SCRIBBLED IN THE CUSTOMER RECEPTION AREA

How long have I been here? 

Have I been here before? Presently,

I find the distinction itself

confusing—the ontological trick 

between coming and going. 

I attempt zen—to sit noiseless and still, 

indistinct as the wallpaper.

But my mind will not relax; 

it waxes, as a moon does, to engulf 

in blue scorn, this slim pretense of a room.

Yet for all of this righteous aggression,

I do not know (and cannot fathom)

why each minute slips past me

as slowly as an open 

parachute descending,

nor would I even begin to suspect

the hostile nature

of the territory below, to which 

each precious one of them is now

prayerlessly falling.

REASONS TO KEEP WRITING

Because words 

are dull, 

heavy, 

old as stones—

but stone 

can be cut 

and formed 

and used 

to make bridges. 

And those bridges 

which connect us, 

our best instructors 

taught us 

to call metaphor.

*

Because there, 

in the shadow, 

in the shade 

of our doubt, 

grows

the carrot

we will follow 

through another day's 

wasteland.

*

Because 

the light which bathes the world 

comes in curves 

tens of millions of years long,

so complex 

and absurd

it'd ruin us

to perceive it. 

Yet—

the derivative of light 

is heat, 

and heat's 

is scent, 

and scent's, capricious

taste in melody; 

for instance,

the accelerating velocity 

of birdsong.

*

Because all the great music 

that exists 

in the world 

to us, still isn't nearly 

as good

(or as much) 

 

as the music 

that, as of yet, 

doesn't.

RIVERWALK

Early in the morning, and

the sun's begun singing,

her rays, tangled up in 

coagulant clouds;

and the breeze by the river 

feels to me more like 

bad breath than mere air

as I walk along the wrinkled planks 

repeating without speaking 

old bits of conversation—

and thinking how words 

are too small, or too dense, 

or too disjointed;

they are like calcified fossils 

of the feelings 

which once walked,

and talked, and pointed.

But still I lope, greedy 

and shameless as a convict,

keeping those words both 

intimately close 

and deviously hidden 

like contraband 

underneath my tongue 

on my way back in 

to some solitary prison. 

ABSOLUTION

Mere words 

on the air—what 

could be frailer? 

But 

just to have 

such thoughts as this 

must be proof 

of your existence.

Maybe, poems

say things, 

and maybe prayers

are things; for here

your sentence 

becomes my jail,
your sin, my penance—

isn't that a coincidence? 

THE AUGUST ENDING

Heavy—presently almost too heavy  

with every enviable 

kite-soaring memory 

and each tiny rain spatter from

tenderest June through this 

blessedly pregnant pause of a moment—

a bloated, swollen, 

torpid finality;

its attendant musk mantle

settles and clings

to the drooping tomatoes—

all roped to their stakes now, like 

crucified deities 

on the brown mounded Golgothas 

of neighbors' back lawns.

MEDITATION AS A STRATEGY

Thinking back on it, 

the being 

in the moment—

the movement 

of the breath 

on the face of the water;

the double-helixed ecstasy 

and terror of no tomorrow, 

the pure synchronic 

collapse of infinity, 

and the man 

with no head left 

smoldering on the alter;

no swirling fragment, 

no rainbow-colored 

shard of that fantastic incident—

in fact, no such trial 

or encounter whatsoever—

ever truly mattered 

nearly as much as 

the story

to told about it later 

ORDINARY INSIGHT

If you could ask 

the great monk 

at the top on the hill

who won't speak, 

who's stick-thin;

the one

with the serious-

ly mutilated skin—

so pure, it 

bleeds steam—

why he thinks it's 

so fundamental

to yolk one's life to rigor 

and masochistic exactness; 

you might be pleasantly 

taken aback 

by the logic, direct-

ness, and banality

of the answer:

the best reason 

to come 

so fully committed 

to the cuffs, 

he insists,

is because it makes it 

so much more fun 

to covet skinny wrists 

and fetishize keys.

AT THE FARMERS MARKET

Smashed 

into those

fuzzy cardboard plats of 

medicine-bottle-green,  

the blueberries—

the very last of the season 

lying on the table,

shrunken and bloodied

like promises I have neither kept 

nor broken yet,

like the people among us out here

who have already come through 

too much 

this summer.

I long to take them home;

get them out of the sun, 

to plunge them deep 

into the back of the freezer

and halt their decomposing.

I would pay anything—

but no,

I should keep walking.

YES, YOU

Just think, 

out of all the billions 

which have ever existed, 

I wrote these words 

only for you.

The consequences of this

are swift

and automatic;

right now, you 

are not you;

You are a vestibule, 

a gateway, an antechamber;

and I 

am in love 

with the whites of your eyes

for receiving, 

and holding, 

and reflecting these letters.

For it's true—

when our souls flutter out 

past their parts, past their matter

love 

is the only reaction 

that is possible.

Maybe transmission 

sparks enough 

for understanding;

maybe 

this world 

isn't so awful.

