POETRY: A USER'S GUIDE

In truth, I do not 

even know 

what it means—

much less

how to make it.

It's just something 

you wake up and 

find yourself always 

in the middle 

of have been doing 

already. 

But it's a lot 

less like speaking 

than like

singing in your sleep: 

in rhythms 

with no histories

and melodies 

left suspended;

and without that

grammatical net 

of guarantees—

and of course, 

on an instrument 

which is only as valuable 

as its capacity 

to be left, every night, 

unattended.

AT YEAR'S END

At the terrible mercy of so much 

austerity, everything manmade 

collapses—or else 

hastily crouches to 

simplify itself, like some 

ungainly fraction. 

No more jingling sleigh bells

or mottled Appaloosas—only 

the simultaneous contraction 

of all the quiet, snowy roads

and all points of time's circle joining 

and compacting. 

Even the dazzling smokewhite 

of daybreak and the shimmer of yellow-lit,

 late evening windows 

are, here at another 

bleary year's end, just as remarkable 

as they are incidental. And yet, 

what remarkable freedom 

must exist 

to be reached 

now that all time and place

and every habitual 

path we might take

have just been so forcibly

but mercifully 

erased? 

MORE OR LESS

From the far-off 

gleam of jet planes

maneuvering around 

the snarling jigsaw 

of towers downtown,

to waking dream 

of each singular flake 

of fat December snow 

landing and mercifully 

blotting out the details  

on row after row 

of old granite headstones—

everywhere you look,

things keep proceeding 

on their own—as if

the music 

which first inspired 

the dance of our lives 

was concluded 

by the orchestra 

quite some time ago,

but someone out there 

vaguely still remembers 

how the words went: 

there's nothing 

you can say;

and nothing's 

out of bounds;

and nothing 

ever has to

be a certain way.

THE TIME BEING

Perhaps 

the past 

is a strike-anywhere 

matchstick 

crammed inside its 

stiff little box. 

And 

the future is 

pure sandpaper—

or the grainy 

brick mortar 

just waiting 

to annihilate it.

And you—you're 

the addict, 

with his sulfur-

tinged nostrils and

nicotine fingers 

who delights 

at how quick 

and how hot 

and spectacularly 

the two come together  

to engender 

the fire 

which you jones

to take hold of 

and hold deep 

inside you 

before setting 

loose to get 

lost in the world—

every time 

anything 

happens 

at all.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH

You should never say grace 

for the things 

you've been given, 

but instead, pray to 

all of those things 

for their grace;

and resist the urge to speak 

or to write of your freedom, 

lest you risk describing, 

through negation, the depths 

of another's isolation. 

But the most important 

move you must make, 

if you really want 

to know the truth, 

is never to stroll 

the perimeter of your life 

in order to fathom its shape;

but instead,

to trace the outline 

of that faint apprehension 

that the shape of this life

is not the only one 

it can take.

CHRISTMAS STAR

Of all of the gifts 

man has ever

been given, 

this was, unquestionably, 

the greatest 

and the cruelest,

as it seemed, 

most perversely, 

to do the most good 

in curing the sicknesses 

which had heretofore 

driven him: 

his belief 

that there is any such thing 

as true knowledge, 

instead of that

black sea of 

fascinating glimmers;

and his addiction 

to confusion which impersonates 

complexity—

both of which were easily 

and unsympathetically 

subsumed

into that baffling 

pool of immutable 

simplicity 

which the shepherds 

called

night sky.

 

VEDANTA FOR SKEPTICS

To say it
out loud, it may
sound a bit odd,

but here in
The West, we don't
really disagree

with an old Hindu premise
that everyone
is God. It's just—

we count our chickens
before they
can squawk,

and we like
to proceed in a single-
file line;

so we keep off 

our knees until
something bad happens,

and we only let one
dead man walk
at a time.