SLEEPING IN THE CITY

what kind of rest
do you expect to get
at all—

what sort of recompense
for passing which state
of remoteness—

when there is no bat,
no rodent,
no owl stirring,

no moonlight silver
water lapping
against a cistern wall

with no lush
canopy overhead—
no dense carapace?

how is a body supposed
to zip itself up
for a bit,

to stall infinity
between two blinks
of armistice,

to see only the pureness
of the ink and not
the words written in it,

to pull its head off
and push it
off into the black

stream of that
same ink
on the pillow of oblivion,

and then turn around
without guilt
and forget?

BURNING QUESTION

If there is one, the reason
for it must be
spread so thin
and evenly across the planet

that all the men and women
and even children dodging
do not see it,
though they lend it

a little more credit
with every new instance
of their constant and
deliberate looking.

The only scintilla of a hint
they get is the golden,
splendid, spacious
daily-ness of it.

This unnoticeability
is encouraging
to scientists; scholars say its
constancy reassures.

The burning frivolousness
of light illuminating
empty space might serve as
evidence—how dependably

each night it fails;
just as in the morning,
how it never fails
at returning.

VOID WHERE PROHIBITED

What about those times
when you say you feel fine—
not sick and not well,
not relieved, but not particularly
miserable; when you do or don't stop
to muse a little, or complain, or
demand a satisfying explanation
from anyone about anything;
when you get through all your email
but haven't begun to reply;
when you don't mind crying
as long as it's because of the bracing wind
blowing in off the lake, the onion
your dutiful chef's knife is chopping,
or the big song from a movie
coming on full-blast in the car;
when you have neither failed nor succeeded
at graciously receiving the redundant
gift you've just been given,
deciphering the confusing
wording on the assembly instructions,
or giving your last trace of love
to this small battered animal
called daily life
who must trust someone soon
if it wants to survive
but doesn't remember how
and has no idea who?

THE SYMPTOMS

It feels a little like
Christmas as a toddler—if you were
just begging for
a little more self-consciousness.

It's as if you realized early on
a good night's rest could work
much better as a sacrifice
to the kind of divinity you believed in.

It's reminiscent of the time
back in school
you had actually studied
but never got tested on the material—

the calculus devised by
Newton and Leibniz, meant to pulverize
the smooth curves of existence
into a fine dust of fractions

which of course you couldn't keep
from inhaling; after that
you found your own lungs had grown
worse at filtering unrarified air.

Now it greets you surreptitiously
like someone who doesn't know you,
as if you really needed this new way
to suffer, another name for the flu.

The disorientation causes you
to swoon, forget your own name,
fall back and then band
together with the rest

of the nameless populace
bearing witness to clear and
certain experience, instead of just
its tenuous first-personness.

OPTIONAL

Early in the morning morning,

it seems I am allowed 

to use a language which is private

to speak only of what is optional.

I might softly lob dreams
into tautological algorithm 

machines; I may discover 

that a poem is a song—or isn't

much of a poem at all—
but there is no dissent either way
from the audience: the remnants
of eggs and coffee (black),

or the headless sardines
not yet extracted from their can.
And I know how all of that
might come across, 

but I don't have to care all the time

about what is optimal. I say:
let the midday break

as my validation; 

may the sky brighten a little, 

as I hurry off, as if 

I have just gotten away 

with something.

HYACINTH AND IRIS

How precious
is each
endlessly regenerative
special occasion?

How fresh and exciting
the unprecedented loss
of our counting

of whatever
new thing just
predictably happened?

How significant
the prefabricated sentiments
and ornamentation adorning
the most trivial events?

Nature has given us
a quick heuristic to follow—

the more anthropologically
significant the flower,

the deadlier the petals
if ingested.

IT'S YOUR CHOICE

Any point
in an elliptical orbit
might as well be the end
as the beginning

someone who must meet you
has just been born

someone who you have met
has just died

on the road
to the chapel of influence
or the bright silver hospital
of exegesis

a crow overhead
a scavenger bird
alights on the path

and denudes you with his
bewildering rasp
all mouth, but no voice
you are given two options

express your ideas
and suffer the risks
of their getting pecked
and shredded apart

lay your beating heart down
naked and liable
to be picked clean
of all its feeling

or else choose
later on to read in the paper

of the silent auction of both
and suffer

the same humiliation alone.