ABSTRACTION

For some 

time now, sallow light 

on the spring/winter border 

has been blanching all those

photos hung too close 

to the window. 

The scene might read 

as tragic to the momentary 

witness, but 

in the relentless eternity 

of now, to temper

is a kindness; 

you can look at the past 

as if through stained 

cathedral glass—that is, 

without wincing 

at all the details, or facing-

off with facts. 

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING

A Pentecost of pigeons 

perched in rows on 

rolling fence posts 

is spelling out a message 

just for you in 

Morse code. 

It isn't a prediction 

of the storm 

before it happens,

or a forecast 

of how many breaths 

you have left;

it's the eerie invocation 

of the purpose 

of The Random—

of a sharp exhalation 

and a little vague wind, 

in the long run, amounting 

to the very same thing.

This is what passes for 

excoriating doom,

its communique 

telescoping 

over the horizon:

if you feared you'd be 

hounded by fate 

to ruination, the bad news 

is good news—you will 

get there 

on your own. 

DOUBLE OR NOTHING

From the battered ground, 

stark crocus tips poke 

like licked fingers 

raised, in their near-

comic seriousness, 

to test the direction 

of the wind 

and feel around 

(a little dubious) 

for what sincerity 

may exist in this 

latest thaw.

Despite last year's flowering 

coming to nothing 

and the daffodils' trumpets 

falling silent—

then just falling—

they are eager as gamblers  

for their damnable chance

not to bask 

in the moral of the story 

or the Easy Street Kingdom 

of the power and the glory—

not for permanence, or 

to put it all behind them—

but only 

for balance—

only

to begin again. 

ON SECOND THOUGHT,

in this spherical geometry, 

a straight line 

is a lie—

is actually a slight smile 

or sneer; 

it may even 

intersect itself 

after a while. 

For Euclid, 

this was heresy. 

To be emissary 

of the kingdom 

and still be allowed to see it—

that is just

too much. 

It's a beatitude to be 

so near 

to the truth 

and not be allowed 

to touch it. 

*

I'd have to say 

it's rather odd, but, 

during one certain hour of the morning, 

the mind is a vacant lot; 

the few hawks 

that drift high above 

would have to be 

its thoughts. 

The arbitrary relation 

of the sign to the signified—

ominous, 

but not urgent;

eerie, but benign;

lifeless, and so 

deathless—maybe that

was god.

TALKING TO MYSELF

"What is there left

to say?" I mutter;

existence 

is incurrence 

of impression (viz: 

of debt).

*

A bit 

far-fetched, but it 

feels good 

to be called 

as material witness 

to the voiceless obsessed; 

to next spring 

and last winter 

colliding with each other 

and hopscotching birds 

that seem to disappear 

around the corner 

of the Earth; 

to the hide 

and seek 

of rivulets 

which traipse 

through mud 

like hieroglyphs. 

There is always something 

new to read, however 

crude or tenuous. 

No wonder 

this attention can 

never be spent;

this duty to desire 

can never be absented; 

this ache to ask 

questions can never

be addressed. 

THE DEFENSE RESTS

At this point, God 

must be 

absolute-

ly sick of me 

telling him 

all about the sparrows 

and trees.

What did you think 

you were doing? 

he'd say. 

I'd say: it takes a lot 

of faith 

to just describe 

the things you come upon 

in a prosaic 

way when one 

leaf shot-through 

with dawn sun 

is staggering 

enough to 

make you scream—

what is anything?

THE NAME OF THE GAME

We like to think 

affection will make

absence shrink away,

but the consequence 

of tenderness is never 

abolition. Love works 

more like a caretaker—

an animal husband 

to savage distance; 

it does not kill or 

outlaw, just declaws 

our separation; 

for the sake 

of preservation it 

succors the herd—first

it feeds, then trains 

and breeds it. In a word: 

domestication. 

A SUBURBAN CONJURING

From the hedges
on the banks of the muddy
Dunkin’ drive-thru,

the sparrows chanting
“come and get it”

with a hunger
for spring rains, not donut-
combo breakfasts—

for locusts 

and wild honey, in fact; 

not that they 

could ever show it.

but forget about baptism 

by water, or coffee 

in the courtyard 

of the shopping plaza,

and never mind 

the incantations

carved in the cliffs 

of the distant auto mall:

"Good credit, 

bad credit,
no credit?" Hell,

if you were really getting
life right, you
wouldn’t even know it.

