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Crooks run the whole world, and the Dow just fell. Crap rules the airwaves. All your best plans stall. The air is dirty, and you don’t feel well. Your wife won’t listen. Friends no longer call. Sad songs from youth no longer cast a spell. Cancer research has run into a wall. Some inflated hack just won the Nobel. You witness clear signs of decline and fall. The neighbors are cold, and your house won’t sell. Your cat has bad teeth. Your paychecks feel small. Maybe you’re really sick. It’s hard to tell. Up ahead, traffic has slowed to a crawl. The world didn’t just start going to hell. You just noticed for the first time, that’s all.

Long before the fresh apple crisis, my life had some form to it. I would wake in the mornings—I would perform something. For example, the day I tried, as one with acute passion might, to win one woman over but accidentally won another—that whole time I had been living like someone. Though I can’t remember his name. His model of optimism provided me with a certain geography that I inhabit in time of need. This time the need was surprising. People tend to have faith that the juice they drink in the morning is the same juice they have always drunk. And apples take their shape naturally. The guy, whose name escapes me now, taught me to look upon others’ concerns as mine to make at home. I was fond of doing many things at home, but my favorite was drinking juice. When my friends came by—they liked to suddenly show up with all kinds of breads in their hands, thinking they knew what I needed and planning to force it on me—I had to tell them I was busy with my juice. Two weeks before the crisis, I had been writing some poems about it. It was a warm day, not entirely different from other warm days in San Francisco. People were on the street. Pale people were on the street, making it to the park and lying there such that the next day they were a little browned. The poems I had written were failures, but dense ones. It seemed appropriate to think the person’s attempt at wholeness was a series of missteps, which if drawn across an afternoon might prove interesting to other people. I had a way of reminding my friends that we were all in pain, but a fruit tart kind of pain strangers can’t help but enjoy. That day I had, in a sense, gathered all my possessions and gone out onto the street with them. I awoke that morning with an urgency to prepare myself for something—not anything life threatening, but definitely personal. My lover, then, wanted to spend much of her life asleep. She had no ostensible reaction to the city’s sudden depletion of all its fresh apples and no hope for them. In a world where a person’s tastes revolve around the kind of sleep she gets, I could not find four people who cared. I thought that if I could find those four people we could really do something. A few of my friends pretended they were chosen. A few neighbors felt bad and made offers. My mother called to console me. My lover—in actuality, the closest person to being a member of the encumbered troop, slept next to me. Sleep became our network: falling in and out of it for change. The rule of survival is that no two people can lie in the same bed and sleep at the same time. So I kept an eye on her and played this game of freshness. If by morning I could quickly run out and do seven things that did not involve longing, she would reward me. Before the crisis, the reward would have needed only to be an apple one. But after the apples were gone. The landscape usually contains the solution to what’s lost. Demographics help people in cars. Some people did not notice me. Some demographers lose sleep and do not notice me. That was two days before. The evening before it was two days before the crisis, I was thinking that I did not think I was asleep. I had been watching the sunlight take the corner of my room and my housemate’s cat in it. When I looked again, there was no light—but I had not been asleep. It’s the way people react to traumatic events. They say, “I had just been there” or will say, “She was just with me.” So the loss of light was emotional and the lost state—demographic. I began to trace things by their disappearance. Alone in the room, my memory, and anticipated darkness going for light. People like to talk about the daytime. People in strange moods often miss the daytime. Before the crisis it was not often that one would find me in strange moods. I had managed a particular kind of balance fortified by a certain satisfaction of taste. I was happy. I mean, I was in my juice. Five weeks before the crisis, I was employed at the natural foods grocery around the corner from my house. I did not really work there, but I went there every week. All but the third Sunday of each month, I would walk in and find all kinds of juice on sale. Not to buy, but to stand next to. Shorter people have the privilege of proximity to most cardboard signs. That was one thing. I would stand there and be something for taller people who couldn’t see. I had gotten into the habit of improvised customer service as a way to peruse the juice aisles without being noticed. My parents thought my talents should have led me somewhere. My father would always say, “If you’re not going to be a people person, then numbers will have to do.” He was surprised that with all the time I had on my hands, I chose to spend most of it alone. Numbers then did hold some mystery for me, but mostly too high and far-reaching to explore. For years I had known that if there was a wall between where I was and where I needed to be, I did not want it there. Some people have personal goals that are demanding. Certain goals make it impossible to lounge around in bed. My decision to drink only fresh juice, which costs as much as a small satisfying breakfast, kept me busy rounding up cash. I would have to leave most friendships behind. As a way of keeping my life “wall-free,” I had to divide my time. I would spend the first part of the day searching for volunteer positions in organic juice factories. The second part of my day I would spend telling people about the first part. The other parts are not of substance here. Twenty-five years before the crisis I had for the first time what would eventually become known to me as apple juice. Twenty-three years later a magazine editor would reject my first attempt to recount that experience in litany. I am always drinking in my poems, a good friend says. In the first years of my life, everything I ate was mush. Today I will tolerate only the toughest of green vegetables and date people who will always forget this. When I had that remarkable glass of apple juice, I had no idea that one day I simply would not be able to find it. The city gets rid of its apples. People find themselves inventing fruit. The day I decided to write poems about it—it was twelve days before the rumors began and fourteen days before the media coverage—I had been resting in my best friend’s easy chair. We were discussing the rise of the smoothie industry when something fantastic occurred to me. Five days later I had twenty poems. When a person writes a poem about her passions, people on the street are bound to notice them. The passions overwhelm the body. She carries the body as though it were the book. The friend whose easy chair gave way to my failures moved out of town the next week, and though I miss her it was the failures that saved me. On every other day any kind of crisis one finds particular sayings helpful. If certain words are spoken quietly into a cup of hot water, with the handle of the cup turned toward the wall, whatever strength found in the person may be mirrored in the wall. The person leaves the house with her hand against this wall but strutting slightly. In the alley behind the natural foods grocery, I met my second lover for the first time. Meeting people in vulnerable places accentuates the passion later. Or it may be so hot that the lover never thinks in the present. And the weather was so hot during the crisis. Only the alleys had shade. Forty-eight days into the crisis, while on a thirst strike, I had to make a run for the alley. Not as though people were after me, but the elements. The foundation of anyone feeling that they must get away is need; at the bottom of any body-based need is grace. When I appeared at the opening of the alley, a woman who not twenty-four hours later would be dozing in my bed was stacking crates against the east-side wall. Women who work against surfaces inspire me to do things—I thought about telling her, or—short women make me want things. All the time while I was growing up I put a lot of demands on my juice; forty-eight days into the crisis she made me forget it. I did not forget it, but was embroiled. The newspapers were saying things about the past. People were celebrating thick juice, and I kept writing those poems. That day in the alley I realized three things about life. While assisting her I learned three things to carry around with me, to disperse when needed. For six months during the crisis, I did not care about the crisis. When my faith returned all my lovers were gone. That morning I woke to the two hundred and thirty-second day of the crisis; I was beneath my bed. It was the sixth day that I had awakened beneath my bed. I was lonely, but I was also sure. Life without juice had taken on the name and shape of my weakest character, who—when we passed on the street—did not know me. I knew it was me by the way my head felt: people find themselves in an idea and feel so specified by the idea that they are compelled to show it. Today all my ideas are liquid. That day of my faith, friends thinking I was sick came by to see me. It would be the last day I spent alone; I was happy, but still would not drink. The juice on my mind was no longer juice. There was an absence there, but one so constant it became familiar. I did not want to drink it.

