NEW YEARS PARTY

Like everyone else here, 

I have practiced 

speaking gracefully  

about the myriad ways 

all life on earth

will cease.

The lakes of hard clay

and black holes 

born at CERN 

trip off my tongue 

at the New Years party—

as if

preempting 

my own absence 

will save me 

some face.

AXIOM

They say—Light 

is uncatchable

weightless

ageless

incorruptible. 

But without an observer—

a serpent 

to proffer 

the choice—all this 

becomes nonsense.

If I never needed 

to say anything again

would I?

How would I 

decide?

How would I 

make clear that I haven't 

decided?

What could it mean 

for an axiom 

to vacillate

between 

higher—or even alternate 

dimensions?

 

LACUNA

When I think 

back on all 

the objects 

I have worshiped—

many spheroid, 

others cylindrical,

all of them 

hollow now, black 

and white in 

the photo-

book of memory—

I experience not 

the loss 

of quintessence, 

but the paradox

of hope;

it might yet 

be possible—

for a substance, 

for a presence 

to represent 

its own total 

lack.

NEVERTHELESS

Even while we cry 

for help—

pinned and seeing 

neon in a car crash,

dangling and superfluous 

in a pitch black elevator shaft, 

from every strained cell

of our body mass, 

in our weaknesses, 

in our sleep—

we nevertheless remain 

those rightwise 

and bright-eyed optimists 

of myth. 

To have a taste 

for anything at all—

any form of subsistence 

we may yet deign to eat—

is an article of faith. 

Every day,

to wake, 

and to rise—surely

these are two kinds

of belief.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Even the astronaut—

decorated veteran,

so fond 

of silence, 

so near

to heaven—like everyone 

else here, just 

wants to go home.

SMALL TALK

What if there 

were an ominous 

pleasure 

simply in calling 

a thing 

by it's name?— 

This 

is called a "ghost note."

that 

requires exquisite 

"control." 

Each recalled term, 

the guest of honor

at a banquet, 

long toasts recounting 

all the places 

it's been.

Overstimulation

would come merely

from teeth 

touching tongue; 

a fatally 

decadent self-

indulgent feeling

as air

abandons lung.

SURROGATE

From here on in, 

to help avoid any 

unnecessary confusion, 

every day will cancel

the previous 

one out. 

Like voices 

cooing "nothing 

compares to you" 

just as the marvelous 

synthesizers 

kick in, 

this place you're in

and that place 

where you came from, 

will both signify—

significance.

True, with no endings 

and no new beginnings, 

you'll never uncover 

the source 

of your sadness.

On the plus side,

if you ever thought

you'd rid yourself 

of that nuisance 

"once and for all"—

now you're only

half-wrong.

THE PRODIGAL

Me and my satisfaction—

how appallingly like 

the prodigal.

The moment I catch it

staggering back, 

I'm out there—

slitting fat throats 

of nicknamed calves,

chainsawing

timeshares

and 401(k)s 

in half, bleating 

appeasements, 

tickling its feet, 

and babbling 

of rash feasts (gold leaf 

on the appetizers, 

knock-me-down cigars,

60-year apertifs)

in its

pussyfoot honor.

UNEQUIVOCAL

Across the graying snow, 

my hound dog 

bounding lightly, nuzzling patches 

with her nose 

and going crazy with delight 

to feel the cold wads of it

clinging to her muzzle. 

Despite my reluctance,

she had wanted to come out. 

Naive to grumbled curses,

she resolved to bow 

and splay and curl her body 

in curious service

to this hostile environment

while I stood back on cold heels,

frozen toes, watching

with slow growing interest

blooming to amusement,

and genuflecting 

imperceptibly now

to her and to all that is 

still unavoidably 

wonderful in this world.

PHYSICS LESSON

Given enough time, you say 

whatever flies forth 

from an once-opened hand 

is statistically bound 

to come back.

With one 

palm pressed firmly 

into the other—

so much the better

to conceal 

the dull ache there—

and the light of oblivions

at play 

on my face,

I nod my understanding

and falsify 

the case;

I must be decades away 

from believing that.

ARTIFICE

There's a graceful 

way, this time of year, 

that the bare branches bend 

with each sharp 

sprig of wind—

or are coaxed 

even more so

by snow's mellow angles

and the permanence 

of evening—

to bow gently 

downward,

which may make

you feel like 

letting things be,

and just as I begin

(a little too coincidentally) 

to reexamine 

my usual ploy

to gain pity.

RESOLUTION SHORT LIST

To eat less. 

To move more. 

