Tuesday, February 28, 2023

BAGATELLE

True blankness 
isn't white, like a glass 
of cold milk is; 

it hits not a bit 
like snow, bleached 
paper, or crisp sheets. No, 

the blankness 
which crouches
inside of you now

isn't even part
of your bodily 
experience. 

And in truth,
it's so good, 
so pure, and so right 

that it's not even 
like light,
so much as 

Einstein's densest,  
most compressed equation 
which describes it—or

maybe, it's more like 
the time 
that a cloud takes 

to rain itself cleanly right 
out of existence. 
The point is— 

what you're feeling 
is not even a feeling
it's 

the experience 
of whichever feeling 
you'd expected 

slowly dissipating—
as you come, with neither
malice or elation, 

to know: it was doing 
absolutely
nothing for you.



Monday, February 27, 2023

THE BRAVEST MAN

Here, once 
again, comes the 
illimitable sun—

that titan, 
that dynamo, 

that protector, that
exalted one—

that scourge of all 
philanderers, hard 
criminals, and drunks—

that gutsy oligarch 
of planet Earth 

who knows 
how to 
get things done. 

And you watch him
from your window 

as he ferrets 
out the gloom 

and rides upon 
his chariot toward 

the palace 
of high noon—

and you  feel, 
as you do, the relief 
in your bones

as this honey- 
golden thought
first blooms, 

then, drizzles 
down, from your head 
to your toes, 

and spreads 
to suffuse your 
unlettered soul 

with all it could 
possibly know: 

you do not have to 
do this alone.



Friday, February 24, 2023

DAMASCENE CONVERSION

For a long time, it seems,
we've been looking 
for the source 

of the biggest ideas 
in the universe  
inside of things

but perhaps 
we've been putting all our 
eggs in the wrong basket, 

and we'd be so much 
the wiser to invert
our tired search.

Perhaps, in fact, 
all we can sense
is abstract, 

and only the stark-
ly analytic
is real. 

Arithmetic, identity, 
virtue, logic, etc—
what if 

all these are 
are the bricks 
and the mortar—

the internet, 
water, heat, garbage, 
and electric?

And the warmth
I can feel 
in the palm of a hand

is the only way I'll 
ever understand 
true acceptance—

or the sound of my 
boot soles on 
ground is 

awakening—
or this city's sidewalks
are my church?



Thursday, February 23, 2023

LESSER EVIL

Believe it or 
not, noon still comes 
to the square, 

where the footpath 
is once again clotted 
with pigeons—mottled gray 

and filthy 
with the greenish light 
of winter, 

a dozen or more 
swarm at my feet, and beg 
to be perceived. 

And who am I, 
I think, to resist
reinventing,

or expanding
and collapsing them 
into a poem—

lest this numb, 
and intransigent, 
and wholly uninteresting cold 

interpose 
to rule that safe 
asylum in my mind, 

just as it will surely 
come to ruin
these city sidewalks 

long before one shabby 
glut of birds has 
had the chance to?



Wednesday, February 22, 2023

NEVER TRUST A POET

First of all, 
they always talk 
about devotion 

as if it made a 
difference—
as if 

the distance 
between persons 
were just the same 

as the distance 
between objects—

and could thusly 
be bridged 

by some mass 
exegesis, 

and then sumptuous 
arrangement 

of bland  
counterfactuals. 

*

Next, they conflate 
hopelessness

with the state 
of immortality—

insisting 
that sometimes we don't 
have a choice 

but to stand, for all 
intents and 

purposes, permanently 
aghast 

at the prodigious depths  
of our own 
shallowness.

*

And last, but not 
least, 

they all rhapsodize 
desire

as if this were 
desirable—as if it 
weren't 

fulfillment's 
opposite.



Tuesday, February 21, 2023

ROAMING

By late February, 
when winter 
is a thin and haggard ghost,

and streets are clogged 
with slow-going cars and

closed-lipped 
commuters going 
through their weary motions—

even the chalkwhite, 
supposedly empty 

treasure trove of 
bracing-cold sky is 
not so—even the notion, 

say, of barrenness,
or vacancy 

is choked 
with the desiccated 
caws of old crows, 

which ricochet
off surfaces too
salt-caked for snow, 

driving me further 
and further away

from recalling 
some sentimental snatch 
of a poem.



