Wednesday, March 22, 2023

BULLSEYE

The most extraordinary thing 
that our eyes 
will every see 

has got to be 
plain old 
rotational symmetry. 

For it's practically unimaginable 
how our
faulty geometries

could bolster so much
swagger to a
negligible point. 

And in the end, isn't it 
nothing short 
of heartrending 

to watch, from 
the boundaries, how much
everything's changing 

so precisely on the premise 
that there's one thing 
that can't?



Tuesday, March 21, 2023

TO A BRUISED CHILD

I know you 
think you're made 
of parts, 

but really, there is just 
this body. Trust me:

fragility,
stiffness, 

malady, 
melancholia—

as you earn 
each gold blip of 
bewildering world, 

these shall be 
your duties. 

And I don't mean 
irksome obligations;
I mean

taxes you must pay 
on the beauty.



Monday, March 20, 2023

BEAUTIFUL WORLD

        春の風 
        桜舞い散る 
        美しき世界
                -ChatGPT


Ten minutes 
from now (or possibly 
fewer), 

the large language model 
chatbot will speak 
Japanese; 

it can conjure you 
haiku in the original, 
if you ask it to—

and you don't 
even have to say please.

But what does it mean 
to extrapolate 
from this?

And how 
do you repay a small
favor to a computer? Perhaps 

just by pondering 
the possibilities.



Friday, March 17, 2023

AMENDMENT TO WILLIAMS

Even in the hands 
of such a 
parsimonious doctor, 

form will still 
degrade 

and meaning 
must concentrate—

if only due to time's 
harsh-but-
vigorous erosion.

Such mutable things
as wheelbarrows 
and chickens 

might likely seem 
superfluous 
a chastened century later, 

and will never escape 
the omnipotence 
of erasure.

If he somehow 
knew then

all that we've
forgotten now, 

his most profound 
work, from beginning 
to end, 

might take up 
one line 

and read: 
"so much depends."



Thursday, March 16, 2023

MINUTIAE

It seems almost 
ridiculous how 
all of life's particulars 

stubbornly refuse, 
over time, to refine—

how blood 
and saliva don't distill 
like a wine—

how frangible 
stem cells don't 
collapse, they multiply. 

But at least we catch 
a break when all the dots 
start to connect, 

and all of those 
stubborn, hard knots 
where life's events 

soon will get 
fused to our biased 
remembrances of them 

eventually combine, 
and then cement 
into a spine—

from which long, 
nervy pipes unspool 
and start winding

with generous 
thickness through all 
we now are 

to structure and 
nourish and, eventually, 
to animate 

some overlaid 
insouciant part, which 
didn't used to be there 

into a piece of 
appreciable art.



Wednesday, March 15, 2023

TERM OF ART

The way in which darkness 
will twice
bookend day—I suppose you 

could call that haiku 
if you chose to. 
But haiku itself 

would never 
give away 
the name

of streetlamps 
which cast creeping 
shadows through park grass,

or the blueness 
of evergreens 
against skies' rising bruises—

least of all, 
of deftly transposing 
aromas 

as one mug of tea  
warms the countertop
and cools.


Tuesday, March 14, 2023

BAN THIS POEM

On one hand—
just a slight series 
of deftly pitched words, 

flung with 
just the right spin to affect 
a sly curve 

could, irrevocably, 
destabilize the world. 

Then again—
on the other, it's probably 
safer by a long shot, 

to haul off and 
send discourse 
running in all directions 

than it would be 
to ever risk coming- 
off as lazy 

or too slow, or late 
to the party, 
or cagey—or worse, 

some deceptively 
benign word 

like—injurious.