Friday, April 30, 2021

A PROBLEM WHERE THERE IS NONE

Inconvenient 
though may be, 

there is no reality 
behind the scene;

reality is simply 
the scene 
seen rightly.

The room 
where you and I once sat
all night arguing—

tacking up 
tents, drawing 
boundaries on the thing—

might itself 
have been 
infinite.

But then, we'd have 
to imagine,

so too 
would have been
the elephant. 


Thursday, April 29, 2021

YOUR HOME

Your home is not 
a place you can leave; 
your home is that spot 

where you can't stand 
to be, but nevertheless 
can't stop;

it's the position you're in 
and the attention
you command when 

your ship's coming in, 
and it's the face 
that you make 

while their train's 
pulling out—
that grimace of stone

while you wave 
very slow and refuse 
any teardrops, as if 

even the wind should know 
to blow around you 
on the platform,

because you have 
never allowed 
yourself 

to be moved,
and you do not intend 
to start now.




Wednesday, April 28, 2021

A GOLDEN CIRCLE

At some definite
moment, the object 
of going 

converts
to the triumph of 
making it back. 

Attainment depends 
not on our finally 
heading to the laundromat

but that proximate
uncanny moment when it 
feels like we never left.

In the end, 
it doesn't matter 
how noble the errand—

endeavor alone
is a sentence 
to death; 

to leave 
and come home is 
a sacrament.



Tuesday, April 27, 2021

MISSTEP

None of us was built 
to remain 
in control. 

Walking tall 
wherever we go is 
nothing 

but a user illusion.
Really, our legs are 
always working 

on making a smooth recovery 
and another clean getaway 
simultaneously.

It's too bad 
how only the occasional 
stumble, 

brutal knee scrape, or loss
of a tooth 
proves the rule.


Monday, April 26, 2021

IMPROVISATION

Sometimes, memory
works less 
like a history book;

more like 
an instrument 
whose stoppers get stuck—

effortlessly regurgitating 
the repertoire 
is an option 

no longer; you must focus 
your face, blow hard, and 
shake into existence 

whatever notes 
you can manage to make
with no reference. 


Friday, April 23, 2021

LEAVE IT ALONE

Perhaps 
to explain away a feeling 
this exact 

by way of a lifetime 
that's far less so

is to come to 
blunt blows 
with a formidable mustang 

in the vain hope 
of taming it
and riding it home;

whereas
to just name it
and give it some space—

is to meet it 
halfway 

with a carrot.


Thursday, April 22, 2021

POETIC JUSTICE

Actually, there's no 
such thing as 
Justice in a poem; 

and not so much 
the chiseled beauty 
of Truth 

as a homely fiction 
you come to love 
and trust.

Nucleus meets nucleus—
the two of you 
make life;

word by word, 
you give birth 
to yourself.

After, both 
parents stand 
silent behind, 

knowing 
they must hope
for the best.


Wednesday, April 21, 2021

DEFINITION OF INSANITY

At this point, 
you've had 
the same shallow thought 

so many times, 
you've about 
lost count; 

no variation 
on the theme 
whatsoever, 

no left turns, 
no new insights
leaking out.

It's a bit like 
that moment 
stuck in a rain storm 

when you're suddenly 
as wet as you're 
ever going to get—

on paper, 
it's clear this exact
well has been tapped;

and yet 
you can't help 
but dig it again,

confident that,
this time, it'll come out
a little deeper. 


Tuesday, April 20, 2021

THE END OF TIME

Maybe all along 
we were 
all wrong about it—

overly 
dramatic,

or else, 
too clever by two- 
over-half.

Maybe it's not all over
(that's too climactic).

Maybe, instead, it's
the 1st of Never 
on the calendar—

at last 
that day has dawned 
which will not ever set.

But we are so used 
to the practice 
of patience—

of just hanging on 
and staying 
strong til tomorrow—

that we're all too contented 
to sit
and to wait

even though it's getting 
awfully late—

or should be, 
anyway.



Monday, April 19, 2021

BITTER MEMORY

There are, of course, always
those sensible buildings 

to which 
daily access
is granted millions.

Then, there are
the particular places—
a ramshackle cabin

high in the mountains, say—
whose paths are passable only 
intermittently. 

And last of all, there's 
that one empty palace—

with its gilt towers 
and buttresses frozen
at formidable right angles

and its piercing 
white interiors, all
excruciatingly polished—

which, having glimpsed  
only once, 
you have ever since permitted 

to secretly exist,
but which 
you'd never dare wish 

for one second
to reinhabit.



Friday, April 16, 2021

WISDOM IS THAT KNOWLEDGE WHOSE BURDEN WE NEVER WANTED

Scarcity 
may always be the
archetypal fear;

But the truth is, 
there is far too much 
here to defend.

Time is so ample, 
in some sense it 
never advances;

and the sky, always 
so far away—what 
are the chances 

there won't always be more 
to mistrust 
in those immortals

whose intelligence 
was too lavish 
to be blighted by death 

and yet, too humble
to now seem quite
foolish instead?


Thursday, April 15, 2021

LEARNING TO SPEAK

It's not an intelligence—
it's something that happens 

to your entire body 
all at once;

language 
is the grail itself—

an inexhaustible radiance, 
which, up close, could 
burn all your clothes off.

