Tuesday, September 17, 2024

I AIN'T AFRAID OF NO GHOSTS

          "I’m Nobody! Who are you?"
               -Emily Dickinson 

Unconscionable, yes, but 
where's the tragedy 
in death? 

By what trick of light 
may the forever 
of after 

be glimpsed, however
slightly, in the mirror 
of before?

If we're no one 
while we're here, 
by what rights do we fear 

this kind of non-swimming 
through the ocean 
of no more, or 

the flowers of the intangible 
which bloom at night 
by the banks of the unconscious? 

Valuelessness 
must have 
no valence, at best:

nothing more 
to nobody.
Ashes. Dust. Rest.


Monday, September 16, 2024

EXERCISE

Don't simply 
look, 

writer; look again
harder. Unsettle

and ply each
delimited moment;

attend 
every petal—you 

will live 
longer.



Friday, September 13, 2024

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.


Thursday, September 12, 2024

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. 


Wednesday, September 11, 2024

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.


Tuesday, September 10, 2024

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.


Monday, September 9, 2024

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.