The Break Cafe, October 29th, 2015

There are a handful

of things I know

for certain right now:

I have good friends

with small but not unpowerful jobs.

Sean didn’t charge me for this tea.

I know anxiety

and how it can swipe the whole jigsaw puzzle

to the floor in a second.

I know right now

I’m breathing deep and serenely as

Billie Holiday lyrics pour

gently from the teapot stereo

over the leaves of a saxophone.

I don’t know where I’ll be

next lifetime, though I have

a feeling some nothing of me

outlasts this body, the same

nothing of me that outlasts this mug

of tea once it’s empty.

The same me that limps down the street

wearing all of my clothes

and a few garbage bags

waving sharpied cardboard at cars

for the hope of chicken bones in my beard

in the coming days.

The same me that is the body

of a taxi cab honking hurry hooray

for today get the hell out of my way.

There was a tremendous mural

under the bridge over the Yellowstone

in Livingston. It was dated

September 11th, 2001

and prophesied the end of all war.

There were childish drawings of buildings

and soldiers burning, angels

flying down from heaven

to catch the falling, to lift up

the wounded and the screaming and
the dead with X's on their eyes

There was a huge redwhiteandblue tag for

PEACE

next to it.

I am letting the cool waters of the Yellowstone

bring peace to us all.

In that place, in that month

it wasn’t a mighty river.

It was low and slow and gentle.

Some places it was just

a wide trickle over rocks

and I crossed the river

back and forth in these places,

my feet hardly getting wet.

I’m sorry to say

this is how peace comes.

It doesn’t come blaring from the intersection

green light go, wait your turn,

halt, halt, stop everything

everyone stop.

I mean

it does, but not everyone recognizes

it all the time.

And even when it does

crashing descend upon you

it’s unsettling,

quiet unsettling

how you never noticed

it’s always been there for you.

It’s always been there in you.

You’ve always not been there

in it

and now

the river smashes your dixie cup,

crumples your tea pot

you are rolling over and

down against the rocks bashed

banged brow, face mashed

legs and arms twirling like a mangled

piece of farm equipment

I’d be more specific but I can’t

you’re so old and rusty misshapen

I can’t even identify you.

Not to worry.

When the Spring floods subside

that old metal is just

a former shell of something.

It’s being buried solowly in the bank

by moss and lichen and mud.

That’s not you anymore.

Come.

Gather you legs.

Meet me by the side

of the Yellowstone in September,

the side closer to the peaks

and let’s weep before that picture

of our brothers and sisters dying for nothing.

Let’s scream our madnesses silently

into the gentle flow of water, for this

is how peace comes to us truly—

in slow sips of breath,

one Sinatra song at a time,

the warm tears on our face,

the mug lifted,

the ring of tea

left on the table

slowly evaporating.