DREAM RECALL

Occasionally, very 

first thing 

in the morning, 

a person 

may sense for a minute

the faint pressure—

like a handprint 

on the bedspread, 

still there from the night before—

of all of queued dreams 

which the dawn 

has left stranded. 

Still fuzzy, 

this person can't begin 

to imagine 

what tender and doleful  

scenes they've abandoned.

And yet, 

faint depressions

of each character remains—

a surface tension 

as subtle but urgent as 

moisture in the atmosphere, 

as full as the low clouds 

which have gathered 

at the horizon's corners, 

obscuring the sun, but 

declining to rain.

LESSON PLAN

Beware The Complete Poems 

of Emily Dickinson.

Solitary words,

machined with such precision,

are liable, when incanted, 

to crack the roof open

and fill up your classroom 

with sharp sky-

colored diadems.

Incantations like hers

are much safer 

read in private, 

for when- and wherever 

such a stealth bomb 

is detonated, 

every molecule 

in the ears of the hearers 

might quiver,

the hard drives 

in their cell phones may

spontaneously erase,

and of course, 

there's the ominous possibility 

of power failures: 

the overhead projector

darkens; the lights dim 

and flicker;

the custodian in the basement

primes the generators, 

just in case.

OFFSCREEN

After standing alone 

outside of it all 

since before immemorial, 

time 

has grown stubborn, 

furious, cold. 

But once in a while, 

time is kind—when it's late, 

and it's drowsy 

and slow, it says 

things like

"Tag. You're it." And 

"Anyone 

could have written this." 

And

"direction is effective 

but ultimately 

unnecessary."

*

What have I got to lose? 

Among the bumps 

and depressions 

of a black and blue 

keyboard, 

the only things moving 

were some shadows 

and their fingers.

*

In the terrible dreams 

that I've been having 

lately, 

words rise unbidden 

like bodies 

from the harbor 

and speak themselves.

It's like—everything that made me 

not good enough

comes screaming at me 

from everywhere offscreen

at once.

Through the racket, 

the question I still want 

to ask you more than anything

isn't 

whether or not 

you still love me, 

but whether or not 

you believe 

that you do.

ELEGY WRITTEN AT A KITCHEN TABLE

Essential as it is, 

it's as difficult to love 

as it is to live comfortably—

however completely

that drawer by the stove 

becomes stuffed 

full of manuals, user guides,

warranties, and gift receipts,

in all the ways that matter most, 

deep down, you know 

you're on your own. 

But difficult as it is, 

its just as essential  

to eat the peach 

and leave the pit, 

to carry off the dead, 

to bury the shit, to swing 

at all the decent pitches.

It's not just a rush: our sense 

that changing the future  

authenticates the past; 

it's a pulsating truth—

that after anything is swallowed 

or flushed or cracked or burned to ash, 

the world is new; 

there's no way of 

going back.

REVOLUTION

Thirty seven years, 

and I'm still 

this mysterious: 

mid-stream, I'm liable to break up 

into ripples; 

each night, 

each one fords a different 

lonely dream. 

*

O, to be beautiful 

enough for someone 

to want to come along

and break me in half, 

rend my halves 

to shreds, 

grind 

the shreds to dust, 

and then fan 

the fine powder cloud

over the sea. 

"Let's see you rise up 

from these deaths," 

they might say, 

I like to imagine, purely 

out of jealousy.

* 

How many tiny changes 

until this body isn't mine?

Until the world 

as I know it ceases 

to exist? 

When did this revolution

begin?

Already, our attention lapses; 

we know

there won't really be a next time.

COHESION

It's become a favorite 

David Lynch cliché—

that dark two-lane highway 

connecting two odd 

numbered interstates;

a distinct memory, 

not of the events which 

took place, 

but the interstices  

between them—

the absoluteness, 

not of the dream, 

but the dream's

continuity—

and the song

that was playing. 

*

Now, it's as if
the present moment 

were an exception 

to The Rule, 

as if bodies in motion 

could contain 

their own means,

as if teetering 

on the brink 

between never-meant 

and always-will 

were just one viable way 

of a million

to remain.

AT THE CROSSWALK

In the milky sky above the square, 

the familiar almost-equilibrium 

of pigeons 

having burst from their fountain 

at the gunning 

of green light engines

 

now tickling the low clouds 

in undulating ripples,

diving and swooping in hapless formation—

making me 

feel restless; making me feel 

small. 

For a moment, I suppose

I would like to be 

one of them—

but no, that's not 

quite right, is it?

I'd like to be 

them all.

CONCLUSION

Every day, 

fresh trauma 

is minted,

is deemed 

too precious 

to spend—

is saved 

instead, 

is recklessly 

preserved, 

is obsessively 

earmarked 

for later, 

grows rotten. 

*

Then, one day,

just before your bullish 

toddler swipes away—

that photo of Earth 

as seen 

from space

as seen 

on the lockscreen 

of an outdated iPhone.

How long 

had we known

it would always be this way?

None of this 

could be lost;

it all must 

be forgotten.

EQUINOX

Just like that, the home team 

punts—and another summer's 

florescence shrivels.