CATALYST

It sounds so 

innocuous 

when you say it 

like this: 

our prehistoric 

antecedents—

those eagerest primitive 

pieces of us—

were thermodynamic 

processes, 

catabolic molecules, made 

to break down acceleration; 

they ate up time 

and distances 

and breathed out rates 

of change

in increasingly warm 

and rapid waves, til 

the great grid of tireless 

innovation caught fire—

then the tires 

of the car—

then the back seat—

then the kids. 

CREATION MYTH

Particles 

of astonishment 

flood the gap between 

"I" and "am." 

Matter 

and its anti-; 

positivity 

and its pre-

requisite opposite, 

which must, as a rule, 

repel one another—yet 

here we all 

sit anyway, 

casual as Friday,

comfy as ever. 

*

Still bearing the stigmata 

of such deliberate precision, 

keen pithy snatches 

of some meditation mantra 

play around the collective 

nouns that we've 

come to call our faces, 

making them gorgeous 

as fractal images:

matrices 

of galaxies, say;

or heaventree heads 

of Roman-

esco broccoli?

*

We go forth 

and name things

to know 

where we stand. 

We shake things up 

and leave the house 

for the sake 

of getting back. 

this is not 

profundity—this is 

just its traces. 

CRUELTY REFINES

On the subject of tough love, 

much to hear this 

time of year 

from the mute cold throats 

of the rough 

fruitless bushes 

which crouch low 

and hold their ragged 

breath in the wind 

while a whole mess 

of sparrows—all 

hunger pangs and urges—

whinges now for shelter 

and sugar 

in their branches: 

never mind 

what "speaks to you." 

It's all about what could—

but chooses 

not to. 

VOICE LESSON

As if any further 

proof was needed 

that truth and beauty 

come in particles 

and waves—

rough but discrete 

and mercifully light, 

a song behaves

like a handy palliative 

used to modulate 

one's tolerance to life—

whereas 

singing itself 

is a very different catalyst; 

like a whittling knife 

to basswood, it's the honing 

of routine 

through rigorous daily 

practice

to a thing that feels 

sleek, but looks 

preposterous. 

DEUS EX MACHINA

The Terminator 

who learned to cry 

was right:

the best anti-virus 

protection from 

sadness is 

pattern recognition—

this 

is like that; 

stolidity 

like blankness; 

detachment, right 

next door 

to madness. 

*

Wherefore this need 

to triangulate 

emotion? 

Our first response 

to the threat 

of overbalance is 

not 

to respond—

but to find someone 

to show. 

*

Note to future-self: 

when you finally 

rub up against 

the Great Artifice, 

be sure to save 

the last of those three wishes 

for meta-

significance. 

THE PLOT

First, you learn 

that you 

are someone—

front 

and center, bright 

eyes shining; 

then, you learn that you 

are not—you run 

together, wander off; 

last, you learn 

it was never 

about you—all depth 

collapses, 

and the plot 

strands clot; 

the divinely un-

divided scoffs 

at what went rhyming

with "auspicious"

in the sticks—those 

trite seconds 

and gauche minutes—

the conceit 

was just a matter, 

not 

of time, but 

of timing. 

SECOND PLACE

Heaven is distinguished 

from psychosis

by its paleness. Whereas 

even the bleakest, 

snow-blank 

day in February 

is all shot through 

with stinging 

vivid filaments of memory 

and the richness of the longing 

for the sideways 

glance of spring—

the end of the show, 

where the ache 

is extinguished 

is a blank soundstage, 

stripped of its old 

garish game show sets

and backlit 

by the weakest dangling 

strands of winking bulbs—

as if the antidote to depression 

and anxiety was 

a kind of blindness; 

as if the runner-

up prize, 

so long denied, 

was an end to irritation 

and negation of striving; 

as if going nowhere 

and doing nothing 

were the grand culmination 

of yearning for something.  

DAN SMART POEM

A set of instructions 

for decoding instructions; 

identical rhyme 

to give surfeit 

some zing. 

Mobile-home stanzas 

in trailer-park columns;

contrition 

as antidote to hubris 

and shame. 

Of course: rhythm 

as instrument, 

not the song 

that it's singing; 

as longing 

without referent;

as syntax, not diction.

And last: the tragedy 

of slant rhyme 

to overgraze

pure rhyme's commons, 

to contain 

the seeds of its 

own destruction 

while retaining 

some plausible 

deniability of same. 

