HAIKU (INTEGRITY)

All facades gray

wet with sleet — hardly a safe

day for ideas.

RAREFACTION

Science says:
The future is feeding back
into the past.

Without being asked to go, old
White Christmas
snow acquiesces,

is fragmenting—and, wet and unbuffeted,
you can again hear the city crack-
and creaking

at grimy street level;
gazing up at high windows,
you can just imagine

molted needles and fine dust
which percolate cold penthouse halls in
the emptiness of late light—

dark filaments, like the nets
of unborn souls which (you still think
in private

minutes like this)
must softly stitch
the universe together—but,

like the dark types of light,
you don't observe
those parched rooms directly,

you see them obliquely—these alleys
all decked up
and down with dying pines.

THRUM NATION

Sure as the imperious sunlit sky
obscures vast astronomical networks,

this waking life is
merely
obfuscating my illimitable dreaming. sure
let's have another loud

mournful celebration—sure, of the death
of the night, of the life of the world we could
still walk around dead in. sure.

I'm humming, I'm joking, I'm not
humming, I'm scrolling, tearing,
                             improvising through pages—people,
years, projects, dollars. millions of
billions of them out there, but who's counting,
just listen—
even the word "billions" sounds like the coins

getting yanked out of some digital
slot machines' mouths
and hitting the ground sure—just
make up your mind or don't I
don't care just let me make up mine...

in the even audible spaces between breathing, I hear
a kind of existential silence
emanating from all these smart devices.
                                          all trash
compacted news, rude
teenage poltergeists of photographs, clever
ticker tape commentary—

it doesn't matter where. sure,
                          everywhere
the white space tingles. the black
pulses thrash and hum.

Gradually—nothing

has begun 

to crease and to fold and compound itself

out of thin air. out of existence. in a minute 

suffocating it’s own capacity to happen.

APPROACHING 0

As winter's cruel late 

afternoon light 

floods each poorly curtained window, 

fills and 

somehow

dims the kitchen—a gradual void 

of value, 

pace, and direction 

leaves you 

with not even your 

own distinct shadow.

Darkness.

This must be how planets come together. 

This is your cue 

to simplify feeling, 

consolidate meaning,

and wrap your core up tight in their patinas.

You have layers now. You're still you—but

encrusted.

Gradually you are moved 

to boil water,

to light imaginary cosmic cigarettes 

straight off the finicky gas burner,

to start practicing 

smaller 

smaller, 

ever-smaller

reorientations toward perfection.

CAPABILITY

So deep in the grip of it, Bewilderment
suddenly wrenches the corners
of slack Inexperience

into a dopey smiling curl—
a cute little ligature
used to tie nonsequiturs together

which Authority
leaps to misconstrue
as devious, collusive, up to no good—

failing to notice, this self-
righeous Batman—is about to slap Robin
Hood.

SOUL

This is all you get:
for a minute,
a twilit sky—

emaciated light-
blue cerulean,
and obdurate scarlet fire—

occupying
the same place
at the same time;

a winged thing
hovering,
abstract—and dislocated.

This is all they really meant
by—
the anomaly:

a small air bubble
drifting,
swimming

up and
down in the hollow
plot of your body.

NAME THE FEELING

Okay, I take it all back—you can talk
to me all you want
about _______ (WHAT).

Guess there's really
no loss quite like

the bloodless
remembrance of loss,

probably because—no loss
except it.

Do not try to pronounce that thing, just
accept it:

"foist." "crack." "pervade." "insinuate."
This all sounds right in your own native
tongue—doesn't it?

do dishes
fix
coffee clean and
type little crumbs

all you want. But please, let me revise
at least this
one paragraph for you:

to grieve, you'll have to
open up.

I don't mean—empty. And I don't mean
write. I mean:

you must speak.
Speak and say the wrong things.

Speak
to fill up

the raw freezing gulf
that exists
between you

and the rest of us.
Speak,
if just

to keep breathing,
to exhale

and fill the bare air up
with warmer stuff.