SLACK

It's official—nothing

wears your body 

down like

keeping 

still and holding your 

breath, in an increasingly

elaborate pantomime of death, 

while simultaneously chastising
yourself

for not growing
celestial
wings in the meantime,

and wondering the
whole time—whether 

it just can't be done? Or worse,

why?
it just isn't happening

quickly enough

to counteract 

this annoying and

incessant little compulsion

you seem to have developed—to keep 

pinching and  

hoarding and furtively

sniffing up—
little secret doses

of the free, ordinary air 

which seems
to lie
around everywhere,

so stupid
and dispassionately—outside
of yourself.

INTERCESSION

Dear God—
please hear me,
I need you

to understand—
the extent to
which mom

always lets—
me do pretty
much

what-
ever the hell
I want.

GESTALT

Emphatically—the thing doesn't
speak, but it

mumbles

its imperatives. It works,

as a tumbler
in reverse—staining and polluting

that which you'd already purchased 

as shiny, silver,

and perfect-

ly useful. It fouls your image

with the homely
grit of indiscretion, forcing a whole

glut of conspicuous
indecisions—such as

whether or not
it still makes any

sense to try
combing your hair

when you
can't see anything

familiar in there? And though
you try

to wipe away
the condensation,

all you manage
to do is to

muddle the surface
further—so instead, you just 

stand there, still puzzled 

and peering, now

speaking out-
loud to yourself for

the first time
in a long while,

and asking—whether
what lies inside

the gilded frame
more closely resembles—

a chalice?
Or a pair

of—kissing
faces.

SNATCH AND CLEAN

Inhaling compassion—exhaling
pride (for keeping
both inside would surely kill me)

slowly I start to move about my daily exercise.
I walk,
I jot, I push and talk, repeating.

I see the movement, become the movement,
swallow a little water
I carry, repeating. And I notice it tastes good

to me. It tastes so good
and so right
that soon I begin to notice a new endurance, as

steadily I continue now—to move about my daily exercise;
the force and object
of which, presently, feels far less heavy

than it does substantial: to lift
and pull—
the words off of their objects.

HUMAN INTEREST STORY

The puffed reporter's
sheep eyes say more—than a bleating
ten billion newspapers.

DEATHBED EDITION

Devouring Homer,

Whitman,

Christ!—was never enough, 

either to crush their hunger to be clever

or to quench the thirsty 

doubt of their questioning.

And so—as of now

and hereafter, your self 

and your soul would like to announce:

they are giving up,

and have decided to just lay down

and start making love to each other;

taking turns, one

nourishing the other, strictly 

on rhythm—

and achieving, at last, via this

tacit and fictive music—

complete satisfaction.

That is—

that perfect faith

which is utterly inexpressible,

but which is sort of like 

how—the edge of the water

is more than 

the end of the land; it is also

the end of a man, and spells

the end of all his words.

And it seems perverse 

at first, but such

are the little deaths 

we never even realize

we needed.

Until after 

we've already found ourselves there—dumb

and so ready

to fuck.

DUMB SHOW

In the cold streets, 

I watch them pass me neat 

and swiftly,

carried on two stiff bits of sticks

toward various green leathery 

destinations—rumpled behind desks, 

or else shining, golden and 

auspicious somewhere, over

substantially heavy polished counters—

the old man faces. These
supposed geniuses of our race,
whose noses flair, gravely

exhaling smoke and fire and iron 

across the quaffed silver arches 

of their vast incombustible mustaches.

And yet, I cannot resist 

giggling a little 

to imagine—their children,

or, more likely, their 

children's children! Somewhere 

warm and safer—perhaps

back at home, if they're 

lucky—but with infinitely more convincingly

austere looks upon their faces

than these scowls now parading

past me can muster. 

For here, I suddenly feel cocky

and confident,

that no mask 

can affect the true look of solemnity, 

which isn't still malleable 

enough to render 

into realistic expression

just how severely 

frivolous—is 

the whole masquerade.

STROKE

Every living thing
becomes more

and more beautiful,
but only

once dead—admits its
perfection.

DUNGEON MAP

I must keep perilously barreling
past and through,

or else run
the risk of eternal paralysis—if caught too

careful, too regretfully—inside of some cautiously over-
lit room or other, replete

with pulpwood faces collapsed hard over paper coffee
cups, stirred a little

too surreptitiously, with balsa splints
in lieu of spoons

because there simply isn't any sugar
to measure.

I'm sure
I was born better

than this, I'll curse. I am not so ambivalent
as these others.

I am not so
one-dimensional. This may be hell, but I am not

averse to what's
in the next room. I am not afraid. I'm just exhausted

and too selfish to leave here, bereft
of all feeling, save for

this deep and luxurious intellectual concern—
that there

actually isn't any next room
beyond the one in which I'm stalled. That there's

really no way out of here
at all. And that hulking impersonal

black and clear
door over there, the one with the largish

handle, on which is printed
PULL

TO GO BACKWARDS FROM HERE
TO WHERE YOU WERE

is only
painted-on.

