NEW YEARS PARTY

Like everyone else here, 

I have practiced 

speaking gracefully  

about the myriad ways 

all life on earth

will cease.

The lakes of hard clay

and black holes 

born at CERN 

trip off my tongue 

at the New Years party—

as if

preempting 

my own absence 

will save me 

some face.

AXIOM

They say—Light 

is uncatchable

weightless

ageless

incorruptible. 

But without an observer—

a serpent 

to proffer 

the choice—all this 

becomes nonsense.

If I never needed 

to say anything again

would I?

How would I 

decide?

How would I 

make clear that I haven't 

decided?

What could it mean 

for an axiom 

to vacillate

between 

higher—or even alternate 

dimensions?

 

LACUNA

When I think 

back on all 

the objects 

I have worshiped—

many spheroid, 

others cylindrical,

all of them 

hollow now, black 

and white in 

the photo-

book of memory—

I experience not 

the loss 

of quintessence, 

but the paradox

of hope;

it might yet 

be possible—

for a substance, 

for a presence 

to represent 

its own total 

lack.

NEVERTHELESS

Even while we cry 

for help—

pinned and seeing 

neon in a car crash,

dangling and superfluous 

in a pitch black elevator shaft, 

from every strained cell

of our body mass, 

in our weaknesses, 

in our sleep—

we nevertheless remain 

those rightwise 

and bright-eyed optimists 

of myth. 

To have a taste 

for anything at all—

any form of subsistence 

we may yet deign to eat—

is an article of faith. 

Every day,

to wake, 

and to rise—surely

these are two kinds

of belief.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Even the astronaut—

decorated veteran,

so fond 

of silence, 

so near

to heaven—like everyone 

else here, just 

wants to go home.

SMALL TALK

What if there 

were an ominous 

pleasure 

simply in calling 

a thing 

by it's name?— 

This 

is called a "ghost note."

that 

requires exquisite 

"control." 

Each recalled term, 

the guest of honor

at a banquet, 

long toasts recounting 

all the places 

it's been.

Overstimulation

would come merely

from teeth 

touching tongue; 

a fatally 

decadent self-

indulgent feeling

as air

abandons lung.

SURROGATE

From here on in, 

to help avoid any 

unnecessary confusion, 

every day will cancel

the previous 

one out. 

Like voices 

cooing "nothing 

compares to you" 

just as the marvelous 

synthesizers 

kick in, 

this place you're in

and that place 

where you came from, 

will both signify—

significance.

True, with no endings 

and no new beginnings, 

you'll never uncover 

the source 

of your sadness.

On the plus side,

if you ever thought

you'd rid yourself 

of that nuisance 

"once and for all"—

now you're only

half-wrong.