EARBUDS GUY

Possessed by secret tempos
and surging

like a great hot
chorus through the city,

furtive, urgent-as-lava
though and past

the gaps between
a huddled few,

around
ambling dozens,

beyond mute
fantastic hundreds—yet

desperately dependent
on every last scrap

of their late-
afternoon shadows, positively

lusting
after their unwitting,

their trivial and
haphazard company—like so much

gratuitous roadside litter
with which

to insulate
your warm and private fort.

LAST SUPPER FOR ONE

Hungrily—
which are the words?
that will possess

an experience
like this, without
also

consuming it entirely?
Eye-teeth
are glistening,

dripping-
wet,
wondering—

is
this meal I see
for real? No, quivering, it

must be
a trick—
since,

from the
silent holy looks
on all the pale faces

of the animals
in this
tattered picture book,

there's no real meaning
to the food
I've been eating. But

there's still
shame,
and there's sorrow

and there's
guilt,
and there's plenty—

in the simple act
of eating
any

in company.

A SHORT POEM

Imagine—

the last time

you held the warm weight 

of a nickel 

in your hand—and really thought
anything of it.

Picture—being presented

with a polished, single 

Granny Smith apple 

as your Christmas present 

by somebody 

who really meant it.

A short poem

is a little like that. 

It's like an angel—not a 

real angel (the kind that 

real people
would believe in) but one of those 

cute concrete statues of one: 

not great—but at least it won't 

stir any more hate.

Not super
well-defined, either—except that it 

definitely couldn't hurt.

COUCH SHARK

Lying alertly silent, half-awake
here, I smell—

myself
on the approaching

car in the street's cloth interior, subtly
under notes

of normal menstrual function,
clementine oranges,

lavender swirled
with tea tree oil, all mingling

with oniony
schoolbook pages.

I can tell—my time has come
for the stage,

the clocks have reset,
the season is about to change.

I hear—the very sound
of this empty thing inhaling,

subduing and
bating its breath as I stand

and stretch
and can now feel

its insides rumbling,
quivering in time

with those footfalls
which presently

plod upon the steps outside,
like it's

not me,
but the whole place—that's

bracing itself—for her
return.

FORMULA 1

There's a reason

you're encouraged

to play house,

buy fictional

groceries, do

fake chores,

say bogus grace

in your three-

quarter-size kitchen—

God forbid

you should

ever find out

where it is

you really live:

in your mind,

which is not some

cramped little piss-and-shit

cockroach condo,

or a spooky

old neighborhood

mansion that’s caving-in

or even

a tax-funded Walt Disney

castle made of stars.

The real place

is actually

the little red race car

that's always

double parked,

outside of those buildings

with its doors locked,

and its engine running,

and its key stuck—in the ignition.

PROSCENIUM

I'm so sick of the look of this place
this morning. Kate, it's
not you; it's my guts,
it's these words—

though quick-
ly delivered, hot, and livid,
they're thick, swollen, full of themselves—
and yet somehow

this little kitchen talk is perpetually
waning, wearing a bit thin, cracking
in inscrutable-but-
inspiring spiderweb patterns,

like a cool, pretty, mocha-brown
hard-boiled eggshell must
whenever it comes up against
the sheer, glum cruelty of the butcher's block.

Resiliant, you conceed
we should probably
stop speaking entirely. Only then can I read
the silent biographies—libraries

and libraries-
full of them,
in each tiny muscle still tensing
and relaxing in your charitable,

democratic face—and I understand
we're on the same page; we've
agreed, we've achieved some universal
harmony: we're both hungry.

ITCHY TRIGGER

I swear on paper, I'm disillusioned—
can of beans, box of pens,
home watching TV, in tight jeans,

desperate to get
a point across, a lancet
of art, a provocation—though

just a small one—like, I'll cut
your hair, or purposely
part it wrong, or something.

But everything I dish out sounds
so much like the set-up
for a joke, that it's hard

to get an argument
started. I swear I'm starting to
feel dangerous-

ly untouchable this way.
No one ever wants to fight
back against a smart aleck.

WORKING CLASS HERO IS THE WALRUS

First things first—
the part about seeing

a dubious blind beggar in the
crosswalk at the red light,

cardboard sign strapped to him,
babbling and tapping

his cane in defiant cross-
rhythm to the orange flaring

warning of the stale Don't
Walk signal.

