THE RUB IS—

It's just so 

tremendously!

tough—to consider 

poetry—as

so many

sinkfulls 

of 

epic blue 

dishes need scrubbing—

CONVOLUTION

Today I think 

I feel—still more 

tired 

than even these endless 

slow tendrils 

of fat and off-

white logy 

milk look—stretched-

out and yawning—

deep 

through glass

after—endlessly

repeating 

translucent

glass

of foggy cold

ineffectually lovely

iced coffee—

that I've

all the while—only 

been dreaming 

of ordering.

HUMILITY CONTEST

On those rosy rare occasions
during 

grimy after-
noons spent walking—

when my steady-as-she-
goes attention 
span is—suddenly rather rudely 

embarrassed—
by a sheer clean wealth
of burnt yellow sun-

flowers and fiery 
shocks of spindly 

snapdragons waving 
at me madly—from 
behind an oddly 

fanciful 
wrought iron 
fence somehow splayed

out in 
Chicago's most 
tumbledown alley—that's

when I secretly
and sheepishly—feel
I'm actually pretty 

decent—at recognizing
when I've
been shown

whatever I 
must mean by—my own 
good fortune.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN FLAWS

Suddenly one 
unoriginal July day—in the hot rude lateless 
of ongoing afternoon 

you're—perched 
on a porch 
sipping iced coffee and munching

and contemplating—a million 
and one little 
madeleine cookies—tiny repeating seashells 

all modeled after
the very 
first perfect madeleine cookie—

only—you realize
there probably was no actual first 
madeleine cookie—

and just you're so over-
whelmed
by the implications of that 

implacable thought— 
that you 
simply must 

stop and
haul off to the nearest park—and go 
splashing  

through the swimming pool
of cool
and endlessly—and 

refreshingly 
bue and self-
similar water.

INDISCREET MUSIC

The silence—that 

finally

falls—at the 

end 

of it all—though it feels audacious-

ly exposed

has—in fact 

been adroitly

composed—

of every single 

subsequent 

timeless 

classic album's 

closing-

track—specifically not 

being played 

back—

at once.

GRAPHEMES ARE THE SCAFFOLDING

You may start 
to think 
reading this—that

there's 
images present—or
at least 

being conjured—

perhaps of balmy
mid-July 
mornings in wide-open 
city parks

each kissed 
with 
seagreen grass—and flush with
the spotty occasional 

rosy rash of
little sticks of kids
toddling
off in the distance—that is

until the lush 
quiet fields 
start
to fog up—from the rush

of fresh 
steam quietly gathering
up on your screen 
from a close-

at-hand coffee cup—
dispelling 
at-once any lingering 
mistrust

of the fact that I've really just 

been punching-
up 
a plain 
and blank white page

with all—
or at least some—of the 
same-
old-same-
old 
twenty-something sorts

of characters.

PACIFICA

Even—or maybe it's more like
especially

here in Chicago's most crippled 
and vile 

network 
of narrow swiss 

cheese 
dismal and holy dis-

combobulated alleys—
repeating brick walls

look quite 
expensive—lushly covered 

up 
in such quiet ivy—