SPECIFIC INTENT

Harm—I mean 

the winged

fire-breathing sort, 

with intent—isn't rare 

or made-up. It's 

everywhere you look. 

Long ago, it was 

often pursued 

relentlessly

by those who would 

maim themselves 

just to claim its jewels.

Currently, though,

it's simply mis-

understood

as it flutters

from camp to 

decimated camp

masquerading

as Help—even though, 

by now, this has got to be 

the oldest trick 

in the 

holiest book.

MILLENNIAL PARAPHRASE

Looking back, 

some would say 

we're obsessed. 

But it isn't quite like that. 

We were told 

when we arrived 

that wealth 

would be plentiful

just as water 

was wet—

that we'd live 

to be much older 

than our parents' generation, 

just as soon 

as we re-bolted the gate, 

undid 

every threat. 

So we check, 

and double-

check, 

and triple-check 

the locks; 

we circle back

and look 

with microscopes 

and magnifying glasses 

for the faint shapes 

of the arrows 

which we know they 

must have 

humanely painted 

on the floor of the maze 

before they left. 

Now, the thing that 

we're desperate to find 

we cannot shake,

and what we want 

to hold most 

we cannot possess:

a life which

at once feels both penetrable 

and safe.

THE HUMAN COMEDY

Despite its 

undoubted lack 

of marriage at the end,

before fade- 

to-black, I would like 

to have said

my life 

was a fairly ambitious 

amateur movie—

unencumbered 

by plot, and excruciatingly 

slow at times;

but all the while 

braced

by a kind of 

almost maniacal, 

ham-fisted take on material 

beauty. 

THE BEST POEMS ARE FORGOTTEN

After generations spent

working hard at your desk, 

you head out at last

for that walk. 

Leaves—

which once offered coveted shade

and chattered 

their small talk 

in virile June breezes—

now crunch smoothly

underfoot 

as you junket,

your open jacket 

blown back behind you 

with each chilly gust.

You pass jack-o-lanterns, 

inflatable ghosts, 

grinning skulls pitched askance

on each proudly

ragged lawn. 

Gradually at first,

your thoughts 

turn to patterns,

which weave

and then merge with 

the rhythm of your feet. 

Never in your life 

has air tasted

quite like this. You know it

now: every prior hour 

you did not choose

to squander 

as a waste. 

ALL THINGS

Late in October, 

all things pursue ease.

Tinged 

yellowish, moldy, 

and brittle—all matter, 

all space making peace.

All of us, too

are seeking release;

All at once, 

our eyes, 

knees, and speech 

will grow weak.

What we loved most—

what we sought 

(so we think) 

from the world 

more than pleasure 

or experience—

was security:

a clean embrace, order 

in the storm, shelter 

from the subsequent 

wreck. But now, 

we haven't got 

the spirit left 

to wonder: 

what sort of terrible 

miracle comes next? 

What summer child 

could be born 

of this marriage 

between solemnity 

and death? 

NUTS AND BOLTS

There are lots 

and lots of 

pretty things out there,

but true beauty 

is rare; 

like a blank spot 

which does not cry out 

to be filled in,

the kind of quiet 

which does not announce

"I am keeping quiet" 

in a stage whisper.

We have seen it seldom, 

as we are far too poor 

to afford ourselves 

to notice:

how fortuneless, 

how willing we are

to sacrifice experience 

to the god 

of Having Been There

when really, it was everywhere

(that's why the instruments 

couldn't measure it).

All along, the allure

was attention itself,

not the purported locality 

of its center;

it was the laughing, 

not the laughter; 

the actual fact 

of being seated here together,

not the table 

or the chairs.

HALF

The experts are quite clear 

about talking in absolutes. 

They say 

the matter we encounter 

and the energy feel

is just half 

of a conversation 

we were not meant 

to overhear.

*

Let's face it. Relationships 

have always been a gamble. 

And what is a gambler—

if not a little unstable? 

Like a blip

in a machine, he thinks 

he is special; 

he thinks 

he alone can read 

the clutter of chips on the table.

Just the same way, 

we seem to think 

that luck 

can be stacked;

we recall

how we happened to win

the jackpot once, 

and we honestly believe 

that the past 

makes comebacks.

