This body
carried me into the backcountry of Yosemite,
and down the Tenderloin after midnight
where you walk alert, shoulders squared,
count doors, read faces.
Across oceans that did not care who I was.
Up the Rockies and the Sierras,
higher than she wanted—
complaining the whole way and going anyway.
Down lava tubes,
through the hot, lightless gut of a mountain
spewing lava like blood into a sea nearby.
To jungles where we drank coffee cold
and watched more molten rock tumble,
steady and unstoppable,
like time, moving downhill.

This body
made a human—
from a small conspiracy of startled cells
into a furious, squalling being
outraged by light, by gravity, by the rush of cold air.
No poetry in it—
just blood, pressure, tearing, survival.
Somehow, she opened
and another life came through
and stayed.

This body
was never built for spectacle.
No mirrors smashed, no legends made.
She did not jump clean or shine hard.
nor burn into legend with a guitar,
a snarl, crowds chanting her name.
What she leaned into was work, was loving.
How to lift what needed lifting:
groceries, children, grief, boxes of books.
How to sit in a room with the dying
and not look away.
How to keep moving
when joy fell behind
and might or might not catch up.

This body
did not carry me toward greatness.
She carried me toward endurance—
the unremarkable kind,
the kind that doesn’t photograph well
and doesn’t quit.
She carried me into kitchens and forests,
bedrooms, hospitals, long conversations,
years that bent and years that scraped.
Carried me through decades
when I treated her like a problem,
asked her to be smaller, tougher, younger, quieter.
She didn’t argue.
She just showed up.
Kept going.
Did the job.

Now, near the narrowing end
of a life that has been crowded and real,
I see her for what she is:
not an ornament, not a failure,
but a working animal,
a shelter,
a means of crossing.
This body—
scarred, serviceable, still standing—
has been my only home.
And gratefully
she’s not finished yet.

We wake inside an afterimage.
The universe still crackles
from its first shout—
a hiss in the radio,
snow on the old television,
static threaded through our sleep.
It is not silence we live in,
but debris.

Every atom in your hand
was once flung outward
with everything else,
a great, reckless beginning
that never learned how to stop.
Space itself keeps stretching,
a fabric pulled too far,
so that some light—
perfect, obedient light—
will travel forever
and still never arrive.

This is not metaphor.
The galaxies are leaving us.
Their glow thins, reddens,
slips beyond what the eye
or any instrument can hold.
There are stars whose names
we will never invent
because their messages
cannot cross the widening dark.

Tell me this doesn’t sound
like the way we live now.

We stand inches from each other
and feel continents away.
The heart curves inward
like spacetime near a massive object,
everything bending toward its own weight—
old grief, inherited fear,
the constant calculation of loss.
Love, too, has gravity,
and that is what frightens us most.

To be known is to risk collapse.
To let another body close
is to admit you cannot hold yourself
together forever.
Even light bends near what is dense,
even time slows where gravity insists.
Why wouldn’t we hesitate
before stepping nearer?

Some nights the terror comes unannounced—
a sudden awareness of scale,
how small we are,
how brief,
how the universe does not notice
our singular, burning need
to be touched, to be seen.
We feel the expansion inside us then,
the way distances grow
without asking permission.

And yet—

Against all cosmological odds,
matter clumps.
Atoms choose proximity.
Dust gathers into stars.
Gravity, patient and wordless,
keeps saying: come closer.

We are made of that insistence.
We are the remnants of an explosion
trying, astonishingly,
to hold hands.
Trying to say:
Stay.
Trying to curve space just enough
that someone else’s light
might reach us
before it’s gone.

If this is lonely,
it is also miraculous.
If this is frightening,
it is because the stakes are real.
To love in an expanding universe
is to defy the math—
to believe that for a moment,
here on this small, ferocious planet,
distance can be overcome,
and the static can soften
into a human voice
saying your name.

Here,
light arrives slowly—
through kitchen windows,
through hands cupped around starts,
through the pause before someone answers
with care instead of speed.

Here, people learn names again.
Of neighbors.
Of tools.
Of what can’t be summarized in a comment box.

