MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM

Listen, if there’s 

a modicum 

of purpose

or will 

in each post-

diluvial squall—

if the howling wind
has half a mind,

and the incoherent 

rain can be said

to have a goal—

it could only be

to polish

even the smallest 

wild soul

(which survived
the first time 

by disobeying—

by stowing away
on Noah's boat

instead of praying)

until it glistens
the way it did

back then—that is: 

after the beginning,

but before 

the last war.

ALL I GOT

I like a crescent 

moon best, because it’s

easier to pretend

that it marks the thumb-

nail edge of a vast

empty circle;

and if emptiness
like that can remain 

so rich and ample,

there may yet be
hope for this 

shred of faith after all.

RITORNELLO

     (after Rilke)

Yeah, no—

maybe

 

don’t 

change your life;

just improve 

your quality

of attention, 

and notice

how literal equals

figurative now,

because of consent-

plus-arbitrariness—

and how, once

you’ve purchased 

your new stance 

from a torso, 

the achievement 

turns out 

to be worth less

than the practice.

FUTURE PERFECT

          When you get there, 

          you’ll already be there.
               —American Girl, 

                   Twin peaks: The Return


There, the crackle
of electricity through air
will not have needed
to scare us so much;

our rooms
and our calendars
won’t have finished
with our stories.

You’ll have declared:
though my memory’s
a blank, maybe I did have
a dream last night;

it’s just that maybe I dreamed
of pure uncut time—
the one thing
that all aspiration requires.

Or perhaps it was just 

a very vivid and precise
dream about what nothing
will have been like:

you and I in free fall,
and everyone not arriving—
but already being there,
with no memory of the days

in between when we weren’t
damned with faint praises,
but exalted by the universe’s
faintest damnations.

DAYDREAM KINGDOM

As a knight, 

my errant 

mind rides out

to quest for aimless boons
of unfathomable grace

and accidentally 

fumble-slay the random 

dragon of high expectations.

But when at last 

it gets back home, 

which crazy maiden—

what brazen citizenry waits? 

Who, I want to know,

would deign
to throw

such a hopeless-

ly daring itinerant 

a parade?

HEREBY

From the lengthening light slant
to the now-birdless fence tops,
the season has given its 

two weeks notice:

soon, the gardens will grow
naught but radishes.
Crows are more available
as literary devices. And I

am still waiting—still
grieving the gaps
between all I had accepted
yet still hoped to accomplish.

But if I thought it would help
to re-lengthen the days,
I would promise to light
my own life on fire,

minute by minute, one 

task at a time. In exchange, 

I’d entreat you, heaven,

to come blow me out again—

and in doing so, send my 

presentiments flying

to whichever afterlife 

they’re already doomed to go.

FIRST OF SEPTEMBER

Children back in school—

I fling my window open to hear 

the quiet morning better.