* 

For eons,  the pious moon

has only been showing us one

of its faces. 

What on earth are we 

supposed to take 

from that? 

It must not be safe yet

to be ourselves.

EDEN

That moment 

when you see a 

snake's tail 

rammed so incautiously 

down it's own throat—

what comes to mind? 

For me, it's:

even the rocks 

are rented; 

even the air 

is tied in knots.

*

Over time, my passwords 

have grown longer, and so much 

less intelligible,

and I am responsible 

for fewer and fewer of them—

it's how I know, 

not only that entropy 

must be increasing, 

but that I am complicit 

in this clusterfuck of justice, 

this snarl of radiation,

which is, even now, 

both splintering 

to bits and evening 

things out.

* 

As if 

|the absolute value 

of the wave function| squared 

were as equal 

to The Real

as your little pliant groan 

of an exhale on the pillow

as you drift on a ship 

toward an islanded dream 

which you invented, 

then discovered—and which 

I am forever 

forbidden to visit.

WAFFLE

Opportunity knocks,

but it's complexity 

who enters,

inertia who pins you 

when ambition 

overleaps.

In Yeats's day, 

things fell apart—

now, they just 

hang around 

mercilessly, 

dilating over time 

and merging 

with technology—installing 

automatic updates 

while you sleep 

with all the 

feigned ignorance 

of Judas's kiss. 

*

Personally, I think it's 

a bit of a 

no brainer; 

I don't dare 

disturb the universe 

because the future 

is determined.

But isn't it probable—

that what the world needs now 

isn't more love, 

but more 

built-in excuses,

a secret trap door 

in a metaphysical

floor, 

a little more room 

just to jitter 

and wobble?

CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE

I exert my own kind 

of pressure 

over time; 

I pass it absent-

mindedly, or else 

forget it exists entirely. 

Like a chooser 

who chooses, with his infinite

freedom, to beg,

I sprun the past, 

with its plain face 

and bad manners—

forever waiting, jungle cat-

eyed

for just the right 

future to appear.

*

Are we dying 

to express ourselves more 

or less precisely?

To fill the tank with self-love 

or empty it 

of self-pity? 

We've been pressured to believe

all these opposites 

arose separately, 

and then synchronized 

by chance. (What are the chances 

of that?)

Who knows what sorts of errors 

have been magnified 

in the process 

of enhancement—

or how many of life's other 

magnificent annihilations 

we find ourselves out here 

wannabe-dying 

to practice.

*

All told, a life 

is a road;

there's one obvious direction, 

but many gaps 

and fissures.

And every savage experience 

is a manhole.

And the language we use 

is its scabrous 

cover.

HARBINGER

Landing all 

in a terrible rush, 

as if forcibly 

pushed by the host 

out of heaven,

the gaunt crow overtakes

the gilded autumn field

whose resplendent view I'd 

been admiring while walking.

Go ahead! Go ahead!

Make the most of this 

false show of pigment—

his coal eye

and flinty beak twitch 

to suggest—

for we both know 

when those everlasting sea-

bottom-black nights 

are due back—and you, 

ever so much bleaker

than I am on the inside,

will likely need all 

of the gold 

you can get.

LATE IN OCTOBER

A month ago, 

the same sky that now threatens 

to bulge down from heaven 

and flatten the fallow land 

was glistening blue 

as packed 

Park District pools.

Now, the birds have whisked 

the sweet summer air southward 

on their beating wings,

and flower beds 

are burial mounds 

which even the fastidious 

bees have abandoned.

What use is it

regarding what's left of the harvest, 

gathering wool and 

clever remarks

with our bodies now hiding 

the same aging machinery 

of departure

and our voices 

drifting wild through the cold 

soundless universe?

AUTUMN DEFENSE

The weather

does not even know 

we're alive,

and yet sometimes, it changes 

in ways 

which are kind.

When you're low, a white 

cloud blooms and 

blankets the sky;

when you're blue,

tongues of mellow flame, 

arrange themselves just so 

on the trees 

which array your 

apartment's bay windows—

 

wagging their yellows, 

and crimsons, 

and browns—

not to distract,

but defend

or console 

against the slowly thickening knots

of grim 

winter's shadow.