They gather without a platform—
around soup pots,
around folding tables scarred by use,
around the quiet agreement
that no one is coming to monetize this moment.

What we do for each other looks unremarkable up close.
A ride offered.
A bill quietly covered.
A child watched so someone else can rest.
No credits roll.

Skills return that refuse shortcuts.
Hands remember what patience feels like
in wood grain,
in thread tension,
in the long argument between fire and clay.
Mistakes stay visible.
So does learning.

People surrender their edges the hard way—
by being needed.
By being corrected.
By showing up on time
even when no one is watching.

The work of repair happens here
without applause.
Someone sits through another person’s darkness
with nothing but breath and steadiness.
Someone listens past burnout,
past paperwork,
past the lie that care should be profitable
to be real.

Resources are thin.
So generosity thickens.
Time stretches.
Attention becomes currency.
Presence becomes medicine.

Outside Gotham, the virtual loses its grip.
Screens dim.
Bodies re-enter rooms.
Change is slower, heavier,
harder to engineer—
which is why it lasts.

You cannot refresh a garden.
You cannot algorithm your way
into trust.
You cannot outsource grief
or automate recovery.

Here, people practice being human
like it’s a skill that might be lost
if neglected too long.

They fail.
They try again.
They apologize.
They keep going.

No one calls this heroic.
The opportunity is the gift.

This is how the city is outlived—
not with a signal in the sky,
but with hands in dirt,
with shared bread,
with ordinary resilience
of choosing the real
when the unreal is easier.

Outside Gotham,
the work continues.

Unbranded.
Unrecorded.
In service to that which will pass despite our careful effort.

And somehow—
against every hollowing news cycle—
is enough.

Part One: Manufacturing the Night

He enters like a siren made of gold,
a grin lacquered thick as carnival paint,
the city’s lights bow a half-inch lower
because noise has learned to masquerade as power.

He doesn’t steal jewels—
he steals the weather.
Every room turns storm-shaped around him.
Facts slip on marble floors and fall quiet.

His cape is a contract, signed in sharpie,
lined with mirrors so he can admire the echo
of his own name returning to him
like obedient bats.

He monologues. Oh, how he monologues—
not to explain the plan,
but to hear the plan hear him.
The plan changes to agree.

But Gotham built the stage first.
Brick by brick, screen by screen,
they paid admission to spectacle,
mistaking volume for truth.

They laughed when cruelty felt funny,
shared the clips, wore the grin ironically
until irony forgot its way home.
Every cheer sharpened him.

They wanted someone to say the quiet parts loud,
someone to punch the rules instead of fixing them,
someone who promised that blame
was a renewable resource.

Laws became riddles with missing answers
because the crowd liked the guessing game.
Truth learned to bend for applause,
a henchman paid in clicks and shrugs.

They told themselves it was entertainment,
just a phase, just a character—
never noticing how often they asked
for an encore.

He doesn’t want Gotham burned.
He wants it clapping
as the match is struck,
convinced the fire is warmth.

Some villains want chaos.
Some want control.
This one wants consent—
manufactured, repeated, normalized.

And somewhere above the skyline,
the signal flickers—not hope exactly,
more like accountability—
a reminder that villains rarely arrive alone.

They are assembled.
Fed.
Elected by appetite.

And the hardest truth Gotham avoids:
the mask fits because
so many hands helped sew it.

Part Two: Episodes From the Long Night

Episode I: The Mirror Tax
He convinces Gotham that reflection is loyalty.
Every surface must shine or be suspect.
Windows stop opening.
People learn to admire themselves
instead of looking out.

Episode II: The Flood of Names
He releases a thousand nicknames into the streets—
little knives with handles of laughter.
Neighbors become categories.
Categories become targets.
No one remembers who started it,
only who it’s safe to hate today.

Episode III: The Trial Without Evidence
Justice is shortened for efficiency.
Belief replaces proof; volume replaces record.
The jury is a crowd standing very still,
afraid that silence might look like dissent.
The verdict arrives before the facts.

Episode IV: The Night of the Broken Clock
Time is declared flexible.
Yesterday contradicts itself.
Tomorrow is postponed indefinitely.
Gotham wakes up tired,
unsure what it already forgave.

