HARVEST

With most of this 

city still bugged-

out for environs 

in the moon-

swallowed wake 

of another Thanksgiving, 

I pause 

to regard my growing 

streetlamp celebrity—

my analog feed, 

which keeps 

blowing up—

not with follows, 

but with paw-

tracked snow; 

not with tweets, 

but caws. 

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I MADE THE WORLD?

I do not want 

to ask that question; 

what I want is to stand 

underneath 

and inside it—

to feel it accrete 

around me like a pearl 

around a grain of sand, 

until I'm not the one 

who is doing the asking; 

I am the one who is 

doing the accretion—

dancing like 

dust coalescing 

around 

what wonder 

must be lost 

whenever we seek an answer; 

when we sellout 

our attention, 

or turn it upside-down 

and watch 

the nothing that was in there 

fall back to the ground.

AUTOPILOT

After each 

alarm, the precious 

interim 

of boredom.

A carapace of dust 

begins to form 

around the plangent 

call to self-harm—

but unfortunately, 

also around

the one to self-

report. 

*

It manifests less 

like destiny 

than cruise control 

or autopilot. 

After a while, 

you feel blessed 

to have no choice; 

Never mind the abyss; 

you have gazed 

at the on-and-off blinking 

lights of you life—

those phased 

rhythmic stutters 

of your days and nights— 

for so long 

that you've become 

hypnotized by the sight 

of repetition's ocean, 

where thoughts don't dare 

to delve 

for fear of drowning;

where all your burdens 

still exist, but 

seem to lift 

and drop themselves.  

YOU NEVER KNOW

Suppose for a moment: 

ambition's not the issue. 

Short of money, looks, 

and the privilege 

of ambivalence, 

what on Earth else 

could be wrong with you?  

*

Growing older 

is like binging 

a riveting 

series on Netflix, 

desperate to know 

what comes next—but 

in reverse: 

all of the whispers, 

the taste of their lips—

even the texture 

of that fabric 

on your fingers—

disappears; it

starts rushing backwards 

in a torrent 

as you sit there 

transfixed before 

all you never learned. 

You realize (for instance), 

watching found families 

back away from one another 

and old lovers shrink. 

and smooth-out. and weaken, 

that all along, 

you'd been too glib 

or hasty 

when you said you knew love;

what you really felt 

(or thought you did) 

was loveliness 

mixed with safety. 

*

Skin blushes, 

sugar rushes, 

pleasure felt in rhyming—

how much of this 

would still be important 

with the Great 

Lakes dried-up 

and the west coast 

in the ocean? 

You cannot be sure,
so you'd better list 

everything. 

CONDOLENCES

"Not half bad!" cheep 

the migrating 

barn swallows 

as they bed down 

for the evening in the cart 

outside the store. 

But when I ask them 

to elaborate, they only keep 

repeating themselves,

so I continue 

through the lot alone 

on my pedestrian chore. 

Though admittedly

a little more 

slowly than before—

thinking, after all, 

I've got things 

to get done, 

and others 

to get over—

but also, now

a few 

on which to land 

until tomorrow. 

HARD MODE

What I want 

is to have been given 

all the answers 

in advance. 

What I get instead 

are platitudes, 

highlights, 

spot-lit, 

slowly rotating 

carousels of facts—

not collected, 

but selected prose. 

And how tempting it is 

to punch in 

the cheat code; 

to let one thing, 

not  support, but 

stand in for another; 

for dessert to take 

the place of dinner. 

But no, there's not 

an app for that. 

The map is not 

the territory—

no matter 

how intricate 

or lovingly rendered. 

Facts are not objects; 

truth is not beauty; 

and beauty 

is something more 

than order.  

HOT TOPIC

The saving grace 

of intrusive thoughts 

is how they 

never seem to make themselves 

at home,

how each 

is preempted, and prevents 

the last one

from getting stuck 

in the flow. 

*

Obscure loops 

of bird slang 

buffeting me 

from the roof in 

the morning

like shrill orbits 

around a supermassive 

object, long-collapsed; 

like empty electron shells 

around a hydrogen atom. 

all going nowhere 

in the most urgent fashion; 

like a time-lapse 

of doomed bees in what's left 

of autumn flowers—

showing me there's always 

something to remember, 

even if I only know that

because I have forgotten. 

*

The hottest gift 

this Christmas season 

is suspension 

of your disbelief 

that, unlike loneliness 

or empty space, 

need is a hole 

you can fill 

with itself. 

COAT OF ARMS

November rose 

near the fence, you're 

an argument—

tattered, not fragrant;

more thorns 

than petals—yet 

fierce enough 

to be here, 

to press a point 

that no longer matters—

to voice your concern 

for childless mothers 

and endangered 

pink elephants; 

for punk rock dads 

whose roots are showing

and half-novels mired 

in dark locked drawers—

in short, 

for the lost race; 

for the cursed family tree; 

for the not-unhappily dark

and stormy future 

of irrelevance. 

CONFLICT AVOIDANCE

The incongruously sweet 

talk of pigeons 

in the park 

as they run 

interference all 

over one another, 

scrimmaging 

for corn crumbs, plum 

pits, bread crusts—

though strange-

ly attractive, is 

not such a good trick—

this glut 

of rapprochement, 

this spurious gossip,  

this little bit 

of trouble which

adds such spice to dinner

must be indicative 

of something 

I do too, but—

I don't even want to know what. 

