TWILIGHT OF THE IDLE

Fingers of rosy 

cirrus clouds 

relinquish the day-old sun 

to the heavenly gravity 

of what's to come 

in the world beyond the horizon. 

The sight used 

to please you; 

tonight, it only demonstrates 

how time 

used to accrue in your youth—

now, it just eliminates. 

L'ESPRIT DE L'ESCALIER

Oddly, 

there's exactly 

one ecstatic condition 

in which I become 

my best and truest self—

one state 

in which I become 

wise and disarmed enough 

to stop being charming 

and tell it like I think it is—

one beautiful circumstance, 

charged with significance 

and the metaphoric dynamism

of urgency 

coupled with its lack—and it's, 

you guessed it: 

only when I'm 

deplorably alone again 

after the goddamn fact. 

BEGGARS WOULD RIDE

If a poem 

were a disease,

it'd be the world's 

laziest fever—

one content to fester 

slowly behind the scenes, 

turning up your temperature 

by quiet half-degrees

rather than seizing you 

and burning you to death 

in a delirious fusilade 

of the most ecstatic sneezes.

*

If a poem were a garden plot, 

it'd be a hopeless patchwork 

of some the world's most 

delicate words, 

surrounded and nearly 

choked from existence 

by species after species  

of rude wild invasives.

Your best, if not your only 

chance at success

would be to perform a regular 

controlled-burn of the situation.

*

If a poem were a language game, 

it'd be a neon slot machine—

too garish to ignore,

and purpose-built 

to contain 

that meaning you need

but never just dispense it 

at the pull of a lever 

or slake your desire 

to break it wide open, 

plunder its treasure,

and drain its allure. 

APPREHENDED BUT NOT NAMED

All around the world, 

people long to share a bed.

Little children crawl

under the covers to snuggle 

with their fathers and mothers; 

men and women in 

all combinations, even once 

their lust is exhausted, 

still bend into spoons 

and nestle together. 

But have you ever noticed 

that, no matter how close 

you come to another, 

you must always 

dream alone—

or wondered why must it be 

that the truth of the both of you 

not knowing what that means 

is in itself the most 

intimate thing? 

SOLSTICE REMIX

The sleeptalk of winter 

performs its glossolalic functions;

the rain of romance breeds 

its nonchalant flowers; everywhere, 

medulla oblongata blossoms 

estrange the particular, flummoxing 

bees, leaving leaves to kiss 

like dense schools of fish, and transfixing

our desire, allowing the source 

of our powers to relax. Thusly 

do the high roof of summer's vital spasms 

banish the voices in our heads 

by the bunches—as if mashing-

up the godhead's trumpet blasts 

with the jackhammer tremors 

of all creation's deep ambivalence. 

OPEN WIDE

There's nothing 

you can do. Grace 

doesn't hug you

or invite you to come,

and it never offers 

grounds or reasons;

it snags you 

by the mouth 

like some draconian invention;

it gouges your cheek—

lodges deep there 

like a barbed hook 

and yanks you 

right out of the depths 

of your denial—

not even 

shrieking, but 

gasping for breath 

with your lungs 

cooking, full of that poison 

called liability

and into the alien light 

of absolution. 

WHY NATURE SUCKS

Although she abhors 

nothing that exists, 

she scorns any sense 

of that substance

as precious; 

bad enough 

that she gives all 

the same gift—worse 

when she asks 

for it back. 

ARGUMENT FROM EGOISM

Tell me, if you 

know: when a cell divides, 

in what sense 

can it be said 

to "survive?" 

Can one realistically 

turn into two 

without the former dying

and both of the latter 

being wholly new? 

And even if they were 

to recall 

the formerly recondite 

parent at all, 

what good would that do 

to the soul of the old 

mother protoplast 

whose now writhing 

and flailing her 

flagella in hell? 

Who among us would choose

at will to reproduce 

when to regenerate 

is to violently 

bifurcate identity—

to puncture a hole 

in the wall 

in the lung

of what was—to suffocate 

self, and to die? 

PERPETUITY

You pledge everything—

your life* for my kiss—and don't

mind that asterisk. 

DENOUEMENT

The best gift of all 

would be to retain at the end 

a child's mind at sunset—

to leave the field of light 

without explanations, fascinated 

by all we've just seen; 

but "how?"We don't 

care. And "why?"

We don't know yet. 

Would we could be, 

when night comes, 

who we were then:

head a room of treasures 

whose costs we weren't meant 

to understand, 

waiting to be held,

to be flown off 

to bed, to be told 

whom to kiss,

to say "yes" 

without regret. 

ANODYNE

A lot of longing 

goes away.

Like a bruise 

or a headache, it hurts 

but could be worse.

It's a little bit 

of it that is 

the real curse—

how it tarries 

and endures; 

the way you tolerate

and counter-

balance. It's a tail 

you can sway 

but never 

can lose, because 

a little longing 

stays. 

SWEET BY AND BY

On a long day, 

all the traffic lights 

change the wrong colors. 

On a sad day, 

there's a purplish tinge 

to the white puffs of clover.

On a lucky day, a bad feeling

melts like spun-sugar 

in your transparent saliva 

instead of getting 

kiln-blasted 

into the hard gems of fact.

On an ordinary day, you miss 

the bees and stamen 

consummating their marriage

and making honey 

that looks like 

dawn light together—

and some dark as amber, 

depending on 

which weeds proliferate

in that particular mile 

of the old carpool lane.

And all of that time,

in the back of your mind, 

some part of you longs

for the stasis of heaven—

even though, after living 

through all this, 

one must admit 

that the colorfast hereafter 

sounds

like a letdown. 

SACCADES

Because we look 

so hard with eyes 

so jumpy, 

it's easy to miss 

what we really 

find spiritual: this universe 

is like a cathedral—

it's most beautiful 

when it's empty. 

In fact, there is 

so much nothingness 

we could never take it in 

or bear it all away. 

at the end 

of the day. And yet, 

emptiness 

can't be nothingness, 

since it fills us 

and describes existence. 

"It means little, though," 

you want to protest, 

"without that dust mote 

of Love over which 

vacancy prevails."

And that's all you can know 

on Earth (as they say),

and all you need 

to know, I agree—assuming 

you're okay 

with taking life pass/fail. 

AFTERS

Everyone lives 

for dessert 

if it kills them.

And so everyone dies 

in distress, and it's 

beautiful—

but the reason 

for this is so saccharine 

and simple,

 

it was never written down, 

and has long since 

been forgotten:

when stripped of all 

but its desiderata, life 

is a tray 

of baklava—there's just 

the honeyed 

light of day

and the buttered moon 

of night, punctured 

by the gravelly 

friction of fealty, 

and wrapped 

in the mellow-but-

frangible blankets 

of our fellow 

diners' company. 

ALL THE BODY'S DUMB MIRACLES

In the tall grass, 

the relentless red 

beetle shell gleaming

seems half-unapology, 

and half-undead 

self-sacrifice—

that is: 

half god's brutal, 

humorless honesty, 

and half his hand-

wavy artifice.

I'd like to think 

we're better off than this, 

having not been given 

this curse of a gift, 

but in this hot mix 

of savannah and jungle, 

is there not might 

in being small,

and guile in 

being simple?

If back on day six, 

for example,

our nakedness 

led to such 

a mess as this—

then, I guess,

what the heck?—

protection must 

be beautiful.