JITTERBUG

The unmappable 

stars,

the unshakable 

sea,

the unspeakable, recalcitrant, 

irrevocable things 

that jitterbug in the vacuum-

space between 

you and me—

such barren 

and rootless 

and vain names we give 

to things 

which have sung, for 

so long now, in pitches 

which extend 

far beyond the highest edge

of our existence.

IT'S COMPLICATED

When we still feel

so sure 

about who 

we should love, 

it's the loss 

of all we knew about 

how 

that most

crushes us.

DEPARTURE

Again and again, 

what is gone 

tumbles forth 

in the drum of our minds

as a stone

to be polished;

it rolls off 

our uncluttered tongues 

so discretely 

that we measure 

its weight, and then call that

the truth. 

But what persists 

cannot be 

parsed or counted,

or owned 

any more than the air 

that fills the room; 

while we mill around

and think and speak, it wafts 

between us invisibly,

evocative as perfume

or the taste of good honey

to our taciturn senses,

and so inexplicable, 

even to our voices, that we 

fudge it slightly 

in our recollections 

and judiciously call it 

the beauty.

BAD ANALOGY

Even though 

it would be more 

straightforward,

we don't want to believe 

that grief works

like a street, 

on the other side of which 

are all the places 

we need to be.

That would mean

that all we had to do 

was wait patiently 

for the traffic to abate 

before we take 

our opportunity. 

But really, we don't dare 

venture across 

until we're ready—

and we're loathe 

to be ready 

(even going so far 

as to resent the conceit 

that we will be 

eventually)—since

readiness suggests 

we've accepted 

the premise 

that an absence 

could infest us 

in the first place. 

READY OR NOT

It seems now, in 

everything 

still to follow, 

nothing at all 

will rigidly follow.

We've been told

there is so much light 

we can't see,

but none 

that won't use us,

none 

that we might not 

someday be—

and that 

where words would never

dare to go, 

feeling 

still remains.

But nothing will change 

the feeling of dismay 

that the weather today

would dare be 

so fair 

or shame 

that food still tastes 

pretty good.

We think: if we could 

hurl ourselves hard 

into that wall of all experience 

and burst, in an instant, into 

frenzies of pigeons...

but no. Only you 

could do that 

and get away with it.

ALL THERE IS

There ought to be
no such thing
as culmination,

for there aren't any limits 

to those things 

which stay hidden. 

All of the options, 

all of the spurs 

and passions that we weigh 

are measly little bulwarks 

against the pure flood

of confusion. 

So I guess it must be 

true, then—

there really is 

no extent 

to what is possible;

there are just a few

prerequisites. 

Firstly, that the beautiful 

must stay shackled 

to the temporary; 

and second, 

that an absence, the instant

it is felt 

must then remain 

unbearably 

present 

for the duration.

AFFIRMATION

Do you still wish 

those errant, 

ungovernable parts of you—

that uniformless 

gray 

which sometimes 

smears the blue 

sky of your body,

those bottle caps 

and six-pack rings 

and rusty left boots

in your oceans

in your brain—

would submit 

to your rule 

and keep themselves contained?

Is the Earth 

the raison d'être
of the moon?

 

Does the sun 

ever seem to be 

ashamed 

of the rain?

PORTENT

By this point in autumn, 

the moribund sun 

has begun to take its 

own appearance 

a little too self-consciously—

draping itself 

in stiff muslin of clouds 

so that none can see 

how pale, how 

slight it has become 

and keeping even lower 

as it lopes its daily rounds 

to avoid being 

spotted—or, heaven forbid, 

adored—

by stark, starving crowds 

of finches, for instance,

who, instead of singing it 

sumptuous hymns,

are compelled to dart and argue 

on the dusk-

darkened grounds

over cold, hollow husks 

of yesterday's bread.

MASTERMIND

I guess I can only 

believe it 

when they tell me 

that eternities 

of time 

and all 

of vast space 

had to converge

like a car crash 

and congeal 

just to create the rough, 

serrated edge 

of my milky-white, 

brittle right-

hand pinky fingernail. 

And yet, it makes me 

nervous enough 

to chew the thing 

clean off 

to know that 

there ought to be 

so many melodies—

discriminate 

and ancient, and all 

bundled up inside of me—

which only some set of fingers 

distant and opaque to me

knows how 

to choose from—and to truly 

play well.

SEMIPRO

No poet 

worth their salt 

would ever tell

the truth—

that everyday's 

epiphanies 

are little more than 

consolations, 

or that passion 

and fervor 

are handy tricks

of rhetoric 

but are hardly 

prerequisites 

and are no one's 

responsibility. 

They withhold 

such thoughts not 

because they know 

that they ought 

to come across, 

above all, as both 

conceptual 

and real—but 

because 

they've been told 

by low murmurs of, 

prosaic wind 

that just being there 

to misapprehend those

is a feeling 

so much bigger 

than any thin 

description of 

experience will 

ever feel.

