THE BIG PICTURE

It's true: 

the life within you 

may go on forever. 

You, 

however, 

will not be invited. 

*

Without even 

putting forth a modicum 

of effort, 

the human eye 

can see across 

vast distances. 

Is that what passes 

for insight 

at present? 

You call that clever? 

You call passivity

enlightened?

*

Congratulations: heaven 

exists.

It is a state 

of consummate equivalence.

In it, 

there's no difference 

between remembering 

and being remembered,

between loss 

of all function 

and making 

a fist.

GAINSAID

What piques our interest 

if not 

contradictions—

the imagination going 

off-roading adjacent 

to abysses? 

But the landing only sticks 

if we learn 

to split the difference 

between lavish 

and sufficient—

between generous 

and precise. 

In that case, 

The one-way 

road separating 

spacious 

from its opposite 

may then be the site 

of a Disneyland 

parade—that is: 

both 

purgatorial and pure 

entertainment. 

GENERAL RELATIVITY

Let mass 

be defined as 

that feeling 

you get 

when you push

against the boundaries, 

when you tug 

at the contours 

of your own 

nothingness.

*

Energy is simply 

the repetitive 

performance 

of the one trick 

you know how to pull

off so well

that nobody 

realizes 

you don't believe it 

at all.

*

To square the speed 

of light, you need

a galaxy 

of grackles—

each darting

while exchanging mock-

insults with each another—

so quick

and so turbulently 

commingled 

that there's no chance 

of knowing 

how the whole thing

got started.

ELEMENTS OF DESIGN

The way 

the rebellious 

wind runs wild 

inside its enclosure 

of stainless 

steel chimes 

is, to the passerby, 

its own kind 

of speech act, 

stopping

at nothing—dying 

to remind 

that even 

that levity we

misconstrue as freedom,

even pure emptiness 

has corners 

in the mind.

ANY BODY

When was the last time 

you refused 

your own reflection? 

when was the last time 

you self-identified 

as pretty? 

* 

You want to believe 

ideologies 

are parodies—

that the goal is:

make the most

of each constraint 

imposed. 

But, like all 

living subjects

bound and bordered 

by grim logic,

you cannot stop 

compulsive attraction 

of neurons 

to belief.

And in time, 

you find yourself 

relieved 

to be identified

 

as the object 

of ongoing 

hostage negotiations—

between the law 

of falling bodies 

and the trifling weight 

of light. 

DITTO

We say: "I get

the feeling," 

as if that feeling

pre-existed.

But even our most intimate,

and antique experiences,

when recollected, 

are nothing 

if not

counterfeit heirlooms—

ersatz treatises, 

newly minted. So, 

either, to god's eye,

there's no such thing 

as proper order, 

or else—come to think of it, 

probably 

it did.

AUTUMN RHYTHM

Ethereal mounds

of aromatic asters,

hardly fairly compensated 

for all that they could

(but do not) say—

for spinning 

sunlight into sugar 

all the long day

without so much as even 

honoring the urge 

to glance up at god's 

time clock, or

whistle while they work 

to pass the hours 

faster.