OH SNAIL

     O snail 
     Climb Mount Fuji 
     But slowly, slowly! 
     -Issa (trans. R.H. Blyth)

Slow and steady
wins the race, I guess
but what if the
race isn't real? No slope,
no sky, it's all
a shell we live inside
as a dreamer
whose vulnerable
mind secretes, in defense,
a fortifying dream.
Will it ever be possible
to succeed
at such a climb—or
to fail? And how
could you tell
the difference? Oh snail,
what the hell?

PRECIOUS

Every time I said I loved you
was an interest payment
on the truth.

When I told you I needed you
I meant it
as an investment

and investments need protecting.
Every pet name I invented
every darling sweetheart precious

was a password on the account.
And when I'd wax poetic
list all the itty-bitty things I would do

that was me dumping you
out on a table
counting you up like a cartoonish

miser, like a giddy Ebeneezer Scrooge
would do. The sentiment sounded pure.
The aim looked true. The intention

was good—or so I assumed—
as all the gold in the Pharaohs'
airless tombs.

All those times
I'd talk with you, so eager to know
what you'd been up to—

when I held you close
at night and whispered—
when I thundered and roared

like a dragon in a cavern
fiercely guarding
treasures he could never use—

that was me letting you
know I would do
whatever it took

to always be with you.
I was even willing to live all alone
blind as a golem in an

underground cistern
content to bash the brains of fish
against stalagmites every night

for my dinner—if only
I could keep you. I didn't see
how I could lose.

IN MY HOUSE

In nature, every frill
is useful. Animals' furbelows
go forth and do things;
exaggeration means something
in the discourse of plants.
Guillemots' white bellies
camouflage nicely
against the cloud covered
coastlines of the North Atlantic,
and a certain crazy fuchsia
makes those tropical blossoms
which prefer honeycreepers
inconspicuous to bees.
But indoors, what are all
of our enrichments for?
Quotation marks, arrows, and
huge yellow carets
litter our arid rows of text
like pyramids of fruit arranged
to take up counter space
or fake flowers on the mantle
to make use of the spare vases;
the gaudy color of the
highlighter functions more like
jaundice, signifying the presence
of an underlying disease.
Shiny ornaments on a tree
look pretty, but
they're heavy; and they
stress out the branches.
In my house at least, I think
decorations
just make everything
harder to clean.

THE ROAD NOT RETAKEN

     I took the one less traveled by,
     And that has made all the difference.

     -Robert Frost

Actually, after Frost did

or did not get lost,

the road not taken

didn't stay open much longer.
Somewhere downtown, in a

marble building's basement,
it was sold for a
song, bulldozed to pieces,
regraded, repaved, covered-
over like a skin lesion.

There's a better-lit bus stop
and a closer-by grocery store
and a high-rise retirement
condominium's auxiliary pick-up
and drop-off lot there now—

and a few people are sad about this
inexorable honing of our
decision-making process, and several
more are happy about it, and the rest
still can't work out the difference.

ONGOING

I'm sure it's no coincidence
that deep down, I'm a homebody—
yet something invisible
careens around this stable nucleus
and relentlessly screams to go

off on vacations. Not to luxurious 
or breathtaking destinations—but
to the unnamed
and the derelict places
where savagery's bygone continuance

now sits silent and disremembered.
A shagged-over bison path
or an abandoned copper mine, for
instance; or a rifleman's lookout post
ruined on the tip of a limestone cliff

so otherwise barren and nonchalant
that what is observed—or should I say
rediscovered there—is nothing
but the luxurious ongoing
of my own breathtaking ignorance.

SECURITY SYSTEM

As an anxious first-time 

homeowner, it really 

eases my mind 

to surround myself 

at all times 

with a few modern conveniences   

which don't exactly work.

It feels high-end when 

I jiggle the handle—I tend to think

duct tape 

is pretty punk rock, and
that Gothic look 

of safety pins 

also smacks of a certain rebelliousness. 

Dead strikers, fickle 

circuits, flattened tires 

propped on bricks—

all perform beautifully

their manifest function

of making me feel like 

less of a jerk.

THOUGHTS ON A PLANE

Sometimes the sheer
presence of vertical
surfaces around here
closes in on me like it's
some kind of nightmare.

I vastly prefer
the austere look
of the cleared horizontal—
the sheen of morning light
on a completely clean
coffee table, the seat
of a backless desk chair
with no one with no job
perched on it working.

Peculiar, I know. But
I have my reasons.
These things
calm me down, cannot
hide, conceal nothing.
Quiet and attendant,
they always
hold me motionless,
bear noble gravity, and
don't ask questions.

But it's not just the silence
or the cleanliness—I swear,
the orientation of these objects'
planes in space
matters tremendously;

for even a blank wall,
the spotless glare
of a window, the silence
of doors, each concealing
some latent adventure—
all those things seem
to loudly insist
that I'm at the precarious
start of something,

but a clean marble
counter, an empty
kitchen table, a bare rug
stretched out and
sleeping on a polished
hardwood floor—all suggest
without a whisper
that I'm finally here
at the end.