CRUELTY REFINES

On the subject of tough love, 

much to hear this 

time of year 

from the mute cold throats 

of the rough 

fruitless bushes 

which crouch low 

and hold their ragged 

breath in the wind 

while a whole mess 

of sparrows—all 

hunger pangs and urges—

whinges now for shelter 

and sugar 

in their branches: 

never mind 

what "speaks to you." 

It's all about what could—

but chooses 

not to. 

VOICE LESSON

As if any further 

proof was needed 

that truth and beauty 

come in particles 

and waves—

rough but discrete 

and mercifully light, 

a song behaves

like a handy palliative 

used to modulate 

one's tolerance to life—

whereas 

singing itself 

is a very different catalyst; 

like a whittling knife 

to basswood, it's the honing 

of routine 

through rigorous daily 

practice

to a thing that feels 

sleek, but looks 

preposterous. 

DEUS EX MACHINA

The Terminator 

who learned to cry 

was right:

the best anti-virus 

protection from 

sadness is 

pattern recognition—

this 

is like that; 

stolidity 

like blankness; 

detachment, right 

next door 

to madness. 

*

Wherefore this need 

to triangulate 

emotion? 

Our first response 

to the threat 

of overbalance is 

not 

to respond—

but to find someone 

to show. 

*

Note to future-self: 

when you finally 

rub up against 

the Great Artifice, 

be sure to save 

the last of those three wishes 

for meta-

significance. 

THE PLOT

First, you learn 

that you 

are someone—

front 

and center, bright 

eyes shining; 

then, you learn that you 

are not—you run 

together, wander off; 

last, you learn 

it was never 

about you—all depth 

collapses, 

and the plot 

strands clot; 

the divinely un-

divided scoffs 

at what went rhyming

with "auspicious"

in the sticks—those 

trite seconds 

and gauche minutes—

the conceit 

was just a matter, 

not 

of time, but 

of timing. 

SECOND PLACE

Heaven is distinguished 

from psychosis

by its paleness. Whereas 

even the bleakest, 

snow-blank 

day in February 

is all shot through 

with stinging 

vivid filaments of memory 

and the richness of the longing 

for the sideways 

glance of spring—

the end of the show, 

where the ache 

is extinguished 

is a blank soundstage, 

stripped of its old 

garish game show sets

and backlit 

by the weakest dangling 

strands of winking bulbs—

as if the antidote to depression 

and anxiety was 

a kind of blindness; 

as if the runner-

up prize, 

so long denied, 

was an end to irritation 

and negation of striving; 

as if going nowhere 

and doing nothing 

were the grand culmination 

of yearning for something.  

DAN SMART POEM

A set of instructions 

for decoding instructions; 

identical rhyme 

to give surfeit 

some zing. 

Mobile-home stanzas 

in trailer-park columns;

contrition 

as antidote to hubris 

and shame. 

Of course: rhythm 

as instrument, 

not the song 

that it's singing; 

as longing 

without referent;

as syntax, not diction.

And last: the tragedy 

of slant rhyme 

to overgraze

pure rhyme's commons, 

to contain 

the seeds of its 

own destruction 

while retaining 

some plausible 

deniability of same. 

STAINED GLASS

Clean cry of the newborn

like a crack 

in the face, 

fracturing pure lightness 

into arches, transoms, colonnades—

into limitless 

fragile burnished 

matrices of porches,

all winking 

in midair their 

ambiguous understanding 

of absentia-

cum-grace.