LULL

While they stand out 

like cracks 

in a load-bearing wall, 

those little awkward pauses 

aren't like that 

at all. 

Woven though they are

through the opaque 

morass 

of all our 

most tedious,

prefab conversations,

they seem, at best, 

like empty gaps—

but the truth is 

our hesitations 

are much sturdier 

and more integral than that;

picture the rebar 

which runs right 

through the concrete 

reinforcing the walls 

of the rooms

we were born in—

or the mortar 

holding right 

to the mausoleum's bricks 

which houses 

the remains of our 

very last communication—

every wearisome

second of it,

brick after brick,

whether we chose to build it 

alone 

or together.

LIKENESS

By the time it's 

all over, 

instead of a story, 

I hope that my life

presents more 

like a painting—

brazen and wide, 

and hung right 

at eye-level, 

so that everyone who enters 

cannot help 

but regard it—

but no one

may come 

to say for certain 

what I've done—

only to see 

the totality 

of me having done it 

all at once.

SNAG

The results 

are in—

but the conclusion 

is awkward:

hundreds of millions 

of people 

now living 

are determined 

they're all going to live 

forever.

The catch is:

eternity doesn't mean 

what it used to. 

In this overcrowded, 

overheating stockade 

of a waiting room 

in which pointing 

to a lack of evidence 

against you is a worldview,

the only definition 

of forever 

worth clinging to 

is one second longer 

than the sap 

sitting next to you.

ACCORDS

If our bodies really 

are made out of starlight,

how come our lives feel 

so slow 

and heavy? 

Everything we know 

is supposedly 

made of the stuff, 

but still

there are so many 

words to learn. 

Everything we do 

(so we're told) 

is a vector 

of spellbound elemental matter—

and yet, many

are bad actors,

and others 

have reasonably 

decent intentions 

but nevertheless fail 

to state their cases right.

In fact, 

if everything we say 

is a violent stream

of photons,

heat beams, 

unstable nuclei, 

then who's to say 

we're the same people 

we claimed 

to be when we 

went to sleep last night? 

Then again—

if even the totality 

of all we can 

capably imagine 

is starlight, then 

none of this 

is wrong, because 

everything's 

alright. 

EXCHANGE

I hereby pledge, 

every day, to make you 

fresh music 

using the only two 

means that I've got: 

those syllables of English

speech which are 

stressed, 

and those 

which are not.

I'll arrange these 

small words into 

glimmering patterns— 

based on the ones 

I first learned 

(before I knew 

how to put on a raincoat

or tie my own shoes)

by memorizing, 

then parroting back 

the glimmering

fuss of grown-ups.

But in exchange 

for all that, I want you 

to promise  

to take precious care 

of my instruments: 

the measure 

and pitch of the voice 

in your head 

and the moment-

to-moment endurance

of your breath.

PAS SEUL

An addict of experience 

always fiends 

for significance; 

she wants 

every gesture—needs it

to be special. 

If forced 

to stand outside 

the interpretive circle, 

she will struggle 

to understand 

its simplest implication;

but when driven 

to participate, 

the most byzantine ritual 

will snap to its 

grid and make 

unblemished sense. 

As if under hypnosis, 

she will dance 

the proscenium,

miming gifts of daffodils 

to imagined eye-

witnesses

and bending

to the floorboards 

with a slow somber dignity

to press her soft lips 

to the corpse 

of the past. 

For her, even the darkness 

which concludes 

the performance 

is considered to be both 

highly referential 

and important—

because, 

of course, it's 

the exact same dark 

which she felt so compelled 

to dispel 

at the start.

ACQUIESCENCE

After decades spent 

avoiding the smallest 

threat of inconvenience 

posed by rich mythologies 

that don't explain 

a thing—at least,

not nearly as well 

as they tend

to illuminate 

the dry bones 

and land mines which lie 

in the brambles

and the cold 

distant sun at the heart 

of their explainer—

it seems you've grown more lenient;

you're now ready 

to concede

that there's dignity 

in the tyrannized, 

in the role of doleful entertainer, 

and most of all,

in the drudgery 

of rolling up your sleeves 

to pitch them 

the salvation 

of which you alone were told

but now are

far too old 

to receive.