POSSESSIVE CASE

Without dismissing the import
of this old and fortuitous
trove of strange riches—
the discovery of which, I admit,
owes mostly to a lot of
blind luck and bit of impertinence

toward the vast and immovable ocean
called Filial Piety that nurtured it
(but which also so-willfully purposed to obscure
and shroud and suppress its utility)—

I hereby swear
that I'll always endeavor
to spend its salvaged composite currency
(three small coins, each of which
feels so familiar to use, and yet
foreign to measure)

as quick-
and as loose- and as usefully as I'm able—
letting fall, with the happy grace
of a very recently-poor man, fat streams of all three

glinting
spangled
sungolden pronouns, called—
us.
and—we.
And, most expensively—ours.

STEPS 4 AND 5, STUCK ON REPEAT

Not without passion,
not without disgust,
not without
ennui, fear, longing,
desire and frustration,
apathy and zest—
not without some
levity, plenty of ceremony,
a little lust—
not exactly ironically,
but not fully conscious-
ly seriously either—I confess,

I tend
to love
to make
the most incredible small secret tricky intricate unfinished symphonies

out of spitting
the most delicious
bites back
onto the speechless
ceramic faces of their erstwhile
wan robin's egg blue dinner plates—but it's only because

I just,
so very
very much,
want everything
that I touch—to be
perfect, just the way it is
now—except, later. Not until
later. Not until much later. Not until
much much much much much much later—

IN BELATED COMMEMORATION OF "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" PASSING INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

Tending as always

toward tomorrow

and tomorrow—toward gravity 

and its hugest superlatives 

but also the infinitesimal point of a place, marked with a bold 

x, where the world ends, or so

we've been told;

we sometimes find instead where we tread—a slight 

translucent muse

whose

simple song

at first

is not but disappointing levity—a nursery rhyme! we cry,

a sort of cheap birthday 

party tune—

meant to accompany that space of time, we think 

in our ponderous graceless mood,

between the bored now and

the dark time when all shall become as smoke 

under our very noses, after 

our fervid but still

uncompleted visions have been subsumed

and what's left of them now enveloped 

in gummy sugar and sticky laughter.

Nonetheless,

the music plays on, and gradually 

we realize—

we know the words already, having

learned them all

by heart when we were small.

And what then—

of gravity 

after all? 

Surely a few distractions—a white confection and a few

friends and close relations

are not the heaviest burdens to assume. And as

the lingering smoke in our nostrils 

continues to curl, it compels us 

to recall

and to compare—another simple song,

we dimly seem to have heard

or read about somewhere—

something—regarding ashes and dust 

and so-on, until suddenly

that is to say,

eventually—we hear each song conclude, only 

to rewind and start over,

as tomorrow becomes 

today, re-steeped once again 

in the burnt and dead

leaves which we just 

very nearly discarded,

and we remember that here

on a perfect sphere,

every point 

is both—the end of all things 

and absolutely nowhere. 

And it is then at last

that we find ourselves

free to give up 

and simply let loose our own music

without that unwieldy burden—of ownership,

and the song we make then

is a slender

little cellophane thing, but it nonetheless runs

wild in our minds, chiming

out more and more strongly 

with each new
repetition of its chorus—

Be not a prophet.
And leave off desire
And dignity and class.
What does your day

to day life require?
Tell us—only of that.

OWLS, NOT WHAT THEY SEEM, ETC.

How hollow!
did my aching slits of cold bones feel? When,
walking bleary-eyed
and fastidiously past

what I'd hoped
were my own dim aspirations, and looking,
as I often might,
for something outside my own stifling life

about which I ought
to sit later
and write—
but which, moving on these diffident rodent feet,

must nonetheless
have necessarily gnawed its way out
from inside me;
and how powerless! When—there chanced to appear

a wild blind man, feather-faced,
angry, leathery and fast,
swerving past me on
the crumbling curbstone—grumbling,

though not really at me,
something quite vivid—regarding
the very world's coming, presently,
tumbling apart.

And what then? What now here?
can I possibly write
to rise and take flight
beyond that?

What soars above him? Or,
never mind that—what lies beneath?
The truth, then. Yes, at least
that. The truth, at last—struggle

and scrimp and
evince what I might,

it will never be—possible
for me

to make
that man happy.

TOLL

All the teeming living breathing peoples of this earth!

are somehow—not enough 

to fill

a measly 

two,

or maybe 

three quarters—and that's only 

of the very 

last few 

on a 

quite understandably

highly extensive list—of its

most indispensable 

six,

or maybe 

seven dozen newspapers.

AND I LEFT TRADER JOE'S WITH NO GROCERIES

Desperately seeking an immediate antidote
to relieve this sudden noxious fever,

a serious bout of sickening confusion
spiked with a sweaty vertigo at the oncoming awareness

of so many enigmatic and far-flung cultures,
raw lands of sticky green junglesnarled hills

and steamtopped mountain summits
colliding here in this climate-controlled moment

with a dark and indolent December-in-Chicago,
from these bunches of gaseous yellowing

bananas hanging next to slick plastic cans
of greasy coffee beans from Peru, to those

deep pink hibiscus flower two-dimensional caricatures
fetishized perfectly into corporate logos—

I fervidly began chanting,
quietly but discernibly out-loud to myself,

some of the coldest
words that I know

in order to hopefully
quell the delirium.