Then—the internal part
where you start

to think—how
the kindness

you could afford
to give him (for better

or worse) really
ends nowhere;

but it starts
with no more than

offering a wider berth
than is strictly necessary.

Lastly, the punchline,
the thing

on the sign
that made you feel justified—

All you need 
is love? Wrong. Sorry.

Love is extra. Love's
just icing.

If everything's
contextual, then really

all you need's a
little—understanding.

BUILDING, BED, SPACESHIP

Of course you don't
belong out here—

quips the whipping wind,
but you don't

feel at home inside
big strange buildings either, Einstein.

What do you do? When you're
stuck in the middle,

when you've already come
so far—already

left your warm
bed, the artificial light—that you might

as well keep going now. Except,
it isn't that fantastic out here.

It's not rocket science—
or science fiction, either:

the difference between
the lunatic genius on the street

and that idiosyncratic one sitting
in the academy.

It's not particularly interesting,
it's not any one product, but the

steady accumulation of them
in what they call a process. It's

Knowledge—as one
exhilarating glimpse

vs.—as a long boring
stream of them.

But, where does that
leave the predisposed

man in the middle?
Besides—trying

always to make
himself the center,

with everything else gyrating
wildly around him.

Besides—lying
whenever he claims

to have gone to extremes.
Besides—unfaithful in all

of his definitions, other than
the one for—indistinct.

WISHBONE

Archangel, Archangel,
whose gig is

to watch—

quit your day-
dreaming

of eternity
and trembling,

of
not dying, but worse—aging

in reverse: first
moving back

into your parents' house. Then wingless,
forgetting

everything. Finally rawboned,
naked,

viscerally alone.

Archangel, Archangel,
quit your day-

dreaming;
somebody coming. Somebody

listening. Somebody

might be—
already in here.

NOTES ON MY PHONE AT THE UNDERTAKER'S FUNERAL

Why is it—I'm
never able to do

anything
for the last time?

Buying
groceries, empty-

ing
the garbage,

and
forgiving you

all come to
mind.

*

I know—
there's a catch,

there are rules
in this

sandbox of a universe,
where

Entropy's parents (who
payed for

the place)
left him there

to play—to sift and prod
and fling

the grit
beneath our feet around

with all the
ghoulish tense exuberance

of a kid with
anorexia.

*

But goddamn—just
once,

when you
brush

a
tooth or a

toilet or
something, don't you

wish too?
that

it would—
stay brushed?

PEDAGOGY

Between the flat
and cramped Chicago
land

and its nameless,
unclaimable skies

(whose cerulean blue is
likely thick enough)

swim
pigeons—

battalions
of them,

gyrating
meticulous,
purposeless loops

in a manner
far too
light

to consider
dirty—

slow,
then gently faster

joined,
then bursting wider

wilder,
farther—
allegiant to nothing

apart from,
perhaps,
the surging

invisible
currents of air

which instruct them
equally

through support—
and inhibition.

TEMPORARY RESIDENCE

It is then, in the
midst of his
most meager intention—
to include

just a few
simple lines describing
the garment of
Christ in a sermon—

when, gradually
he finds
that he can no longer
find them,

finds that
the more eagerly
and the more
often he repeats them,

the more they start to blossom,
dancing and unfurling,
molting and reforming, spiraling
far out to the edge of his mind.

Each word is a universe,
bursting with solar systems
which crash and heedlessly
annihilate each other,

is a swirling weather pattern
roving the face of earth
and counterbalanced somewhere
by a long lost sister.

Each word is an atom,
fuzzy, charged, hard to locate,
and with so many orbiting
layers of association

whizzing and casting
such vague and fantastic shadows,
that each time he looks,
none is ever quite the same.

Fleeing outdoors
to a great brown lawn, at last
he finds, scratching and
feeding there, seven large quizzical

white birds—not swans,
he thinks, sighing,
relieved and newly confident
in certitude's return.

RAKE'S PROGRESS

Clutching a tense
quaking
bough in the

grim park—some
how, the lone
North

American crow—
muck-
feathered,

caws long
and precisely his
desiccated doom—

incredulous
at the graciousness
of this early thaw.

YET

Early February morning,
your cold

devitalized
lump of a body—

black
coal-minded

and expressed
physically in

the kitchen—
represents

the whole situation.
Words

need not—and so
they don't

yet
factor into it.

