ALL OF TIME IS IN YOUR BONES

Plot—is just
the serviceable  

fossil—
sought

and scrutinized
after the fact—

of unconsidered action.

CITY OF COFFEE SHOPS

All our old granddaddies—
so impervious,
or else 

oblivious—
to this 
sort of heat

would be 
proud! at how 

even at ninety 
degrees—
there's these

seemingly hundreds of dozens of them—
swelling- 

up ev-
er-
y
second—at each 

new swerve 
of re-
cycled street;

thirsty to meet
and fain 
sell—you and me

their hot and sweet roadside 
water by the dipperful—like so much
dependable- 

but-preposterous
Scotch whiskey.
And we—

though glistening,
out-
landishly

overdressed—still dribble,
so

eager! to take them up on the whole 
crazy idea.

PAVANE POUR UNE INFANTE DÉFUNTE

Dear 
God of beatific 

majesty—can you 
not see? 

that she's—not even
asking! 

for a happy
ending anymore.

At this point—
wan

Mademoiselle 
only 

desperately—
seeks

a proper one;
so she 

can 
at least—finally

rest 
easy—in terrific-

ly rich 
red indigo 

hell—
for a while.

FANTASY—

In which—
I was

so extreme-
ly

rich
all along!—that I 

could—
appreciably

afford 
to ignore it.

LIFE SENTENCE

If you
could—
only

con-
cen-
trate—harder! on

slow-
ing 

time

down—

enough; 

then
you 
would! 

always 

be
(always 
be always
 be—
perfect-
ly)

in 
com-
plete

control—
of 
the 

total-
ly 
infini-
tes-
i-
mal-
ly 
tiny 

whole entire universe—forever 
and ever.

AIRPLANES

Feels strange—to 
hear and 

look up at glitzy
flecks—
which 

mottle the endless 
summer blue;

and admit—feeling 
so thin 

and insulated—
of course!
the more 

impossible

and pure 
science-
fiction your dream—

the more
straight 
down-

to-
earth realistic

your solution—
is invariably

required 
to be.

APOCRYPHA

No offense
intended—to old Nat
King Cole

who certainly—
works great as the maidenhair
trees out-

side the Island
House ripple and flow;
But it's definitely

Sam Cooke—
and 

Sam Cooke
alone—whose oracular
outcry
first made
those breezes blow!

MYTHOS OVEREASY

Eventually one 

morning—the stiff and stubborn  

fussy old poet

finally woke up 

to find—everything 

about his little breakfast 

was just so

epically pathetic—that he

could no longer artfully 

disregard it. From the tall skinny glass of juice she always placed 

before him—

sweating to come 

to grips with the 

ambient temperature—

to the gooey sympathetic look 

on the smiles of avocado 

she cautiously flayed 

out across his shiny plate—which 

seemed too perfect-

ly secure 

with the outcome—

of having given in 

to gravity long ago;

before his mind knew 

it—his grip 

had capitulated 

and started 

ungraciously—but 

gratefully pitching 

his speechless mouth 

full of—

runny forkfuls

of those—heroically!

non-

organic eggs.

MY EPITAPH

He never—

so much as 

once!

wrote a poem—

that had ever—so much 

as

been—

written before. 

POEM WITHOUT EXCUSES

There—along the scraggy purple 

highway median strips

where thick bushy tufts 

bow and swirl in wild windgusts—which

never once dared whisper a single word 

of far-

off hothouse rose bushes somewhere; there,

you feel 

you're finally free—to disavow your need to freel freedom. Because

no longer obligated 

to stay upright, to attend 

to the perpendicular; your only imperative then,

while moving—is to simply  

keep going

while always 

remaining parallel.

SERVING THE SENTENCE

Dad, I think—I might finally
be through 
with expecting

that it'll all 
come out—right

in the end; that just sounds far
and away 
too—intuitive 

anyway! Instead, 
I would totally settle—
to just have it all 

come out
as having
been already—correct

from the get-
go! But be perfect-

ly
honest with me—is it way,

way too much
to expect? That you've 
already

hung up 
the phone—several minutes ago?
while I was 

still busy 
talking—
and maybe I just 

wasn't 
listening 
properly.

FROM HERE, HAPPINESS LOOKS JUST LIKE CONFUSION

So—you say

you have

no center anymore!—Ever

so much

the fortune-

less better 

for your circumstances;

because,

don't you see?—

Now it's

never

been truer 

than ever—

that no matter

what off-

kilter pilar

you tether

up to—and then

spiral 

out from;

you'll always be—so perfect

-ly

well—and safely!

within that particular

exotic glob

of geometry's

given circumference!

RELAPSE

Here he comes again now, rearing 
his head 
into view—the owner 

of my pretty screwed-
up and back-
ward-looking face;

he who—not only 
seems to 
have willingly 

paid so bewildering-
ly handsomely 
for it—but also,

who has—
just that kind
of bland-

ly cavalier 
look in his eye—
of someone

who could—
rather effortlessly 
afford to.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

No offense to Hegel—but I think 
I finally figured out
how we got

so inextricably fused 
together—after 
I kissed her 

just once;
and so 
lightly indecisive—and only

sort-of! not to mention
too fast—
in my dad's 

freezing cold car
in her
hot July driveway

upon our return
from that arbitrarily nondescript
Main Street ice cream parlor.

And it's so dumb—and unabsolute!
and has nothing whatever 
to do with that 

delicate situation—which initially flattened
those two little paperthin
noses together;

but rather—
with every ponderously heavy 
and ugly impersonal thing

that's happened—
to drop down 
and pile up on top

and around 
and outside of them since then—
creating increasing

and tremendously monumental 
inward pressure—as their owners 
ever so innocently

simply continued 
sitting together 
occasionally—though honestly

not all that often—
inaccurately
remembering that embracing.

