OVERWORLD

Once, to combat 

the loneliness 

of the present, 

we make-believed now 

and then 

were one place;

here and there 

blurred to pure 

pattern recognition, 

and all that we sought 

was the shine 

of one face. 

But soon, we grew curious 

and wandered out 

in the blankness,

and everything 

looked hauntingly 

the same in that forest 

as we tramped 

our way back toward 

that lost abstraction. 

Now, it's the end 

of another 

long evening; too dark 

to read the map, 

and we're at our 

most hollow—

so we're left 

with no choice 

but to pitch a new camp 

at this blip between

tomorrow and a past 

we can't correct. 

SPYGLASS

This moment, 

we are told, is everything 

you can notice 

that cannot be noticed 

in the last 

or next moment. And yet, 

the goal, they say, 

is to line up each

one perfectly, 

end to beginning, 

beginning to end—

and then 

peer through the hole 

at the center 

of all of them 

until you make out 

the blurred shape 

of a plan. 

HALF-ASSING THE HOUSEWORK

Scrubbing 

(in vain)

the stain

of nostalgia 

from the same

couple memories

I can capably

dismantle

and quickly 

reassemble 

from memory 

already.

IMMEMORIAL

Before 

and after—a false 

dichotomy.

Suffering 

isn't everything, 

but it's 

everywhere—

and it's massless;

it isn't 

your past, 

but it rhymes

with your past—

and it travels 

(if it travels) 

at the speed 

of light; 

the instant it arrives, 

it is already leaving; 

but it doesn't 

really leave, 

it only 

leaves you 

behind. 

NEW YEAR

The sentence 

keeps running-on 

longer 

and longer,

using fewer 

and shorter 

and more similar-

sounding words—

CLARITY

After another 

all-night bacchanal, 

the bewilderment 

in me 

falling 

drunk asleep. 

VICIOUS CYCLE

From time 

to time, the old 

guilt goes—in a flutter 

of the heart, 

perhaps, or churn 

of the stomach. 

Then, like some 

defenseless animal 

desperate to attach, 

it always comes back. 

But from where 

does it return?

And how hard 

was walking its 

arduous path? 

I'm ashamed 

to admit it, but—

I never think to ask.