inside the bottle with the ship were several Drowned sailors elegy acts on inward skies what you imagine about radio waves these elegant machines bend sinister sentience itself, disordering of the senses, sentimental disgust, disuse, unease by palliative measures supply sufficient echoes to eliminate our organs scattered bones prove the date of the body they are rexed beyond the farthest shoal consumed by a mosaic, a forest of saltshakers an obstinate minor puzzle at my bidding everything is procedural a relative view is counterintuitive, journalism is not written by journalists the diaspora was juggled, then slain intercept a preferred designator a kernal, a Trophy low birth fashioned a hallmark swagger to replace geometrical dreams with scant leviathans: is this an improvement? where is the life that later I led how to account for the strategems, in what I am weakest exemplify I am departed, protean twinned stick figures cut up drawings with scissors, put the pieces in their pockets, confidence in shapes . . . this picture is not very accurate inner turmoil is as oblique as how fair realism fares the objects of its attention; externalized or just compacted to a fêted untouchable Vitamin doll exception spines boundary what kind of skirts are outskirts a primitive, endangered mahogany mask, a convict’s garb, soil cleared from weeds. these teeth sown won’t become full grown: prey talks foreign; heads hang in the halls. habit is only two dimensional, as with any tool barbarous cattle, drudgery of ammunition, improper use of artificial blue collars I died of foliage; I died of typed patterns on carbon paper; I died of a chief delight. fare thee well, crackpot. I break a sweat, the dish is still cold read my Palm, do what it says it’s time that we get up on all fours

