NEW YEAR

The sentence 

keeps running-on 

longer 

and longer,

using fewer 

and shorter 

and more similar-

sounding words—

CLARITY

After another 

all-night bacchanal, 

the bewilderment 

in me 

falling 

drunk asleep. 

VICIOUS CYCLE

From time 

to time, the old 

guilt goes—in a flutter 

of the heart, 

perhaps, or churn 

of the stomach. 

Then, like some 

defenseless animal 

desperate to attach, 

it always comes back. 

But from where 

does it return?

And how hard 

was walking its 

arduous path? 

I'm ashamed 

to admit it, but—

I never think to ask. 

THE WORK

Well past noon, 

I still sit 

at the writing desk 

waiting for the violence, 

for the language 

to crack.

Words come 

(when they come) 

one by one, 

wet and slack;

as primeval 

subspecies 

from the ocean 

of doubt.

And one by one, 

I wring them out 

and hang them 

on the line of silence. 

But this isn't 

a method 

of making something

so much as 

a way of marking 

time.

STARS

Night after night, 

their mild light 

trickles 

like the ardor 

of a mother for her 

tenderest child—

like drizzle 

from the heights of some 

unfathomable past—

but in spite of this 

fact, and our hours 

in quiet contact, 

 

we still somehow 

wake up to find 

we've grown older. 

HEARSAY AND CONJECTURE

In a coming of age tale 

of the future, I wonder

whose fitful dream 

could have conjured 

this reality? 

So I blunder toward words 

until they rip themselves 

to shreds, 

until my thoughts

climb up trees 

to be crucified 

willingly; 

and I keep my ear pressed 

against the cold ground 

of indifference—

is it the sound 

of rapture 

or repugnance?—

I think: 

any ignorance

this profound 

must be on the brink 

of revelation. 

WINTER SOLSTICE

The way 

gaunt crows prowl 

the desolate 

playground after 

sundown,

as if scavenging 

for a reason to endure 

amid the empty packages 

of HotHands 

and Doritos there—

so tattered 

are the feathers 

at the tail-

end of December;

so unconscionably 

cruel has been 

the season 

of foreclosure.