THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

It's a profound moment when
that first morning dawns, in which
everything we once loved is

still dead—and yet, there suddenly
exists simultaneously the impossible
feeling that, one day, it might not be;

that soon, a new season will reanimate
even our even the most hopeless-
ly insubordinate of subjects;

that right now, we are only living
in the breath before the first rusty
note of a new song is sung;

and that, for now, we might
just be content—
to sip coffee inside
draped in lamplight

and to gaze out the window
and witness, with no small
satisfaction—the exhilarating
stillness of objects.

COMMUTER'S BLUES

Though the journey
is unspeakably long,
every morning
he seems to arrive here

all of a sudden—
as if he were running
from a brushfire closing
in from behind—

to a place that isn't exactly
a remote cave inside
some auspicious
Tibetan mountain;

where not a smudged and
excellent water lily—but
rather, the mass-
produced print of one,

hung behind the single-
serve coffee maker—
marks the location,
instantiates the routine ceremony

of the cut-
off and the dying.
Outside, there's always
the squeal of brakes,

the hoary moan of commuter
trains arriving
exactly on time—
each one, an ardent

horn playing taps 
purely by reflex,
but in some eerily off-
putting minor key.

LAW OF CONSERVATION

Consider the possibility—
most words don't really
want to be written.

They must be yanked up here
forcibly, one at a time—like
some monstrously ugly

green pike—to struggle
and flop in our heart
shaped boats

from a river which,
on paper, doesn't exist.
Up here, I am a nameless

worker, toiling alone
in my hollowed-
out silence.

No one from that other universe
can even hear this; nobody
watching, or daring

to stop me—from
damming up a desert
in order to fish.

MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE

Here he comes now, the world-
famously untroubled
hot air balloon pilot—

old-time goggles
made of leather, big white
scarf, the whole nine yards—

back down here, one supposes,
for a quick spell on the
drab crowded planet

to do a little
laundry, buy some
eggs, check the mail, et cetera.

Here's to survival, to never hearing
anyone; here's to the most successful-
ly lonely man in existence, I salute

silently to the Hollywood vanity mirror
recently installed in the bathroom—
while somebody else, who must be

somewhere far away from here
is calling, nearly yelling—good morning! 
you handsome devil.

MEET JOE BLACK

I'd like to come back 

as a stream 

of hot 

coffee—neatly falling 

into a spotless concavity 

of tall white china;

I want everything around me 

to seem invisible 

just for a moment, 

while I glitter 

more reassuringly 

than crystalline 

wine in gold goblets;

for once, I might know 

what it would feel like 

to carry you

over the threshold 

into a new home, in which 

you are always

smart and cozy 

and happy 

and successful—and I

am simply 

brilliant.

FASTER IT'S ALRIGHT

Little Honda
flying through open
country at some hellish speed,

seeing the blurry steeples poking
small harmless wounds
through the mist in the distance;

I am not on my knees
listening to those
bells ring. I am one last

flickering laugh, I outlast
the flight of mourning
doves;

this engine is
the chorus of
a thousand boy bands singing,

that glint of light
on the road ahead, all that's good
and left

of someone they all
once knew
and loved.

SWEET NOTHING

In your eyes,
I see—the perfect
slender beach

where you must
be lying
currently—alone,

starving,
stranded—and nowhere
near me.