PLAYING CHICKEN

Those mysterious judges—

all robed and rimmed 

around the outer reaches 

of the palace you know 

when you close your eyes 

as existence—have agreed:

the question

of your identity has been 

overly-determined.

Every night, 

a blind, greedy gene 

and an all-seeing eye 

are swimming ever nearer 

in your body, 

playing chicken.

And the place 

where they meet 

and the instant 

they collide 

you'll only know,

looking back 

on your life,

as the moment you stopped 

coming closer—

and arrived. 

MUSCLE MEMORY

For as long—and just as 

surely—as the world 

has been turning, 

we too have been cooking-

up our own ways 

of spinning:

wandering out 

from our center

in increasingly wider ellipses

and screwing 

our flushed faces upward

toward heaven—

not to discern 

whether such a thing 

exists,

but rather, to repeat 

the pageantry 

of our looking 

in the hope we might 

someday internalize 

the feeling. 

LYRIC POEM

I do not want to

tell your life story; 

I could take or leave 

convincing you of things 

or clearing up residual 

hurt or confusion.

My aim is to take 

just one minute 

of your day 

and make it 

a little bit sweeter 

to have wasted: 

that peck 

on the cheek, say, 

or that drag off his cigarette—

the pensive tone of the patio music, 

or the best word for that purplest 

last bit of sunset. 

Let cohesion 

and closure sell you 

long-term relationships; 

the succor 

of hiatus 

is the only kind I solicit. 

IMPROMPTU

From the grubby 

alien ruins 

of another 

stalled-out new construction 

bursts the ceaseless 

and obdurately 

sunny song 

of some two dozen 

unseen sparrows. 

To us passing commuters, 

their elation 

sounds absrud, 

but their sureness 

proves a slender gift—

the blessing 

and curse of such

groundless motivation:

things could always 

get a little worse.

THE RETREAT

Most vacations are 

such ordeals, they're 

hardly worth the trip; 

let's face it: one bad meal, 

and Edens turn 

to nightmares, 

and wanderlust 

dies hard when it's 

mired in logistics.

And yet, somehow, 

the most excruciating 

trip I've ever taken

was the time I tried 

to stay in the

exact same position, 

forcing that old 

groove down 

as deep as I possibly could

while the rest 

of the world, 

despite my objections, 

rudely 

continued to move.

ROSE-COLORED GLASSES

As days grow long 

and warmer, it becomes 

easier to see 

how everything burns 

to take part 

in reality. 

As the sky of spring gradually 

grows less 

and less obscure, 

it reveals, perhaps

not the text of the song, 

but its birds. 

It's as if mere consciousness 

has taken the baton 

from creation, 

as all our vague 

daydreams 

and half-sure intimations 

suddenly flush with color 

and yearn 

to be expressed.

COUNSEL

Possibly because a poet's 

always there

to witness,

invariably, this

mid-morning caucus

of grackles 

will swoop down 

from the humid sky 

in irridescent ripples,

then spread their 

long tails, puff their 

black bodies, 

and all at once begin

to castigate him

from the park lawn:

there's a song 

even more 

uncongenial than ours, 

which, for obvious 

reasons, you have 

long-since given up on;

but the pull 

to be complete is ever

too sweet to resist,

and so—

before you even 

notice,

you will

feel the need

to finish it.

EXPOSED

You can count it 

and take it 

and save it 

all you want, but 

time 

will never quite 

add up to anything;

its hands

cannot satisfy—

its fabric,

is not flattering.

In fact, it's basically 

a spool 

of super-sheer organza

which you'll cut-up 

and drape

and make your tasteless 

clothes from—

then parade in

up and down your skinny 

life, like it's a catwalk—

pretending 

you look great;

pretending 

that it fits right;

pretending 

it conceals 

one single 

inch of all 

you're wrong about.

OBSCURITY REVISITED

For the millionth time, 

the hungry, lupine 

fog of Lake Michigan

roves inland, 

like some insatiable, 

blank horde of ghosts, 

where it climbs up

and bites off the tops

of our towers, 

making the whole 

bloodless landscape 

of work—

strange monoliths

of commerce, strange pride

in its permenance—

look not merely

grotesque, 

but manmade 

and self-

conscious.

UNDERSTANDING COMES WITH TIME

How many drafts 

does it take 

for a poem 

to wither 

into abiding truth? 

How many differing 

slight iterations 

before its bright, pliant lines 

start to stiffen 

and darken? 

How long before 

all of its slick words 

start to dry

and its stark, solid images 

soften up enough

such that any future reader, 

no matter how doubtful 

or artistically-uninclined, 

could read the instructions 

and easily reproduce them?

I have lost count 

of the nights it has taken 

for the full moon 

to change 

from bloodless—

to dovewhite 

in the lowest-pitched hope

that, in the mind of a person 

I don't even know yet, 

it may hang everlastingly 

in the heart 

of their cosmos 

and never start 

to wane.

ALL AT ONCE

The truly secuctive thing 

about Spring 

is the way she doesn't choose 

to dazzle anything 

gradually. 

One day—abruptly, 

like a fist 

which is opening—

on the bright-kite breeze

surfs the balmy smell 

of lilacs 

already relieved 

to find themselves

decomposing—

not to mention

every speckled starling 

who immediately begins,

when he lands 

in the green, 

to contribute his insights

to the raw mind of nature.

It's as if, 

all at once, dolor 

begins holding 

its breath

as the distance 

that exists beween heaven 

and earth 

collapses

from the width—

to the depth 

of one leaf.

