OVERDETERMINED ARS POETICA

We are all 

unhappy; 

we are each disturbed. 

The artist is

merely the kind

of doubly precocious-

meets-insecure 

jerk who

absolutely has to

be the one to say so

best—but also 

first.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LAZARUS

Okay: it’s a gift 

each day to wake and 

strive to be happy—

but the imperative

to come forth (or
come fifth, or come 

clean, or whatever)

is not a quid pro 

quo we should need

to put up with. 

To say to the worms

and maggots waiting
on death's platform:

“Hey sorry—but this train
now runs express 

and in-reverse”

would seem on the 

face of it anything

but crude, if not for 

its infringement on
that finitude we
bargained for when
brokering our contracts.

Moreover: to comically 

keep unrolling 

the scroll of a life 

while withholding the cipher 

to decode its message's 

preciousness is at best 

an over-saturation

of an already highly
temperamental market—
and at worst,
a tremendous violation
of what we thought
was our God-
given right
to some rest.

AGNOSTIC'S LAMENT

It’s not that I’m afraid
of winter’s curses—just 

embarrassed to say out loud

that I’m jealous of these
gaunt crowds
of autumn trees

which possess such 

vaunted freedoms not 

accorded to the likes of me.

It's a tacit invective, or 

so it seems—their choice

to just stand around all day

and, whenever they’re
ready, die in 

public so spectacularly—

knowing, 

without ever having 

learned or forgotten,

that another turn is bound 

to come—

then go—then

come again, come 

what may—and that, 

even if the next one 

isn’t strictly 

“theirs,” it 

might as well be.

A NEEDLE FOR YOUR BALLOON

Pomp, as such, being 

no match 

for circumstance, 

how we exist 

just equals 

where we’re at. 

No matter his girth, 

his strength, or his 

speed—the wild colt

on the steppes is 

undone by the gnat. 

So trust

that, no matter 

how vast the heavens 

and the Earth,

the motion 

of traffic’s no match 

for the breeze;

picture ten 

thousand things—

from mosquitos

to kings—all 

gently sustained 

by the way it is.

LOSING THE THREAD IN THE HOUSE OF FAME

What paucity
of Truth exists

in that which
can be told—

easier to slowly

draw one's straw 

than spin it

into gold. And so: 

inspired by 

the spider 

to weave lowly 

words—not Literature—

I compose this
little showpiece, then 

just leave it

in the corner.

VICISSITUDES

Last leaf on the maple, 

I’d almost forgotten

after last season's
lightness, but I know

how you feel: both

bright gold

and crippled—

doomed 

but finally seen—

and always

for defensible but 

not the right reasons.

BONFIRE NIGHT

By November, when its colder
and sound travels 

farther, I can hear 

the swift but distant tolling

of church bells—right on the tick
of the hour. And,
for a sepulchral moment,
I can’t remember

which unfulfilled promise
I’m still holding out for:
a calmly determined
clockwork universe—or

swarms of crotchless
six-winged seraphim
praising god’s capricious love
of wrongness to the rafters.