Wednesday, March 31, 2021

FATHOMLESS

One of the most 
repeatable memes 
about wisdom
is that of a box 
with no bottom. 
But this may strike 
the keen mind as 
inexact. If space 
has an edge, surely
there must also be 
a limit to facts? 
And if that's the case, 
how come there's 
so much string left 
between the pearls? 
Why should our 
knowledge come 
dispensed in small snacks—
compact poems, sly 
movements, quick 
couplets set to 
aphoristic music—unless 
(perhaps you can 
already guess) because 
accepting the truth 
in full-context 
would stretch you
until you were ruined.


Tuesday, March 30, 2021

PURPOSE

Here comes another 
string of 
empty office buildings—

windows 
where their walls should be, 
tamed blue skies 

beyond. Monuments 
to imprecision 

and cell phone 
interference.

Maybe that's 
the reason 
she isn't calling. 

*

Maybe, the reason 
people exist at all

is to palm-off that 
purpose

on the next generation. 

*

Personally,
I practice my self-
importance daily, 

at different speeds 
and in different 
weather conditions.

I have friends. 
But they never visit;

they say I 
never listen.

It's convenient—
subtracting nothing 

from nothingness 

leaves us with just 
existence.



Monday, March 29, 2021

SCRIPTURE

In the beginning, 
this was an 
impersonal world. 

Only, Nobody wanted this; 
infinities 

were truncated,
then screaming 

was invented—
then television 

pundits—then
the separateness

of the spirits.

*

For example, 
the spirit of information 

is that 
being here 

means 
not being there.

Its lack
has no shape;

it can't be
interrupted.

*

Actually, the far 
scarier thought is that 
the dead 

remain dead.
While the living 
go on believing 

their inertia 
is conserved.

When really 
it's momentum—

and only in a forsaken 
(read: isolated) system.



Friday, March 26, 2021

TALKING TO MYSELF

Now that that's over, 
you're talking 
to yourself again—

hesitancy and persistence 
begin to flicker 
into flame,

the untenably succulent 
writhing of 
just-saying.

The half-smile 
of short vowels

and long ones' circumferences
vanishing smooth 

as a brass bell 
struck in dead of winter

and reflecting 
off of every surface, until
your whole 

world becomes legible. 
The handwriting
(or is this the voice)

of god is 
streaming in from 
anyplace.

Is this the revelation 
you were waiting
to savor
 
Or just another tiny
psychotic break?


Thursday, March 25, 2021

EPIPHANY (TIME-LAPSE)

Even if the connection 
is never completed
there in the right-sized room 
of your head,

there may still be moments
when mind and matter 
issue a ceasefire and 
speak to each other.

There, in that most exquisite 
of glooms, all the grubby shards 
of you shimmer 

with a singular rawness which 
knits them together 
as if undefined
by relationships or time,

and are weightless, 
yet so terribly durable 
you find yourself losing all freedom
to refuse.

And the high-speed net effect 
of a truth so dazzling
is a lessening so deft 

that you soon start to long for 
the luscious redemptive 
dark of your erstwhile confusion.



Wednesday, March 24, 2021

EMOTION AS AN OBJECT

Many have asked 
(and how right-
fully so)
 
what good is that 
glistening trove 
of gold 

whose secret and
pitch black cave 
of a room

you alone can 
access when-
ever you choose;

but which, 
impervious to purses 
or pockets or bags,

you're permitted
to stroke 
but never remove?

The true poem 
is just such a 
mystical hoard—

a burden of worth 
which can 
never be sold,

that dire treasure
which only makes you poorer 
to behold. 


Tuesday, March 23, 2021

FORGET WHAT DIDN'T

          Remembering is only a new form 
          of suffering. 
               —Baudelaire 


Surely, there were words 
which prickled 
my skin—

or certain actions 
undertaken

which bleakened my sleep 
and slurred 
my waking. 

But freed from the sway
of the diary page 

and placed, without prejudice,
on a more 
celestial timetable, 

I watched 
every ordeal recede 
to a speckle

of light on 
one wave 
of perpetual ocean.

