Wednesday, October 15, 2025

HOW TO MAKE RELIGION

Mix until 
just combined 
(stir, don't shake) 

equal parts lucky 
to be alive 
and dismayed 

by just how profoundly 
it agitates 
that gratitude 

to have no one 
and nothing specific 
to thank. 


Tuesday, October 14, 2025

KNOWN UNKNOWNS

Acrobatic finches 
pull and tease 
the hackberry branches,

heedless as birthday 
toddlers ripping 
clean through tissue paper—

discrediting so-called 
eyewitness accounts 

of consciousness 
existing 
at the center, 

and not just 
as a dashed-off 
insouciant flourish 

ringed around 
everything's fringes.

*

Where there's a will, 
there's a way—but 

is the converse 
also true? 

Does a "thing to do"
preordain a doer? 

Could the heart persist  
outside of its armor?

For that matter, 
could "outside"
exist—even a little—

if it didn't surround 
that wound 
called "the middle?"

Monday, October 13, 2025

REPEATING OURSELVES

Like those roses which sustain 
their blanching blooms 
clear through October, 

we too 
may now look 
a bit worse for the wear 

as we hold
the last sonorous 
note we'd prepared 

in defiance of the muffling pall 
of a silently 
darkening autumn—

as if virtue consisted 
in our obliviousness 
to criticism 

and praise and thanksgiving 
in our freedom
to do the one thing 

we already know 
how to do 
without thinking. 


Friday, October 10, 2025

WHAT IS THIS?

If matter is 
slow energy 

and energy 
is fast matter, 
then what 

are we even 
talking about? 

Physics tells  
what it does, 
but can't say 

what it is—
because 

even whatness 
is really something 
else. 

*

Our favorite books 
are made 
of poems, but 

what in the world 
are poems made of? 

Us, I guess—

hot plosives,
rough edges,
and incipient glances—

and that's just
what we are;

what 
were the chances?


Thursday, October 9, 2025

ACCEPTANCE

We pride ourselves often 
on becoming 
better people, 

but perhaps it's 
our dimness—
our thick impenetrability— 

which makes 
the affirmative grip 
of love 

not just effective,
but possible
and necessary—

perhaps 
priceless amalgams 
of loathing and lust, 

like seams 
of gold, lie so 
deep at the center of us 

that our humanity 
would collapse if they 
should ever be retrieved;

the less we understand 
about these 
fables that inhabit us, 

the more 
we are willing
and able to believe.

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

Remember when 
we thought that we could 
simply trade labor 

for a glimmer 
of its opposite—

for the long, happy, 
untrammeled, 
callus-free life 

of the children we 
once resembled 
on another distant Earth,

where the moon 
routinely takes the place 
of the sun 

without 
the mechanistic explanation 
of eclipse? 

Would those kids ever think 
that the sweat 
of the intellect 

is somehow equivalent 
to that of the flesh—

that safety is a substitute 
for the raison d'ĂȘtre
of love,

or an orbital ellipse 
for the halo's perfect circle—

that one thing 
ever truly takes 
the place of another

when they know, 
even in the throes 
of their youth,

that two pairs of lips 
cannot make,
or replace—

or even summarize
the bliss—

of that nervous 
first kiss?  

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

KILLER POEM

A shriek 
with its splinters 
and spikes sanded-off, 

its creases 
all filled, smoothed, 
and polished 

with the thick 
shellac of distance—
until 

it shines 
with all the uneasiness 
and pathos 

which play 
in the shadows that eclipse 
your own face 

as it groans
at the sight of its 
grimacing reflection 

in some 
opaque expression's 
strange transparent finish.