POSSIBILITIES

What is it, we wonder,

about each morning's fresh 

mellow tide of hunches

that makes us forget 

about the fallow 

way each day must end?

The way lovestruck 

birds risk blatant overtures 

in still-bare branches

or the frisky wind 

that rolls disenchanted

boxes down alleys everywhere

must serve as narcotic slivers 

to the same hand that doles 

out the nightly dread; 

for a fleeting moment, 

last evening's shouts of panic 

melt into golden tender air, 

and the living there is easy 

in the summer 

in our heads. 

FLING

For now, I have decided 

that the best things in life 

are gratis, yes, 

but also disputable; 

like a coquettish 

cardinal swinging 

branch to branch 

and tree to tree, 

I too might be free 

to change my mind 

endlessly—

and the song I sing 

may sound 

unbound, but only 

because it is 

mutable. 

THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

Even after 

that sugar rush crash 

of delphic erudition,

no one 

thinks to ask

the most selfish question: 

whence 

these sallow cocoons 

of flesh—why 

would God want 

to obscure his best 

butterflies? 

GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH

Like the silence 

between moans, 

or like reflux 

in the night, 

conviction hits us 

in the gut. 

I feel it in my bones, 

we say—

or, I know that 

in my heart—

because certainty

is selfish—

by which I 

mean: it lives 

inside us. 

Whereas doubt, 

thank goodness, is 

a migratory process, 

a striking out 

for parts unknown. 

We suspect 

it underlies us 

when in fact it 

wouldn't touch us 

with a ten foot pole. 

Like spit 

or a shout, 

it was really only built 

to burst 

from our mouths, 

then bolt 

like hell for its 

actual home. 

IDENTITY POLITIC

As an object in space 

may be extended 

through many different 

time dimensions 

without every really "belonging"

to any of them,

so "i" 

is a shibboleth, 

a torture device 

of convenience, 

a lever used to prod 

parity into abeyance—

better yet: 

a clever code 

used to bootstrap 

the rest of you 

into continuing its 

sentence.

Meanwhile, the past 

and the present 

are your two 

divorced parents:

divisive 

but just a little 

too significant—

indispensable 

to your very 

survival, in fact—

yet acutely 

and instructively  

unwilling 

or unable 

to even so much as 

coexist. 

GHOST STORY

When it comes to the next life, 

half-seen is only 

half-believed; 

if every uninterrupted 

second of our lives 

was an object 

infatuated with its 

image in the mirror—

in other words, its redoubled

but left-handed opposite—

then what does that say 

about changing 

the subject? 

*

To simply begin again 

would seem 

more expedient 

than an excess of oblivion.

But 

knowledge and its limits 

are provisional pairs 

of binary digits. 

A buyer's remorse code, 

held "in contempt" 

of what? 

*

Take this mute testimony 

of branches, for instance, 

first puncturing, then devouring 

every color on the horizon: 

less like the rattling chains 

of some dolorous phantom

than the chains of coincidence 

and fate we get caught in—

tangled, we say

when we're lucky enough, but 

strangled the one time

we're not. 

AFTER THE SNOW LEAVES

land 

battered bare

like a skeleton—

like a picked-

clean rib cage: empty, 

shrunken, brittle, frivolous—

like a blank landscape 

painting in which 

anything can happen—

like a camouflaged

cat that feels 

stealthily superior 

 

while assiduously licking 

her claws clean 

and the tips of every tooth—

like the infinite grandeur 

of a mountaintop view 

getting compressed until 

whatever is left 

resembles blandness—

and the truth.