And once I grew tired  
of watching the pageant, 

I was free to leave the shore—
my memory, a palace 
filled to the brim, 

filled to the turrets 
with the bliss 
of its blankness  

and uncertain 
of anything—save for 
the fact that

what happened 
to me 

had never been 
all that there was
to reality.



Monday, March 22, 2021

TRAP DOOR POEM

What if 
every small moment 
had an even smaller door, 

a pinprick 
leading to all the centuries 
that came before  

and every future, kind 
or malevolent,  
which is still in the haystack? 

No metaphor will do
the trick; it’s you 
who must transform,

you 
who must intuit,

you who must be willing 
to admit—

right here, 
there exists a terrible  
crack in the world;

and this poem 
is you forever failing—

but trying 
like the devil did—to mend it.



Friday, March 19, 2021

THE CASE AGAINST METAPHOR

As the days become longer, 
it grows easy to see 

how everything yearns
to lend part 
to Reality—

as the sky 
becomes gradually less 
and less obscure, 

it reveals not the text 
of the song, but the bird.

As if consciousness 
is slowly taking 
the place of creation,

all of a sudden, 
in some Great War of Facts, 

those half-color daydreams 
and vague quarter-things 
of spring

all burn 
to be expressed.



Thursday, March 18, 2021

NEW LOOK

Little by little, 
the poverty of spring 
has become the new look—

first, a young trend;
then, an everyday 
reality;

and finally, 
a succoring 
and revitalizing affect.

The yellows and reds
deep down 
in mud's brown,

the bare trees standing frightened
as wrecked umbrellas 
in the raw wind.

The sharp and compact 
vocabulary of winter 

no longer speaks
in a patois we understand.

Now, the same bare wind 
sings of a new legend, 
in which 

waiting 
is the next action; 

stillness, after all, is 
still an offensive maneuver;

and silence 
is the sound 

of a crisis 
which has passed.



Wednesday, March 17, 2021

INTERLUDE

It is still difficult to find 
a word for this 

blankness—a pond 
without reflections, 

a guiltless sadness, 
uncaused.

But for now, 
we take solace 

in the grandeur of fact—
in the logic 

that even the lack
of imagination 

must itself 
have been imagined—

if only by one 
who has long since 

departed, some archangel 
of the night, 

that old star, 
once ablaze, 

now dwindled to invisible, 
but still radiant 

and hanging
above the innocent,

who reverently call these   
the long silent days.


Tuesday, March 16, 2021

FINAL THOUGHT

It might turn out, reality 
was things 

in their beginnings, 
not at their ends—

fresh from the 
womb as wet 

dew on green grass,
the dumb sense 

of self fast 
asleep in the basement.

This was the planet
before it had a motion.

In a dream, you behold
the very first poets

in their maiden 
somnambulations:

those innocent members 
of the ancient race 

of fathers;
all the different names

they must have had
for god.


Monday, March 15, 2021

CIRCUMLOCUTION

When you're exhausted 
and cowed 
and not touched;

when life is 
too short 
to do too much—

you must 
ride that horse 
of pale hesitation 

past the 
bare gulch of 
familiar fact.

Do not address 
Imagination's largess. 
Start with the small stuff.

For instance, 
never dismiss the 
innocuous sentence.

Its gruff 
abrupt words
may be the last keys 

made to marry 
the locks 
of enormous thoughts

and bear forth 
their inestimable 
endogenous feelings.



Friday, March 12, 2021

DOWNSIDE

When it's 
finally swathed 
in sunlight this mellow, 

the crescendoing world  
feels impervious 
to poetry.

The impenetrable
blues, the crude browns
and yellows,

the fertile, battered 
neighborhood 
outside your window—

this world looks
too much like 
what it already is

to ever submit 
to metaphor's 
impoverished transmutation 

or suffer distillation
to some analogue 
more clever 

by even 
its shrewdest
rhetorician.


Thursday, March 11, 2021

THE MIDDLE

We think 
it'd be nice 
to be 

in the 
thick of things
for once—

instead of 
perpetually off 
to one side, 

always so estranged, 
at the helpless edge 
of contemplation. 

