LEARNING HOW TO LOOK BACK

You are told 

that, after many years

of rehearsal, 

you'll see better— 

depth will come 

in clearer, and even

small things 

will grow bigger. So 

day and night, 

you stare, until 

your learn

to pull the trigger

and shoot 

a bullet, for example,

straight through the heart 

of a louse.

Only now, there’s all 

the shrapnel—ah, the shrapnel 

is a nightmare;

you miss more 

little flecks of her

than your dead-

eye now knows 

how to count.

OCTOBER EMPYREAN

If what the say about heaven
is accepted

on faith as
what waits at the end

of the path, then:

every face 

reps an abstract expression,

and what used to pass

for pumpkins 

don’t now sit deflated—

reverse-skinned

by psychopaths, 

garish smiles
childishly gashed—

in their new patch

made of concrete

at the top
of Valhalla’s steps.

THE REDUNDANT COMING

Forget about the center—really
it’s the edges now
which cannot hold.

The slaughter rule
has gone
out the window,

and the refs grow
less bold
than a chessboard pawn,

while the worst
of us don’t even
sneak around anymore.

We all see them
showboat and 

weave around the lines,

scoring touchdown
after touchdown
while the clock winds down;

It’s easier than running
for office unopposed.
But the silence

from the crowd isn’t
stunned; it’s just
bored, because

a circus that truly
goes “maximus”
is meaningless, and

even pure diversion

will fail to meet its
stated goal when

all the world’s
a grudge match, but
nothing’s out of bounds.

THE VOID SPEAKS

Many have said
what they seek
is peace—

as if it were 

an exotic insect, bird

of paradise, or one-day bloom.

Time and again,
I’ve seen man
and woman

scour the streets or comb the web

for what they presume to have 

lost in the womb.

I’ve watched one
after another splatter paint
over blankness,

whistle past
hiatuses, build bridges
over chasms, and

march forth in its name
like some half-
mad lepidopterist, net in hand,

and ignorant 

to the boobytrapped-

pit-as-prerequisite trope—

to the fact that it’s more than
good etiquette, it’s
foundational—it’s the most

one can do
(if one does
what one can)

to carve 

out a little fallow
space in the middle

of life's hazards and transactions 

which may give that capricious, 

fleeting, alien peace 

a chance—

by which I really only 

mean: a decent place—to land.

WORK SONG

Certainty 

prevails—only 

not the sort you wanted.

For God 

is not the manager,

the foreman—or even

the carpenter. 

No,

God
is the hammer—

and a hammer

just pounds nails.

EVEN STILL

There is nothing in this world

so patient

as our longing—

the way it curls

up like a question

mark and waits,

purring phrases 

in quotations which sprawl across 

the pillowcase

and conspire with 

our deference 

to keep us awake and explaining

again at the tail

end of another

long and tiring day.

HALLELUJAH LTD.

Splashing water 

in the basin—voices 

of the yet-unborn

sing: praise be 

to everything's

always and everlasting

trickling a little too 

quickly down the drain again.