FRAMING DEVICES

At one certain point, 

everyone living 

has precisely 

the same amount of past 

as future. 

For this moment only, 

they no longer need to walk, 

to count, to listen;

there is nowhere to go—

they are home. 

*

Quick question—

how many descriptors 

does it take 

to denote 

an individual? 

How many individual birds 

make a pair?

and how many pairs make 

a difference? 

*

Behind each eyelid, 

there's a small, tidy room 

being held 

in reserve 

for "you." 

*

The beginning of love 

is sympathy for another, 

but the end of love 

is pity. 

How can this be?

The holy trinity was made 

when two lovers 

walked together on the shore 

and were followed 

by the gaze 

of a third-

person narrator. 

*

The structure of sentences 

like those above 

has conditioned each of us 

to value most that 

which we expect 

to see next. 

In just the same way, 

reverberation teaches 

that every word 

which comes to us 

has already been said 

at least once. 

DIAGNOSTIC

The results are in—

inside me, there's a knotted fist 

of string 

where the beginnings 

and endings 

of things ought to be—

long twisted tangles 

of some equally inaccessible 

near and far, 

some tension 

that's connected to, but doesn't 

end with me 

and the start of which has 

always been 

somewhere else entirely. 

*

I used to be more 

exact than this, 

but that was before I knew

letters and numbers.

Now, every frightened thought 

is less a mandate 

than a blundered attempt 

at a revolution—

which is 

to say: half senseless 

directionless, 

nonproductive motion

and half little battle 

for the truth 

of some previous-

ly governable situation. 

PASSING FAIR

What is there left 

to complain about now? 

Will the dead still need the living 

like the living 

need the dead? 

Has the gist of our conviction 

has been weighed down 

by old inference yet?

By way of answers, 

here comes spring again—

all penitent mallards 

wing north 

for the season 

and fingers of rain 

massage moss 

from dead tree trunks.

Things soften, then streamline; 

so certain, they're 

redundant.

Life in such times is 

tedium refined;

ease 

that's insistent;

reiteration 

with a difference. 

OLD HAND

There is, in this life,

a kind of strangeness 

so pervasive as to turn 

innocuous—

an eerie glory 

so often repeated 

that, even in its transience, 

it doesn't bear hoarding. 

Picture the proverbial 

overflowing bowlful 

of tropical citrus 

on a Midwestern table—

and tell me

we're not experts

at gorging 

on the foreign 

while ignoring 

the incongruous. 

MARCH MADNESS

Day by slowly 

swelling day, a collective fever 

becomes visible 

as the bashful sun 

tickles baubles of frost 

from the mud-mottled grass

and the geese overhead 

blare back northward 

in a huff. 

With spring still little more 

than an R.E.M. dream,

little sounds appealing  

in the rawness 

of wind and spent-

matchstick look of lawns—

but even though 

that pulpit-crowed hope

of resurrection still feels risible, 

we have to admit, 

it's a joy 

just to realize 

even our muddy, most 

juvenile feelings. 

LATE FRAGMENT OF STEPHEN DEDALUS

Dreamt I was love's 

last living vampire; 

loneliness 

was my familiar—

but for once, my lust 

and your concern came 

teetering back into 

phase with each other. 

As I opened my mouth 

to bare my teeth 

and claim consubstantiality 

of words and reality, 

your lips—which were wet 

and pressed close enough 

to, at least temporarily, 

shut mine up—

felt like not so much 

of a big deal by contrast, 

and, as such, were 

all the sweeter. 

 

LET'S FACE IT

We love to hurt 

the way a baby loves 

to look around 

after it has 

just fallen down 

to make sure its mother is 

paying attention. 

*

Our preferred form 

of diversion 

is a pleasure 

deferred—

a day 

without timestamps;

a poem 

without all the troublesome 

words;

a "referred" pain 

as an analgesic 

substitute for the real thing.

("Better them 

than us," we exclaim.)

We like our 

soft feelings

like we like our hard truths: 

registered across town 

in seedy hotel rooms

under nom de plumes. 

*

We are not into 

"pushing the easy button."

We are into regretting 

easy buttons don't exist.