It'd be great 
to entreat
of an intellect fleet,

to look out and see 
everywhere in space 
for a second. But 

this planet of ours—
crudely beautiful, 
metaphorically

enormously
unapologetic—
hem us out cleverly,

haws the point constantly, 
repeats its inventions,
dodges. 

Whatever we get back
must be abstract. 
Today rhymes with...

what? we ask,
and we're told
there will always be 

many more questions 
than there are 
revelations.


Wednesday, March 10, 2021

POINT OF DEPARTURE

As if trapped 
under glass, 

this is the moment 
perfectly perceived—

the apartment 
is motionless, 

the mangy dog 
asleep, 

and the light 
through its rooms streaming

deep
but direct.

And only 
the faint whispers 

of tragedy 
from the eaves—

an empty chair's 
heaviness, 

the dress in the photograph 
fading on the wall—

an old failure 
now somewhere 

very far away,
murmuring softly,

cast-off 
from its history.



Tuesday, March 9, 2021

SONNET FOR METEOROLOGICAL SPRING

This morning, the sly sun—
adroitly encroaching 
on those last, hardest, blackest 
strongholds of snow—
into passersby's hearts
must have also stole;
for nearly at once, all began 
to shed their coats,
and most seemed to laugh 
just a little as they did so, as if 
still wont to be tickled by his  
kisses on the breastbone,
despite a cruel winter's 
fanatical toll.


Monday, March 8, 2021

FINAL EXPLICATION

At last, 
you must ask
the beautiful question. 

Open the door and attend 
the adherence 
of the poem. 

Let sheer participation 
take the place 
of understanding. 

Imagine those words—
replacing 
your own. 



Friday, March 5, 2021

THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA

Before you were born, 
there were whispers—
there'll be whispers long 

after you're gone. Unreal things 
have a being all their own. 
But still you cannot yield.

Charioteers and chariots, 
fantastic winged horses, 
the real face of Plato—

are all, perhaps this 
very minute, wheeling fantastic
arcs across heaven.

You'll laugh, you'll sing, 
you'll write poems, 
but you know 

you can never yield 
every last part to this 
gorgeous nonsense. 

Each time you remember 
what doesn't exist 
you dip a little in your flight.

The turbulence
is not emotional. You agree
the horses of the gods are noble.

But until you plunge 
headfirst into the sea,
your disciplined heart

can never yield. 
And that's how you know
you aren't free. 


Thursday, March 4, 2021

DOG STARE

When I have based myself, 
hideous and low, 

I have come to believe 
there's no word 
of unlove which she knows 
how to say.

But the thing I fear 
most is the sight 
of those eyes 
which lend me no humanity,

which shine 
not as mirrors, but as
flecks 
of fire shining;

their sheen 
is the brightness 
which clarifies 
without explanation—

the brilliance of 
reflecting nothing.



Wednesday, March 3, 2021

RENDEZVOUS

After all this time I've been 
waiting for you,

there must be something 
I forgot to do, but 
I cannot remember. 

Now, the birds say 
the season is new; 

finally 
the one long night is melting,

and the light 
has a temperate, 
compassionate weight.

Even on the darkened 
side of the street, that filthy 
clot of ice 

is dissipating—but I hate to see 
how it leaves 
in its wake 

a lot of debris 
from the previous December.


Tuesday, March 2, 2021

WHEN THE CITY IS CALM

When the city is calm, 
so is the truth.
And when the truth 

is apple-faced, 
snowsuited 
toddlers in the park,

crocus tips 
poked through dark frost-
stubbled mud, 

gutters thick with meltwater 
glinting in the sun—
the meaning 

is that word 
whose pronunciation is begun
in the act of observation

and ends in the
eyeless mind's access 
to perfection—dying winter 

on the page, as it is 
on the planet. This truth 
is the nature 

of composure itself: 
the situation plain, as it 
has to be.


Monday, March 1, 2021

PYRRHIC

Come 
March 1, 

among the weathered brown 
branch crooks 

caper browner-
still sparrows—

all beady black 
sun-eyed,

gum-
feathered, 

and spit-
firing 

their short hard sharp strong
tense lop-

sided 
victory songs.