IDENTIKIT

Believe in yourself, 

they all used 

to tell me—

as if I 

was really 

a caped crusader, 

a crimefighter 

cloaked in a nom de guerre. 

They may have 

had a point there 

about the mask 

of duplicity, 

but some superhero 

I've turned out to be—

I can't even seem 

to bend 

even slightly 

the bars 

in the prison 

of this body. 

*

Trying to convince yourself 

there's no such thing as solidity 

is a lot like banging 

your head against a wall. 

Protons, 

electrons, 

gamma radiation—?

Referring to yourself 

in the first person 

suddenly just feels wrong. 

*

There's nothing pacific 

about the ocean, 

the way it 

keeps thrashing its wings 

against the sand. 

But who am I 

to envision a better way? 

Who am I 

to say 

how to bear—

to withstand?

Immeasurable 

reach 

needs

impossible hands.

ODE ON INERTIA

The way  

each heavy-

with-holy water droplet 

hits 

and resounds 

upon the surface of a pond 

like the infinite,

transient 

drone of a gong—as if, 

for always 

and ever, it was

the only one—

honest-to-god momentum 

looks a lot 

like its opposite.

But curious 

enough, we only know 

what's honest

by the way it leaves us

hanging on 

for so long 

after it's 

already gone. 

METEMPSYCHOSIS

In the infinite 

closet known as 

immateriality, 

it must be hard 

for a cold

little soul 

searching 

and searching 

in the desperate dark 

for the armholes 

in a garment 

called the heart

of a stranger. 

MAD RUSH

Ironically, it's just that 

pliant softness

and fragility 

of open petals 

that causes us, as we 

dash past, to grow 

anxious—

to clamp our mouths 

shut, stiffen 

up, and become 

what we fear most: those 

tense, insipid 

imitations of ourselves. 

It's as though, 

when confronted 

with such 

slow and deliberate 

forms of movement, 

our subconscious aches 

from its breakneck approach.

But instead of going limp, 

we go 

unbending

as we make haste 

for cover, since we feel

so exposed. 

NEW AGE

In the end, perhaps 

it'll all come out 

like a laugh 

from the mouth of each play-

acting skeleton—

how the truth 

was a leaf 

in the air 

for a moment

just before it hit the ground:

a surfeit 

of love,

always there—

but no 

care, because 

no self. 

THAT'S PROGRESS

All our lives, 

we can't shake 

the feeling 

that our bodies 

should be more static—

not these great 

twist contests 

of vestigial viruses

and genes 

in giant lines, switching 

off and on again 

one at a time 

like they're taking turns trying 

to duck the limbo stick. 

In fact, it seems 

almost automatic—

every precious time 

we get the chance 

to close our eyes, we see 

in a dream, the lure 

of advancement 

as an abstract 

substitute for light—

that feeling of warmth 

by which we might, 

in an ancient time, 

once have felf 

unselfconscious enough 

to unspool 

in the water—to expand 

and to rise 

toward a surface that, 

to breach, we all knew 

would be suicide. 

PSYOP

Fleshy scented

fists of magnolias 

shall uncurl 

and beckon in 

troves of mist 

as cardinals 

issue falsely 

approbative dictums 

and gestures 

toward warm 

breezes come and go 

coyly as so much

conditional love—

and this 

is how April 

will manage to sell 

its thirty-

day-wind-and-rain 

hell to its victims. 

MUTE SWAN

Perhaps the only 

extant creature 

to have successfully 

upended the belief 

in her own body, 

she alone knows—

to catch the wild quiet 

and keep it 

is harder 

than it seems at first. 

And perhaps, 

to achieve this, 

she has spent her life picturing 

a breath 

without limits,

a breadth 

with no length, 

a burst far beyond 

the bounds of sound and color 

too haphazard 

to ever have been 

intended. 

But more likely, 

she has learned 

in the monochrome fire 

of repetition

how to forge 

a more effortless noise 

with neither the desire 

nor the need 

to make another. 

 

THE IMPERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Viewing their star 

from increasingly far 

as the explosion 

we live in 

rides the spine of everything

each night will add 

just another 

milligram to hell.

As if the ghosts 

that swam in these shells 

could not possibly find 

their way home 

without reminding 

that matter can neither 

be created nor destroyed,

that the gaping 

void is no match 

for mathematics.

And so, we try to focus 

on the faith that our facts 

persist without us; 

gradually, 

we learn not to be 

afraid of growing distance—no, 

it's the tiniest 

change in brightness 

that shatters us. 

THEME AND VARIATION

When the keynotes

and leitmotifs drafted 

in dreams 

begin to seem tedious 

and overly repetitive,

perhaps that is when 

we're impelled 

to wake up 

and witness afresh 

how the many rooms 

of consciousness 

also incessantly 

urge and repeat. 

*

It's a curious thing

to feel 

disarmed by duplication—

the copy-pasted nodding 

heads of daffodils 

beside the path, 

or the headlong rush 

of grackle songs unspooling 

from the cool penumbra. 