Monday, February 20, 2023

POEM WITH NO BOTTOM

With each hard laugh, 
the hatred 
in our hearts

may be halved
(hatred cut slow- 
but-steady 

by our heroes,
as a babbling 
brook shaves a rock 

into canyon),
but that 
asymptotic curve 

shall never 
hit zero. 
Still, though 

we'll dolefully
open that scar. 
And

what choice do we have?
Our hurt
may be salved, 

but can never 
be spent—
such is 

the fantastic
depth 
of our reservoirs.



Friday, February 17, 2023

INDISPOSED

Those nights 
when we're contented 
enough with our 

discontent to notice, 
we may glimpse 
the eternities 

which are 
sandwiched 
between moments—

like gleaming marrow 
locked 
in femur bones;

like a drawer 
full of long-expired
checks we cannot cash.

In fact, this may
explain why we're 
so often restless—

restless to the point, 
perhaps, of desperate 
and tense—

any time we 
find ourselves awake 
instead of dreaming

of the endless 
lives of 
satisfaction 

every 
second 
burns to ash.


Thursday, February 16, 2023

CAVEAT EMPTOR

You don't get older
gradually;

it happens
overnight. Unlike

a good fruit, which 
will sweeten
as it softens,

the delicate, crisp 
silhouette you had bought

might jump, as you
snooze,
from tight

and smooth—
right past rot 

and baggy
ruin, and straight 

to formless 
oblivion.


Wednesday, February 15, 2023

ONE SIMPLE THING

It's there, in the 
briefest downward 
swish 

of our eyelids—
when the unconscious 
works hardest

to perfect its 
most plausible 

and yet least grim 
denial of that 
absolute black;

and it's there, too,
in the invisible 
kiss against our lips 

we feel as each stubbornly 
fixed prior cause 

is wed 
to its capricious next
proximate effect, 

both smug 
in their insidiously 
universal perpetuity—

it's the one simple thing 
which even 
the Buddha 

could never quite manage 
to cross off 
his to-do list

and the very last bit 
of Newton's 
old physics 

which still resists 
all modern attempts
at interpretation;

it's god's 
damn machine;

the irreducible 
constant;

the little trouble we 
laypeople call:
expectation.



Tuesday, February 14, 2023

SUNK-COST FALLACY

In a season 
where hearts most resemble 
dead leaves, 

our offensive of indifference 
is concealed 
like the wind

as it permeates 
the skin and swiftly 
subjugates rejection. 

So what, we want to spit 
blindly at the seers,
 
if we choose to flirt 
a little bit with 
distance? 

Is it not a fact 
that repeated gestures 
build significance?

So what 
if our love language 

turns out to be 
ventriloquy? 

Is it not more empowering 
to perish the thought

that our wanderings
in the desert of another
were for nothing?

To still believe their slights 
may yet turn out to be 
that promise,

that errorless envoy
which renders angels 
unnecessary?


Monday, February 13, 2023

ACTION POTENTIAL

This (and only this) 
is how things 
currently stand: 

the present is just 
the future's grave 
remembrance of the past.

As electrons fizz 
and fudge 
the black gap 

between dendrite 
trees and their
bygone axons, 

words whose constituent 
letters aren't clear 

cohere and steal silences 
which can't be 
stolen back. 

They say that 
no one's fully conscious 

until they feel
desperate—
and disconcertingly 

certain 
that they don't belong

as close 
as they've come 
to the fulminant nothing 

from which 
all of their thoughts
have sprung. 



Friday, February 10, 2023

FULL CIRCLE

In the beginning 
there are

position 
and number;

all is raw 
as we are 

naked,
and spectacularly 

there. 

*

Before long
we crave more 
provisional things 

such as color,
sound, taste,
smell, and touch—and then 
ardor.

We get high 
on the high-resolution 
of pictures 

and objectify
subjects whose 
cores 
we most adore.

*

Latterly, though, 
we are goaded toward 
repentance;

we grow wary 
of these sentences

and wearier
of stimuli; 

we're no 
bacchants, 

but docile 
(though headstrong) 
philosophers,

hellbent on 
glimpsing things 
as they really are—

by which, 
of course, we 
finally mean:

with our never 
having been here.