You forget 
about getting things
a bit mixed up;

you remember only enough 
to know you must walk 

into the furnace of words—
naked 
and nameless,

from the gutter, 
to the galaxy—
but always willingly, 

as if any other 
choice existed. 



Wednesday, April 14, 2021

AMATEUR CARTOGRAPHY

Repellent as it looks 
from this 
location, it would be 

far better 
to stop 

and carve a stiff grid across 
the top of your life

than to not. 
After all—
at some point, 

the coordination 
of pain 

must begin 
to protect against 
the loss,

and let's face it—
and you are going to get lost 
a lot.


Tuesday, April 13, 2021

PREPONDERANCES

If what Nature 
just cannot stand is 
a vacuum, 

how come a man 
most abhors 
her redundancies—

earth's messy multiplicities
which breed free
endurance, 

or guaranteed 
survival of the most 
blessedly anonymous, 

or, worst of all,
the sophistication pre-
supposed of the oblique? 

Instead of trusting 
in processes, why is he 
repulsed 

by the repetitions
which console against
chronic incoherence?

Do he fear 
these varieties 
obscure the one angle 

from which he both
views the truth clear—
and survives it? 


Monday, April 12, 2021

TWO CONFLICTING IMPULSES

Like a beaten 
drum, or some hapless planet 
bombarded by comets,

I guess you have 
no choice but 
to abide all the torment,

of this moment, all its tiresome 
insistence and it's chronic 
aggravation;

for the sensation 
you experience is no 
technical problem, 

but rather, a tectonic one:
for durability's sake,
beneath topsides of skin, 

the meat of you really is 
made out of plates—
whose main job is 

less to contain 
than to grind at each other 
continuously.



Friday, April 9, 2021

AT LEAST EVERYONE IS LOST TOGETHER

The choice is—are there 
lots of things 
you'll never understand?

Or is there just the one 
ocean, whose surface is 
continuous? 

Perhaps every person 
you've passed 
is a beacon 

on a boat's mast 
whose port your 
imagination couldn't guess;

maybe every last 
star you can see 

is only there to deepen 
and unify your sense

of the space in-between's 
unknowableness.



Thursday, April 8, 2021

UNKNOWING

A person can certainly learn 
how to fish; 

or they can simply keep returning 
and stammering out in 
the same mystic river. 

Perhaps to make sense 
is to be useful in other contexts, 

whereas nonsense 
never changes, but can always 
be revisited. 

There's a kind of satisfaction 
which exists 
only in this—

like a confident poem, with no 
outside applications.

At least on occasion, 
is there not 
tremendous relief 

in a thought 
which is terse, but which comes
with no substitute? 

For once, 
can we not just enjoy 
our loss? 


Wednesday, April 7, 2021

WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

          Nothing gold can stay.         
               —Robert Frost


We all knew going into this 
that Eden sank to grief; 

so, clearly, for humanity, 
maturity is inevitable—and it's heavy, 
and it stinks.

But how did the whole 
planet get 
such a short shrift—

with leaf subsiding 
to flowerless leaf, 

and each dawn defeated 
in an hour or less? As if 
that's just how it is 

in the bucolic world? As if, 
even the curliest ivy tresses—
sinless or luxuriant,

green, red, or gold-
tinged—had best keep 

a look out, since 
the charge isn't arrogance, 
but existence, 

and the plug is 
apparently 
always getting pulled? 



Tuesday, April 6, 2021

INFINITE REGRESS

Just when you think
you can't possibly articulate 

your good intentions
any better,

or beta-
test a plausible 
explanation any longer,

or parse 
and reparse the hard
data more often;

that's exactly 
when there's a rupture—

the notion 
of number suddenly 
collapses.

Now, elaboration
is coming so easy

that prolixity cannot 
possibly be the mission;

the quality 
of the conversation 
won't deepen either,

and even compounding 
the interest is 
meaningless 

after your brain 
has prolapsed 
to that place where 

adding 
one more notion
to an ocean of others

no longer 
counts as a 
larger amount.



Monday, April 5, 2021

SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

So what 
if you cannot be 
precise, thorough-

going, or 
complete 
with your reason;

in the heat of 
the moment 
there is no need. 

After all,
one must not be afraid 
to make a big statement—

then pay strict attention 
to where the 
controversy leads.

Thus, during the 
delicate dawn 
of the season,

it becomes especially 
tempting 
to say 

that eugenics, 
divine intervention, 
phrenology—

even evolution 
by natural selection—
may be the reason 

that flowers 
seem so superior 
to leaves.


Friday, April 2, 2021

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

There is nothing funny 
about perfection,

though the smiles 
which pass by me 
on these blithe sidewalk passengers 

are tracking much more like 
amused than happy. 

And yet, 
there must be something 
rare which is trapped 

in the bright April wind
which makes us 
want to laugh—

and not from the inexorable 
glee of satisfaction,

but as if 
we've all just been 
taken-in 

by some fiendishly clever 
immaculate trick.



Thursday, April 1, 2021

INSOMNIAC

Perhaps 
you're an addict;
this is just your fate.

Or perhaps there's no end 
to the cast-
off names,

to the lists of the wants 
and the fears 
you transcend.

Perhaps suffering 
is just the daily 
allowance you make—

and maybe 
the best way 
to finally get some rest 

is to merge 
with the problem—
forget 

about your strengths;
become one 
with 

the exhaustion 
which is 
keeping you awake.