HEARTBREAK IS INEVITABLE

Little soul, 

you have no control. 

One day, you will need 

to let go,

but you won't. 

(There is such a thing 

as too 

sincere, you know.)

SORRY TO SAY

Courage isn't bravery, 

but fullness of the heart—

your body's drive to stay alive

compressed into a song.

After years, are you truly 

still so distressed 

to find yourself moved by 

all you can hear? 

Perhaps after all you should 

call yourself lucky 

to wander through life 

on the threshold of tears

because that way, 

you'll always know on which 

side of that verge

you belong.

THE UNIVERSE IS NOT EXTRAORDINARY

The most instructive thing 

about counting to infinity 

has nothing to do 

with number; 

it's that your indifference 

to the task doesn't matter;

you can 

take it or leave it, 

work backward 

or forward,

attend it with discipline 

or crash like a slacker.

Anyone 

who values anything,

can start anywhere, 

and be dead-center—

and from there, 

it gets even easier:

you either start to calculate, 

or you wait.

ALONE

As you know, living breast-

to-breast here 

with the others,

alone doesn't need 

desert conditions 

to  grow.

To explain 

the word cleaves 

its own definition, 

inviting 

great depth as much

as destruction.

Written, it is a tiny seed 

which contains 

a vast ocean—but strangely,

that power is yet doubled 

when it's spoken 

to another.

CONUNDRUM

To be frank, we must 

take some phantasmic 

pleasure in uncertainties.

Each new birth 

is still celebrated 

as a miracle,

even in this increasingly 

poisonous world;

every wedding guest

is still impressed 

by the ice sculpture,

even while the Amazon 

rain forest smolders.

Or perhaps, our reaction 

works more like 

stage magic, since

fascination emerges 

from the same empty cage 

into which the whole 

audience saw dread 

get inserted.

EARLY-ONSET

The dumbfounding sight, 

wavy from across the 

distant blacktop,

of scorched-purple columbine

anywise arrayed 

against the bent wood fences 

says: when true dog days 

descend on your neighborhood 

later this summer, 

this time they 

well might be coming 

to stay.

REFLECTIONS

Perhaps, this hate 

which you gave 

to others 

was love 

whose two vowels had

collapsed 

and evaporated 

in the friction 

which resulted 

from the 

toil of 

conversation.

*

Perhaps, this anger 

which you once wielded

like a sword 

was patience 

gone sour—

not because 

its presences was 

unwelcome at dinner,

but just

from being left out 

on the counter too long 

afterward.

*

Perhaps, this sadness 

which you cannot seem 

to rinse clean

was joy 

that's now threadbare 

from being stretched  

too aggressively 

for too long around 

too many 

ungainly things. 

BYPRODUCT

There are mornings 

when the very first thing 

is the need 

to have an idea.

And then, 

there are evenings 

where the last idea standing

is the desperate 

need to fall 

asleep.

*

I think I need 

to clear my head. 

I'm think I'm becoming

too interested

in the way 

being interested 

generates fumes 

we call "finitude," 

which must then be

exhausted.

*

How is it 

each day 

feels so far away 

from the last

when really there's 

just that thin stream 

of tedious recap 

dreams in-between?

THANKS AND PRAISE

If nothing else, 

at least for those 

two or three minutes—

still soggy 

with the pulp of 

last night's of sleep, 

its bellwether 

dreams still 

reverberating—

when the endlessly-

in-rushing space 

of this world 

is crimped back 

to leave a small  

path for the feeling

that there's nothing 

to pray for, since 

I might be anybody.

DOWNSIDE

We call it a virtue—

to seek 

new experiences, 

coveting the novel 

like the wife 

of a neighbor.

But never 

is the horrible 

downside considered—

with each moon's

new waxing, 

what's familiar 

grows larger,

bolder, 

less abstract, 

more aggressive-

ly territorial.

Many tryers 

who value 

the use of their fingers,

or tasters their tongues,

would be 

wiser to wane

or at least 

remain stuck

where they were. 

BEFORE AND AFTER

Let's play a game 

with the charged 

openness of language;

the next phrase 

may destroy you 

or leave you  

alone.