LITTLE TROUBLE

It's there—

in those disorienting 

little white blips 

which appear 

and dance zigzags 

when you shut 

and clench 

your eyelids;

which seem to flaunt 

consequence 

and silently 

push back 

against your mind's 

own disorienting- 

but-steadfast denial 

of what you 

could never call 

absolute black—

that's where 

the very last and 

as-yet unexplained 

mystery that's left 

in all of modern 

physics lives: 

that tiny 

but stubbornly 

irreducible constant, 

that little corpuscle 

of troublesome 

noise in the signal 

which laypeople 

still call their sense 

of intuition. 

EVANESCENCE

Our beliefs are not 

the crystals 

we would think; 

they don't accrete slow  

until they're sharp, hard,

and beautiful. 

Rather, they 

are bubbles—

mysterious dirigibles 

borne by the wind 

and birthed from breaths 

which we blow 

though magic wands, 

resplendent 

in the sun and streaked 

with magic colors—

but none of them 

built to withstand 

the mildest altitudes 

or suffer the slightest 

external pressure—

and which bequeath 

at their deaths quick 

felicitous pops 

built to make a child laugh

and then flee

from its memory.

BOUND

When the day's at its end, 

get as still

as you can, 

and you may hear, 

hidden within 

each pulse of breath, 

the very next line 

to a pledge 

of allegiance 

which you must have 

somehow memorized 

very long ago 

right down 

to every last syllable 

and inflection. 

And you know 

you can't quit while you're 

still in the middle; 

you are no volunteer

here; this is sheer 

conscription. It's like—

every instant 

you're alive, there's this 

frantic drill sergeant

shrieking at you 

with his 

repetitious numbers

to keep 

the production and pace 

of your life 

moving smoothly 

at the very same

speed all the time—

with no regard at all

for its length 

or direction. 

AUBADE

Maybe, our love 

was not a gift

made for us.

Maybe it doesn't function

like a service 

or product, but 

more like a process—

like nuclear fusion 

in the sun,

where everywhere 

you looked, you'd see tons 

of doomed couples 

breathlessly speeding 

head-on 

toward one another, 

colliding and expiring, 

to create 

something rarer,

something heavier 

and just a little bit more 

precious than they were—

not to mention, 

a tiny fraction of heat 

and of light 

which might make 

the lives of some

billions of others 

far, far away from there 

a little more 

possible.

SPECIFIC CANDLES

The best love poems

are always 

trying their best 

not to come across 

as too dull 

or too clever.

They often involve rhyming 

the same words together, 

over and over 

and over 

and over. 

The truest ones 

don't settle for 

"patient" and "kind;" 

they describe love 

as "sucker"

and "enabler" 

and are not scared to show it 

waiting forever 

in parking lots 

scanning all the outbound 

faces from the car

or sitting alone 

in darkened kitchens, long after

specific candles have dwindled. 

But most importantly, 

the best love poems

don't reveal much;

like our lives, they're over 

far too abruptly

for that—

besides, even if 

they saw something,

they'd probably lie—

or talk around it 

on the sly—or just 

never bring it up.

END TIME

By November, 

any hesitation has been drowned

in early shade; 

anywhere you look, all life 

has begun 

to uncomplicate.

All feel 

the centripetal pull—

irresistible 

as the center of a 

famished black hole—

from clock hands 

that whir toward 

their end time, invisible. 

Some can even hear it: 

that imperative 

of the thinning air 

daring them

to carry their coherence 

for much longer. 

While the deaf 

are unceremoniously stretched 

and bent, squeezed and rent 

of even their unutterable 

concept 

of halcyon. 

MISSION IMPROBABLE

With that first slap 

of existence, 

you are told

congratulations;

you are contestant number 

eight billion 

and one—

you are 

the chosen one—you 

will be upgraded.  

And just like that, 

you're an 

astronaut, 

an intrepid explorer 

of inscrutable territory. 

Your experimental endeavor 

(which you cannot 

decline): 

to hurtle, in this 

gangly vessel, headlong 

toward the future—

flying at the fantastical 

rate of one second 

per second, 

each and every second—

and then, 

when, at long last 

and terrible cost, you 

finally arrive, 

to promptly check-in

on the status 

of the rest of us.

PREORDAINED

Kaleidoscope 

of colored leaves, 

tumbling erratic

in shifting streams

of wind, 

though such 

an obvious 

fate has befallen thee—

collapsed,

soaked in torrents,

then dried 

by the breezes—

would that the stems, 

hearts, and edges 

of our lives 

come through it all 

so vivid, 

so crisp, and 

so clean.

GOSPEL

The good news is—

Eternity 

does exist;

the bad news 

is—you're in

the middle of it already. 

Not to mention,

as rewards go, it's less  

a cash settlement 

than it is 

an inheritance 

which is marred by stipulations.

What you want 

from such a heaven is 

to finally be together again;

what you get 

from it instead is: an utter lack 

of separation. 

THIS IS IT

Even if I were able 

to live 

in the moment,

it would still feel 

like suicide 

when the next one arrived.

And even though 

tomorrow, 

I will just as likely say 

that I shall trust 

and heed nothing 

outside of that day, 

I still cling to the fate 

which has found me in this one

as if to slow its passing by. 

By now, I know the stars we use 

to find our position 

have long ago exploded, 

but still, I 

can't remember 

what I've lied about last, 

or the child I must have 

been before I ever 

got the chance.