HARD MODE

What I want 

is to have been given 

all the answers 

in advance. 

What I get instead 

are platitudes, 

highlights, 

spot-lit, 

slowly rotating 

carousels of facts—

not collected, 

but selected prose. 

And how tempting it is 

to punch in 

the cheat code; 

to let one thing, 

not  support, but 

stand in for another; 

for dessert to take 

the place of dinner. 

But no, there's not 

an app for that. 

The map is not 

the territory—

no matter 

how intricate 

or lovingly rendered. 

Facts are not objects; 

truth is not beauty; 

and beauty 

is something more 

than order.  

HOT TOPIC

The saving grace 

of intrusive thoughts 

is how they 

never seem to make themselves 

at home,

how each 

is preempted, and prevents 

the last one

from getting stuck 

in the flow. 

*

Obscure loops 

of bird slang 

buffeting me 

from the roof in 

the morning

like shrill orbits 

around a supermassive 

object, long-collapsed; 

like empty electron shells 

around a hydrogen atom. 

all going nowhere 

in the most urgent fashion; 

like a time-lapse 

of doomed bees in what's left 

of autumn flowers—

showing me there's always 

something to remember, 

even if I only know that

because I have forgotten. 

*

The hottest gift 

this Christmas season 

is suspension 

of your disbelief 

that, unlike loneliness 

or empty space, 

need is a hole 

you can fill 

with itself. 

COAT OF ARMS

November rose 

near the fence, you're 

an argument—

tattered, not fragrant;

more thorns 

than petals—yet 

fierce enough 

to be here, 

to press a point 

that no longer matters—

to voice your concern 

for childless mothers 

and endangered 

pink elephants; 

for punk rock dads 

whose roots are showing

and half-novels mired 

in dark locked drawers—

in short, 

for the lost race; 

for the cursed family tree; 

for the not-unhappily dark

and stormy future 

of irrelevance. 

CONFLICT AVOIDANCE

The incongruously sweet 

talk of pigeons 

in the park 

as they run 

interference all 

over one another, 

scrimmaging 

for corn crumbs, plum 

pits, bread crusts—

though strange-

ly attractive, is 

not such a good trick—

this glut 

of rapprochement, 

this spurious gossip,  

this little bit 

of trouble which

adds such spice to dinner

must be indicative 

of something 

I do too, but—

I don't even want to know what. 

COMING TO TERMS

Once-noble savages 

with their hands 

on the monolith 

are now become, not death,

but hapless 

fish 

who got snagged 

in six-pack holders—

who found their fins tangled 

in a flimflam of options, 

or got strangled 

by the disembodied 

washing-hands of explication.

Great inviolate nets 

of cause and effect 

trawled through oceans 

of perspective, seaching 

for the bottom—

but such a glut 

of explanations

was less of a cure 

than a clue 

to what was missing 

and filled precious 

little of that trench 

in the truth; 

now, none are left

to acknowledge 

that depth 

is just height as seen 

from another point of view.

DRUTHERS

In this fairy tale, 

everyone dreams,

not of riches, but 

of becoming 

a meme.

Don't think

wishing stars,

think bondage constellations.

All the children 

"vibe so hard" 

with Rumpelstiltskin's 

POV. 

*

Everyone 

wants to make 

something out of nothing. 

Some would go 

so far as to say 

that truth 

is a parasite 

on beauty; 

if they had their way, 

some would say 

that rhetoric  

is not opposite, 

but prerequisite 

to plague—

that intercourse 

is poison; 

good faith, contagion's 

larval stage. 

GOD EXPLAINS THE JOKE

To the extent 

that it "existed,"

all poetic language 

was a farce 

of your mistaken 

sense of mastery 

over feeling. Sometimes, 

yes, your thoughts 

were scalding-

hot water,

and some pleasingly 

strict little poem 

was the pot;

but were you 

not so taken

with the aptness 

of that metaphor, 

you might have finally 

thought to address 

the question 

of the burner.