Multiple readings,

polyvalent implications 

comprise their before- 

and-after shots.

Proof is not an answer, 

but pleasure 

arises 

in entertaining both sides 

of the paradox.

BROADBAND

For obvious reasons, 

it's nice
to believe 

that sleep is not a rehearsal 

for dying, 

nor is it some strange and 

colorless landscape 

into which we all plummet 

once the small aircraft

staffed by our consciousness 

is harrowingly dog-fought 

out of commission. 

Instead, perhaps its 

thick swarms of 

amorphous propagation

function more like training 

for the actual mission—

namely: our melding 

into all that is

presently happening, 

a rejoining with the program 

already in progress, 

which, one day, will require 

a focus so wide, 

an attention so general

that we won't even think 

of its opposite 

as narrow.

WORKAROUNDS

Like a musty old

chessboard 

with cloth bits standing-in 

for its long-

lost rooks 

and a couple of quarters

kept in the box 

expressly for use

in place 

of horses—

or, like a 

library book

with a few pages missing

which, mercifully does not 

seem to decrease 

your affinity for characters

or apprehension 

of plot—

so too 

can a heart

still be jury-rigged  

to work 

even after a few 

of its parts were

snatched out.

FIVE ALARMS

We know it

in our bones when 

something's amiss—

except when those 

five alarms ring

from within. In that case, 

there's no preordained place

from which to receive 

the emergency.

Though we might drip 

with urgency, our ducts 

remain dry; it's as if 

we've tried fighting this 

house fire

from inside.

PUTTING YOUR FOOT DOWN

Why the big to-do 

around putting 

your foot down?

However tenacious you 

make yourself 

out to be, 

you know that

soon you will have to

unstick that boot 

and move it 

to some other 

discrepant position 

(which, by the 

way, is also quite 

temporary).

If you're not 

being careful,

you might even slip

and come loose 

from this capricious 

planet entirely.

So what's with 

the show we 

pretend to intuit 

around these alleged-

ly permanent

displays of our firmness?

When in truth 

we all know from

way back 

in grammar school how

nothing stays put 

without roots.

APPLIED SCIENCE

Sometimes, 

things we know 

cannot be applied;

what's crucial 

is impossible,

like going back in time 

to leave before you arrived.

As if we 

are the ones who've just 

done something wrong,

the solution 

has a habit of breaking 

it off with us—

just when we hoped we might

cling to it most.

All we can do 

to keep ourselves occupied

is tally-up the evidence 

we've snuffed from 

existence, but 

this never seems to run 

down the clock—

and besides,

the total 

is not the same thing

as the sum.

AQUARIUM

Maybe there's 

a purpose

to each place, 

an end

which pacifies  

all the objections.

Maybe there's 

a bedrock 

somewhere behind your face 

which is free 

of all of the guilt 

of comparison.

Would you rather be 

the fish 

in this aquarium—

forgetting, with each turn, 

the dimensions 

of your prison? 

Would you sigh

with your gills 

spread so wide 

that the patron 

passing by could

see to your inside?

It's possible

what we've built

is all that there is,

but that doesn't mean we 

were designed to 

recognize it.

EVERYDAY POEM

Even the sun—dependable, huge, 

tried-and-

true as it comes,

you know, before 

too long, is 

how it will leave you.

And here, all you've done 

is walk 

into the room;

you must 

not have a thing 

to lose.

REFINING WHAT'S FINE

From the bluntest 

of blows and the 

most pointless impacts—

asteroids smashed 

into still-

molten planets, 

rocks that bust rocks, 

dashboards crushed 

against foreheads—

instead of destroyed 

in a powderkeg 

of morass,

somehow, your

appreciation grows

even more exact.

FERMATA

At last, when there's 

only a minute 

of daylight remaining,

time finally relaxes

and unclenches, 

expanding in significance 

as the sky 

in turn diminishes;

over far shadowed 

hills, mauve clouds 

in the distance, 

a long low note 

being held

in your head—

the last syllable 

of a goodbye

which doesn't know 

how to finish.