Anyone who begins a sentence with, “In all honesty ... ” is about to tell a lie. Anyone who says, “This is how I feel” had better love form more than disclosure. Same for anyone who thinks he thinks well because he had a thought. If  you say, “You’re ugly” to an ugly person — no credit for honesty, which must always be a discovery, an act that qualifies as an achievement. If  you persist you’re just a cruel bastard, a pig without a mirror, somebody who hasn’t examined himself enough. A hesitation hints at an attempt to be honest, suggests a difficulty is present. A good sentence needs a clause or two, interruptions, set off  by commas, evidence of a slowing down, a rethinking. Before I asked my wife to marry me, I told her I’d never be fully honest. No one, she said, had ever said that to her. I was trying to be radically honest, I said, but in fact had another motive. A claim without a “but” in it is, at best, only half  true. In all honesty, I was asking in advance to be forgiven.

In a precisely lighted room, the CFO speaks of  start-to-start dependencies. Says let me loop back with you. Says please cascade as appropriate. It’s that time of morning, so we all can smell the doughnut factory. If scent were white noise, doughnuts would be that scent. The factory won’t sell at any price. The building next to it burns the animals we experiment on. I have worked on a few preclinical reports in my time. The rhesus monkeys become so desperate that they attempt suicide, over and over again. I am legally obligated to spare you the particulars. How could things be any different? Here many choice molecules have been born. Here. This pill will dissolve like sugar. Your last five months will be good ones.

The Props assist the House Until the House is built And then the Props withdraw And adequate, erect, The House support itself And cease to recollect The Augur and the Carpenter – Just such a retrospect Hath the perfected Life – A Past of Plank and Nail And slowness – then the scaffolds drop Affirming it a Soul –

The morning coffee. I'm not sure why I drink it. Maybe it's the ritual of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the day on. It's something to do between being asleep and being awake. Surely there's something better to do, though, than to drink a cup of instant coffee. Such as meditate? About what? About having a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee whose first drink is too hot and whose last drink is too cool, but whose many in-between drinks are, like Baby Bear's por- ridge, just right. Papa Bear looks disgruntled. He removes his spectacles and swivels his eyes onto the cup that sits before Baby Bear, and then, after a discrete cough, reaches over and picks it up. Baby Bear doesn't understand this disruption of the morning routine. Papa Bear brings the cup close to his face and peers at it intently. The cup shatters in his paw, explodes actually, sending fragments and brown liquid all over the room. In a way it's good that Mama Bear isn't there. Better that she rest in her grave beyond the garden, unaware of what has happened to the world.

By that he ended had his ghostly sermon, The fox was well induc'd to be a parson, And of the priest eftsoons gan to inquire, How to a benefice he might aspire. "Marry, there" (said the priest) "is art indeed: Much good deep learning one thereout may read; For that the ground-work is, and end of all, How to obtain a beneficial. First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise Yourself attired, as you can devise, Then to some nobleman yourself apply, Or other great one in the world e s eye, That hath a zealous disposition To God, and so to his religion. There must thou fashion eke a godly zeal, Such as no carpers may contrare reveal; For each thing feigned ought more wary be. There thou must walk in sober gravity, And seem as saint-like as Saint Radegund: Fast much, pray oft, look lowly on the ground, And unto every one do courtesy meek: These looks (nought saying) do a benefice seek, But be thou sure one not to lack or long. And if thee list unto the court to throng, And there to hunt after the hoped prey, Then must thou thee dispose another way: For there thou needs must learn to laugh, to lie, To face, to forge, to scoff, to company, To crouch, to please, to be a beetle-stock Of thy great master's will, to scorn, or mock. So may'st thou chance mock out a benefice, Unless thou canst one conjure by device, Or cast a figure for a bishopric; And if one could, it were but a school trick. These be the ways by which without reward Livings in court be gotten, though full hard; For nothing there is done without a fee: The courtier needs must recompensed be With a benevolence, or have in gage The primitias of your parsonage: Scarce can a bishopric forpass them by, But that it must be gelt in privity. Do not thou therefore seek a living there, But of more private persons seek elsewhere, Whereas thou may'st compound a better penny, Ne let thy learning question'd be of any. For some good gentleman, that hath the right Unto his church for to present a wight, Will cope with thee in reasonable wise; That if the living yearly do arise To forty pound, that then his youngest son Shall twenty have, and twenty thou hast won: Thou hast it won, for it is of frank gift, And he will care for all the rest to shift, Both that the bishop may admit of thee, And that therein thou may'st maintained be. This is the way for one that is unlearn'd Living to get, and not to be discern'd. But they that are great clerks, have nearer ways, For learning sake to living them to raise; Yet many eke of them (God wot) are driven T' accept a benefice in pieces riven. How say'st thou (friend), have I not well discourst Upon this common-place (though plain, not worst)? Better a short tale than a bad long shriving. Needs any more to learn to get a living?" "Now sure, and by my halidom," (quoth he) "Ye a great master are in your degree: Great thanks I yield you for your discipline, And do not doubt but duly to incline My wits thereto, as ye shall shortly hear." The priest him wish'd good speed, and well to fare: So parted they, as either's way them led. But th' ape and fox ere long so well them sped, Through the priest's wholesome counsel lately taught, And through their own fair handling wisely wrought, That they a benefice 'twixt them obtained; And crafty Reynold was a priest ordained, And th' ape his parish clerk procur'd to be. Then made they revel rout and goodly glee; But, ere long time had passed, they so ill Did order their affairs, that th' evil will Of all their parish'ners they had constrain'd; Who to the Ordinary of them complain'd, How foully they their offices abus'd, And them of crimes and heresies accus'd, That pursuivants he often for them sent; But they neglected his command e ment. So long persisted obstinate and bold, Till at the length he published to hold A visitation, and them cited thether: Then was high time their wits about to geather. What did they then, but made a composition With their next neighbour priest, for light condition, To whom their living they resigned quite For a few pence, and ran away by night.

