HAWTHORNE OUTGROWN

Romance might look 

like all wild woods 
at first—some fervid

uncurbed, hysterical 

knots of old New

England,

but the real book's 
a scraggy bit 
more like this land-

scaped sprawl that I'm

skating by on—

here, a would-be 

shock of violets

crabgrass, upstart 

dandelions, 

allowed to crowd 

the patterned assembly of 

bought-in-
bulk chunks of limestone,

there, a thornless 

tuft of tulips, multi-

colored hand-

picked bulbs swaying 
just a little

in planned rows to the laughing

jazz of docile wind,

and—back 

at home, the way 

she left me lying warm

and dark this morning;

a spontaneous kiss 

with prefabricated implications,

the new but

same old way she flew 

apart from me today—

un-proud but 

on-time,

intentionally, but not

on purpose.

Lawn Ordinance

Endless so-forth and so-

on of inestimably greenthick 

spring grass—so young and

teeming with brash yellow dandelions, 

who dared pave this 

frame around you?

Your rhythm, I think 

looks unrude

as a picture—your colors

disengage me all 

wrong and your shading 

doesn't look quite so 

hot pulled apart;

but mostly, you're 

much too 

close-by to be balanced—your green 

reaches far too unlimited 

to have ever been started—besides,

there are some things

you just can't walk around, 

things that are far too 

broad to be pretty—

all this 

big diction, for a start.

Sprinting After Heidegger

After a fast

run—panting,
latent

sweat beading,

euphoria

waxing and
quickening waves of nausea
that sweep 

down
from secret
stomach's pit to far-away
little quaking ankles—I realize,

that I've
never really felt

like giving-

in;

or like getting
high—

I've only
felt

like
being both.

Blues for Commuters

Waiting in the slow 

lane moaning, we watched 

the bold sky clotting thickly over 

with gluey cumulonimbus 

clouds—arrayed in jazzy

asymmetry of bluegrey and cruising

allegretto westward, they felt 

the beat a bit faster than 

our clustered cars—but still remained 

neither moved nor bothered

by the overlapping and predictable strains 

flung up by their satellite radios.

Silverish Lining

Just stop

and—

look

how heaps 

of greycloud weather

help pick-

up

the quick greenness 

of—

grass a bit better.

Phenomenology After Eno

Wherever

I am—feels like home

plate

in a

fake radiant

stadium of ambiance—

go ahead

and pitch me

your least

nominal stuff, world—

I couldn't assume

a more

casual batting stance.

First Idea

On a greyscale 

morning, an unseen

robin crowing—

perhaps 

proudly—perhaps

colorfully, perhaps atop 

some neighbor's dismal building—

a song unrhapsodized or

half-remembered or

imaginary;

its fleeting beats inviting,

and yet resistant to 

extrapolating—

I don't know him, and I never will

so what's the point? But what's

 the point of knowing?

The point's just where it 

comes together, so what's 

the point to asking?

Dear little 

reddish citybird,

perched high on heaps 

of greyish bricks, 

your essence,

I admit—is starting to sound 

expensive, 

but its 

coherence—and its currency,

are 

cheap

cheap cheap

cheap,

cheap!

Laminated Paradox

Cherry-

wood disparity

of the unused back 

office

every square-

inch lies—cluttered

with organizers

Great Literature has Nothing to Teach Us

A thin black 

crow calls like 

crazy from a tanked 

phone line 

laughing with nothing 

to say—

A white bag 

marked Thank You 

brims with bright

wind in a tree 

branch and no boons 

to gain—

The cardboard 

box letters of 

a fairweather busker 

lean hard on spare 

change having no place

to stay—

We're taught at least

three things

without being told: to leave

some things unmade, unsaid 

and unsold—

nothing left to learn leaves nothing

heavy to hold.

Lit. Theory

I first

felt lusty this morning

when I heard—a robin

faintly singing

far away his pithy

augurs of warmer weather—

but then I saw

the same fat creature swooping

opportunistically right

in front of me

down—to pluck

and gobble the guts

of a dried-

out clay-

colored earthworm—

and thought—

poetry might

get us laid,

but it's

prose nonfiction

that keeps us fucked.

Fable

—And after

a stiff while, rain

soaked in

and softened-

up our sense of meta-

physics;

things

became either—awfully

wet

—or not

quite

just

so

awful yet.

Alchemy Since Lucy

Hark!—the humble

salient yip

of my copper-

colored dachshund-

beagle—

leaping to lick

and glaze the lengths

of the scrawny

rented space between us—kindling quick re-

capitulation

of  that tawny old

metonymy of fealty—here

and there, you're

brazen, friend—now,

as then—

you're gold.

Nouveau, Riche

across the street,

the purposed

row of old boxelders 

stands—

popular, still-

leafless, a battalion of bare 

limbs offering fluke safe-

harbor to secret 

upstart colonies

of clover, creeping

charlie, springy 

tufts of wild

violets!