From what 

have we just been 

relieved or exempted? 

As often, the pith 

of feeling will not bear 

articulation. 

EXPLORING

Behind the convenience store, 

oblivious to me, 

a cadre of shrieking 

laughing gulls 

heedlessly scavenges 

the disarrayed trash, 

finding nothing precious there—

other than the difficulty 

of taking themselves, or one 

another too seriously. 

*

We like to believe 

that effort 

is accumulated,

but the truth is 

it's negotiated, moment 

by moment.

Satisfaction, equanimity—these 

are loss leaders,

lagging indicators. 

To receive 

our daily bread 

is blissfully bearable, but 

to forage it

instead? Nothing 

could be trickier. 

* 

At long last, you 

discover: the fact of the matter

is, at best, an atlas. 

Whereas 

its reality 

is a landmass—

a pristine 

island Eden—

a country with no roads.

SPRING PSYCHOANALYZED

It's a peculiar thrill

the way the nascent 

season teases us—

advances, then retreats; 

pronounces, 

then repeats—

as if it somehow 

gets us off to see 

uncertainty made manifest.

This disarrayed mix 

of encouraging breezes 

and hectoring sleet 

must bring to mind 

our own haste 

and reluctance—

those sides of us 

which are not content 

with the surety of stasis, 

which crave a container

for their own 

ambivalence 

and find nothing 

hotter than the lack 

of intent. 

OSMOTIC FLOW

As water moves 

through ground-

up coffee—corpuscle

by corpuscle:

the littlest peace

of mind.

JUST GUESSING

If nothing 

needed doing, what 

would I do?

Without an observer 

to despise 

or enjoy me, 

would my need to deploy one 

make me chattel 

or deity? 

For a ghost, 

there's no such thing 

as friction 

(though of course, I'm 

just guessing); 

Likewise, 

for a photon, 

no time passes 

as it wends and twists 

its way 

through the infinite 

vacuum of space. 

If what I resist most 

is just emptiness 

and void, 

how would 

not resisting it feel 

any different? 

DISCREPANCY

Some chords 

seem to naturally 

resolve themselves to others, 

while a few 

sound stranded 

no matter what you do. 

Some people you know 

are like that too; 

some words 

you send 

mean even less to them  

than their displeasure—

while others, much more 

than you intend,

trembling

like malleable bits 

of unearned treasure. 

but then—who gets to say

how much 

things mean,

or even—

what units 

should be used 

to make the measure? 

INSTINCT

Smitten 

by the heretofore 

derelict sun, 

warblers flood 

the lawn, repeating 

the only note 

they know by heart—

as if 

serving the light

by taking dictation—

as if the world's 

most transcendent art 

were to wring 

every last bit 

of tartness from it,

leaving, thereby, 

only sweetness behind. 

And perhaps, 

some canny witness 

may say 

that to act out of impulse 

can never be sublime—

that there is no transcendence 

in quotation 

of a known text. 

And all I could say 

would be that I 

agree: 

there is only 

every implication. 

SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES

Tuck stop full 

of chary strangers, 

not fighting 

over resources, 

not even talking— 

a little taste 

of Purgatory 

right here on Earth. 

*

Every kid  

wants to know 

where do thoughts 

come from? 

It's rare an old

ascetic wonders 

where 

do they go? 

*

If the soul 

is not of the body—

if it tenors-on 

long after 

the vehicle is dead—

must we not admit 

it just 

sits back and 

watches all this—

bored, 

reticent, 

disinterested? 

NOW AND THEN

There

at the cinched severe 

center of the hourglass—

where nothing 

is pent-up 

but all is interposed;

after thought goes 

but before feeling 

has arrived;

where one 

might well find, 

(if one were so inclined)

just one grain of time 

which is neither cached 

nor spent—

there is the best

speck of proof 

you will find—

compellingly weightless,

exquisitely benign—

of the sustenance 

many call intelligent 

design. 

THE AGNOSTIC

You would grant that 

there's a plane 

through which 

all things intersect—

it's just 

foreign as heaven 

to a deep sea fish. 

But make a wish 

and listen: does the answer 

form a question?

Is your notion of god

like a hermit crab shell—

an awkward and 

abandoned vessel?

In that case, hold it close 

and listen; you are 

bound to hear the ocean. 

MISADVENTURE

Grim scythe 

of morning by the rain-

bedeviled shore

where wet fat crows sift 

through the mist,

spearing worms

and take turns defying,

with each hoarse

craggy laugh,

the baggy nets cast 

by my best 

metaphors. 

WRITING AS A DISCIPLINE

Notice how,

day after day, the blue 

waterfall of dawn 

fearlessly 

moves to drown 

the nonpareil moon:

there is neither sorrow 

nor jubilation 

in the action—

just the dutiful execution 

of each peerless 

new tomorrow.