WHY THE ARTIST WAS ALWAYS STARVING

When he stopped to think about it—just for a little,
the total situation 

evidenced by—
the skin

of that silly little mango 
steeped in the long shadow 

of the furtive 
and furrowing memory 

that stained
his depressed kitchen table,

was not really all that fantastic 
a metaphor for progression.

Although—certainly!

the thing
appeared to be green—turning

yellow—and then? that perfect kind of 
orange that seems 

pink—but because it's been secretly
dreaming to be scarlet;

really, no it couldn't be any 
one of those colors—at all,

because—as he saw it
there in that moment,

any great mango—

ought to display
each of them equally—all at once; 

and besides, 
he thought

if it was truly great—no wait, actually literally
none of them at all!

because someone
very much like himself—would have come 

along and likely
devoured it 

several hours ago now. And that skin?
It wouldn't have become anything

other than—shredded to an ugly pulp
and blotted out

with sweltering dark 
coffee grounds in the garbage.

ACTUAL LORD OF THE FLIES

Marching stately barefoot and
brandishing 

blood 
orange vestments and halfnaked—

as I prefer it—I proceed 
enchantingly!

to the beat 
of slow confident 

tambourines—forward
toward the antique gilded window-

sill—of my royal-
ly 

tumble-
down 

rental—to throttle
yet another 

greasy little 
bastard for her.

THE POEM IN YOUR SHOEBOX

Curious!—this particularly 
artistic

double bind—
where

You must try!—to live forever 

without ever
writing-

about—what you supposedly don't know;

while—
simultaneously

always remembering never

to write-
off

more than you owe.

FEEDBACK

So far?
it basically 

feels like
I'm on speaker—

with 
that man 
from the mirror. I mean—

the way—
everything looks 
pretty much exactly 

the same
as it used to—only back-
wards. Oh—and how there's always this 

weird and
interminable delay—
between whatever! I see

and literally
every 

single—
little 

stupid thing
that I say.

PREVAILS

Little humdrum bumblebee—flickering 
lowly and erratic 

through the stiff and non-particular 
knots of high grasses—how I wonder!

here beneath our shared canopy
of uncharacteristically chilly July air—do you 

also daydream? Are you so distracted-
ly busy? fizzing to recall—each and all

of last summer's most-popular blossoms?
where they were exactly—and how lovely!

it was to gently drink—and wick a little 
of their rarefied lives away from them?

Or are you merely out here humming
so diligently—to remind?

This too!—could be
true!

This too!—
might be right!

This too.
Can maybe

just—must 
be.

EARMARKS

There—in the raw and undesignated   
newness of morning,

just before—the ink dries
on the signatures of things

and the sting
of your self 

unleashes—
and thumbs its tremendous weight

evenly and hard
into the pulpy grey 

matter of your 
as-yet unproselytized mind—

when the light (even the light currently
motivating your eyes)

still feels—far off
and like it came from outside;

it is there—you must try. 
And try hard. As hard 

as you can—not to think
but rather

to wonder;
How? Just how many times?

in this moment—in this very
room? in this very

same space—prior to now?
have you felt

your soul 
quake like this? having leapt

up! in a split second; 
only to feel chaffed

and confounded
and constrained—by the weight 

of those names 
always coming so rapidly 

and heavily into formation?
And then—in that same space

of time—you must try 
to concentrate even harder.

To imagine 
even faster—the impossible idea

of tomorrow! Of
the next day. Of a very 

next morning. Another one.
A different

one! And yet—somehow, just
the same one.

And then?—And what then? 
What in hell

will you do then? 
And even 

more importantly—
what will you do now?

COUNTING ON IT

Recklessly,
I've been practicing naked—at making this 
pretty weird

mug the whole morning;

over and over—
for hours 
in my cold bath-

room mirror (I've been told
if I'm not 
careful—it just might!

stay that way)—Okay,
but which one?
I'm guessing,

at this point—
you're
probably asking? Only

the craziest! And
riskiest!—
And definitely most screwed-up

and difficult-
to-master 
kisser I can muster, mister—

My face. 
The first one.
The only one 

that couldn't have looked—
this bad.

QUIXOTIC

Soft through the curtained air 
her thin breaths—communicating
to him distinctly

the impractical romance—of late sleeping;

and then—upon finally beginning 
to stretch
and begin shedding

her gruff dreamy feeling of 
big armadillo skin
for more pliant—

and yet
still more 
unrealistic things—

day-old apparitions of seedy hard bread 
with holes up each of their middles,
for example,

and lugubrious brown 
streams of 
coffee pouring legato 
from giant steaming pitchers—he resolves

that to love her—here,
now,
with abandon

as wild 
and weird 
as her 

impulsive 
and 
impetuous nature—

would be far, far 
less risky
than to ever—dare endeavor not to.

CROSSFADE

Alright, fine—but it must be?
some

dazed, sunny after-
noon situated 
somewhere in between

Memorial
and Labor Day—opaque 
with condensation- 

thick
and ice 
cube grey-
colored billows of yardsmoke—

for it 
to feel 
even 

remotely okay!
the way 

that—Heart 
of Glass 

is bleeding—
weirdly

into My
Sherona!

UNDEAD AFTER BILLY CORGAN

Turns out,
you were pretty much
right—about 

everything—the world
really was!
just a vampire. 

That is—poor,
but rich-
ly dressed; 

old,
but still—
terrifying.

PUCKER

Littlest drooping 
scarlet daisy 
of the bunch—it gives me

such strange
heart—
to watch

your docile 
head hang;
thinking—

if only!
there wasn't 
so much

stiff competition 
out here—
more of us 

could resign—
to be 
winners.