Monday, August 4, 2025

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Empty set, I 
eye your symbols 
with inexplicable dread, 

like a pair 
of hungry rusted 
calipers on the page

or two 
of a disappointed fence's 
warped boards, 

long past brown now 
and headed more 
towards gray

as you don't so much
circumscribe as
underline what remains:

the size of a place 
when nothing there
is left, 

and there's nothing 
left to be done;
the truth

that absence 
is not the same 
as nothingness

(for absence 
is a vacancy in space—
whereas nothingness 

is the full weight 
of space 
and vacancy's absence);

and the fear that, 
after this, quite enough 
has been said.


Sunday, August 3, 2025

ENLIGHTENED PESSIMISM

As the regal sun 
processed in the sky
the only way it's able

and white gold
from the window inched 
inexorably through the room—

I was the one 
true witness 
to the sight 

of the half-empty glass 
on the bright side 
of the table.
 

Saturday, August 2, 2025

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

Bad news for 
all that time 
and effort you'd been spending:

your heart's 
no longer warrantied 
by the lyric poem's defending.

Sure, for now, 
it still works 
to its purpose, but 

let's face it—it certainly 
is no state-
of-the-art thing. 

If your body were a car, 
for instance, it wouldn't be 
the engine; 

it'd be 
the rear defroster 
or the AM/FM radio. 

If your soul 
were a home, 
it wouldn't be the kitchen, 

or even an electric 
toaster oven; 
it'd be 

the old flip phone 
which you keep 
in a drawer,

just for those 
gray-sky kind
of sentimental days 

(it may be 
a brick, you say, 
but it still contains 

a few 
of your favorite 
dead cat's old photos). 



Friday, August 1, 2025

HUNGER

Hello, 
common thief—

back again, 
I see 

to steal 
a little 

more of my 
complacency.

Thursday, July 31, 2025

FUCK IT

It's dangerous, they say, 
to paint with 
too broad a brush, but 

you know what? Sometimes 
you're in a rush. 
Plus, the predicament 

you're in couldn't be 
more legitimate: the crew 
is on a break 

which is starting to look 
more like a 
permanent hiatus—

and this guilty 
conscience of a fence 
won't just 

paint itself—so, 
holding your breath 
against the stench 

of the whitewash, 
you bust-out 
the biggest, widest 

roller of the bunch
and make short, bliss-
fully thoughtless work 

of what otherwise might 
have taken months 
to confront.

After all, you think,
what harm could it do—
just this once? 


Wednesday, July 30, 2025

GILDING THE QUOTIDIAN

The water birds sailing 
in search of Byzantium 
are now touching down 
on this flash-flooded town

in search of oases—some 
retention pond of youth, 
some inside-out aquifer 
or impromptu estuary—

like 
Ponce de León,
like Noah’s enervated raven,
like thousands of Parsifals 
burnt out on the quest—

driven by thirst to steal 
rain from gutter puddles
in a soggy pantomime 
of Promethean fire 

or nectar 
from some presently
nigh-uncountable 
overstock remainder 
of Holy Grails. 

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

FINAL JEOPARDY

          (after Robert Creeley)

Walking here, 
standing there, 
killing time 
and yawning—

sitting around 
talking, thinking, 
tinkering 
with the longing 

for anything 
to start, stop, 
bind, or burst 
into flame; 

for anyone 
to come or go, 
to curse or keen-
ly call your name—

what is a life 
when you haul-
out its engine and 
take it apart? What is 

a car 
that won't start.