MAY

Late spring is mature and kind
and eager enough to chaperone
pink dogwood
wild plumb and lovely
cherry blossoms
to this outdoor formal ball

just so that you and I might stroll
idle as the air
thick as marscapone
past them all—feeling debonair
and breezy wearing
last week's gym clothes.

FACE THE DAY

Heads up—here comes
that invulnerable hero: the sun;

demigod, sparkplug, revisionist,
exalted one;

enemy of criminals, drunks,
philanderers, card sharks;

the one who gets things done.
Unlike that liminal coward, the moon,

he has returned just as he promised,
luminous, and as always,

in the same platonic, circular
oracular form.

He can now be seen from your window
riding in his glorious chariot, post-battle

toward that reassuring press conference
in the sky called high noon.

And you are so relieved to see that man,
you can feel it in your bones

like a heat; so relieved,
it feels undeserved—it's like

those dreams, those precious hours
like pearls on a necklace,

which were stolen last night
as you slept have been returned.

From your ligaments to your fingertips,
you feel whole once again

as you realize—you do not have to
do this alone.

ALL OVER THE PLACE

The thin needles of cold
rainwater this morning
can go on pelting the lilacs
outside my window as long as they

like for all I care; I am no longer
offended by the relentless,
the indefinite, the endless, or
the all-over-the-place.

Perhaps the world's sadness
is a kind of sustained prayer,
an expression of our gratitude
for the time it took to get this lost

and for the generous time
which is still on offer
to pay off the interest
on the opportunity cost.

Yes, there must be much tenderer
planets out there than this one—
so small and so distant, it would
exhaust these bodies to get there;

but there are also those thoughts
which we know will never leave us
until we've become so
thoroughly exhausted.

THE FIRST FEW SECONDS

Right as arithmetic
you roll out of bed—
another day, a blank

page, a clean slate
(except with your
particular head on)—

at least it feels that way
for a few seconds,
until that strange terrifying

alien computer brain
kicks back online again
and begins recalculating

frantically, everything
that has ever happened
in your life until now—

adding up how much
of it was all your fault,
then subtracting off

all the stuff you couldn't
do anything about
if you had tried. Luckily

by that time, the bed
you lie down in
has been made

and it would only
lengthen this sequence
to crawl back inside.

DRIVING FORCES

After the fact, some brick
walls start to look like
lucky breaks—

dead-ends, like acts
of crash test
dummy mercy;

breaking their hearts
may have kept the reckless
safe from broken necks.

THIS IS NOT THE POEM

It is actually all of the poems
other than this one
which have saved me—
those beautiful gems
wrought by hands I haven't met
with the blood and sweat
and fetid smell of their own
hells, or the sweet pure
simplicity of their daydreams,
bound and collected
by still yet unseen others—
those mystical squalls
of torrid imagination
which have snapped my last
resistant traces, or else
deftly recombobulated
some dead node in my mind
at the very last moment
before the breakage could occur.
Those are the poems
that matter. This one is written
merely in participation—
like a nod in response
to a life-and-death directive,
a sober and sapless 'amen'
uttered upon the conclusion of
a transformative sermon.

PLAYGROUND

The grass in the park
across the way
is overgrown again
and needs mowing.

I can see battalions
of dandelions
creeping steadily
inward from its mangy edges.

Silence—neither the silence
of peace, or of complete despair—
now occupies the square
patch of ground in the center

where squealing children
once would clamber
over ropes and bars
and rusty swings,

eager to launch their
small world wars.
Now I wonder what sorts
of unsuitable spaces

are filled today
by the voices
of those brave and
impatient soldiers—

what impassioned
political speeches
must be pouring from
their indoor throats

like the mash of torn-away
treebuds and rainwater
that's gushing from the mouths
of its vacant army-green slides.