ONE IN A BILLION

     —after W.S. Merwin


On the last day of the world,

I would not want to know it.

Because maybe not realizing
how lucky you've been

is what burnishes one stupid 

little pebble on the beach—that is: 

only walking over your life 

day after day without bending down

to put it in your pocket
allows you to own it.

CONTINGENCIES

Ridiculous
how practical a surfeit 

of color is—

how fall’s glamour 

will strategically go

tripping on its own largess—

how a blanket

of gold leaves super-

sedes its inconvenience

and tends to do much 

more than beguile 

or interrupt us; 

it also 

just so happens

to shrewdly obstruct

our view of a future

wherein 

frivolous gluts

might no longer 

clog our minds’

gutters, trapping memory

and insulating

whatever loud

homunculi reside there

from the functional

knowledge and

intractable glory

of their own 

untimely deaths.

PROMETHEUS REWOUND

O, sucks 

to life’s vicious, quick,

steel-trap one-wayness! No,

I’m being
serious, though: how much

I would give

to be able 

to de-regret this

or cotton-off to that—

to take my self 

kindly by the sleeve

and lead him back 

past temptation to the 

crib—heck, or even 

to the womb again—

or at least, with the deft 

expertise

of a mother

wiping the spittle
from her
dribbling child’s chin, 

relax the world’s 

hinges from his neck 

to pre-impinge it

and release the stopped 

oxygen 

back into his brain 

to regain some sense 

of consciousness—then 

slowly un-remind him.

IN PRAISE OF HESITATION

          In modern wit, all printed trash is
          set off with numerous breaks and dashes.

               -Jonathan Swift, On Poetry: A Rhapsody


With all apologies
to Swift, here in post-
modern wit,

nothing’s rushed
to print that wasn’t
trash already—

besides which,
to equivocate
a bit in one’s thought—

or pause for a small 

pensive breath 

now and then—or

slam the brakes 

to swerve in an
orthogonal direction—

these 

are the best real-life 

CAPTCHAs we’ve got

to suggest—if not
prove—to the bots
that we’re human.

In addition: great
feeling takes
time, doesn’t it—

lest rhyme
should crash into
prim inane rhyme,

or rhythm get
tripped up by its 
gallivanting tongue?

I—for one—am siding
with Dickinson
on this one:

when I choose to
enjamb you with a
battery of dashes,

I am not
haphazardly
losing the plot,

springing some
contrivance, or even
just stalling—I am

half-drawing
drama's fresh 

stilettos from my cache—

and half-calling 

“time-out” and
lowering the sunglasses

to meet your eyes 

with mine—and assure you

I'm alive. 

DIET OF WORMS

Near November 

in the playground, now

surrendered to its rust,

grim crows
are the only 

ones dining out

on the wriggling
results of a low-
pressure front—

harbingers
somehow, of both
the status quo

and its heretofore 

heretical opposite: 

the tough reforms to come.

THESE AREN'T THE MAGES YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

          The job of the artist is always 

          to deepen the mystery.
               -Francis Bacon


As inevitably as Shakespeare
showed in london
with his pitch

not to take it easy, but

to take the language pro—

so now, the role of every

subsequent poet

is surely not 

to stand up
and unscrew the sun

just to examine 
and explain how it works,
but to strip prose

of its church clothes
and send it off hunting in
bewilderment’s woods—

not to tell it 

like it is, but

to fling birds at bushes
and see what child-
ish sentiment sticks—

to honor the message,
yes, (especially
in public), but

in private, to
fetishize the muffled
mouth of art 

as hooked earth-

worms worship

before the tongues of fish,

which chant ever on 

to their hearts

(as they must) 

in their rude, rusted 

pidgin: this rough, 

confused English. 

THE FIRST WORLD PROBLEM

Taxes, groceries, maintenance

of appliances;

most nights, having to
close your eyes
and consciously will minutes
and seconds to pass

They say
it could be so much
worse than that—

that it’s more like a limp handshake
or stiff kiss than a curse
to have so many painless
choices, it hurts.

They say that, after all,
you’re so much better off

than a medieval subsistence farmer
toiling in the rows. 

And as far
as you know, that’s
more or less true—but

even so: back then, boiling 

in the summer
sun or blaspheming at
the frozen ground,

at least one 

found—six days

out of seven—one knew

what one was supposed 

to do.