FUTURE PERFECT

          When you get there, 

          you’ll already be there.
               —American Girl, 

                   Twin peaks: The Return


There, the crackle
of electricity through air
will not have needed
to scare us so much;

our rooms
and our calendars
won’t have finished
with our stories.

You’ll have declared:
though my memory’s
a blank, maybe I did have
a dream last night;

it’s just that maybe I dreamed
of pure uncut time—
the one thing
that all aspiration requires.

Or perhaps it was just 

a very vivid and precise
dream about what nothing
will have been like:

you and I in free fall,
and everyone not arriving—
but already being there,
with no memory of the days

in between when we weren’t
damned with faint praises,
but exalted by the universe’s
faintest damnations.

DAYDREAM KINGDOM

As a knight, 

my errant 

mind rides out

to quest for aimless boons
of unfathomable grace

and accidentally 

fumble-slay the random 

dragon of high expectations.

But when at last 

it gets back home, 

which crazy maiden—

what brazen citizenry waits? 

Who, I want to know,

would deign
to throw

such a hopeless-

ly daring itinerant 

a parade?

HEREBY

From the lengthening light slant
to the now-birdless fence tops,
the season has given its 

two weeks notice:

soon, the gardens will grow
naught but radishes.
Crows are more available
as literary devices. And I

am still waiting—still
grieving the gaps
between all I had accepted
yet still hoped to accomplish.

But if I thought it would help
to re-lengthen the days,
I would promise to light
my own life on fire,

minute by minute, one 

task at a time. In exchange, 

I’d entreat you, heaven,

to come blow me out again—

and in doing so, send my 

presentiments flying

to whichever afterlife 

they’re already doomed to go.

FIRST OF SEPTEMBER

Children back in school—

I fling my window open to hear 

the quiet morning better.

RETROGRADE

Ever since I 

became your world, 

I'm amazed, 

looking back, how little 

anything has changed;

you are still my sun—

my moon—

my stars: 

always

you are 

far—

silent—phasing 

away in the dark—

A REAPPRAISAL

Have you seen, along the road
to ruin, how each blade
of crabgrass comes topped
with a dewdrop—

a carpet made 

of gems which runs toward 

referenda

on the wrong?

After all, a jewel
wouldn’t be a jewel
if it hadn’t been found
in a locked vault of stone,

and a praise bell wouldn’t
make a sound at all
if it wasn’t moved
to exalt when struck—

if that which pummeled it
wasn’t also part of it
and didn’t then become
the subject of its song.

SO HELP US

God we are all
such crooks—I mean,
look at us

stealing dates, furtive
glances, midnight
snacks, inhalations—it’s like 

we’re born

to be ingrates who 

go through life begging

to be caught
with our red hands
in an existential cookie jar—

and not for the rush,
or because it’s
"who we are," but

just to practice for
armageddon—
that feeling of sitting

one foot from the judge’s chair
with that very same hand
on a stiff bible, stating

nothing
but the truth,
and the whole

truth, so help us:
that Telos and Logos
could never understand

how damn often 

there are no such things 

as good explanations.