ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY NEAR-DEATH

I flinch from the memory

like a hand from a hot stove—

one big mad twisted engine, 

no headlights left—

as if to prove, 

via hand-eye coordination, 

that hunting was a sport,

and I was just a second-

stringer, excised from the team. 

Even in the silence 

of midnight blindness, 

I cannot bear to listen 

to the black box message

and so must cut it short. 

Biography isn't destiny—I know 

that's what it'd say. But history 

isn't nothing, either—at least 

not anymore. 

OUTSIDE CHANCE

You first wake 

to a morning both 

mild and gray.

it might not rain on your side 

of the burg, they say. Or

 
it might pour the cats

and dogs of your life

before the end of the day. 

Either way—better to grab 

the slicker of your wonder

before you sashay 

out the door on your way 

to life’s work.

It’s so uncomfortable 

to wear (stiflingly hot 

and a garish lemon yellow).

And you're probably not even

going to need it, 

you declare—but 

then again: you may.

ENLISTED MAN

You don't have to be 

an egomaniac 

or sign a lifetime contract.

What starts you on the warpath 

to writing every day 

is that any poem might 

be your best;

but what keeps you there

as a hapless conscript 

long after the romance has left

is this Howitzer 

aimed from the end 

of a halftrack: every poem 

might be your last. 

TWILIGHT OF THE IDLE

Fingers of rosy 

cirrus clouds 

relinquish the day-old sun 

to the heavenly gravity 

of what's to come 

in the world beyond the horizon. 

The sight used 

to please you; 

tonight, it only demonstrates 

how time 

used to accrue in your youth—

now, it just eliminates. 

L'ESPRIT DE L'ESCALIER

Oddly, 

there's exactly 

one ecstatic condition 

in which I become 

my best and truest self—

one state 

in which I become 

wise and disarmed enough 

to stop being charming 

and tell it like I think it is—

one beautiful circumstance, 

charged with significance 

and the metaphoric dynamism

of urgency 

coupled with its lack—and it's, 

you guessed it: 

only when I'm 

deplorably alone again 

after the goddamn fact. 

BEGGARS WOULD RIDE

If a poem 

were a disease,

it'd be the world's 

laziest fever—

one content to fester 

slowly behind the scenes, 

turning up your temperature 

by quiet half-degrees

rather than seizing you 

and burning you to death 

in a delirious fusilade 

of the most ecstatic sneezes.

*

If a poem were a garden plot, 

it'd be a hopeless patchwork 

of some the world's most 

delicate words, 

surrounded and nearly 

choked from existence 

by species after species  

of rude wild invasives.

Your best, if not your only 

chance at success

would be to perform a regular 

controlled-burn of the situation.

*

If a poem were a language game, 

it'd be a neon slot machine—

too garish to ignore,

and purpose-built 

to contain 

that meaning you need

but never just dispense it 

at the pull of a lever 

or slake your desire 

to break it wide open, 

plunder its treasure,

and drain its allure. 

APPREHENDED BUT NOT NAMED

All around the world, 

people long to share a bed.

Little children crawl

under the covers to snuggle 

with their fathers and mothers; 

men and women in 

all combinations, even once 

their lust is exhausted, 

still bend into spoons 

and nestle together. 

But have you ever noticed 

that, no matter how close 

you come to another, 

you must always 

dream alone—

or wondered why must it be 

that the truth of the both of you 

not knowing what that means 

is in itself the most 

intimate thing?