DIAGRAM

Would you believe me if I told you?
I'm not only

here, but I'm also
in a hurry.

It'd be quicker
and easier if I showed you—

there's a crumpled up map buried
deep inside this body
somewhere.

An X—marks
some dumb thing a kid did
one day
a dozen years ago,

and the well-defined boundaries,
also known as limitations,
dictated by each subsequent
rank conferred upon him.

But forget all that; he did.

Just look
for the symbols. Track
the barely audible music
of a left ventricle

as it pulses
red swingtime dotted lines up
behind his right temple.

And forget about
authenticating anything
by its signature.

That thing is always
subtly but adroitly being molded—
just a nonsense heap of loops.

Check instead
for the true pilgrim's insignia—a cool cartoon
lightning bolt.

MOBILIZATION OF THE PROLETARIAN DIASPORA

I suppose if you're fortunate,
one day—when you're
old enough,

you finally get
handed-down
a grown-up bike.

It's light, and it's
quick, a little too tall
to ever let comfort
be a passive luxury again.

Best of all, its sophisticated body
doesn't insist on itself
with all those sharp corners
the way your old one did.

Its supple, contoured chrome
is painted silver
or gold—or the ripe mellow
color of some other
carefully cultivated liquor or mineral.

You're really thrilled
to move so
gracefully, forcefully, propitiously
toward your destinations,

choices-within-choices

for speed and resistance 

just a finger's length away.

Only real problem is—
nobody tells you
before you trade up

how you can never
pedal backwards again. Or,

that is to say—you
can if you want to, but

when you do, nothing
will happen.

ADDICTION MODEL

I'm all over the place, but
this is an attack.

Stop saying
things

are like crack;

everything in the house,
everything around the planet

is like that.

And I've
had it.

Even the way
I just can't stand it

is a feeling
I seem to want

more and more and more of.

Politics, science, religion, opinion.
Oatmeal, honey, milk, cinnamon.

Satisfaction's like crack.
Truth. Beauty too, then;

after all, we just can't

stop looking at shit,
once we've

begun it—now, can we?

It's hard enough
here on this rock, already.

Every day, on my TV, I overdose on
The grooves of Saturn's rings

oozing mystic sex appeal
via Google Images.

They're just so chunky, glossy; it's
like some majestic vinyl record.

What hypnotic
epic song is etched in there? I wonder.

Which old 45rpm
of god's is that, whose insanely catchy lyrics

go—damn, we're so 
caught up in the current 

that we don't even notice 
what it's been carrying—?

And when does the meaning of all these
such incidents—finally tally up to be

greater than
the single one which caused them?

And who on earth

makes those sorts
of decisions?

And then, who reinforces
them? by agreeing

so quick—
and repeatedly,

without thinking.

A LIGHT IN THE DAY

I'm not afraid
to be a
fool, of

non-fruition,
of nothing
happening.

Like a light that shines
in the already calm,
bright middle of day—

sometimes I get down
all the dusty cups
and glasses from my

cabinets, lay them
out across the table,
and just watch them

all remain empty—
in the unutterable name
of possibility.

Other times, I simply rest
in that relatively-
pointless space

between the last line
of one poem
and the title

of your beautiful
next one—not because it's your best,
but because it's the most

unobtrusive
and the most workable
place I can think of.

GENERAL SWIM

There's a huge mountain—but inside
out

with a peak
that points down

and a road
that grows wider,

where the going
gets easier

except that it becomes
hotter and ever more

crowded with other people—
as you climb
lower,

to
the center, actually
moving toward

your fear
and uncertainty
instead of treading over it.

until
your pain
and theirs

join and commingle
in a mild
underground
river

of very pleasant warm water.

THE POET PREPARES

Like in a nursery
rhyme, he knows—
the most vital and powerful words

can, at first
sound deceptively simple.
Therefore, in order to survive,

he keeps repeating
the tiniest poem he
knows by-heart—

One day, I / shall finally 
be sad / in a way 
that they / could never understand.

Every day, he disciplines himself
by picturing—being shown his whole future
in some miraculous vision,

and then
abominably refusing
to do a single thing differently.

And one more thing.
A poet never laughs, either—he gafaws.
Or else, he snickers a little,

but with that same
pained and knowing kind
of mirth you used to hear

in little kids singing—
ring around the rosie!
pocket full of posies! etc. etc.

True, like everybody
else, he sometimes enjoys making a plan
and sticking to it;

but only from memory,
after he's caused a big scene—and publicly
burned the blueprints

in effigy, because—
ashes, ashes! We must. All.
Fall down.

GNOMON

Every room is full-proof. The halls
are built roughly the same
on purpose,

so you
always seem to
know where you are;

you're
always familiar
with what's on the table.

A bowl, pale and glum gold
like a soft luke-
warm sun.

A chalice
brimming with
a lake called The Ocean,

hollow
in the middle,
like the counterfeit words of incantation.

Pointed polished jewels, shook down
from their place in the sky,
scooped up

and retrofitted
with a familiar silhouette brutally-
but-indomitably drawn across them,

its four limbs stiff and stoically pointed,
a new kind of ancient pagan sundial
(now featuring Roman numerals)

made to keep new time
a little more slowly,
in order to blur and cover-over

how gradually—the symbols,
emblems of
the conquerors

come to be
fiercely adored
and worshiped—by the conquered.