The home improvement store 

hauls boxes of gourds 

and dimpled pumpkins out front.

In the park, an almost 

chilly wind thrums;

a stubborn toddler's nose is tickled. 

But rather than sneeze 

from the windblown spores 

of autumn mold, 

she blinks her wide eyes 

and shivers out a squeal instead— 

because she knows, 

from the tresses of auburn 

that loosely overlay her head, 

that though the afternoon

sun grows long, 

there's still no way 

that she is the one 

getting old—at least, 

not really. 

At least, not yet.

OCCURRENCE

The hulking 

gnarled arm 

of a woebegone ash tree

sagging yet 

a little lower with its 

resident crow—

o how I long

to lift it back up, 

to tear all its blight off, 

to shoo 

this dark payload

away from my soul.

MILLIONTH DOG POEM

When, by chance, 

you looked up

and entangled my gaze, 

unconcerned as ever 

with what your faultless eyes 

were saying, 

at first, I 

was furious (for I believe that

calmness can kill us; 

it's the friction 

of disturbances 

we depend upon for warmth),

but that madness

soon turned curious, then

began to grow concerned:

 

what distraction still

in our future will cause 

concurrence to be ruined?

Which of us will be the one 

to look away 

from all this first?

LULL

On a September noon 

this clean 

and this still 

when even the few 

clouds seem

some stately archipelago, 

the only thing that's reeling

would have to be 

the sparrows

whose quick-darting song 

tingles each tongue of 

calm avenue,

and the only dirty thing

is the feeling 

you don't belong.

NAME IT

The way night

bookends day—would you call that 

haiku? 

Haiku would choose 

to name it

red sundown, 

streetlamp shadows 

creeping through the park grass;

perhaps

the dregs of green tea 

in a white paper cup 

near nude feet,

grown satisfactorily 

too cool 

to drink.

LOVE WORKS

For all of its plaudits, 

love works 

like a virus—

unseen 

and unknown, it grows 

without goals; 

when it attaches, it 

bores down and 

binds us 

to our skeletons, 

to these hard discrete cores

which we'd been 

heretofore 

trying to keep from 

bobbing to the surface. 

It is nothing 

but a brainless, selfless, 

welter of confabulations 

which causes us 

to confront 

and expel 

the only other feeling 

which, hitherto, 

we'd come to know: 

the vague prickle 

of our 

own nauseous longing;

the sickness 

of our selves. 

WAITING ON SOMETHING

Tongues of yellow light 

through an afternoon window 

which creep to kiss the tip 

of a prone 

hound dog's nose 

should mean more 

than they do—

ought to 

collapse 

this mute feeling 

of distance between us

into a thought 

even god couldn't hold.

KNOT

Cheap knot of sparrows—

somehow I know 

you're the 

undisclosed masters

of all of the air between 

here and there;

for you're 

manic as preachers

whose sermons 

are their bodies— 

which are hurled all around me 

like pointed brown echoes, 

great tails of reverb 

which rebound without end

between two very clear and 

frictionless mirrors—

and it must be a strange-yet-

ideal piece of physics 

which is always unconcerned 

with the state of my happiness,

but never in itself 

unhappy.

SYNOPSIS

The exacting way 

the morning glories 

are snarled around 

the warped wooden gate 

at the corner,

violet fire-faced

and fluting out the rapture 

from ripe throats 

so white they almost make

you lose your balance—

how does yearning get here? 

the vine-strangled 

mind wonders.

Who is to blame?

What was the reason?

Most importantly, 

what's 

the big take-away?

VULNERABILITY IS RARE

Vulnerability is rare

as the hairs that protrude  

from our scalps 

and our arms 

and from under our noses.

What we fear most 

to lose falls 

in pools at our shoulders, 

or is grisly, 

or brittle—disturbed

by mere air.

And the truth 

is so trivial: every one 

is born with some—

how will you choose 

to wear yours?

AIR MINUS AIR

Where my lungs 

met my heart, 

it was air minus air 

when you left; 

it was blood 

drained of oxygen's 

flair when you left.

To my eyes, 

it was light 

with its sweet 

waves of white 

boiled out.

If only I now

could see 

through those eyes 

as they pitied me then—

could here resurrect 

the primordial planet 

on which 

such a demented 

physics made sense—

I'd feel I might 

still yet survive

my own death.

(NO BIG) LOSS

After the distant longing clang

of churchbell songs recedes,

first comes the twilight 

and then, that charmed silence—

washing over 

the tilted planet, 

beckoning rats 

from dark wombs of nests 

to the post-dinner 

rush of back 

alley trash feasts, 

razing proud empires of day 

to the street,

and darkening 

the newly-strange path 

of concrete 

I suppose I should really take 

home—

in a minute.

HINDSIGHT BIAS

Watching the first few 

pale stars of evening, 

you might realize 

by their light 

not hope, 

but the truth:

that somehow, a man 

is both an ungainly 

and a deftly brutal animal. 

How nimble 

his belief;

how awkward it reads 

when we

see it on the replay—

the way he savagely hammers 

and tapes 

his feelings 

onto shapes.