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.

POEM FOR THE TIME BEING

Late October
afternoon light—so gauzy

and washed-out—
that it feels like we might

be inside
an aquarium

in god’s
chic apartment—only, we aren’t

the attractions; 

we are pure décor. 

It’s this elusive 

and brilliant-

ly delicate interim—
this hyper-exotic, temperamental 

meanwhile—

that’s the star.

FACE FIRST

To "please deliver us 

from fiction's 

necessary evil"

is a tricky slope 

down a bald

cliff face of "seems." 

And to declare yourself

"a nonbeliever"

is tantamount
to saying that you
don’t need sleep.

From one second
to the next, both 

feel oddly

doable—but, 

speaking of fact-

based: sooner 

or later,

every living
body slips and falls
into a dream.

LIBER NOVUS DIAGNOSIS

your results 

have just come back 

from the lab.

Just as random

charged particles
colliding in a blackbox

neither describe 

nor resolve the plot 

of anxiety,

what we’re dealing with here

is not 

nostalgia,

since nostalgia 

is a feeling
that requires a spot

in space and/or
time to which you’d want
to go back. No,

the problem you’ve got,
is worse, 

I'm afraid—and 

a whole lot less

sophisticated 

than that: it's

your past—not as 

want ad, or concussed,

or collectible,

but irrevocably
scalded and
cauterized shut. Think of it as

an Imaginal mic drop.
But to be 

more upfront: 

what you caught
is called 

mythlessness. Period. Full stop.