BAD BREATH

If I wasn't so tired and quiet
and conspicuous-
feeling—all goose pimples
and rumpled underwear,

I might stand and shout

out the chilly bay window—

take it all back!

at the exacting light,

which, with its usual knife-

edged insensitivity,

is presently quizzing

all the neighboring

brick walls, needling

the street beneath, and

splitting the precious hairs of these

blunt stone hours

into cheap and hurried-

feeling moments—like this, each

one a little too sharp for my

taste in the morning.

LESSER OF TWO EVILS

Pursuant to the new year, a rude
cigarette lying
out on the sidewalk still burning,

its curled gossamer
floss of smoke, the cherry
on top, so elemental

yet conclusive
as the profligate
ribbon on a gift—which

you've done so little
to deserve,
it unnerves you to accept

such an absolute
surge of dry lust, a sudden kindling
of entitlement 

to be—someplace warmer
than this is, at least. And a third
cup of coffee.

INVOCATION

God save the thin woman
in the longest parka imaginable

bisecting the lowly
wind outside my window;

that spectacularly inflated
little royal fountain

of a Pomeranian-Shih-tzu
gurgling along beside her

likely requires
someone truly special

to clean the interminable
gunk from the

corners of its eyes—
if not the matted

shit from its
jubilant coat—routinely,

without somehow
growing too humble

to keep scheduling
public demonstrations.

LIFE MANUAL

Here you go, son;
here's your very own
loaded gun—

now remember, an eyeball
never stops seeing
what it looks at,
even with its heavy lid blinked;

so be sure to be
careful with
where you choose to point it—

and by careful, I mean steady;
and by steady,
I mean absolutely
certain that you're right;

and by certain, I mean
convinced;

and by right, I mean not
too unhappy.

GETTY ADDRESS

No wonder a few hundred
years—or a thousand
are still
not enough to learn from:

how did she look
when she first heard the news
horse-powered from the border
a few weeks too late?

what was his first thought
when that cold rain which fell earlier
suddenly caught
the light of a blue moon?

History has no
people in it.
Only pictures—and, of course

words—doing things,
following certain
orders.

CONSIGNED TO THE DUSTBIN

As a puppet is free
because he cannot look up
to see the strings,

as a seer voraciously rereads
and memorizes page 35
in order to predict 36

in a huge holy book
whose conclusion already exists
somewhere around 500—so too

every night, in our dreams
so many unwritten poems
gleam on the knife edges of the horizon

while our shuttered eyes are powerless
to read them. Yet
silent, incorporeal, ghosts move to visit

each of these dark cities
off in the distance,
populated with divorcees and fugitives

and orphan children—
whose histories are long epics,
the lines of which will change slightly

with each new generation, because
they must be sung
in order to be remembered.

POST-MERIDIAN MAN

Mornings, the guy is basically toothless
and quiet: all black
coffee and no talking, thank you.

By afternoon, though, he's
so through
with contemplating that sermon of serene sky,

and, much like the light in the windows
gradually twisting pallid, then chilly,
and finally cruel, his mouth too starts twisting

toward the shape of the new vulgarian's—one
who's so ruthlessly "past all that"
and who is presently

howling out-loud at the neon heaven glow of
internet television—or else
hunching over to hellishly

wolf down helpless sprats,
all uniformly slashed, preemptively
decapitated, and buried

two tons-deep beneath
the brutish crust of some ancient stone-
ground mustard.