BEAUTIFUL WORLD

        春の風 

        桜舞い散る 

        美しき世界

                -ChatGPT

Ten minutes 

from now (or possibly 

fewer), 

the large language model 

chatbot will speak 

Japanese; 

it can conjure you 

haiku in the original, 

if you ask it to—

and you don't 

even have to say please.

But what does it mean 

to extrapolate 

from this?

And how 

do you repay a small

favor to a computer? Perhaps 

just by pondering 

the possibilities.

AMENDMENT TO WILLIAMS

Even in the hands 

of such a 

parsimonious doctor, 

form will still 

degrade 

and meaning 

must concentrate—

if only due to time's 

harsh-but-

vigorous erosion.

Such mutable things

as wheelbarrows 

and chickens 

might likely seem 

superfluous 

a chastened century later, 

and will never escape 

the omnipotence 

of erasure.

If he somehow 

knew then

all that we've

forgotten now, 

his most profound 

work, from beginning 

to end, 

might take up 

one line 

and read: 

"so much depends."

MINUTIAE

It seems almost 

ridiculous how 

all of life's particulars 

stubbornly refuse, 

over time, to refine—

how blood 

and saliva don't distill 

like a wine—

how frangible 

stem cells don't 

collapse, they multiply. 

But at least we catch 

a break when all the dots 

start to connect, 

and all of those 

stubborn, hard knots 

where life's events 

soon will get 

fused to our biased 

remembrances of them 

eventually combine, 

and then cement 

into a spine—

from which long, 

nervy pipes unspool 

and start winding

with generous 

thickness through all 

we now are 

to structure and 

nourish and, eventually, 

to animate 

some overlaid 

insouciant part, which 

didn't used to be there 

into a piece of 

appreciable art.

TERM OF ART

The way in which darkness 

will twice

bookend day—I suppose you 

could call that haiku 

if you chose to. 

But haiku itself 

would never 

give away 

the name

of streetlamps 

which cast creeping 

shadows through park grass,

or the blueness 

of evergreens 

against skies' rising bruises—

least of all, 

of deftly transposing 

aromas 

as one mug of tea  

warms the countertop

and cools.

BAN THIS POEM

On one hand—

just a slight series 

of deftly pitched words, 

flung with 

just the right spin to affect 

a sly curve 

could, irrevocably, 

destabilize the world. 

Then again—

on the other, it's probably 

safer by a long shot, 

to haul off and 

send discourse 

running in all directions 

than it would be 

to ever risk coming- 

off as lazy 

or too slow, or late 

to the party, 

or cagey—or worse, 

some deceptively 

benign word 

like—injurious.

FINALE

        (for Hammerhands.)

So you no longer want to 

play music anyhow—

for what music 

could coax renewed 

substance from shadow,

or transcribe absent echos  

to original score,

or soundtrack 

winter's deaf, blank 

finality of snow? 

But somewhere deep

in the twitching 

of muscles;

in the shadows 

where capillaries drum 

along bones;

in the labyrinthine swirls (as 

a seashell 

by the ocean) 

of the exquisite folds 

of the inner 

ear, you notice:

that as long as 

you're able, by 

definition, to persist,

you can never 

bear witness to such 

suitable silence—

through each triumph 

and each stillness, 

in greatest 

gratitude and grief, 

your delirious, 

lunatic heart 

will keep repeating 

the only note 

it knows.

APOTHEOSIS

When we 

can't kiss, but can still 

quietly walk 

around the perimeter 

of this indescribable 

feeling and listen—

when it seems certain 

that no room is left 

in the inn

for the bigness of the 

thought we've been 

trying to hold in, 

but still, there 

are a few 

rickety windows

we can reach and fling 

open to let in 

some air—

when we can’t find words 

for the despair 

which devours us, 

and yet, it doesn't feel 

all that capricious 

to sing 

with some friends in 

a bar about 

frivolous things—

that's when 

we're finally ready 

to admit 

that there's no 

rationale, but 

it must 

stand to reason:

we can probably live 

without the touch 

of true meaning,

but not without

the feeling.