SO HELP US

God we are all
such crooks—I mean,
look at us

stealing dates, furtive
glances, midnight
snacks, inhalations—it’s like 

we’re born

to be ingrates
who go through life begging

to be caught
with our red hands
in an existential cookie jar—

and not for the rush,
or because it’s
"who we are," but

just to practice for
armageddon—
that feeling of sitting

one foot from the judge’s chair
with that very same hand
on a stiff bible, stating

nothing
but the truth,
and the whole

truth, so help us:
that Telos and Logos
could never understand

how damn often 

there are no such things 

as good explanations.

ART BRUT

I’m afraid of getting
too close to the thing

because I’ve got a funny 

feeling that, if life

were a painting,

it wouldn’t bear
a signature.

Despite oils and gessos
of extravagant color;

despite all the playful
shapes, strokes, 

and ligatures 

meant to evoke it’s subject’s 

singular features;

despite delicate and 

abstract layers of preferences

and memories;

and especially 

despite the fact that

many come to see it
and several great masters 
have claimed they're the author—

when I scanned
and turned it over,

there'd be nothing 

there to see, because nobody
made this—

it just came
to be.

MINDFULNESS AS HAMARTIA

What will nourish
day-to-day versus

punish, who can say?

What luck:
this over-
abundance of nature’s

great flavor for 

beauty in the cup 

of just one flower—

but still, I bet 

you’d end up crazy 

with hunger

if you were to pluck
one to have
as your dinner.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LYRICISM

From a fast windmill 

joust to the

Zapruder film—

from a doomed ship 

with too few rafts

to the madeleines of Proust:

we think it's Fate conspiring 

with our truths 

to make such songs—

we assume we're

inspired—but what

are the odds

it's been you

and me all along breathing 

out the gods?

PURITANICAL FANTASY

Had a dream last night

that I could separate

the beautiful 

from the ugly

parts of my body—

and unlike

in the compos mentis bait-

and-switch of daylight,

doing so didn’t
immediately kill me.

INVOCATION FOR LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS

Just as pearls 

are less delicate, yet 

more rarified than facts,

so the artist, although
terrified, is patient 

as the windblown grit.

Call it a symbol,
a metaphor, or a lie—but 

let the statesmen

deal in worlds;
you shall traffic
in the skies.

IDEALIST HEPCAT HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

He scats
that there are no such things as 

separate events—

that he who
circulates his own blood
is the one who shines the sun.

Then he riffs that you must
see the golden
goose of life whole,

or else risk the temptation
of cutting it open.
You counterattack

that omnipotence
doesn’t have to know
how things get done

in order to transmute our
“freedom to”
to “freedom from,”

but you have to admit that,
even for a materialist, the jazz
is close enough

to say we see
independent identity
only through relation,

and that impenetrability
is just a jive word 

for drastic isolation.