Thursday, February 9, 2023

ERSATZ

From crib 
to crypt, syllable 

by syllable, only 
a makeshift 

self is constructed—
a papier mâché 

in which 
similar sounds 

are bound 
with the starch 

of incessant 
repetition 

to create, 
not a man

or a principle 
or a brand, but 

the one thing 
which no one can 

ever agree on: 
the heart 

of an in-
comprehensible story—

the "obvious"
meaning 

in a true work 
of art.



Wednesday, February 8, 2023

INSIGNIFICANT ODE

Insouciant, 
restrictive, 

and frightfully 
dull though it is, 
an eternity 

of tedium 
might have its upside—
which is 

namely, that it's difficult 
for its downside 
to exist.

if, after death, 
a fearless 
soul does not present itself—

if no reckoning 
or cessation, 

but only some dis-
embodied lack 

of interest 
in either one persists—

what is found 
shall quite obviously
mean very little, since

what might have been 
lost can no longer 
haunt us

or put its 
religious-

sounding words 
in our mouths.



Tuesday, February 7, 2023

SIMULTANEITY

Like invisible wind stirring 
phantom leaves 

on a dead-
to-the-world old 
elm tree in February, 

so you, too 
reshuffle reams 
of dull memories 

to which you still cling, though 
you never seemed
to live-through.

You see obscure eternities
meandering forever, 

while recalling 
with clarity, that it all started 
somewhere.

Just for now, all your fear 
can be turned 
inside-out 

to resemble 
what you'd called, in your 
foolish youth, "wonder,"

while the confusion, 
which looms in the darkness
at its center

both attracts and 
consumes you—

like a massive 
black hole in the middle 
of the universe

and a huge, heavy whetstone 
which your strength
will not move—even as 

you somehow use it 
to sharpen-up
your truth.



Monday, February 6, 2023

SYNTACTICAL RETREAT

What are these statues 
we're all turning 
into? 

The slightest 
discrepancy—a pea
beneath the mattress— 

is all that's required 
to stilt integration, 

to pause "Good
Vibrations,"

to completely upend 
the conversation. 

*

Perhaps 
Yeats misspoke in that 
things fall apart;

perhaps they just harden 
and reduce 
and conserve. Until 

all that we are 
is lines, arches 
and serifs—some dawn

just behind, 
some ahead 
of their curves. 

From Abraham and Sarah, 
to Peaches 
and Herb—

sooner 
or later, everyone
is a word.



Friday, February 3, 2023

NOTHING'S OUT OF BOUNDS

Spurred as they are 
by spectra 
past our kenning, 

hollow bodies aimed 
by the thrumming 
ultraviolet,

migrating birds 
have no feeling 
for our borders—

just as 
that sadness
which arises absurdly 

and flits among us 
damned to tread cement 
and dirt and grass

will alight and persist
long past its 
advantage, having no sense 

of terminus—
and no respect 
for facts.



Thursday, February 2, 2023

CONSERVATION OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM

The will to live is 
a pendulum 

which swings 
from regret to 
anticipation.

The bottom 
of the carton;

a cold whisper 
of Spring;

the sound, on your 
end, of their cell phone
still ringing—

there's no fact 
of the matter 
that won't do-si-do 

because even they know: 
The Actual
is a stopped-clock 

which might 
suffice once 
or twice, but 

The Possible 
is the sun 

that keeps us gunning 
for horizons.



Wednesday, February 1, 2023

SEEKING ASYLUM

For argument's sake, 
let's say you're
a sort of pioneer 

who casts-off for new
truths on each 
day of the week. 

One day, the sun soothes, 
and the moon's a wedge 
of cheese;

the next, the whole 
solar system's some 
godless conspiracy, 

and you're scared 
to look up, lest they see 
your unbelief. 

Would you still get 
the feeling of 
love at first sight 

each time that you hugged 
the next curve 
of your silo? 

On an exit-poll, would you 
rate yourself as more
or less contented 

than all of your 
dear fellow 
inmates who reside there 

never to be able 
to recall 
the first name—

or the face—
or the smell of the 
devil you know?