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. 

BALDERDASH

Most life exists 

as if just following orders—

only sometimes

a few of these 

strident young pheasants 

seem instead to destroy them. 

Bowdlerizing strip mall farmland 

like unoiled halftracks; to them, 

form annoys function.

Their hackled crows 

and annoyed, dusty cackles 

proclaim that sound won't follow sense

the way future echoes present—

even where it must,

and even when it doesn't.

ASK THE BROKEN MAGIC 8 BALL

Don't ask the prophet 

or the Pythoness 

to tell you; ask instead 

the original witness—

the songsmith 

or the poet. They'll say:

the forecast is not 

but the lonesome 

tears of all 

whose residue leaks

from the present 

day's sorrows;

I do not know 

what will happen 

tomorrow, 

but I see a few 

cracks you could fix 

in today. 

DAILY MANTRA

Today'd be a day 

as good as any to die—

there's just this one thing...

EVERY ENGLISH FOLK SONG

Isn't it crazy 

about that ghost 

on the ramparts 

of the castle 

by the sea? 

But I guess 

life is like that.

Anyway—will you 

marry me? 

DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF POEMS AND POETRY, FIFTH EDITION, TEXT REVISION

1.

A poem 

is a photograph—

a quick fun diversion, 

but mostly cruel 

in the way it 

hunts and captures 

proud wild moments 

to be gawked at 

in a zoo. 

2.

Poetry is sheet music—

a blueprint 

for performance, 

or more accurately, 

empty manuscript paper 

you can use 

to overlay 

a landscape onto, 

assigning pitches and duration 

to randomness itself, 

putting tone-

deaf reality 

on a clef. 

3.

A poem is a handbill 

for the ambient soul—

a greeting card sent 

by thought 

to confusion—

an afterword 

on sentiment—

propaganda 

for more poems. 

4.

Poetry is a fire theft—

a Promethean provocation 

of the Logos in words, 

like Merriam-Webster 

defining what love is, 

or when the White Star Line 

called the Titanic 

"unsinkable."

5.

A poem is a disorder—

a disease 

you can catch, 

the prick of each enjambment 

causing inflammation, 

and each 

stanza, a mobile

ICU tent, built 

to quarantine the infection 

of an encephalitic virus 

which, for a few dozen seconds, 

may make your death 

seem more—not less— 

unthinkable.

THIRD COMING

Hate to say it, but Yeats 

had too much 

and not enough 

imagination. Why just one 

rough beast, for instance, 

slouching up the main street's 

verge—why not 

a million? Perhaps even 

a billion 

running interference, 

pressing in 

from the edges? 

Or worse yet: not even 

"pressing," since it's 

nothing so agentic, and 

therefore, not a villain? 

What if trillions 

upon trillions of dis-

interested bits—not 

Satan's digital minions 

breeching our cyber-

Utopia's privacy hedges, 

but uncountable, unknowable, 

ineffable battalions 

of inane stochastic parrots 

built to mimic us 

to pieces—start to weigh 

down all the branches

and block said-Utopian 

sunlight's path, along with 

all its oxygen—not to mention, 

due to heat- and brain-death, 

any thoughts at all—

coherent or poetic—

re. said-Utopian citizens' strategy 

for an exit?