Title poem off acclaimed collection, How We Are Human. 

How We Are Human

How we dig desperately at the coarse crust,
Seeking, searching for the soft cream beneath
Only to discover we were crust people after-all,
Needing the crispness of a crunch to give us the
Dream of cream that keeps us clawing, reaching,
Gargling mouthwash to face the naked mirror before
Heading out into a world full of well-meaning masks. 

Humanity, where are we going with our painted faces? What are we doing with our soldiers and doctors and daggers and surgeons and doomsdays and saviors and drones and drilling and seeing-eye dogs and draft beer and secret police and dance halls and secret ballots and diamonds and second honeymoons and driveways and second chances and social benefit concerts and diesel engines and Sigmund Freuds and damn fools and solar flares and datebooks and solar plexuses and daytrips and sight gags and the daiquiris we can never spell?

What are we doing with our data and differences and dreams and diagonal matrices and days of reckoning and dollars and donkey years and Siddhartha Guateamas and sunscreen and Sundays and sundaes and social sciences and services and silicon chips, silks and satins and soaps and solar myths and socks?

Dear addicts and atheists and theists and theologians and the people who work at Walmart and the girl in the bus station in Spain who wish I knew, to the hitchhiker I didn’t stop for, pagans and prom kings and everyone flirting with the fierce futility of Franchesca, terrorists and the people who robbed my house, the girl in high school who I was cruel to; dear mom and dad and everyone I’ll never meet or love or hate or help or harm,

A man walks into a bar. He orders a beer and then walks out into the open air. He raises his hands and stretches his arms until they become wings. He walks back inside the bar, grabs his beer and then walks out and flies away and everyone watching takes out camera phones, wishing they could follow him, but they can’t, and no one will ever know who he is or where he went. But they will speculate and remember him. And at least he’s documented and credible so when they tell their friends “you’ll never believe what happened at the bar last night” they can crowd around their phone’s screen, astonished.

Before we used to sin, we used to sing: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? I was of the opinion that pretty much everyone was. He’s big. He’s bad. And he’s a wolf. What’s not to fear? But together we knew we could beat him, could be sheep in wolves’ clothing, pretending to be the love of his wolf-life, inviting him to the wolf-prom only to break his wolf heart to the point that he’ll never want to hurt anyone again. He’ll be one of us, a bit chipped, but ready.

The beauty of a broken heart is that it means it was one of the good ones, one of the hearts whose door opens to those who know how to knock.

There are still so many questions to ask and never enough time or pages to put them on.
“Do I do enough insane and reckless things?” “Will the world be beautiful?”
Maybe the real questions are hidden within the
Questions—hidden somewhere inside our motives—
The questions we ask to fill perfectly good silences—
Questions aimed blindfolded at a target that might
Not even be there—a target we hide inside ourselves. 

Internalize the lines given while listening for
Others to sing the unscripted ones that once caroled
Cannot, for better or worse, be stricken from our minds. 

Luckily, there is still time to go anywhere
Do anything, be anyone and see anything.
We are the future that everyone was fighting for, hoping for,
Dreaming of. It’s just you and me and everyone else held
Together by the same bits of gravity the Haldron collider
Is mapping so that when our time runs out tomorrow’s
Will be closer to the truths we fight for.   

Luckily Children starving in Kenya hunger
Like Kids in Cambodia just like Democracy
In Denmark justifies its right like Thieves in Thebes
Or Racists in Raleigh and Murderers in Morocco. 

What side of the TV are we striving to be on?
If we decide not to live our own lives there are
Plenty of people to be or not to be,
A multitude of worlds to see or not to see
In the limitless library of life
Permeating each perspective. 

When will we have said enough?

Is this the last thing I’ll need to write?

There’s always more to say.

But life moves so quickly and ends so slowly that it’s okay
To leave things behind, undone and unsaid. We only have
Silences, and blank pages, and unwritten books, and
Unclimbed mountains and every unknown to work with. 

As the poor threaten to thrive,
While god threatens to answer,
While waiting in the endless lines
of bureaucracy, wandering through
A marooned morning, I hope people
Will always see through me.

I hope we give each other the chance
To live and live and live and feel and break and heal,
I hope we run outside in our underwear when it rains and dive headfirst
Into frigid unknown waters, when we find ourselves saturated with a Saturday, 

I hope the pieces of moments discarded by everyone as broken can be picked up by us, glued and stitched and stapled together, to create a present we can give to anyone who’ll hold our hands and run to wherever we’ll find our bleeding bliss in the harrowingly wonderful state of human affairs we’ll simple call the world.