ORDINARY DREAM

Dreamt I built myself a temple 

from what I could steal 

from the ruins of old temples—

and the only
change I made
to the pile

was to hose
the rubble down
for a while,

just to get some of the holy off

and make it a little
more run-of-the-mill.

ON THE SEVENTH DAY, GOD RESTED

And lo, only after growing tired 

of carrying out the legislation 

of his own delight did he discover

that the greatest pleasure in creation
is solitude and isolation. O, to put 

down the phone, he thought. 

O, to be left alone 

to be a recluse. And now, 

having been made in his image, 

so it must go with all of us. 

For is not the point of our lives 

a sharp end 

when our loneliness no longer 

makes us feel small—and, turns out, 

never did at all?

 
All along, in fact, it brought us 

closer to omnipotence. 

Like the sunflower

teaching the galaxy how to swirl, it 

made us feel simply enormous 

with excuses.

HEATSTROKE BEBOP

Great chariot of Apollo’s fire,

please speed

up your layover. Is there 

more time

than there used to be before—

or is it 

only passing slower?

Rooftop of June 

and height of afternoon as 

languid and narcotic 

clouds drift by like belly-up fish

and baked bees labor 

in the clover drunk on nectar's straight 

concentrate of summer.

Red rover red rover, I already 

have a hangover, so

let’s just hurry up and get this 

apotheosis over.

WRINGING MY FINGERS

It's a method 

of protection; 

a display of penitence;

the vaguest 

supplication, sarcastic 

but exact—

and I'm terrified 

because it's 

been a long time 

since I've done this—

and by "this," I mean 

stopped being "I."

*

These hands are so
stubborn, they have minds
of their own. 

When they sign, they've 

been known 

to send some 

very cryptic messages

which I'm certain 

I never
intended them to send.

*

There are times when heaven 

throws down a rope,

when these blackeyed and 

terrorized digits 

grab hold. 

Then, there are times 

when it feels 

like they're tweaking 

and combing every fold

of my brain like a rake 

just to try 

to figure out who 

was just speaking. 

POETIC PRACTICE

Draw a perfect circle 

freehand. 

Notice 

what has happened. 

POEM ABOUT LIFE

Like with your 

refrigerator,

only once it spoils 

do you notice 

what was in there. 

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY NEAR-DEATH

I flinch from the memory

like a hand from a hot stove—

one big mad twisted engine, 

no headlights left—

as if to prove, 

via hand-eye coordination, 

that hunting was a sport,

and I was just a second-

stringer, excised from the team. 

Even in the silence 

of midnight blindness, 

I cannot bear to listen 

to the black box message

and so must cut it short. 

Biography isn't destiny—I know 

that's what it'd say. But history 

isn't nothing, either—at least 

not anymore.