There is a land of pure delight Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain. There everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers; Death like a narrow sea divides This heavenly land from ours. Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green: So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between. But timorous mortals start and shrink To cross this narrow sea, And linger shivering on the brink, And fear to launch away. Oh could we make our doubts remove, These gloomy doubts that rise, And see the Canaan that we love, With unbeclouded eyes; Could we but climb where Moses stood And view the landscape o’er, Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood, Should fright us from the shore.

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight, A-purpose to revisit the old claim. I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate, And the lads who once were with me in the game. Poor boys, they’re down-and-outers, and there’s scarcely one to-day Can show a dozen colors in his poke; And me, I’m still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and gray, And I’m looking for a grub-stake, and I’m broke. I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon looked down; The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me; But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like a town, Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see. There were piles and piles of tailings where we toiled with pick and pan, And turning round a bend I heard a roar, And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore. It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung; It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs; Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung; It glared around with fierce electric eyes. Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more; It looked like some great monster in the gloom. With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for seven score, And I sighed: “Ah, old-time miner, here’s your doom!” The idle windlass turns to rust; the sagging sluice-box falls; The holes you digged are water to the brim; Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss-chinked walls Are deathly now and mouldering and dim. The battle-field is silent where of old you fought it out; The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold. But there’s a little army that they’ll never put to rout — The men who simply live to seek the gold. The men who can’t remember when they learned to swing a pack, Or in what lawless land the quest began; The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back, The restless buccaneer of pick and pan. On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North, You will find us, changed in face but still the same; And it isn’t need, it isn’t greed that sends us faring forth — It’s the fever, it’s the glory of the game. For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust, Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; It’s little else you care about; you go because you must, And you feel that you could follow it to hell. You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold; You’d follow it in solitude and pain; And when you’re stiff and battened down let someone whisper “Gold,” You’re lief to rise and follow it again. Yet look you, if I find the stuff it’s just like so much dirt; I fling it to the four winds like a child. It’s wine and painted women and the things that do me hurt, Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild. Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub-stake and my tent — There’s a city, there’s an army (hear them shout). There’s the gold in millions, millions, but I haven’t got a cent; And oh, it’s me, it’s me that found it out. It was my dream that made it good, my dream that made me go To lands of dread and death disprized of man; But oh, I’ve known a glory that their hearts will never know, When I picked the first big nugget from my pan. It’s still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives me forth once more To seek and starve and suffer in the Vast; That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glimmers on before — My dream that will uplift me to the last. Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there’s none of you too sane; It’s just a little matter of degree. My hobby is to hunt out gold; it’s fortressed in my brain; It’s life and love and wife and home to me. And I’ll strike it, yes, I’ll strike it; I’ve a hunch I cannot fail; I’ve a vision, I’ve a prompting, I’ve a call; I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my trail, To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all. Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at the sky There’s a lowering land no white man ever struck; There’s gold, there’s gold in millions, and I’ll find it if I die. And I’m going there once more to try my luck. Maybe I’ll fail — what matter? It’s a mandate, it’s a vow; And when in lands of dreariness and dread You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your frontiers now, You will find the old prospector, silent, dead. You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe below it; You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod; You will find the claim I’m seeking, with my bones as stakes to show it; But I’ve sought the last Recorder, and He’s — God.