Episode V: Infrastructure Week
He promises bridges, delivers slogans.
Promises are printed larger than blueprints.
The roads crack quietly beneath the parade.
Everyone applauds the banner
while their wheels sink.

Episode VI: The Emergency That Never Ends
Fear becomes renewable energy.
Each alarm funds the next alarm.
People trade freedom for certainty
and receive neither,
but at least the sirens sound purposeful.

Episode VII: The Vanishing Watchmen
Oversight is mocked as pessimism.
Whistleblowers learn new words for exile.
The lights in City Hall dim
not from budget cuts
but from neglect.

Episode VIII: The Loyalty Test
He asks one question only:
Are you with me?
Complex answers fail.
Quiet ones disappear.
Gotham learns to nod
without thinking.

Episode IX: The Weather Returns
Storms feel personal now.
Rain sounds like accusation.
People stay indoors, refreshing feeds,
waiting for someone else
to go first.

Between episodes, the villain smiles—
not because the city is darker,
but because it adjusted its eyes.
And Gotham, brave in small ways,
tells itself this is survivable.
That darkness is temporary.
That someone else will stop it.

But villains don’t need victory.
They need continuation.
And the night, once invited,
keeps its shoes by the door.

Part Three: When the Signal Fails

Batman does not return.
Not because he is dead,
but because there is nowhere
left to arrive.

The center does not hold—
it has been meme’d, monetized,
ironized into fragments.

Every truth comes with quotation marks.
Every symbol eats itself.
The Bat-Signal flickers,
but no one agrees what it means.
Is it warning?
Branding?
Satire?
A threat or a joke in poor taste?

Gotham has learned postures
instead of positions.
People curate selves like crime scenes,
leave clues that contradict each other,
call it complexity.

Masks multiply.
Everyone wears three.
One for work.
One for survival.
One they forgot they were wearing.

Names lose weight.
Faces slide.
Batman was trained to fight villains,
not feedback loops.
Not a city arguing with its own reflection
until meaning collapses from exhaustion.

There is no rooftop left—
only platforms.
No alleys—
only threads.
No witnesses—
only audiences trained to doubt
their own eyes.

The villain no longer needs to act.
The script writes itself now.
Contradiction is policy.
Confusion is cover.
Outrage refreshes the page.

Batman waits at the edge of coherence,
where cause once led to effect,
where a bruise could still be traced
to a fist.

But Gotham has dissolved into vibes.
Into vibes about vibes.
Into reenactments of arguments
no one remembers starting.

Even the villains are unsure who they are.
Even the heroes hesitate.
To act requires agreement on reality—
and reality has been outsourced.

The city says: Save us.
The city also says: Who are you to decide?
The city also says: This isn’t happening.

Batman lowers the cowl.
Not in surrender—
in recognition.
You cannot rescue a city
that no longer believes in cities,
only performances of collapse.

And so, the night continues,
leaderless, centerless,
brilliantly lit and utterly lost—
a Gotham where everyone knows the plot is broken,
but keeps reading anyway
because stopping would require
remembering who they were
before the story fractured.

The signal goes dark.
Not because hope is gone—
but because no one can agree
what hope would look like
without a mirror.

1
What is hitting bottom, precious?
the question curls tighter
than the gold band

owls trade dark messages
the night stays intact still
after each one

2
lembas breaks cleanly
still we keep taking portions
meant for later

fallen log breathing
through mushrooms and beetle work—
nothing wasted

3
pipe smoke, green hedges
we swear this was always ours
because we’re here

a trail disappears
where deer decide otherwise
than the map did

4
borrowed power hums
warm as a held secret
it knows your name

rain learns the leaves first
before it reaches the ground
already slowed

5
the loudest vision
crowns itself inevitable
by repetition

fog lifts from needles
no one asked to be seen here
so nothing performs

6
this matters now
the stone insists again
and again and again

roots pass warnings down
slowly, in sugars and shade
too late for panic

7
we touch everywhere
without ever arriving
this feels like power

hands return empty
smelling of bark and time
changed, not filled

8
everywhere at once
feels like truth when you are tired
of being local

one step, then another
distance teaches patience
without instruction

9
days lose their edges
seasons flatten into posts
labeled now, now, now

nothing urgent here
a branch breaks only once
then learns to rot

10
something is coming
the stone agrees immediately
and sells the cure

outside, trees continue
their slow unbroadcast work
unimpressed

11
this is connection
says the light in the dark room
feeding on eyes

the mountain waits, still
no hero, just gravity
doing its work

12
it is not evil
to need, says the burning land
just realistic

fire clears its throat
even ash knows where to rest
when it is done

13
the hand goes numb first
still refreshing, as if depth
were down there somewhere

