OUTSIDER

After all it has done, 

the best we thought 

to do was chase it, 

then replace it electrically 

and on-demand. 

No wonder, then 

the sun 

says no prayers, 

goes to bed each night 

believing nothing.

For doing what it does, 

true genius 

is shunned; 

it kindles and excites about 

as well as it offends—

no wonder 

the sun 

has no friends. 

HOWLER

Cold, hard, 

and old 

as the wandering djinn,

I too run only 

in self-

imposed circles 

from northwest  

to southeast 

and back again. 

No wailers 

need apply; 

I need no familiar 

to invite me in. 

My dominion is 

your body's prison

my dharma 

is your din. 

Who am I?

DENIAL

No scene more 

sober than the small 

town in winter

where, in and around 

the towerless high street, 

for-lease lots 

lie in snow-

white terraces 

like the fallow 

garden plots of some 

vast ice palace 

from which precisely 

no bells toll 

to mark the mourning 

of days gone by, 

of auld lang syne 

and its sallow dead, 

because, colorless

though it is, 

this is a dominion

they could never inhabit—

or so the powers 

that be would insist:

damn it, snap 

out of it, you nameless, 

you ignorant! This 

is the land 

and the time 

of the living.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT

With the thinness 

and pallid consistency 

of dead trees 

by midwinter, the sparrows 

have grown 

hard to see. Still, 

we know they are here 

by the sharp way 

they cry 

at the bleary un-

folding 

of indigent dawn—

as if solely responsible, 

as it limps 

through the sky, 

for bearing the war-

wounded weight 

of the outcast 

but stubbornly 

oncoming veteran 

sun. 

UNFINISHED

We are all born 

as hatchlings: blind, 

featherless, pink—

and yes, equipped 

with the twin 

wings of hopefulness 

and grief. Only,

we don't know how

to harness them them yet. 

For now, we are young, 

and the dead of course

are other ages.

At the windows, 

by their ledges, 

on some precipice 

we wait, tasting

the upraising breeze 

on our faces;

but the sky is 

much colder than we 

can conceive,

and the sun, so much 

farther away

than we think. 

EMPTINESS

Hymn 

that the dead sing; 

sheer absence's salve; 

true-to-life 

enough as 

memory itself; 

that which you find 

an abundance of 

everywhere—and 

which you 

must bear, but 

cannot have. 

JANSPLAINING

As the light now 

always seems to be 

leaving, never coming—

so do I, 

from the weak 

morning's first, 

always have 

the sense of running 

some minutes behind;

of resolving 

by declining embers 

just to stand aside;

of struggling 

mightily 

just to conclude—

to contain,

to confine—never mind 

begin something.