Make sure you go on to read the rest of the issue, which has much fine work in it and other videos from that night.

Check out all of our videos at:

http://www.youttube.com/theduendeproject 

Thanks. 

Admit it, man;
you’re not fighting
anything except
the lies you tell
to keep yourself 
from seeing how you really are.
Your whole belief
of the sounds of your enemies
has never been anything
but the sound
of your own garden growing –

roots breaking stones,
leaves pushing into the light.

Stay still and you can hear it all
Now it won’t sound like you’re not whole
if you’re quiet enough –

yet, who, in fact,
are you talking to now?
Can’t you ever shut up long enough
to tend what you’ve grown?

Frankly,
I could do with
a few less of
the former
and a lot more of
the latter;
not every moment
or action
has to have a point
and I’m tired 
of getting stuck
and bleeding
because of the ones that do.

Right now, give me
the road and the
loud, louder, loudest
three-chord songs,
and no reason to be
driving except
that’s where those songs
sound best.

My senses of smell and taste? 
Somehow, gone.

Sittting in front of me
on the surface of the sea of brown,
a spoon.
A sign affixed to it: 

“Eat, then Dig…or Die.” 

You’re thinking,
ooh, a metaphor –
dear reader, you could not be

more wrong.

Took me hours.
No matter what it was,
I was sick by the time
I was free.
I’m still covered in it
but I had to tell you about this –

it’s what I do:
follow the signs
no matter how confused
I become or
how disabled the process makes me,

then put it all on paper
and say, “See
how clever I am and how hard
I have it and isn’t it all such
a mystery?  A lesser man
would have drowned.”

What I wouldn’t give
for a house without spoons,
for one good night’s sleep.
What I wouldn’t give
for the wisdom
to figure out
the difference
between shit and pudding
without plunging in
face first.  What I wouldn’t give
for you to love me
and not my foul
awakenings.

That’s when the city
looks its best,
dressed in love-crafty haze,

red eyes blinking in pairs
on the stacks of
the Narragansett Electric plant,

sign of the ghost fires still burning
in the pile of brick, signaling
how much damage there still is in the air.

I walk everywhere I can
in Providence, but only at night,
just to pay tribute to it,

to honor the dim power
cradled in this crook
of the upper Bay

where what we withhold all day
comes out
to define us.

How refined so many are by day, 
striding these cobblestones
in good artist’s clothes, admiring

the East Side brick,
avoiding the South Side, 
slumming in Olneyville,

dipping their well-shod toes
into the Armory district, feeding
their faces on Federal Hill.

They remind themselves of this at night,
overstate the light, recall that 
“Providence” is a name once given

to the source of good fortune,
cling to that.  But I walk the city
at night not to fear but to bathe in the hangover

of the once-rough port, the vanishing villainy 
of the Mob, the elder deities
once conjured here; to imagine

their red eyes blinking at me
at night in Providence, city
of disguises, city that was once

and always will be
my only comfortable
home.  Some of us, after all,

do our best work
in the dark
when we can almost touch 

what we refuse to acknowledge
by day — when we can at last find
others who know who we are

simply because
we all feel at home
in this rough, honest night.

Two eyes,
folded into stingy purses.

Ears
apparently unchanged,

but you can tell
they’re closed within.

Hands
rolled up and clubby.

Can’t you see what’s next?
Hear that thumping, see those feet

seeking a jumping-off place?
Get ready for fight

or flight.  To defend
or chase.  To return

to the savanna
we all recall when necessary.

war,
war,
war.

Our pockets broken open, our children
ignorant by others’ choice, our homes
emptying, we sing of nothing and especially not 

war,
war,
war,

for they’ve made up a war to hide that war. 

Shown the threat of it, we cut our hearts free; run up 
suicide charges; serf medieval; dance
tremendous; devil our care in the teeth of 

war,
war,
war.

And all the time we miss the truth,
and the sleight of hand concealing it:  all the time
they’ve been pursuing against us the real

war, 
war,
war.

comes in
off center
from what I
thought I knew

except it somehow
centers me
and I don’t
understand

how that’s possible
but I feel it
so it’s real
and understanding

seems less critical
than what I feel
(or perhaps
it’s a different kind of understanding)

so please
continue my schooling
as I crack the books
on the one

Thank God there’s a subwoofer
in the new car
to help me
study