STAINED GLASS

Clean cry of the newborn

like a crack 

in the face, 

fracturing pure lightness 

into arches, transoms, colonnades—

into limitless 

fragile burnished 

matrices of porches,

all winking 

in midair their 

ambiguous understanding 

of absentia-

cum-grace. 

ROAD TO RUIN

Is it any 

wonder that 

things fall apart

when, simply 

by reacting, we deconstruct 

the past—or worse 

yet: simply by thinking, 

we kick 

the future's ass? 

Picture layer 

upon layer 

of anger, guilt, resentment 

laid down like shellac, like 

goose grease, 

like black ice

to slicken the surface—but 

on the fence-less precipice 

of what? 

Is it any wonder 

the mind's terrain is 

so precarious? 

To get out of our head 

is hazardous 

enough, but 

it's twice 

as far—twice as dangerous 

to get back. 

PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES

Tell the truth and 

shame the devil: 

"let me just get my 

thoughts in order" 

means 

privileging one 

above all others. 

*

Can you pick out 

the savior 

on the cross 

from the other two actors, 

hired to re-enact 

our anger? 

"Will the real necromancer 

please stand up 

and roll away 

the stone, 

then come 

for our brains?!" 

*

We "weren't there" 

in scare quotes

sounds so benign,

sounds close enough 

for jazz—

close as 

innocence

and indifference, 

which

don't strictly 

rhyme—but 

kind of? 

CONSOLATION

Just to rise 

each day 

is a risk, 

but the carrot 

on that stick—

slender though it is—

is that each next 

try might go five 

percent better. 

And you never 

know: eventually, 

you might wake 

without fear; 

you might complete 

that thousand-piece 

puzzle that is 

your life; 

before it's too late, 

you may glimpse 

the picture, and 

let's face it: 

you'd kill 

for the chance 

to see, at the last, 

what it is 

you were and 

die entire. 

COMPASSION PUMPS

Sympathy does not 

simply sit around 

and wait; 

in fact, it acts 

more like 

a chaos agent—

a narrative tornado 

punting newborns 

into mangers 

and tying your left 

shoelace to the right one 

of a stranger. 

But eager 

as we are to profess 

our ignorance—

to escape the traps 

of tenderness, and 

look away from its messes—

this urge to uncouple 

merely stretches 

out our passions

until they snap 

back like a rubber 

band, and 

just like that:

we're attached.  

ALIGNMENT PROBLEM

Intelligent 

or not, design 

spreads like an illness, 

while understanding 

runs 

like molasses 

in January—like snatches 

of jazz 

blown across 

a vacant lot.

One simile 

per customer 

seems more than fair 

to us (herein "the users"),

however provisional 

(like "a fox") 

or obsessive 

(like "a virus"). 

With the oxygen crisis 

just a smudge 

on the horizon, 

even piss-

poor communication 

is a shot in the arm—

is an RNA fragment,

stealing 

into the heart's blood 

of billions, 

trolling 

for forgiveness 

in the comments section. 

THE PRIMARIES

To this point, 

life has always been 

a run-up 

to something. 

You want to call it 

"fated," 

just to make it 

sound less sinister. 

*

In heaven, 

even the meaning 

of "is" 

is different—

is limned 

with impermanence 

which pulls back 

to a dull ache.

*

Harp flurries, 

pillars 

of radiant fire, 

couches made 

of vapor—

all indicate a slight-

ly bemused take 

on leisure—

all gesture 

toward enlisted persons

on shore-leave 

from the class war. 

For now, we'll 

just have to leave it 

at that. 

FOLK TALE

Perhaps these 

lives of ours—

these contrapuntal 

fables—

need fewer 

revisions

than they do 

repeated listens. 

The hell 

of a booby-trapped 

yellow brick road 

is traversed 

much more steadily 

when marched arm-

in-arm 

with surrogates. 

In company, as in 

hindsight, we might 

finally see 

that means 

are really just 

ends in disguise—

good witches, god-

mothers, and beautiful 

enchantresses 

transmogrified 

to beggars 

stranglers, and thieves; 

and concepts 

such as allegory, 

metaphor, and moral, 

no more 

than scant patchworks 

of leaves, placed 

to cover-over 

the crevices 

in our scant experience 

and deep pitfalls 

of our laurels. 

