BEST-CASE SCENARIO

As we took in the view, 

we were forced  

to acknowledge 

that all along 

the way, black 

and white had underlied 

by default 

our perception 

of every shade of gray—

and that, no matter 

how enlightened, being 

"part of everything" 

still entailed a separation. 

While we waited 

for our breath to come back,

we finally made 

the calculation: for all 

the elevation 

we felt we'd hard-won, 

we had taken the gentlest 

possible slope 

to the top 

of the locally- 

tallest mountain. 

THE GAME OF LIFE

The object 

is to find 

that which will take 

your living breath away 

before some twee 

reaper comes 

to take your living 

breath away.

And points  

are scored 

each time 

you believe 

that all effects 

are caused, 

that your thoughts 

are connected 

like insects 

caught in spiderwebs,

and that similes 

like the one above 

are magic spells—

superstitious rituals 

built to hammer one thing 

into another 

using dull knives 

like love 

and hope instead 

of nails. 

FIRST PERSON PLURAL

Persons are made 

in the combustion process 

known as loss.

As probabilities exist

as distributions 

prior to measurement, 

so too are we kinds

of palimpsests—

superimpositions

of selves. 

Then, from the smoke and dross 

which surrounds each 

burning manuscript 

booms the thunderous sound 

of many rooms collapsing—

of pluralities 

ruthlessly 

getting paired down. 

*

Our eyes narrow 

at the answer 

to another computation, 

and discretion stands-in 

for the better part of valor—

not because it's better, but 

because it can be measured. 

*

This life, then,

is a pinprick 

at the center 

of a cloud; 

is the pupil 

of a rheumy eye; 

is a wave 

in the sky 

which has been 

slowed down. 

Isn't that 

too dreamy? 

GRADUALISM

The way, most days, 

the sunset 

sky elides red—

sliding instead 

from apricot 

to amber

before folding down 

its somber petals 

of lilac, plum, and lavender—

suggests less 

beauty in defying 

expectation

and more 

in this bleary world's 

refusal to accept 

the premise of a difference 

between "do" 

and "don't" expect. 

THE MASS ORDINARY

Everybody sees 

these crimson-

tipped maple leaves—

some plastered 

to the dewy 

grasses near their feet, 

many still clinging 

to senescent 

mother trees 

like fabulous flags 

to decrepit 

poles of memory.

In their own 

low-key way,

everybody senses 

the individuality, 

the novelty 

of each—

and yet, 

nobody thinks 

to make a distinction 

between which leaf 

is which. Isn't 

that interesting? 

SURRENDER

Star-scoured, 

moon-rinsed, 

the air at the window 

is now bell-clear,

and even thought itself 

becomes cheap 

in a world where distant 

branches dangle 

fresh necklaces of condensation 

in scant white rinds of light. 

There is no way 

to get inside 

the alien absurdity of it,

but no way out 

of the moment, either;

no point of reference, 

no view from outside 

of quiet's totality—

and so, for one more 

night at least, 

we slow our breath, let go 

of what we call belief,

and willingly fall 

into labyrinths of sleep.

KENOSIS

I do not write 

to collect 

my thoughts; 

I write to disassemble,

and then spirit 

them away.

As light 

through a glass lake 

will separate and remain 

only as a little heat 

and motion 

in the waves, 

each day, I divide 

and further 

sublimate my mind 

in the hopes that, 

in the end, I'll have 

materialized my soul—

emptied 

my whole self 

out into the world.

No map to unfurl 

of some buried 

cache of interior life;

if no such inner 

life remains—there's 

nothing left to find.