What I Do When Anger Wants the Wheel
Anger shows up in my truck at dusk,
door already open,
boots on the dash,
mud on the floor mat I just washed.
It smells of old arguments and sweat.
It knows the roads better than I do.
It tells me to drive faster,
tells me every light is an insult.
We pass the pawn shop with barred windows.
We pass the church with the empty lot.
We pass the house where I learned
how to turn silence into a weapon.
Anger taps the glass with one finger.
Every face outside becomes a threat.
Every memory turns into a blade.
The past climbs into the back seat.
My hands tighten on the wheel.
The engine swells with heat.
The speedometer rises toward confession.
The road narrows into a dare.
Anger tells me to say the thing
that burns bridges to ash,
to make a clean break
with a dirty mouth.
I pull into a gas station
with one light working.
The clerk doesn’t look up.
The floor carries a thousand nights
of spilled drink.
The freezer hums with buried hunger.
I shut the engine down.
Silence fills the cab with weight.
Anger curses the quiet.
I stay in the seat.
Keys in my fist.
Breath stacking slow in my chest.
The blood cools its fists.
Anger slouches in the passenger seat,
mouth full of smoke,
eyes hunting for an exit.
I don’t throw it out.
I don’t give it the wheel.
I start the truck
when my hands stop shaking.
We leave the lot
at the speed of staying human.
Unarmed
Listen.
Violence don’t start with fists.
It starts with fear.
Fear of losing ground.
Fear of being seen.
Fear that if we stop talking
the truth might speak first.
So fear puts on a clean shirt.
Signs papers.
Prays in the pew.
Calls itself necessary
and sleeps fine.
Faith gets drafted.
Not to heal,
but to steady hands,
to bless force,
to make panic sound holy.
Meekness gets laughed at.
Softness gets you killed.
Certainty grabs the mic
and nobody asks who wired the sound.
That’s the game.
Keep it loud.
Keep it moving.
Keep everybody reacting.
No time to notice
your jaw locked tight.
Because if you stop,
really stop,
the story don’t hold.
The body knows.
Chest tight.
Breath thin.
A man can shout God all day
and still feel fear chewing his ribs.
So I step into the quiet.
Not hiding.
Not holy.
Just a place where nothing works
except the truth.
No weapons here.
No slogans.
No crowd to disappear into.
Just breath.
Just fear.
Just staying put long enough
to see what’s actually driving.
And once you see it,
you don’t get to unsee it.
Violence ain’t strength.
It’s panic with permission.
Faith ain’t certainty.
It’s staying when fear
demands an answer
right now.
So I don’t strike back.
I don’t harden.
I don’t pretend I’m clean.
I refuse to let fear
finish the sentence.
A small mercy survives this way,
quiet,
stubborn,
strong enough to tell the truth
without raising its voice.
This ain’t peace.
This ain’t victory.
This is a man
standing in the noise,
choosing attention over armor,
learning, slow and honest,
how not to become
what he’s afraid of.
music
Peter Mladinic
Collaboration
I woke this morning in the dark with a face
in mind: a senior citizen wanted to reach out
and, I suspect, apologize for a wrong done
some sixty-five years ago. Sorry, no thanks.
I too have been tempted to reach out, even
atone. “Let sleeping dogs lie, let the dead
bury …” I think there’s an animal buried
in my back yard. There’s grass and then
an area, a sandy rise, like a pitcher’s mound,
and, here and there, patches of black plastic,
like those thick trash bags, little triangles of
black plastic sticking up. Part of me wants
to start digging, but I might have to call
the city health department or animal control.
What if it’s a person, a human corpse?
I doubt that. I woke with that boyish face
and a thought of buried things. Some people
have gardens. My friend Bob’s sister scattered
his ashes in her garden. Some people have
watch collections, others coin collections.
My DVD collection I got rid of. I replaced it
with, I’m proud to say, being somewhat tech-
challenged, digital movies! This morning
I thought Ray, I should go to Amazon for Ray.
The click of a button. Taylor Hackford’s film
starring Jamie Fox as the great Ray Charles.
In one scene Ray’s sitting at the piano and
the guy who plays the great Ahmet Ertegun
comes up to him. “Hey, Ray, I got this song …”
Ahmet sits at the piano, in a little whiny voice
sings “You can talk about the pit, barbecue.”
Suddenly Ray’s banging away at the piano,
singing, screeching, shouting, the camera’s
whirling, the moviegoers in the theater, ones
not dead from the neck down, at the edge
of musical greatness, are out of their chairs
at “Now this band’s going to play from nine
to one.” The camera’s whirling, “the house
is rocking.” Jamie Fox nails “Mess Around.”
When The Buffalo Springfield sang, “Hello,
Mr. Soul, I stopped by to think up a reason”
they were singing about the great Ahmet
Ertegun, the son of a Turkish ambassador.
I love that part in Ray, where, at the piano
he kind of mumbles, then Ray takes it, letting
us know it’s great to be alive, not ignoring
the buried things. Keep them in perspective.
The Beatnik Cowboy 