WRITTEN IN THE SKY

While experts consider 

and argue indoors

about where 

in the world our 

language comes from, 

anesthetizing daggers 

of subzero sun 

spear the black 

commas of crows 

on the horizon,

causing them to gleam 

in the winter light 

like flecks 

of sleek 

obsidian and onyx

as their capering arcs 

conjure wild sigils

which dare us to braid them 

into something 

like intention. 

OUTSIDER

After all it has done, 

the best we thought 

to do was chase it, 

then replace it electrically 

and on-demand. 

No wonder, then 

the sun 

says no prayers, 

goes to bed each night 

believing nothing.

For doing what it does, 

true genius 

is shunned; 

it kindles and excites about 

as well as it offends—

no wonder 

the sun 

has no friends. 

HOWLER

Cold, hard, 

and old 

as the wandering djinn,

I too run only 

in self-

imposed circles 

from northwest  

to southeast 

and back again. 

No wailers 

need apply; 

I need no familiar 

to invite me in. 

My dominion is 

your body's prison

my dharma 

is your din. 

Who am I?

DENIAL

No scene more 

sober than the small 

town in winter

where, in and around 

the towerless high street, 

for-lease lots 

lie in snow-

white terraces 

like the fallow 

garden plots of some 

vast ice palace 

from which precisely 

no bells toll 

to mark the mourning 

of days gone by, 

of auld lang syne 

and its sallow dead, 

because, colorless

though it is, 

this is a dominion

they could never inhabit—

or so the powers 

that be would insist:

damn it, snap 

out of it, you nameless, 

you ignorant! This 

is the land 

and the time 

of the living.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT

With the thinness 

and pallid consistency 

of dead trees 

by midwinter, the sparrows 

have grown 

hard to see. Still, 

we know they are here 

by the sharp way 

they cry 

at the bleary un-

folding 

of indigent dawn—

as if solely responsible, 

as it limps 

through the sky, 

for bearing the war-

wounded weight 

of the outcast 

but stubbornly 

oncoming veteran 

sun. 

UNFINISHED

We are all born 

as hatchlings: blind, 

featherless, pink—

and yes, equipped 

with the twin 

wings of hopefulness 

and grief. Only,

we don't know how

to harness them them yet. 

For now, we are young, 

and the dead of course

are other ages.

At the windows, 

by their ledges, 

on some precipice 

we wait, tasting

the upraising breeze 

on our faces;

but the sky is 

much colder than we 

can conceive,

and the sun, so much 

farther away

than we think. 

EMPTINESS

Hymn 

that the dead sing; 

sheer absence's salve; 

true-to-life 

enough as 

memory itself; 

that which you find 

an abundance of 

everywhere—and 

which you 

must bear, but 

cannot have. 

JANSPLAINING

As the light now 

always seems to be 

leaving, never coming—

so do I, 

from the weak 

morning's first, 

always have 

the sense of running 

some minutes behind;

of resolving 

by declining embers 

just to stand aside;

of struggling 

mightily 

just to conclude—

to contain,

to confine—never mind 

begin something. 

SIGIL

As it trickles 

out the dented 

downspout, 

the same water

which might, 

the night 

before, have split 

the rock 

which blocked 

the floodplain path 

or surfed atop 

the roiling ocean—

conspires now 

to form 

a pictograph message

on the salt-

packed void of shallow 

asphalt below: 

your success 

is inevitable 

only once it's passed, 

it says;

as your ancestors 

dreamt of a house 

beyond death, 

you must not forget 

to laugh. 

 

SOLACE

In the friendless

foe-less cold 

of January, 

the sun 

does its best setting 

far away. 

From somewhere 

inside us, our own 

spare thoughts 

fly out like dry 

corvid cries 

to meet it—

but of course, it is 

too far, too cold, 

too late. 

After all the things 

its silent touch

has invited—

after all the gaze 

of its eye 

has allowed—

it does not console

or conceal 

or reproach now; 

it doesn't 

have a thing 

to say. 

TESTAMENT

As sure as the mighty 

wind itself 

must be not 

but envious 

of the littlest newborn's

shallowest breath, 

so too, the God

of that child's understanding 

would have to be 

a jealous one—

forever in competition 

(as He 

must have known 

He would be)

with the sky of pale 

papier-mâché He

deigns to display 

each winter morning, 

if not for 

her allegiance, then 

at least for her 

attention.