OPPORTUNIST

We've been taught 

never to make 

a simple thing complicated—

get to the bottom 

of it quickly, always 

praise the core.

But maybe,

time doesn't just accumulate 

like rain;

maybe time burrows 

and surfaces 

like a mute and blind earthworm.

And maybe

the way we love 

is contradictory 

and feeble 

as a skinny brown bird—

razor-eyed 

but patient,

demure 

(from the binoculared 

eyes of the beholder),

but cursed 

with a dinosaur's 

entrails inside—a rash 

compulsive carnivore. 

FOR NAUGHT

Last night, I awoke 

from the dream 

of a poem 

whose music was so 

candid 

and complete

there was no need 

to write it down.

I should have known 

this morning, 

when I bounded with

the all the speed of a mountain

to commit it;

it would simply come out 

as a jangling thanks

and straightforward 

recognition—

that I now always have this

sweet, unblemished 

memory 

to recount.

NOT A LIFE STORY

By the time it's over, I hope

to have made of my life 

a painting, 

wide 

and tall and

hung at eye-level,

so as to be viewed immediately

upon entering through the doorway—

such that 

no one 

may come

to see what I've done, 

since I will be always 

in the midst of doing it 

suddenly, totally, all at once.

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT

Perhaps, this love 

we've so often demanded 

was never minted 

to sustain us.

Perhaps love is no form 

of currency at all;

but rather, a process,

like nuclear fusion—

that life-giving suicide 

which powers the sun—

in which two individuals, 

breathless and speeding, 

collide and expire,

in the name of creating 

not just a rarer element, 

but enough heat and light 

to make the lives 

of billions of others, 

however imperceptibly,

a little more survivable.

RECIPE

One grain, one syllable, 

one breath at a time:

the dead become words—

and words, over 

centuries, change  

to information—

and information 

is the catalyst which

ferments questions 

into theories—

which congeal 

to prescriptions 

before eventually, 

under tremendous pressure, 

dissolving into legends.

Meanwhile,

the temporarily-alive  

are starving 

and cannot survive 

on the juice extracted 

from disaster,

or on the hopeful fumes 

of stories—even those of loaves 

and fishes.

HOW TO RAISE KIDS

First, you admonish them 

for having filthy hands, 

for crawling on their bellies, 

and never wearing shoes.

Then—after they learn to stand up, 

to clean up 

and suit up,

and say they believe you—

then, you sell them sanitizers, 

autonomous cars, 

and mink oil polishes—

all with no doubt 

as to the cleanliness 

of your conscience. 

GIVEN

Let us not, in the red face 

of the heat 

and our struggles, 

say nothing at all 

in the service 

of reverence;

let us instead quest

for the generousness  

to admit—

that beauty 

should exist 

far beyond its utility

in the hideous way 

our pangs are made manifest; 

this 

is what they

would have meant

by grace.

BAPTISMAL

Long ago—

perhaps 

the first time 

we were carried 

kicking inside—we should 

have realized

this cannot be right. 

That the truth 

was a sin,

and the sin 

is was truth.

That our bodies

were all weight 

and fat heat 

and fierce light.

While hell, 

on the contrary, 

felt like cold 

chrism 

and listless rooms.

Like asthmatic organ tunes,

and that cruel 

and repetitious symmetry 

of hymns.

WHAT THE TREE TOLD ME

Roots deep 

in hell,

branch tips 

scraping heaven;

trembling 

with the littlest wind, 

stiff in the pose

of perpetual giving;

impossible

to kill,

but willing enough

to die 

again—

that is what it will take,

as season blunders 

into season,

if you ever expect 

to keep living.

ENDURE

Day after day, 

rainstorm after rainstorm, 

afternoon 

after humid bluegray afternoon—

the avocado in the kitchen

(tough green, in memory, as 

the skin of an alligator) 

has been growing imperceptibly 

softer; 

but the large pit 

ensconced away at its center is 

hard as ever

and poison to eat. 

Take note of this, I think

to my own aggrieved species—

keep your composure;

there is nothing we can do 

in time 

but yield 

to one another,

but never 

will they take 

our dark heart—that small enraged oval 

that none would dare conquer,

that is the part

which is ours.

CONGRATULATIONS

We did not want

to be the raindrops 

falling 

on the plain—

same color

as the background,

so amorphous,

too mundane.

So we made our lives

complex

as the snowflakes—

delicate latticeworks

built around 

dirt specks; 

and now, none 

is like another—

just like 

every other.

STRAY

Little drifter, 

you've been a stray

a long time—

why not keep still, 

trust the gravity

in laughter, 

curl up 

on my scale 

and see what you weigh?

You've made oceans

of byways; why not 

spend the night? 

It is not true 

that you don't know 

what you want;

what you want 

is to know 

what it is you require,

to ripen into love 

with this thought,

or that one—doesn't matter;

what you need

is to grow 

a heart pain can poison

before you can fertilize

that heart's 

desire.