DOMINION

A long time ago, 

we used to be 

suspicious, 

but now 

we stand in awe 

of abject predictability; 

instead of living 

in ecstatic terror 

of god's everlasting arms, 

we now worship 

their compliance 

and fantastic portability.

In fact, if he 

were still 

alive today, 

he'd mostly 

be shocked

and hurt by the way 

in which knowledge is 

crushed-up to pave 

the roads to power—

by the way our GPS 

now briskly 

redirects us 

around temple wrecks 

and flaming 

sword blockages, 

all while keeping us

abreast of our most 

current ETA—

but mostly, 

by the way in which

a single earthly moment 

is no longer suffered 

by its bearer 

or endured—

or even simply 

received 

or sustained—

but rather, is abjectly 

captured, 

then explained. 

SO THERE

Even the almighty 

river doesn't know 

how it is I manage 

to piss standing up. 

LATE AUGUST

A parched wind 

limps by—

stiff and cautious, 

yet unsteady 

as our exhaled breaths.

How did we

get here? None 

can guess;

the weeks have passed 

so fast—still

each day feels

like twenty years. 

NEVERTHELESS

Every day, once a day,
I get the urge 

to do the impossible:

to save what must leave,

to give weight to words

(though I make no claim

to understand
what they name)

and a hope-like shape
to tumultuous thought.

Is it reckless? Is it vein?
I ought to say 

I don’t care.

But if you think about it,
the very fact
that this poem appears here,

lying patient as a snare
in the middle of this page

(or this screen, or wherever)—

and eager to catch
that which must pass away

already betrays
that I do anyway.

deny it as I might,

the urge to write—

the compulsion
to tell someone

has somehow caught me
unaware that I’m sure

there's no such thing

as an art
of despair.

MORTALITY

A cheap store-bought wind chime

(though no less

hungry for the breeze);

its many small lapping tongues

of bell bronze

or bell brass—

or hell, I 

don’t know, of prefab

fiberglass, perhaps—

making me forget 

as I pass underneath

what silence sounds like—

then remember (however 

temporarily)

what it means.

DAWN SKETCH

Out from the shadows,
a new morning is growing

in the window—like the shores 

of another, alien world 

unfurled for the first time 

at the calm of low tide,

salved by the balm
of a prophecy unheralded

and washed in colors
never seen before by anyone—

except perhaps by the first eye

to get squeezed shut 

at night beneath some 

primordial lid.

Does a word exist for this 

new twist on existence?

The other side of night
is daylight, sure, 

but the other side

of darkness in its essence—

would that be called clearness?
Invisibility? In any case,

it must be a color 

worth savoring, because it's 

a color we haven’t 

got a name for.

THE ENCOUNTER

I swear, when I wrote this

I didn't know
who would be reading—

but then again, 

I must have known roughly

how it would go, since

I could picture you singing

the tune in your head—
line after line, 

never rushing, never stumbling,

not stopping until 

you got to the end—

as if you knew which word 

should come next 

by heart,

because you and I 

were the same.
Not entirely, of course,

 
but close enough

to look the part.

It was as if our two souls 

shared a shadow; as if, 

for half a minute there,

we were so busy

that we wouldn't have

remembered, if asked, 

what our names were.

And I realized

when I'd finished that

that was what I wanted;

the words didn't matter.

It wasn’t quite art—but it was 
a good start.