My incense is sending out smoke signals.

The woodpeckers are using Morse Code.

Beneath my tinnitus whispered voices

garble the news in some foreign tongue.

I get the message—retreat—that

hopes and dreams are pure kid stuff,

delusional futures, pointless without one.

Time slips silently out the side door.

Sirens are weeping, but far away.

*

The only answers are inside the shell.

So close the door and go there, go

where no voices dare reach you, where

there is no need for responses, where

peace sleeps in its bed of anonymity,

Talk to me as if you were talking to yourself,

and please not one of your hermit soliloquys

but as if it was our grave we were digging. 

You can’t do impersonations when you are

talking to yourself, and I would know your lies.

*

A time when only slogans rhyme and trucks

deliver everything you need right to your door.

The deliveryman—don’t fear—is only a distorted

face in the porch security system—soon he will

drive away without a word, remain nameless.

*

I know nothing about tequila beyond its sting

& lingering taste of high desert…nothin’ I tell ya.

But there is a certain time of day—like now—that

some anejo would fit inside of like fingers in a glove.