snow breaks from the branch
only when it weighs too much—
no drama

14
letting go looks like
an empty hand shaking free
without applause

An old stump listens
to every new root crossing
without reply

I have too many opinions
About spoons
To be truly happy
On even the average day.

Someone lobotomize me,
So I can be like them,
Choking on miles of soft cock,
And calling it ferocious.

I mumble around the edges,
And fail to fake it
Believably. No matter how
Stupid I become from bashing

My brains against the brick wall
Of other people’s incompetence,
It’s never stupid enough
To lose sight of how badly

Unmatched spoons fit into
My kitchen drawers and
The problems with those
Too shallow or too concave.

Occasionally, however, I pull
My favorite one from the
Mess and light up with ridiculous
Joy at perfection at last.

If only people were like
Spoons, and I could
Order a new set from
Amazon, have it here by

Tomorrow morning with
Free shipping. Never mind
The fuel used to keep me
Fucking satisfied.

II

Because the mountains have not agreed
to be tamed.
Because the wind still carries dust
from ten thousand years ago
and sets it gently on your eyelids
as if to say: remember.
Because the rivers—thin, braided,
thirsty—still cut their own paths
no matter how many maps
someone draws.
Because a deer pauses at the treeline
and looks at you
as if weighing whether you
belong here.
And you know the answer
is complicated.
Because in the high deserts
the juniper twists its whole life
into a question mark—
and still stands.
Because a shovel in the hand
reminds you of work that matters,
and the soil is warm
where the sun has touched it
long before daylight
reached your door.
Because old mines breathe
in the hills,
timbers groaning under the weight
of regret and gold,
yet the lupine grows anyway
along the tailings.
A small blue defiance.
Because the coyotes
sing the night open,
and no fence, no ordinance,
no well-intentioned neighbor
has convinced them otherwise.
Because the sky is too large
for certainty.
Because the earth beneath you
moves—sometimes gently,
sometimes with a reminder
that nothing built by human hands
is permanent.
Because fire knows your name
and still comes looking,
and the blackened pines
green out again
without permission.
Because out here
you can hear the old stories
under the new ones:
the land speaking
through cottonwood leaves,
the ghost of a work song
in the wheat,
the quiet resistance
of a single thrush.
Because the West
asks something of you.
Not obedience.
Not mastery.
But honesty—
the kind that comes
from walking long miles
with only the sound
of your own breath.
Because every day
the land offers a choice:
to hurry,
or to kneel.
To take,
or to tend.
To pretend you’re in charge,
or admit you are fortunate
to be here at all.
Because wildness
is not something the West lost
and must reclaim—
it is what has held the West
together all along,
quiet as sagebrush,
stubborn as basalt,
faithful as dawn
over the continental divide.
And because when the sun
drops behind the ridge,
and the last light
catches in the dust,
you feel it again—
the truth you didn’t ask for
but needed:
The West is still wild
because some things
are stronger than us,
and always will be.

This going to be an unpopular admission		but 
I’m pretty sure (I know)
how Jesus must have felt, 
                                                          if he ever existed.

People don’t like it when someone knows too much,
Or sees the big picture - and then talks about it out loud,
Or can tell what the problem is -
Knows how to fix a fucked-up situation.

Especially when they have had a hand in
Fucking it

(Up down sideways around the block).

I’ve never been any good at shutting up,
And now is no different.

Perhaps I will be nailed to a high place
And stabbed with sharp objects,
Starved and taunted, left to freeze.

Then later they will say
How right I was	and how everyone	should
Be just like I had been,

When we all know damn well
They fucking hate it		to begin with.

I


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