FIRST THING

First thing in the morning, 

before red 

begets gold, 

the whole world 

knows what it's like 

to feel old. 

There are those 

who rose willingly 

and pirouetted from their beds,

and then those 

who were chosen—flung forthwith

to the floor. 

And yet somehow

they all find themselves 

arriving here together

to comprise, for just 

one moment. the very core 

of re-arrival.

Every man, 

every woman, 

every creature who knows 

knows too, just as surely, 

that they've been 

this way before.

DENOUEMENT

In autumn, just as the 

root vegetables

(with all of their warts 

and nodules) fatten,

and the din 

of another great 

geese migration quickens,

and the leaves, 

which once were the green 

of an ancient sea, 

turn reference-book-brown

and spoiled-tapioca- 

pudding-yellow;

so too, then, 

does the feeling 

that we 

have been grieving—

so hard,

so incessantly,

for what must 

have been months, but 

what feels now

like centuries—begin 

to mercifully 

thicken 

and mellow. 

DISILLUSIONMENT 24-7

It can perhaps be tricky
to remember,
but your beliefs

are neither
expensive
nor sturdy.

They do not stack neatly
one on another,
like bricks,

but in truth are the shape
and consistency
of bubbles—

mysterious dirigibles
spawned from
strange wands,

and borne
on their courses by
impotent winds.

Exemplary as they are,
their translucence
was never wrought to suffer

an increase
in the altitude
or atmospheric pressure

which inevitably must presage
dissolution
and its death rattle:

that cheap little pop sound
as another evanesces
from your memory.

EXIT INTERVIEW

Sir, if you still can, try 

to think back—

which language 

did you speak 

when there was still passion 

on your breath? 

Did that passion 

leave a sign?—some distinctive  

color, or a signature

stink? And did those words 

you once rattled

 in your prime 

or dashed off

onto ream upon ream 

of cheap office paper 

really mine 

the untold depths of what 

you'd dreamed 

in your most 

exuberant philosophies? 

Or did they merely 

have to look nice, take up X 

amount of space, 

and rhyme?

PREMONITION

On some secret overcast

autumnal evenings, 

there's a pinpointable moment 

when day gets invaded 

by a parasitic night; 

when any residual warmth 

is subverted 

and the alien fog both 

condenses and grows.

From the street, 

the faint lights I now  

see in neighbors' windows 

feel at once mellow

and chillingly remote. 

It is usually then 

that the words get caught 

in my throat—

I do not know the exact specs 

of this obstacle,

but the pull is strong enough 

that I fear it's 

unsinkable. 

In a blink, some ghostly 

scenario behind my eyes flows

from unthought

to available—

to forboding—

to unthinkable.

HOW TO LOSE

At first, we cannot see ourselves 

weeping over a body,

let alone feeding one, 

owning one, 

being one. 

Then we come to know 

the gauzy feeling 

of sleep,

 

the sound of the rain 

that keeps beating 

on the ceiling,

the almost-

numb tingling buzz

of what busy is.

Now, we understand 

when we say 

we still miss them,

we don't really mean them;

what we really mean 

is us—

the us that didn't yet

know how to lose, 

the us

we only just discovered  

when we met. 

DIVEST

Outside, the obdurate 

plod of October 

rain is defeating

the tenuous will of the 

weakest leaves—

three at a time 

falling, then six, 

then twelve. 

Perhaps we too, hopeless 

but willful as these 

rooted trees,

will be driven yet completely

to divest, 

will be martyred 

to the very cause

of our changing—little by little, 

squall by squall—

into poorer but sleeker,

bankrupt, yet less 

overburdened specters 

of ourselves.

WITHHELD

Platitudes sound grand 

because often 

they're true—

but let's suppose

life doesn't even hand you 

any lemons;

how do you squeeze 

a lack of cons into pros? 

How far out of your way 

are you willing to go 

in order to make 

the most of an absence?

In the case of the lemons, 

your best bet 

is to take them: 

charter a plane

to the dark jungles 

of Myanmar

and raid a dwarfish tree there 

of its denied

bitter treasure—

as soon 

as you can be 

halfway sure

that the bloodthirsty baboons 

who live there 

aren't looking.