SHEM AND SHAUN

Let me get this straight, 

then—

right after a clean eager man 

in robes comes,

neatly cuts 

and sorts all your guts into 

groups, 

his rumpled shitstained 

brother shows up—

and 

he's the one

who makes you whole, 

individual-

izes your bloody parts again

mints your experience 

into those clangorous 

shiny common

coins 

of 

communication? 

RELATIVES

Some days, I'm determined

to demolish this
blind faith they gave me

and replace it
with something more contemporary,
like compassion—

which means learning 

to see 

every human being

whom I meet—not
as lost, but
sincere-

and
courageous-

ly stop-motion-dying.

Other days, I wish I was still

a little kid

on Christmas—

shucking unquestioningly
the things that
belong to me;

ungrateful, possibly

for some slight

minority,

but too timid—
and sinfully unaware 

of what anything costs.

CONVERSATION ON A TURTLE'S BACK

You assure me,

merely expiating 

one's default settings

alleviates suffering,

and that sheer

disbelief 

is a lot less tenable

than uncertainty.

Then you say, it's simple,

from now on, you'll only be

saying prayers for 

money. And how I ought to

do myself a favor—

just forget about 

whole world and consider 

all its feelings.

For something to endure, 

you hasten 

to add, it needs to move slow 

and be boring.

Finally, you like 

to remind me: in the 

Scheme of Things, 

none of this even matters.

But there—I can already 

hear your mistake: 

Things, okay 

sure. But what—Scheme?

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

Before everything
else this morning—
here I am, slavishly
hardboiling

and rinsing
not quite
a dozen
eggs in my kitchen,

while an
old dachshund-
beagle lies
snoozing,

breathing
in and out
of sync
with the faint lilt

of some
oniony wallpaper
music in the
adjoining room;

each of her persistent,
shallow, and
frivolous
snores underscoring

the wayward
and whimsical
mellifluousness
of my genius,

massaging it,
fudging the gap
between furious
action

and stock-
stillness—from hands
and slick shells
wringing wet,

to just a few
cold beads of water lingering,
stranded on
course, beige surfaces—

until
eventually,
I come
to realize

none of us
ever really
does anything
ahead of time.

BOTTOM LINE

Second Prize Winner
in a Beauty Contest—ugly
and local
as ever.

It's always
Five O'clock
somewhere—some
miserable lachrymose happy hour.

The name of the game
is Pageantry; ceremonial torches
clutched and waved
and hoisted high—identify Ambassadors.

Form exists
wild in nature; of whatever will burn
in fire, yet persist
in the embers of memory.

Rhythm consists
less of
sheer facts than the
regularity of their delivery.

As for Content,
beware: volition. A rose is a rose.
But a poem
might be—Poetry.

WORKADAY

The higher-ups
have started
extending

pre-fab,
amazed
congratulations—

for managing
to keep your prim
head on straight

and your eyes
on the prize
for this long,

though the truth is—
you haven't
done that.

Truth is, neither
the wide view
nor the close focus

does anything for you;
so to compensate,
you've been

overdosing on
the prosaic
for a while now.

The most exhilarating
way you know how,
is by getting

coffee-high
every day,
and then

walking around town
alone for a
little while to gaze,

not at divine arcing rainbows
or placid treelines
or ennobling architecture, but

at the mercifully coherent,
the completely
sufferable way

in which
the late morning
sunlight plays

off of basically
any edifice
that's rusticated—

not because there's anything
sophisticated
or significant going on there,

but because, oddly,
your central nervous
system feels stimulated enough to appreciate

that there's nothing difficult,
or elaborate,
or even remotely sentimental about it.

SCARED OF SOFT

The nights feel too long, all
hoary and

grave
where you are,

with or without that television-
length attention

span you got
born with.

What dreams do come
always

come
vacuumpacked—

free inside bundles
of market-rate orphanage sleep,

are always
that spooky kind of Disney cartoon grayscale;

where it's—CAUTION:
Don't feed those anthropomorphic

wild yellowtooth dogs
so much of that full moonlight spilling

over this sequentially-repeating-to-
infinity yard.

The authorities
can't blame you

for keeping track
of the silver

and gold in your molars,
but remember

you're not an old man yet,
you're still

just an orphan;
it isn't that hard:

fear the beer-
belly now;

worry about that
sticky-fingered

bonedigger—
later.