OPEN WIDE

There's nothing 

you can do. Grace 

doesn't hug you

or invite you to come,

and it never offers 

grounds or reasons;

it snags you 

by the mouth 

like some draconian invention;

it gouges your cheek—

lodges deep there 

like a barbed hook 

and yanks you 

right out of the depths 

of your denial—

not even 

shrieking, but 

gasping for breath 

with your lungs 

cooking, full of that poison 

called liability

and into the alien light 

of absolution. 

WHY NATURE SUCKS

Although she abhors 

nothing that exists, 

she scorns any sense 

of that substance

as precious; 

bad enough 

that she gives all 

the same gift—worse 

when she asks 

for it back. 

ARGUMENT FROM EGOISM

Tell me, if you 

know: when a cell divides, 

in what sense 

can it be said 

to "survive?" 

Can one realistically 

turn into two 

without the former dying

and both of the latter 

being wholly new? 

And even if they were 

to recall 

the formerly recondite 

parent at all, 

what good would that do 

to the soul of the old 

mother protoplast 

whose now writhing 

and flailing her 

flagella in hell? 

Who among us would choose

at will to reproduce 

when to regenerate 

is to violently 

bifurcate identity—

to puncture a hole 

in the wall 

in the lung

of what was—to suffocate 

self, and to die? 

PERPETUITY

You pledge everything—

your life* for my kiss—and don't

mind that asterisk. 

DENOUEMENT

The best gift of all 

would be to retain at the end 

a child's mind at sunset—

to leave the field of light 

without explanations, fascinated 

by all we've just seen; 

but "how?"We don't 

care. And "why?"

We don't know yet. 

Would we could be, 

when night comes, 

who we were then:

head a room of treasures 

whose costs we weren't meant 

to understand, 

waiting to be held,

to be flown off 

to bed, to be told 

whom to kiss,

to say "yes" 

without regret. 

ANODYNE

A lot of longing 

goes away.

Like a bruise 

or a headache, it hurts 

but could be worse.

It's a little bit 

of it that is 

the real curse—

how it tarries 

and endures; 

the way you tolerate

and counter-

balance. It's a tail 

you can sway 

but never 

can lose, because 

a little longing 

stays. 

SWEET BY AND BY

On a long day, 

all the traffic lights 

change the wrong colors. 

On a sad day, 

there's a purplish tinge 

to the white puffs of clover.

On a lucky day, a bad feeling

melts like spun-sugar 

in your transparent saliva 

instead of getting 

kiln-blasted 

into the hard gems of fact.

On an ordinary day, you miss 

the bees and stamen 

consummating their marriage

and making honey 

that looks like 

dawn light together—

and some dark as amber, 

depending on 

which weeds proliferate

in that particular mile 

of the old carpool lane.

And all of that time,

in the back of your mind, 

some part of you longs

for the stasis of heaven—

even though, after living 

through all this, 

one must admit 

that the colorfast hereafter 

sounds

like a letdown.