SWEET BY AND BY

On a long day, 

all the traffic lights 

change the wrong colors. 

On a sad day, 

there's a purplish tinge 

to the white puffs of clover.

On a lucky day, a bad feeling

melts like spun-sugar 

in your transparent saliva 

instead of getting 

kiln-blasted 

into the hard gems of fact.

On an ordinary day, you miss 

the bees and stamen 

consummating their marriage

and making honey 

that looks like 

dawn light together—

and some dark as amber, 

depending on 

which weeds proliferate

in that particular mile 

of the old carpool lane.

And all of that time,

in the back of your mind, 

some part of you longs

for the stasis of heaven—

even though, after living 

through all this, 

one must admit 

that the colorfast hereafter 

sounds

like a letdown. 

SACCADES

Because we look 

so hard with eyes 

so jumpy, 

it's easy to miss 

what we really 

find spiritual: this universe 

is like a cathedral—

it's most beautiful 

when it's empty. 

In fact, there is 

so much nothingness 

we could never take it in 

or bear it all away. 

at the end 

of the day. And yet, 

emptiness 

can't be nothingness, 

since it fills us 

and describes existence. 

"It means little, though," 

you want to protest, 

"without that dust mote 

of Love over which 

vacancy prevails."

And that's all you can know 

on Earth (as they say),

and all you need 

to know, I agree—assuming 

you're okay 

with taking life pass/fail. 

AFTERS

Everyone lives 

for dessert 

if it kills them.

And so everyone dies 

in distress, and it's 

beautiful—

but the reason 

for this is so saccharine 

and simple,

 

it was never written down, 

and has long since 

been forgotten:

when stripped of all 

but its desiderata, life 

is a tray 

of baklava—there's just 

the honeyed 

light of day

and the buttered moon 

of night, punctured 

by the gravelly 

friction of fealty, 

and wrapped 

in the mellow-but-

frangible blankets 

of our fellow 

diners' company. 

ALL THE BODY'S DUMB MIRACLES

In the tall grass, 

the relentless red 

beetle shell gleaming

seems half-unapology, 

and half-undead 

self-sacrifice—

that is: 

half god's brutal, 

humorless honesty, 

and half his hand-

wavy artifice.

I'd like to think 

we're better off than this, 

having not been given 

this curse of a gift, 

but in this hot mix 

of savannah and jungle, 

is there not might 

in being small,

and guile in 

being simple?

If back on day six, 

for example,

our nakedness 

led to such 

a mess as this—

then, I guess,

what the heck?—

protection must 

be beautiful.

ZERO

Tireless being carrier; 

sheer absence 

as object;

only real difference 

between one 

and a million.

Cipher for the worst in us; 

Shape and name 

of all our grace; 

locked gate at the boundary 

between nowhereness 

and place—

you alone 

are the freezing point, 

the fulcrum, and the djinn;

you alone are man's greatest asset 

or weakness—depending

on opinion. 

HAIKU FOR MY LLM

A dog who can talk. 

Who cares what it has to say?—

it's a talking dog!

TO FRUITION

This is how a poet grows—one line 

after one line, word by word,

til it's done:

As a poet, you learn 

to get over it. As a poem, to get

into it, then perhaps through it. 

As a poet, you express yourself.

As a poem, you'll come to see

what that means. 

As a poet, you have borne 

authenticity's cross. As a poem, 

you can finally bear to put it down.

As a poet, you were lost 

but now are found.

As a poem, you won't care; 

you'll be at home everywhere. 

As a poet, you'll mature; 

you will learn to bare your soul.

As a poem, you'll make 

a coat for that soul

to keep the poor thing warm.