Tuesday, January 7, 2025

OVERWORLD

Once, to combat 
the loneliness 
of the present, 

we make-believed now 
and then 
were one place;

here and there 
blurred to pure 
pattern recognition, 

and all that we sought 
was the shine 
of one face. 

But soon, we grew curious 
and wandered out 
in the blankness,

and everything 
looked hauntingly 
the same in that forest 

as we tramped 
our way back toward 
that lost abstraction. 

Now, it's the end 
of another 
long evening; too dark 

to read the map, 
and we're at our 
most hollow—

so we're left 
with no choice 
but to pitch a new camp 

at this blip between
tomorrow and a past 
we can't correct. 


Monday, January 6, 2025

SPYGLASS

This moment, 
we are told, is everything 
you can notice 

that cannot be noticed 
in the last 
or next moment. And yet, 

the goal, they say, 
is to line up each
one perfectly, 

end to beginning, 
beginning to end—
and then 

peer through the hole 
at the center 
of all of them 

until you make out 
the blurred shape 
of a plan. 


Friday, January 3, 2025

HALF-ASSING THE HOUSEWORK

Scrubbing 
(in vain)

the stain
of nostalgia 

from the same
couple memories

I can capably
dismantle

and quickly 
reassemble 

from memory 
already.


Thursday, January 2, 2025

IMMEMORIAL

Before 
and after—a false 
dichotomy.

Suffering 
isn't everything, 

but it's 
everywhere—
and it's massless;

it isn't 
your past, 

but it rhymes
with your past—
and it travels 

(if it travels) 
at the speed 
of light; 

the instant it arrives, 
it is already leaving; 

but it doesn't 
really leave, 
it only 

leaves you 
behind. 


Wednesday, January 1, 2025

NEW YEAR

The sentence 
keeps running-on 

longer 
and longer,

using fewer 
and shorter 

and more similar-
sounding words—


Tuesday, December 31, 2024

CLARITY

After another 
all-night bacchanal, 

the bewilderment 
in me 

falling 
drunk asleep. 


Monday, December 30, 2024

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.