to exchange my inter-generational trauma

for a Chinese takeout menu. A thousand pinpricks

of guilt for the chance to wear fortune’s magic cloak.

Where do we go from here? says anyone who has ever

stood at a traffic intersection with an ancient compass

buried deep inside them, beneath egos and yearning

desires, beneath shitty café art, and all those personal

injury law advertisements. I find it hard to differentiate

between what is bogus and what is authentic, even if

I’m not a gameshow contestant playing for a big prize.

Even if there is no final quiz tallying the world’s hurts

penciled in on an old calendar tossed out in the rain.

It’s hard work I tell you this inflating of generosity, awe,

intellect with only a bicycle pump. Oh, and my too

human resentments! But at least I am trying. At least

I’m sitting at my desk, at work, as some ghost sleeps

in the manager’s office these last 2,736 weeks, refusing

to do his job so I am forced to cover for him, say whales

are related to hippopotamuses, that mice fit through

holes the size of pencils, that human eyes blink

ten million times a year. I have been told the heart

is the only muscle that never tires, but mine is tired,

of proofreading the world’s politics and purple prose,

or watching every regret and shame I’ve encountered

being dragged like a banner behind a tiny red bi-plane

across my brain. Every day. It almost will be a relief

when Death shows up in his trench coat full of cancer

and heart disease, asking me to clean out my desk.

My office passwords revoked. My ring of skeleton keys

turned in. My photos of my family fading slowly in

picture frames, and the walls of my office erupting in

flames, and somewhere a phone ringing. Ringing.