RE-ILLUSIONMENT AT 2AM

An old sailor:
sailing, and 
sailing some more—

until finally 

moored amid 

the neon somewhere 

downtown, among 

nighthawks still-

drunk at the diner—

and halfway 

between sleep 

and awake at the counter, 

that's where

he caught his last
red weather tiger,

whom, rather than holler 

when clutched, 
roared with fury

his hot-breathed 

rejoinder: a distinct

Sayonara!

A farewell, 

thought the sailor,

to dithering, to clinging—

pitched halfway between
(but exquisitely 
neither)

a permanent goodbye 

and a blurry
see you later.

EQUANIMITY

Inland gull—

bobbing 

through the parking lot at dawn,

calmly 

courting alms 

from the unmoved cars;

hungry for litter, 

but mostly  

in the abstract—

lonely, 

but not 

unhappy altogether.

SENESCENCE

Eventually, the set 

of {who you are}

feels like nothing 

when weighed against

the traces

of all you might have been:

things you thought

but never said,

actions you've considered

but haven't ever taken

pass out and in 

like shallow breaths

and through you 

each day like 

ionizing radiation—

like battalions of ghosts 

whom you used to 

know by name,

but now, whose 

faint collective 

hunger gnaws away 

at those serifs 

which ornament each

glyph of DNA 

until finally, it's

illegible, and you're free 

to join their army.

VOLTE-FACE

If there's another Earth 

where things 

worked out—

where the bees all

stuck around

and the birds

maintained their weight—

where a pretty fence 

built from

coordinating conjunctions 

has made cordial

neighbors of Church 

and State—

where, instead of 

swiping strangers and 

sexting AI, 

you and I linger 

over coffee and pie 

(even as I type this)

in a round-the-clock diner—

where anyone 

who lied, or wouldn't 

look me in the eye 

is tortured asymmetrically 

for their crimes by 

Delphic prophecy 

first haunting, then 

unhinging them, then

driving them to blindness—

what good 

would any of these

distant fictions do me?

My dharma 

is the clusterfuck; 

my armament 

is kindness. 

WHAT'S THAT

As above, so below—

what a crock, 

and what a shame.

Precision machine-

beveled right angles jut

as street numbers 

sprout from 

grids like grave 

anatomical ribs;

everything bisectable—

everything 

must heed its label. Only,

on the far side 

of that great looking glass:

the sky—

which, 

otherwise,

doesn't need a name.

SHADOW

Not quite 

darkness or light—

neither noise 

nor silence—

how readily you volunteer 

to wade out ahead of me

and strip me of all of my 

nonessentiality; 

it is your murk which clarifies  

the complicated truths 

of this blandness, 

this coolness, this need 

to be aloof. 

Such a circumstantial absence, 

such ambiguous 

truth—it is you 

who comes to teach me, 

without absolutes,

how yet I might live 

in a world that needs ministry 

in fullness—

and yet 

at the slightest 

remove.

LESS THAN YOU THINK

Any truth which is whole 

could not be yours 

to own—

it's been fermented 

by the grasses, the zephyrs, 

the stones.

For god is not 

in all things—

that's too lonely, 

and it's simpler:

god is the total; 

god is all things. 

Your injuries 

were loaned, as 

actuality is rented.