COMING TO TERMS

Once-noble savages 

with their hands 

on the monolith 

are now become, not death,

but hapless 

fish 

who got snagged 

in six-pack holders—

who found their fins tangled 

in a flimflam of options, 

or got strangled 

by the disembodied 

washing-hands of explication.

Great inviolate nets 

of cause and effect 

trawled through oceans 

of perspective, seaching 

for the bottom—

but such a glut 

of explanations

was less of a cure 

than a clue 

to what was missing 

and filled precious 

little of that trench 

in the truth; 

now, none are left

to acknowledge 

that depth 

is just height as seen 

from another point of view.

DRUTHERS

In this fairy tale, 

everyone dreams,

not of riches, but 

of becoming 

a meme.

Don't think

wishing stars,

think bondage constellations.

All the children 

"vibe so hard" 

with Rumpelstiltskin's 

POV. 

*

Everyone 

wants to make 

something out of nothing. 

Some would go 

so far as to say 

that truth 

is a parasite 

on beauty; 

if they had their way, 

some would say 

that rhetoric  

is not opposite, 

but prerequisite 

to plague—

that intercourse 

is poison; 

good faith, contagion's 

larval stage. 

GOD EXPLAINS THE JOKE

To the extent 

that it "existed,"

all poetic language 

was a farce 

of your mistaken 

sense of mastery 

over feeling. Sometimes, 

yes, your thoughts 

were scalding-

hot water,

and some pleasingly 

strict little poem 

was the pot;

but were you 

not so taken

with the aptness 

of that metaphor, 

you might have finally 

thought to address 

the question 

of the burner.

IN FOR A PENNY

None of us 

actually asked 

to be born. 

Not the scorn 

or the stress; 

not the laughter 

or the sex 

(however respectively 

uproarious and fabulous); 

not to know hunger 

or the comforting tug 

of fabric on skin, 

or the dizzy 

oblivion after 

spinning pirouettes. 

All that we requested 

was to know 

how it felt 

to draw breath just once 

and to speak—

or, to wit: 

to peek out 

from these shells and 

proclaim our strange dreams. 

But in our vim 

to strike a bargain,

it seems we forgot 

to stipulate that anyone 

should be there

to listen;

and little did we know

how often 

we’d find the need 

to keep on repeating

ourselves, over 

and over again. 

ARTIST'S MOTTO

"In artifice, 

verisimilitude." But 

vice versa? Never. 

To know

is one thing; it's another 

to know better. 

Our lies pollute, 

sure, but all lies 

contain truth,

and somehow 

or other, that truth 

stays pure.

THE SWEET SPOT

Before we forget 

what a relief 

it can be 

to subsist 

at the mercy 

of benevolent despots, 

let us recall 

how kind 

it is of light 

to strike 

a blue glass 

bottle from behind 

and, instead of rushing 

through, to luxuriate 

inside it

and make it appear 

so auspiciously 

illuminated; 

and while we're at it, 

how kind of our 

tyrannical minds 

to insist 

that we be 

captivated—

to concoct 

out of infinite 

bolts of whole cloth 

the gonzo 

conceit of some 

Goldilocks plot

in which 

anything at all's 

just right. 

COUNTDOWN

So spare now, day 

runs ever faster 

into day, 

as if being chased 

by the skeletal thing 

that waits 

at the end of the calendar—

not the birth 

of a savior 

or hard deadline 

imposed by the manic 

boss of elves;

not even 

a rough beast 

from the savagest hell 

who's time shall 

come around again at last 

at the zero hour—

just the endless 

night of unfeeling winter, 

creeping towards our windows

like the undead from the grave, 

coming to invade us 

like the same old blunt 

intrusive thought—or worse

yet, leave us 

to ourselves. 

BIG IF TRUE

Each morning, I make 

the same attempt 

to hone my attention, 

as if breaths were 

sharpened arrowheads I'd 

fashioned out of flint—

little weapons

that existed 

independently from me.

*

Suffering through 

vinyasas on the lawn 

increases one's 

hunger to become 

someone else, 

which only makes it 

harder to swallow 

the arrogant swagger 

of crows a little farther on—

they who pretend

to nothing 

and thus have 

never been uncertain. 

*

True or False? Even 

our sense of diminishment 

ebbs. 

"Even if 

the soul exists, 

what are the chances 

it persists 

outside the body?" 

is a question 

no one can 

bring themselves to ask 

once they've brushed 

up against 

a single spider's web.

ARCANUM

As a loitering kit 

of pigeons 

hears my footfalls 

on the roadway surface 

and explodes, 

so too does my 

head start 

to oscillate and flutter. 

You could say 

they've been trained 

to fear my approach, 

and I, conditioned 

to fear their departure—

but life is no trick 

in a Pavlovian circus; 

its moments chime 

in harmony, not 

on purpose. 

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME ENDS

All has given in now 

to ponderous shadow—

to slanting, 

to shifting, 

to edges, 

to echo. 

Still, we feel 

we have come too far 

to disappear into 

the hardening air, 

and so we 

console ourselves

that we still feel okay, 

only—

in smaller 

and smaller ways.