And those words
were these,

and in this particular order—
grave.

lone.
winter.

stone.
and last,

but not least of all—
silence.

ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION AFTER FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

Walking out under the beclouded heaventree
of electrified city lights near Christmas,

I looked and found I could, just barely,
still make out the belt of Orion.

At once, I felt like some premier modern astronomer—
solitary, vigilant; attentive, self-contained.

Which is to say, actually much more like an ancient
maritime explorer—marooned; without the support of a crew.

Which is to say, still another way—utterly
impotent. And doomed.

YOUR MOUTH WAS A STOP SIGN

That's when I 

knew

how inextricable 

feeling

isn't

written 

down—but made.

UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOL BY THE SEA

Quiet, stillness. Oh, Christ—now what

is this? A slight ticking sound,

subtle but distinctly springing

up from within this penitent little

Sunday School student—my soul! Could it

be the strangely unmusical toll

of plain truth knocking? Now—

in that eternal second between the last and

each next second, when the very unrelaxed hands

of a piebald old wall clock

seem to have become nothing less

once again than twin-imperatives,

each stiffly pointing

two very different ways to go, one long

and one short, although with strangely the same

plainness of urgency and arrowheaded emphasis—

it is obvious, for once. I have no choice

but to very soon grow

somehow—more timeless. Less bound to this

place. And as confident

as the motley ribald ocean

presently filling up each classroom window

in his own—unrepentant

wishy-washiness.

DUCK DODGERS IN THE 21½th CENTURY

These days—

no poet writes anything

about
pretty silver shafts

of moonlight, or whatever. 

Not

because they no longer
think

to look up, 

but because—no one

in their
right mind! goes

outside at
night.

ANALYSIS OF "THE MOUTH OF HOME"

After a while wandering miles—the Speaker of this poem

can't help but notice 

that his favorite place to enter

always has a red door,

which always opens inward.

So much better!—he thinks,

than having to rear-back

and tear a new hole 

by ripping some cold stainless lever, 

and then regain his balance 

before stammering into the place like a whirlwind, 

with no time to spare, even for repairing 

the silly abrupt 

slice of his damage behind him.

By contrast, 

at this place—the whole thing always seems to begin 

by bowing.

Then, just enough, he clenches, 

then eases, then 

gives the barest little push,

and then—rejoices;

basking in the feeling 

of having been automatically ushered inside

by that last puff of his breath, into this precious

soft womb of familiar space—where he invariably feels 

his dark tired feet

have been waiting, 

upturned, since long 

before having—actually arrived there.

UNREASONABLE

On a protean ocean
somewhere—
a fugitive

plastic green bottle-
cap—stoically
rigid

green
and determined—
keeps floating to shelter

perhaps—the smallest
hapless last
whiff

of invisible
wind on the
planet—from destiny.

NEWS

Carousing cold sidewalks,
three pigeons—

mottled, sticky with light
and filth of greenish shadow—bob and shudder
to be perceived,
projected, reinvented! But

resist. For images
are hardly so pure
to speak of as their number. And truth—it is dull

and low
and uninteresting cold—which you know
will come to ruin
these old sidewalks

long-
before they've had a chance to.

BUSKER

I promise to make you fresh

music each day, with all

that I've got. Which is only two things—

syllables stressed

and less-

stressed. Small words 

and those chittering 

patterns of them

which I learned—before I knew 

how to dress 

or tie 

my own shoes—by

parroting the tall glittering

fuss of grownups. 

But—in exchange, you must 

always agree 

to let—my instrument 

be simply 

the daily

currency of your breath—its pitches, 

your little inclinations; 

its timbre, 

only—

the voice in your head.

PAVLOV'S DOGS

It's beginning to look a lot like

Christmas—the way bleary thousands 

upon thousands of pairs of perfect 

strangers avoid eye contact instinctively,

glancing instead down, and then

off to one side, relieved to alight their eyes

on the adjacent, newly repeating 

citywide signs for consolation,

recreating each snowy sound and story

in the salivating mouths 

of their minds—of new lives deserved 

or of old adversaries reckoning;

memorable cashes of phrases recurring,

seemingly swirled randomly, but in truth, manufactured 

to refresh mankind's blurry but ample

and resilient muscle memory 

for preferring to remain so 

spectacularly alone (united just softly enough

by fear—of death 

and by awe of what's left)

and for soldiering on, simultaneously—

consumed by these empty tidbits 

now piling up across the white

sidewalks and street corners 

and desperate to consume 

and regurgitate 

and then re-consume them

all over again—at the drop of the next silver bell.

TO TELL THE TRUTH

Do not say grace to him 

for things.
Pray instead, poet, to things 

for his grace. 

And do not seek to write of 

real freedom;

you risk describing—complete

alienation.

Above all, remember never 

to walk 

the perimeter of your life—to fathom

its shape;

but rather, to constantly trace

an apprehension:
the shape of this life is—not the only 

one.