DEVELOPMENTS

A middle-

distance image 

of Earth 

from the Hubble

is now 

the stock background 

on your 

third-best computer.

*

The speaker 

is a device 

(formerly employed

by the speaker) 

now used 

to pass guilt 

through a faultless

bath of chemicals.

*

Just keep 

putting words down, 

one 

after another.

If you're wondering 

whether you'll 

finish 

before you leave here—

don't worry; 

you could never.

If you're 

wondering whether

you'll leave here 

on schedule—

you couldn't 

not do that; 

so far,

it's impossible.

IDENTITY THEORY

The judges,

rimmed around the outer 

reaches 

of Whatness,

all agree: 

unanswerable questions 

related to How

will receive 

no additional points 

for originality. 

*

Fortunately, 

the way congruity works 

has been 

grossly 

overdetermined—

a blind selfish 

gene 

and an all-seeing 

eye 

will eventually 

combine forces;

the unaccounted-

for moment 

nevertheless arrives 

when "there"

and "here" 

drive distracted—

and collide.

LIVING THROUGH

When we're not 

teaching children 

"birds of a feather," 

it's because we're busy

watching television—

or whichever 

events currently 

aggregate as such.

You won't want 

to miss a second

of the 

currently trending

"When Opposites Attack."

*

Listen up. Listen in.

A critical-

mass viral 

load of new pronouns 

can 

in rare instances

be followed 

by the uproarious 

and involuntary 

expectoration of verbs. 

Might as well 

try 

to keep the sun 

from rising 

as dare to dam 

up the loud 

laugh of semantic 

drift.

*

It is difficult, 

but not 

impossible to imagine

never having 

to live

through any of this

again.

TRICK

Listen. 

You may think 

that the poet—

stuck as he is 

with the rest of us 

in the dark rough 

and curtain-thick folds 

of this rhetoric—

is about 

to make 

his excellent point;

but did you notice

how this sentence—

now scored

with myriad nearly

invisible rips, 

now asway 

with its slow-mounting 

stacks of peaked apexes—

has gradually 

begun to slip, 

like brass handcuffs 

off the slick 

and duplicitously 

bent-back 

wrists of 

the magician?

VULGAR TONGUE

How is it

the faint insinuation  

of resemblance 

is seductive,

but 

the brute fact of sameness—

two self-

similar peas 

trapped in the 

dark of their

literal pod—smells 

to our noses 

more than a little rotten?

*

Do you find these 

kinky similarities 

of language 

troubling

or attractive?—

or have you been sucked 

into the paperback-unstable 

romance 

between them both? 

*

Perhaps rhyme 

is a cup of sugar 

one word 

lends another.

Perhaps it is right 

to attribute 

meaning 

to pattern—

or perhaps 

it's merely pretty

common.

CONVENTION

Some who have 
come to this 

convention may insist 

on its elegance, but 

others say 

the universe 

is a pretty dismal

place—the lack of its 

oases, not to mention 

vending machines

is distinct,

there's no way to tell 

which of its poorly maintained 

territories you're 

idling through,

no way to reserve 

your place in line

or avoid all the signs stating

"closed for improvements,"

no views from the middle,

no WiFi signal,

all that debris 

where the

exits should be, 

all the waiting,

all the lost travel days, all 

the wasted space.

NOT

If matter 

consists 

of atoms, 

and atoms are built 

from a nest 

of six quarks 

arrayed 

in all possible 

locations in space,

and space 

is made of infini-

tesimal points—

each point, 

a need 

which has been blocked

(that is, neatly pinned-

in on all sides) 

by a lack;

why, then 

all the plaudits? 

It makes a lot of sense

for us 

to persist—does it 

not?