SOVERIGN

Ironically, 

on any paricularly 

warm day in May, 

lurking in the shade 

makes me feel 

so much braver—

as if 

this great rolling 

penumbra of shadows

cast off by rooftops, 

tall fences,

and branches 

had lept forth expressly 

to anoint my forehead 

as it passes.

Perhaps, 

if every last thing 

the light touches 

with its inquisitive 

fingers and 

unblemished eyes

is the kingly dominion 

of some fierce, 

noble lion,

then everything it doesn't 

might as well 

be mine.

DOUBTING THOMAS

They insist—

any line,

and each sovereign part,

and every act 

of speech 

is virgin;

there's 

no such thing 

as repetition—

And that this 

isn't tyranny, 

but rather, 

salvation—

an unerring religion 

for the already-chosen

who succeed 

by teaching the truth 

they've been taught.

But it's nothing for me 

to prove 

a truth wrong:

first, I say 

maybe—and then,

maybe not. 

NAIVETE

With our notions 

of the truth 

so incessantly evolving, 

it's nice to know 

simplicity 

always exists. 

Often, guys like me 

try to use lots 

of huge words 

to reproduce 

complex and 

beautiful pictures;

we conjure them 

deliberately, then 

present them to others 

and call them 

couth tokens of our 

unsmoothed emotions.

But here once again, 

the truth 

has eluded us: 

it's always been 

those one or two 

elementary sketches—

so facile 

and innocent, which we 

never gave to anyone—

there lay our world 

at its most serene 

and authentic; 

there shone the clarity 

which always was our 

greatest gift. 

IT FIGURES

How convenient 

of the dirt 

to keep its big 

mouth shut,

settling cleanly 

what words could not.

That compulsory 

mercy 

which is 

heaped upon the dead

is exactly the kind 

I want.

LAST OF THE ICONOCLASTS

Would it make any sense 

to study 

only one insect—

a lone, discrete bee, say—

instead of a swarm? 

Why, then, are we taught 

even as children 

not to imagine ourselves 

as superheros or jets 

but instead, as the men and women 

who design, draw, 

and build them?

Today, when I looked 

from a second story window, 

I didn't think 

of the boundaries 

of The Possible; 

I thought of its rhetoric 

and the physics of flight. 

It's ironic: all this talk 

of frontiers 

and horizons 

keeping nonconformists 

stupefied—

stuck on the fence,

with the vastest 

extents of their 

ungovernable spirits

now the province 

of someone else's 

educated guess.

BOUNDARY CONDITION

When we first wake, 

if we're fortunate,

we are granted, perhaps,

one minute

when all the world is mist

and dimmest light

and innocence;

when our calcified grief 

over things 

we have done 

is mistaken, 

in our stupor, for 

the heavy pall of sleep 

and the fathomless morning 

spread out before us 

is a sweet, unblemished 

conversation 

that's been carrying on 

flawlessly for ages 

without us—

and as soon as we can

pull ourselves 

together enough to think 

of a purposive way 

to insert ourselves into it, 

that's when 

we notice: the minute

is gone.

RESONANCE

A little too

self-consciously, I wonder 

what happens

when the sparrows 

in these branches finally run 

out of melody.

Do they pass mundane 

remarks about 

the weather in its place, 

or complain 

about the poverty 

of life in a hawthorn tree? 

Do they bring tedious 

meetings to order 

to dissect the long memos 

which strictly outline 

their routines? 

And if so, would we 

harried and anxious 

passersby still find these 

conversations to be 

sonorous and pleasing 

because we feel,

in some inaccessible

recess of our breasts,

that we've

more or less had the same 

ones before ourselves? 

THE GRAND DESIGN

The ways we know to love 

are myopic 

and feeble—

they keep us as limp 

and afraid 

of what's above 

as a blind and

silent earthworm. 

And the time we have left 

to change 

our design 

is abrupt 

and compulsive 

as a supple brown bird—

razor-eyed 

but impatient, 

contoured

but cursed

with a penchant 

for finesse 

but the rash guts 

of a carnivore.

THE DEAD

The split-second 

when you wake from a long, 

grisly nightmare, 

or the breath 

you take just after 

averting some disaster—

that's when you feel sure

you are lucky 

to be alive. 

But gradually, as your 

pulse slows to normal, 

you realize 

that isn't quite right;

you soon see, as if through

a transparent prism

in which many disparate

and invisible images 

meet at one point and come into focus:

how this world 

you comprehend so well

and elucidate as precious 

really was made for—

and built—

out of them.

All the drowned and the poisoned, 

all the swallowed 

and the spent;

it's the lifeless

who endure

as pure information—

as our words, and our colors, 

and our shapes,

and our numbers,

as the premise of our theories 

and the climax 

of our stories—

and, secure as you feel 

in the continuance 

you've been given, 

you know they're

impervious 

as "forever" could get 

in the hands of the still-

temporarily-

living.

CONTINGENCY

It's a fact: you cannot, 

at present, fathom

or conjecture

in which situations, or 

to what degree

you'll matter—

because luck

and significance 

cannot be planned, 

not even 

by the staggering genius 

of the past.

Just as there was 

no way of knowing 

which minnow 

would rise 

to become the bold 

fish of evolution, 

so too, in the membrane-

thin confusion  

of this moment,

there is just about 

as little sense in 

disowning your devotions 

as there would be 

in lowering 

down to your belly 

and wriggling back 

to the ocean.