IDENTIKIT

Believe in yourself, 

they all used 

to tell me—

as if I 

was really 

a caped crusader, 

a crimefighter 

cloaked in a nom de guerre. 

They may have 

had a point there 

about the mask 

of duplicity, 

but some superhero 

I've turned out to be—

I can't even seem 

to bend 

even slightly 

the bars 

in the prison 

of this body. 

*

Trying to convince yourself 

there's no such thing as solidity 

is a lot like banging 

your head against a wall. 

Protons, 

electrons, 

gamma radiation—?

Referring to yourself 

in the first person 

suddenly just feels wrong. 

*

There's nothing pacific 

about the ocean, 

the way it 

keeps thrashing its wings 

against the sand. 

But who am I 

to envision a better way? 

Who am I 

to say 

how to bear—

to withstand?

Immeasurable 

reach 

needs

impossible hands.

ODE ON INERTIA

The way  

each heavy-

with-holy water droplet 

hits 

and resounds 

upon the surface of a pond 

like the infinite,

transient 

drone of a gong—as if, 

for always 

and ever, it was

the only one—

honest-to-god momentum 

looks a lot 

like its opposite.

But curious 

enough, we only know 

what's honest

by the way it leaves us

hanging on 

for so long 

after it's 

already gone. 

METEMPSYCHOSIS

In the infinite 

closet known as 

immateriality, 

it must be hard 

for a cold

little soul 

searching 

and searching 

in the desperate dark 

for the armholes 

in a garment 

called the heart

of a stranger. 

MAD RUSH

Ironically, it's just that 

pliant softness

and fragility 

of open petals 

that causes us, as we 

dash past, to grow 

anxious—

to clamp our mouths 

shut, stiffen 

up, and become 

what we fear most: those 

tense, insipid 

imitations of ourselves. 

It's as though, 

when confronted 

with such 

slow and deliberate 

forms of movement, 

our subconscious aches 

from its breakneck approach.

But instead of going limp, 

we go 

unbending

as we make haste 

for cover, since we feel

so exposed. 

NEW AGE

In the end, perhaps 

it'll all come out 

like a laugh 

from the mouth of each play-

acting skeleton—

how the truth 

was a leaf 

in the air 

for a moment

just before it hit the ground:

a surfeit 

of love,

always there—

but no 

care, because 

no self. 

THAT'S PROGRESS

All our lives, 

we can't shake 

the feeling 

that our bodies 

should be more static—

not these great 

twist contests 

of vestigial viruses

and genes 

in giant lines, switching 

off and on again 

one at a time 

like they're taking turns trying 

to duck the limbo stick. 

In fact, it seems 

almost automatic—

every precious time 

we get the chance 

to close our eyes, we see 

in a dream, the lure 

of advancement 

as an abstract 

substitute for light—

that feeling of warmth 

by which we might, 

in an ancient time, 

once have felf 

unselfconscious enough 

to unspool 

in the water—to expand 

and to rise 

toward a surface that, 

to breach, we all knew 

would be suicide. 

PSYOP

Fleshy scented

fists of magnolias 

shall uncurl 

and beckon in 

troves of mist 

as cardinals 

issue falsely 

approbative dictums 

and gestures 

toward warm 

breezes come and go 

coyly as so much

conditional love—

and this 

is how April 

will manage to sell 

its thirty-

day-wind-and-rain 

hell to its victims.