Wednesday, July 16, 2025

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 
harmless 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. 


Tuesday, July 15, 2025

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.


Monday, July 14, 2025

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.


Friday, July 11, 2025

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.


Thursday, July 10, 2025

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS

          Is man merely a mistake of God's?
          Or God merely a mistake of man's?
               -Neitzsche

Some causal chains 
are so long, thought 
cannot wind them;

others, as inexorable 
as the final chord in songs.

Quirky and immortal
and mercurial 
as quarks—

as wiseacre cartoon 
rabbits, pigs, and ducks—

the first gods must have sprung 
from the volcanic 
islands of our minds

as general outlines,
suggested by the anxious 
agitation of our motions—

then grew tall
and strong on all
the sugar, fat, and salt 

of our desperate hopes 
and fevered questions, 

til at last they turned 
misshapen 
and strange,

which gradually changed 
to strange-
ly quiet—

then just dead-
silent—

then just 
dead-wrong. 


Wednesday, July 9, 2025

THE SHARP END OF THE SPEAR

In the end, every life
is a dull heavy shaft 

which is suddenly honed 
to a breathtaking point; 

and each, the sole bearer's 
precious own to lose, 

the splendid 
and the simple one.

Given time, good and bad 
fade to ignorance—then pity; 

after ignominy, 
after fame, 

there waits the same 
oblivion. 


Tuesday, July 8, 2025

MATURITY

Less of a ripening 
than a 
tipping point involved:

all that it takes 
is one 
or two more problems 

than commensurate tomorrows 
in which 
they can be solved.