REVERIE

Today I haven't written down
anything profound. Instead I've
sat around, trying
to listen to the sound of humility.
I've had coffee, given in
and read the news, marveled at both
the boldness of power
and the obduracy of conspiracy.
I've walked around 
and seen all the clouds,
dense and deep white, keeping vigil
over a haunted neighborhood—
its buildings like busts
of pagan idols with craven
looks upon their faces,
its tulips and daffodils, only
in mid-April, already learning 
to hang their heads in disgrace.
I've watched empty buses
and jam-packed delivery trucks 
diminish down the monochrome avenue
and imagined the somber cold-cave echoes
of Gregorian Chant playing
on all of their radios.
And of course, I've heard the birds,
timid at first, then growing
gradually louder as the day crescendos,
as if pleading with the half-hidden 

sun for salvation—not for themselves,
but on behalf of the rest of us.

NOT THE POEM WE NEED RIGHT NOW

The poem we deserve
is perfectly worthless.

it won't support ads,
it has nothing to sell us,
and needless to say it won't
pay for our lunch.

its words are furtive,
foreign to follow,
explosive to mouth;

its structure is
like a church which is
loyal to no one—

all its shapes and sounds
are the most frivolous
kinds of pleasures

with no past relation
perishing now
and refusing later.

The poem we deserve
wasn't built;

it resists all systems,
pre-existing structures,
acceptable modes of power.

In other words—
the poem we deserve
is pure revolution:

once it exists,
it always has
been like this—

after its over,
nobody notices
no one remembers.

ON ALL SIDES

If the middle of the continent, a city;

in the center of the city, a park; 

in the heart of the park, a dying ash—

with its gnarls of grieving branches.

Nearby, a Park District worker, leaning

and chewing on a bruised apple, 

tells me—it's diseased 

and due for removal. 

I shut my eyes and try to imagine—

a million fugitive beetles 

panicked and writhing 

in those cursed branches, 

a confused and desperate colony—

destruction in the name 

of survival. 

This infected tree, 

that rotten 

piece of fruit, these brownish 

grass blades underfoot—everyone out there 

must belong somewhere;

every broken thing we encounter 

is someone's desperate 

attempt at a universe. 

EUDAIMONIA

Are we behind the times?
I mean, If there was
a lag—

would we know?

Does each mortal
moment represent
another ancient

star in the sky that's gone critical?

Could heaven
really be so
tacky, so archaic in translation,

so unconscionably far away—

that every chintzy bulb in the place
has exploded in its socket
a long time ago

like the set of some haywire gameshow—

while from our point of view
it still looks as though
it's been ages and ages

since anything has changed?

LOOKING FOR WORK

      Well, while I'm here I'll do the work—and 
      what's the work? To ease the pain of living.
           —Allen Ginsberg 

What is my work—
sitting cross-legged on the
floor for ages

being still or
turning pages
before a stubborn low table

seeking both excitement and oblivion
with equally stable
concentration

seeking an obligation so great
it is my hope to attend to
as little of it as possible

seeking a word
which is study
but weightless as a light beam is

seeking an image pure and eternal
but transient like the melody
of a vanishing bird

seeking
one sentence—so perfect
it helps you persist

even though it
doesn't exist.

FORCE MAJEURE

For some, the times are not so tough.
Despair and isolation, they say,
has never brought us closer.

An unprecedented new chapter
in over-analyzing
the sound of every exhalation

artfully locates
the words delinquent and
centenarian on the exact same page.

The very air,
which once was ubiquitous,
empty, unscientific

is now peculiar,
agentic, and potentially
teeming with invisible royalty.

Formerly adversarial neighbors
now seem to coordinate
with clairvoyance

their modern dances
of creative avoidance
in the aisles and gangways

with grace and aplomb.
In fact, it has become the definition
of conscientious

to wonder
how little we can get away with
offering one another—

instead of a shake, perhaps
just a hand,
indeterminately raised,

in a gesture that's
half-wave—and half-
stay away.

PURSUANT TO COVID-19, STAYING HOME AND WORKSHOPPING YOUR OWN LOVE POEM

I can't help but wonder
if it's still showing
off a little

to declare you don't
care about
craft anymore; to insist

you don't need
to cough up thesauruses
of spurious words,

let alone softball-
pitch a prosaic
slew of images right down the middle

to some huge rhetorical
stadium of radiant
hall-of-fame batters

just to further elucidate
the purity of whatever
purport it is you were going for—

which, up until a few stanzaic
distractions ago,
I could swear

was to tell someone
you know
that they matter.