—and as yet, it's 

only there in 

dirt and 

dim and secret 

pregnancy of scraggy shadow

that blossoms mad and 

unsubstantiated            

this new love

of the unhusbanded;

remember what 

another upstart said once:

a weed is just

a flower growing

not because 

you say so.

April 15

breeze-motivated 

ripples on the man-

made pond

don't perturb 

the green

drake floating—

calmly riding-

out Tax Day

Self-starter

Sore knee with slow

gate to black 

rented Chrysler—

Dredging glum

Monday for 

fresh motivation—

Nearby spring

branchfulls of

spry finches chiding—

Where is lame

Pegasus 

headed this morning?

Last laugh re-

cessing non-

plussed congregation—

Soared from a

dark horse's

push-to-start engine.

VECTOR ANALYSIS

Skinny side-

walk
earthworm—flooded
architecture?
logic of lines
after all—length
does is
get us

up here by last 

night's downpour,

what do you

make of all this fierce

Why do you think 
we cramp the lean

by imposing upon
their wills
such implausible boxes?
It must seem 

mad—to build up 
what could instead 

be made to slant 
forward;

builds progression, a move-

ment in time.
All height

ever
all stepped-on.

Forecast

In a

flash I

feel 

I might

always love

missing you—

just 

like the 

ruddy soaked

arms of bare

poplars love lightning:

ungracious-

ly hungrily all 

of the time

Accelerando

Rainy achromatic

highway precipitating

grey-

sameness of road

and sky

and

making

me feel repeated-

ly grate-

ful for

unapathetic

greenness

of exit signs—

XIV

behind

the wheel I found

myself

intractable, the skyway's 

jammed

with blackbirds

Hard and Soft

Across the alley

the old pink furniture

men tread slowly

through asphalt 

meadows of off-

white washing 

machines old refriger-

ators broken automatic 

dish washers

tending just 

a little listless-

ly to any wounded 

aluminum buffing 

whitepainted 

enamel still glistening  

with April rain carting

the pretty winners 

off to gruff-

motored trucks 

on thin 

red dollies

The eldest 

among them 

wear their saggy 

denim best 

glad to be vested 

in pliable nylon 

today and each 

clad in hope-

lessly camouflaged 

baseball caps—

which actually

distinguish their pre-

rogative astonish-

ingly well

against the alabaster

stacks of

zinc-

coated sheetsteel

Backgammon with Wittgenstein

In the time it took

to walk 

from a parked car 

to my building's door,

I don't know

how - but I'm awful sure -

that a 

certain 

forthright 

sort of 

poem occurred.

See, in a snap

I saw 

the virile wind 

whisk quick away the 

overhead fertile 

froth of clouds;

revealing,

for the very

first time that morning,

that a phenomenal blue

had always been shining

forth without 

my words

to see it through—

but I couldn't imagine 

what claims I'd stake

on  

such a credible 

display of 

ordinary reality

(what, after all,

would Stevens Say? 

What in hell

would Wittgenstein write?)

from here inside my sloppy

office, kinked 

around a desktop;

so I contented myself 

with describing the scene 

and moving on to more

concrete things—

Surely whereof one cannot speak,

one must 

play some videogames.

Recess

From the bombed-out 

desiccation 

of 

abandoned new-construction 

flung

the ceaseless song 

of 

sparrows— 

 

equity proves 

a slender 

gift,

a little

motivation:

things 

can always get a little 

worse.

Graffiti

Ecstasy 

of 

the hyperreal—

My heart 

beats 

more quickly in the alley;

Utopia-

is probably boring.

To Be (Cont.)

Ontology is

housework

every day,

the dishes!

At Liberty

Captaining my car

past sea 

of sleep to work this morning

I blared Bach

to keep awake and maybe 

stoke a little ardor.  Arriving humming (I think

it worked), I docked and wandered out and

there

were fatbreasted robins everywhere–

hither and thither-

ing out on the lawn (as if I wasn't 

there 

at all) and winging 

improvisational songs that 

blew my 

cabin memory of

that 

carefully made cantata 

clean out of the water.

First Logical Elegy

How kind!

of dirt

to keep

its mouth shut—

neatly

settling what words

cannot.

The forgiveness

heaped

upon the dead—

is not

the kind

I want.

DAS MAN

Seems
like nothing

today
is going
your way. For

example—this morning,
some orange-
vested

toughs came along
and

stole
all the

trash off
the highway

embankments 

before you 

could notice

how perfect
it looked in fast-
forward from your

hatchback. And then,
later—at
breakfast, you
distinctly

asked for
stratus clouds

with your
deluxe crisp-
wind-and-tall-
sky combo 

platter; but of
course—someone
screwed-

up
again and gave 

you—cirrus.

ER Re: Bret

Sorry to say—

you'll probably never

be a saint;

because

you're always doing

no harm first—and death

is not your enemy—

but then again—

urgency

doesn't always visit

such ready rooms

and luckily

there are still

two ways to be

a hero—

the first is

suddenly—

and the

other—

is once.