Friday, April 25, 2025

METEMPSYCHOSIS

In the infinite 
closet known as 
immateriality, 

it must be hard 
for a cold
little soul 

searching 
and searching 
in the desperate dark 

for the armholes 
in a garment 

called the heart
of a stranger. 


Thursday, April 24, 2025

MAD RUSH

Ironically, it's just that 
pliant softness

and fragility 
of open petals 

that causes us, as we 
dash past, to grow 
anxious—

to clamp our mouths 
shut, stiffen 
up, and become 

what we fear most: those 
tense, insipid 
imitations of ourselves. 

It's as though, 
when confronted 

with such 
slow and deliberate 
forms of movement, 

our subconscious aches 
from its breakneck approach.

But instead of going limp, 
we go 
unbending

as we make haste 
for cover, since we feel
so exposed. 


Wednesday, April 23, 2025

NEW AGE

In the end, perhaps 
it'll all come out 

like a laugh 
from the mouth of each play-
acting skeleton—

how the truth 
was a leaf 

in the air 
for a moment

just before it hit the ground:
a surfeit 

of love,
always there—

but no 
care, because 
no self. 


Tuesday, April 22, 2025

THAT'S PROGRESS

All our lives, 
we can't shake 
the feeling 

that our bodies 
should be more static—

not these great 
twist contests 
of vestigial viruses

and genes 
in giant lines, switching 
off and on again 

one at a time 
like they're taking turns trying 
to duck the limbo stick. 

In fact, it seems 
almost automatic—

every precious time 
we get the chance 
to close our eyes, we see 

in a dream, the lure 
of advancement 
as an abstract 

substitute for light—
that feeling of warmth 
by which we might, 

in an ancient time, 
once have felf 
unselfconscious enough 

to unspool 
in the water—to expand 
and to rise 

toward a surface that, 
to breach, we all knew 
would be suicide. 


Monday, April 21, 2025

PSYOP

Fleshy scented
fists of magnolias 

shall uncurl 
and beckon in 
troves of mist 

as cardinals 
issue falsely 
approbative dictums 

and gestures 
toward warm 
breezes come and go 

coyly as so much
conditional love—

and this 
is how April 
will manage to sell 

its thirty-
day-wind-and-rain 
hell to its victims. 


Friday, April 18, 2025

MUTE SWAN

Perhaps the only 
extant creature 

to have successfully 
upended the belief 
in her own body, 

she alone knows—
to catch the wild quiet 
and keep it 

is harder 
than it seems at first. 

And perhaps, 
to achieve this, 
she has spent her life picturing 

a breath 
without limits,

a breadth 
with no length, 

a burst far beyond 
the bounds of sound and color 

too haphazard 
to ever have been 
intended. 

But more likely, 
she has learned 

in the monochrome fire 
of repetition

how to forge 
a more effortless noise 

with neither the desire 
nor the need 
to make another. 

 

Thursday, April 17, 2025

THE IMPERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Viewing their star 
from increasingly far 

as the explosion 
we live in 
rides the spine of everything

each night will add 
just another 
milligram to hell.

As if the ghosts 
that swam in these shells 

could not possibly find 
their way home 
without reminding 

that matter can neither 
be created nor destroyed,

that the gaping 
void is no match 
for mathematics.

And so, we try to focus 
on the faith that our facts 
persist without us; 

gradually, 
we learn not to be 
afraid of growing distance—no, 

it's the tiniest 
change in brightness 
that shatters us.