SHEM AND SHAUN

Let me get this straight, 

then—

right after a clean eager man 

in robes comes,

neatly cuts 

and sorts all your guts into 

groups, 

his rumpled shitstained 

brother shows up—

and 

he's the one

who makes you whole, 

individual-

izes your bloody parts again

mints your experience 

into those clangorous 

shiny common

coins 

of 

communication? 

RELATIVES

Some days, I'm determined

to demolish this
blind faith they gave me

and replace it
with something more contemporary,
like compassion—

which means learning 

to see 

every human being

whom I meet—not
as lost, but
sincere-

and
courageous-

ly stop-motion-dying.

Other days, I wish I was still

a little kid

on Christmas—

shucking unquestioningly
the things that
belong to me;

ungrateful, possibly

for some slight

minority,

but too timid—
and sinfully unaware 

of what anything costs.

CONVERSATION ON A TURTLE'S BACK

You assure me,

merely expiating 

one's default settings

alleviates suffering,

and that sheer

disbelief 

is a lot less tenable

than uncertainty.

Then you say, it's simple,

from now on, you'll only be

saying prayers for 

money. And how I ought to

do myself a favor—

just forget about 

whole world and consider 

all its feelings.

For something to endure, 

you hasten 

to add, it needs to move slow 

and be boring.

Finally, you like 

to remind me: in the 

Scheme of Things, 

none of this even matters.

But there—I can already 

hear your mistake: 

Things, okay 

sure. But what—Scheme?

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

Before everything
else this morning—
here I am, slavishly
hardboiling

and rinsing
not quite
a dozen
eggs in my kitchen,

while an
old dachshund-
beagle lies
snoozing,

breathing
in and out
of sync
with the faint lilt

of some
oniony wallpaper
music in the
adjoining room;

each of her persistent,
shallow, and
frivolous
snores underscoring

the wayward
and whimsical
mellifluousness
of my genius,

massaging it,
fudging the gap
between furious
action

and stock-
stillness—from hands
and slick shells
wringing wet,

to just a few
cold beads of water lingering,
stranded on
course, beige surfaces—

until
eventually,
I come
to realize

none of us
ever really
does anything
ahead of time.

BOTTOM LINE

Second Prize Winner
in a Beauty Contest—ugly
and local
as ever.

It's always
Five O'clock
somewhere—some
miserable lachrymose happy hour.

The name of the game
is Pageantry; ceremonial torches
clutched and waved
and hoisted high—identify Ambassadors.

Form exists
wild in nature; of whatever will burn
in fire, yet persist
in the embers of memory.

Rhythm consists
less of
sheer facts than the
regularity of their delivery.

As for Content,
beware: volition. A rose is a rose.
But a poem
might be—Poetry.

WORKADAY

The higher-ups
have started
extending

pre-fab,
amazed
congratulations—

for managing
to keep your prim
head on straight

and your eyes
on the prize
for this long,

though the truth is—
you haven't
done that.

Truth is, neither
the wide view
nor the close focus

does anything for you;
so to compensate,
you've been

overdosing on
the prosaic
for a while now.

The most exhilarating
way you know how,
is by getting

coffee-high
every day,
and then

walking around town
alone for a
little while to gaze,

not at divine arcing rainbows
or placid treelines
or ennobling architecture, but

at the mercifully coherent,
the completely
sufferable way

in which
the late morning
sunlight plays

off of basically
any edifice
that's rusticated—

not because there's anything
sophisticated
or significant going on there,

but because, oddly,
your central nervous
system feels stimulated enough to appreciate

that there's nothing difficult,
or elaborate,
or even remotely sentimental about it.

SCARED OF SOFT

The nights feel too long, all
hoary and

grave
where you are,

with or without that television-
length attention

span you got
born with.

What dreams do come
always

come
vacuumpacked—

free inside bundles
of market-rate orphanage sleep,

are always
that spooky kind of Disney cartoon grayscale;

where it's—CAUTION:
Don't feed those anthropomorphic

wild yellowtooth dogs
so much of that full moonlight spilling

over this sequentially-repeating-to-
infinity yard.

The authorities
can't blame you

for keeping track
of the silver

and gold in your molars,
but remember

you're not an old man yet,
you're still

just an orphan;
it isn't that hard:

fear the beer-
belly now;

worry about that
sticky-fingered

bonedigger—
later.