To make your peace 

with decaf. 

To stop snoring. 

To half-ass-

learn French 

to pad out a profile 

on a dating app. 

To avoid going senile 

by making daily anagrams 

out of random 

AdWords letters.

To smile at more faces

and read fewer poems— 

in order to remember 

both of them better.

To get sacrificed 

in the name of 

one thing

in lieu of getting laughed at 

by all of the others.

To feel safe in the arms 

of a spiraling galaxy 

with a black vacuum lodged 

where its heart should be.

Or at least 

to keep your skin farther 

apart from your bones

than a soul is close 

to its body.

RHYME OR REASON

You've learned—if not reason, 

at the very least, rhyme 

is required. But it's no use; you 

can't make either work. 

Your lines are not catchy,

nor are they terribly 

instructive. But it feels 

when you speak the words—

a jumble of phrases 

about the glow behind trees...

and the mentality of morning...

and wishing you were younger—

all of which seem to glide 

like an iridescent fish 

in the deep and soundless 

trenches of your mind—

that a third thing is happening. 

A third kind of mattering. 

That perhaps feeling, at its purest, 

neither entertains nor teaches.

CUSTOM ORDER

Like the words to a song—

today, I woke 

and took the dog out 

to the dew-silver park

and worked—but not long—

at the one thing I love

until noon, when I stopped 

to cook, then slept hard 

and dreamed 

again, of a conversation 

we were having. 

Only this time, It was me 

saying how the stars 

didn't look so impossibly far,

but really, it was alright here;

there was nothing I needed.

THE SCARCITY OF WANTS AND THE MULTIPLICITY OF MEANS

Even if this 

might get a 

little bit awkward, 

it'd be best 

if we practiced 

saying goodbye.

This is not an argument 

against the primacy 

of heaven. 

Only—it seems, 

after hours spent glimpsing

the moon out the window 

during decades

of cold nights 

inside warm secure houses, 

we must admit 

to having tasted 

so many paradises;

each one, 

its own delicacy—

a leftover 

hors d'oeuvre—

from its own

private party.

POTENTIAL ENERGY

For a minute, when we 

first wake 

and all is first light

and mists

and innocent,

We feel so, so 

very lucky.

For what 

is each 

untrodden morning

but a new 

and earnest 

conversation?

And we think—if I just play it 

smooth enough, 

I could totally

worm my way into this.

DOTAGE

The fiercely accommodating 

taste of old age—to reject 

as inadmissible 

the rudeness 

and the sour gall 

which wreathe and tinge 

the recollected 

vigor of its youth.

FOR BEGINNERS

Perhaps it's too late now 
to turn around in failure;

perhaps no providence 

but the one we make in words.

So we run on 

like proverbs,

like a newspaper horoscope, 

like Ecclesiastes did— 

each last breath, 

which once was all life, 

presently a memory—

eventually abandoned.

What do you think of 

when someone says repetition? 

Exercise regimens. 

(You can't sprint a marathon.)

Amateur hour. 

No big loss. 

A knock at the door.

A lack.

MUST BE DECEMBER

Between row homes' 

little cold 

sigh of a railing

decked with green wire

and that curious 

"city version" of dirt

which collects near the road verge

made of bare concrete, 

three robins—

former rakes, to be sure, 

now all uptight

and pointed and sticky—

darting absurdly 

back and forth

and squawking nonstop

about Easter.

CONTROVERSIAL THOUGHTS

Without trying, you'll look out 

and see the sun shining 

down on your city, 

knowing—but unable 

to bring yourself to believe 

that it truly has no 

alternative.

You won't even have to search 

in order to find 

that which seems 

to want to define itself 

as beauty—

the amber light 

on antique heaps of brick, 

the streaks of dried dog piss 

that mottle the street, 

each nearby 

grass blade in high relief.

An unwilling witness—

amid depression, 

amid poverty, 

despite sickness, 

despite depravity.

Perhaps, then you'll say

there's something 

to not fighting 

for our consonance 

when every scrap of this 

wretchedness 

is compulsory 

and every stitch of love,

unearned. 

CASTLE IN THE AIR

You swear 

what keeps you going is 

the prospect 

of tomorrow:

a contemplation 

of the rosy 

taste of clover honey, 

the mouthfeel 

of good milk. 

But what is hope, really, 

but a certain kind 

of fear 

that's been perverted 

and turned 

on its ear? 

When you leave here, 

how will you know you were 

free in this moment—

this moment of sorrow  

which must precede creation—

regardless 

of that thing 

which was destined 

to happen?