SENESCENCE

Eventually, the set 

of {who you are}

feels like nothing 

when weighed against

the traces

of all you might have been:

things you thought

but never said,

actions you've considered

but haven't ever taken

pass out and in 

like shallow breaths

and through you 

each day like 

ionizing radiation—

like battalions of ghosts 

whom you used to 

know by name,

but now, whose 

faint collective 

hunger gnaws away 

at those serifs 

which ornament each

glyph of DNA 

until finally, it's

illegible, and you're free 

to join their army.

VOLTE-FACE

If there's another Earth 

where things 

worked out—

where the bees all

stuck around

and the birds

maintained their weight—

where a pretty fence 

built from

coordinating conjunctions 

has made cordial

neighbors of Church 

and State—

where, instead of 

swiping strangers and 

sexting AI, 

you and I linger 

over coffee and pie 

(even as I type this)

in a round-the-clock diner—

where anyone 

who lied, or wouldn't 

look me in the eye 

is tortured asymmetrically 

for their crimes by 

harmless prophecy 

first haunting, then 

unhinging them, then

driving them to blindness—

what good 

would any of these

distant fictions do me?

My dharma 

is the clusterfuck; 

my armament 

is kindness. 

WHAT'S THAT

As above, so below—

what a crock, 

and what a shame.

Precision machine-

beveled right angles jut

as street numbers 

sprout from 

grids like grave 

anatomical ribs;

everything bisectable—

everything 

must heed its label. Only,

on the far side 

of that great looking glass:

the sky—

which, 

otherwise,

doesn't need a name.

SHADOW

Not quite 

darkness or light—

neither noise 

nor silence—

how readily you volunteer 

to wade out ahead of me

and strip me of all of my 

nonessentiality; 

it is your murk which clarifies  

the complicated truths 

of this blandness, 

this coolness, this need 

to be aloof. 

Such a circumstantial absence, 

such ambiguous 

truth—it is you 

who comes to teach me, 

without absolutes,

how yet I might live 

in a world that needs ministry 

in fullness—

and yet 

at the slightest 

remove.

LESS THAN YOU THINK

Any truth which is whole 

could not be yours 

to own—

it's been fermented 

by the grasses, the zephyrs, 

the stones.

For god is not 

in all things—

that's too lonely, 

and it's simpler:

god is the total; 

god is all things. 

Your injuries

were loaned, as actuality

is rented.

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

          Is man merely a mistake of God's?

          Or God merely a mistake of man's?

               -Neitzsche

Some causal chains 

are so long, thought 

cannot wind them;

others, as inexorable 

as the final chord in songs.

Quirky and immortal

and mercurial 

as quarks—

as wiseacre cartoon 

rabbits, pigs, and ducks—

the first gods must have sprung 

from the volcanic 

islands of our minds

as general outlines,

suggested by the anxious 

agitation of our motions—

then grew tall

and strong on all

the sugar, fat, and salt 

of our desperate hopes 

and fevered questions, 

til at last they turned 

misshapen 

and strange,

which gradually changed 

to strange-

ly quiet—

then just dead-

silent—

then just 

dead-wrong. 

THE SHARP END OF THE SPEAR

In the end, every life

is a dull heavy shaft 

which is suddenly honed 

to a breathtaking point; 

and each, the sole bearer's 

precious own to lose, 

the splendid 

and the simple one.

Given time, good and bad 

fade to ignorance—then pity; 

after ignominy, 

after fame, 

there waits the same 

oblivion.