CURRENT CITY, RELATIONSHIP, HOMETOWN

There used to be such things
as hometowns.

Now, you're not
so sure there are anymore.

A whole decade,
one big blank.

Important things
wait in desk drawers,

while you dust off meaningless junk
And repeat:

A whole decade,
one big blank.

Close your eyes
and take a hard swallow,

reminds you of the sound,
of great lake waves lapping—

cold and lonely,
but, like in a dream,

strange-
ly fake and two-dimensional.

Then, there are those other moments
lately, it's

so quiet,
you nearly lose your balance.

A whole decade,
one big blank.

But a blank
so palpable

and opaque—that it can't be
the silence of people not speaking;

it must be the one
that comes from too few of them

occupying
too huge a space.

ABANDON

Gleaming white
jet planes
maneuvering around

towering jigsaw
of sky-
scrapers downtown;

snow
landing faintly
on rows of slate stones

in a church yard
in December, in the
slight evening sun—

the music ends,
but someone
still remembers

how the words went:
nothing—ever has to
be a certain way.

TINKER TAILOR

Count it all you want to;
it'll never

add up to anything—
time

isn't here
to satisfy;

time
is not flattering.

If anything,
time is this

super-sheer
spool of organza—

which
we cut up

and make into
tasteless, in-

decorous
clothes and handbags—

then walk
(and watch others

walk) around in,
pretending we all look fine—

pretending
to conceal stuff,

pretending—
they fit.

JILLIONS

Where I've been and
where I'm going—
wish I could send myself
letters from either.

I'd write—
how the world gets so packed
full of revelations,
they're easy to ignore.

And the only way
to grasp the situation
is to go to sleep
and dream up a different one.

And even the crystalline sky
is not a such a fixed idea,
yet no one ever thinks
to doubt it.

So many floozy moments half-
congeal; like
ice cubes melting, turning cloudy,
swizzling around in some tiffany glass,

And it's through repeated daily use
that transparent symbols like that
become stained—with truth, or
with expectation.

DESCRIPTION OF A PARADE

Try not to envision
the scene; try to

imagine the feeling.
It's vague,

but that
very vagueness

is what provides it
with solidity—

A small white
sun rises,

then it
falls quickly; birds fly

past, and are quickly swallowed
up by endless sky.

Below, people come
and people go.

Everything gets dirty—
some things

become filled;
others, used up. Still

others—are emptied.
While you stand off to the side,

reality processes,
is deliberately celebrated.

Before your eyes (slowly)
these lumbering filaments of history,

stripped of their
own rough mythologies,

are displayed,

are saluted—
are thus purified,

sorted, and
laundered

as they drive by—
into nature.

EXCHANGE

It used to be—
only the future
sounded like "perhaps."

...

Now, so does the past.

...

If I could just sleep,
time's trickle might
come and wash that stain away,
like meltwater filtering
through cold rocks and seeping
into dark
caves carved with underground streams.

...

Not that anything that's true, 
about you
even if undiscovered, could ever
go missing. 

...

But even as we speak, surely
silver rivulets
are joining veiny rivers,
and all are plunging toward the boundless ocean.

...

Not so fast. No ocean
is really so vast. 

...

True, but at least I bet there's
real peace
and quiet at the bottom.

MACHO HAIKU

The cold stoic wind

moaning—tells only part of

how it really feels.

DISSOLUTION

Look—how the pathos
of the living world gets
anesthetized by stony winter.

Your sorrow
cut deep, felt intense—but
in the end, like a

sweet scent carried on the tender air,

it vanishes.
It consisted of no particles
you could point to. It was, quite possibly

never even really there.

KILLING ONE BIRD WITH NO STONES

Intercourse—a word like this
fits nicer,

permits a more comfortable, every-day
sort of constriction.

The veneration
of all of those books on the shelves,

the projection of another you
who reads them;

then,
the playing chess against yourself,

and the folding more clothes
than the both of you own—

gradually,
something is being torn down;

a license is revoked,
a structure

is demolished.
And yet, slowly

One heals—re-learns
after the explosion,

somehow, to once again
throw—only, this time

a little less
than one's hand is holding.

SPLITTING HAIRS

Piercingly obsidian
and fatal,

but dull
and unimpressive—

this mind is surely not a diamond;

it isn't even
some
jagged bolt of coal.

It seems to do
more work
as a livid old nail,

hammering
away at the sobering
thought that—

nobody's perfect;
but some are
pretty

damn exact.

EKPHRASIS HITS A WALL

A precious
but a
treacherous lie—

the sky-
blue ocean,

honeycombed salt-white,

the interposing
reef of
coral sky—

O'Keeffe horizons
like those

don't actually stop.

SKEPTIC

A fragile winter sky—
the kind which is
everywhere

and nowhere
at once—spare,
polar blue,

and fissured
through
by high contrails—

might well
crack and
unburden itself

any minute—
depending on
whether certain words

whispered down here—
are scalpels 
or stitches.

VAMPIRE COUGH

The results
are in. But
the conclusion is

awkward.
Three hundred
million people

can't be wrong—
guess we're all going
to live forever.

The catch is,
forever—doesn't mean
what it used to

anymore.
The only appreciable
definition

of eternity
left in an overstuffed
vestibule

like this is—just one
second longer
than the poor

sucker
we got stuck
standing next to.

COME ON-A MY HOUSE (AFTER ROSEMARY CLOONEY)

Ten forty five, ten
forty seven, ten fifty—
the blond singer

sleeps fitfully.
Part-victim
part-perpetrator—

she feels
run-over
but guilty.

People say:
she doesn't actually
have a job, which must be

why she's pretty
sure she's
never been on vacation, either.

Waking up wishing
you were as dull
and dry as everyone else

must be the worst
feeling.
When you're this

talented and pretty,
the world is so
slick, round, and shiny

that you can't
get a grip.
nothing is discrete, no knob

ever clicks.
This must why,
it's a relief when

once in a while,
ordinary questions
yield ordinary answers.

What time is it right now?
Ten fifty five.
I mean—

Ten after eleven.
Close enough
for jazz.

MISTER NARRATOR

Sometimes, there's no structure,
no storyboard,
no reason.

All we're left with
are characters.
One resembles Bob Dylan—

Pumiced by bitter dusty
wind,
eviscerated

by gravity,
and left for dead somewhere
outside Graceland.

He'd give everything
to have made it there.

He'd give everything
for a mouthful or two
of clear, lubricating water

so he could
speak again
and tell you his story.

But again—it doesn't
make sense; the explanation
isn't satisfying.

It isn't even
that
the vandals took the handle;

the pump
just doesn't work any-
more;

it's old. And it's
broken.

HAUNTED

These nights, I'm not afraid 

of feeling alone

so much as of—alienation 

feeling 

utterly intimate,

thick

and familiar.

Often, I 

feel in by bones—

this is not the same wind,

but it is

the same kind;

like a notorious melody 

played on two very 

different evolutions

of one instrument.

LUDDITE LOOP

Too bad—how
God keeps getting trapped
inside his own creation;

his lofty moods,
his purest, most
ethereal ideas—pulled back

slowly but surely
to the dirt,

weighed down
by his own invented
animal drag.

Slowly but surely, that
which is clever
seeks divorce

from what's kind.
Worship becomes desire

for distraction.
So now, he stabs—
with intent

to wound and
scar the planet, then

harness its cries
to power the latest
electronic devices.