INCANTATION FOR THE LOST GENERATION

If I could, I would go back there

to kiss the creases 

and clefts of your injuries—

tell you 

I'm sorry 

you were disallowed 

to put your mouth 

around your anger

or your meager joy. 

But,

less for the stern spirit 

than the weeping maid 

inside you 

that drives all of us, I wish

above all to tell you this: 

it is better by far, old man, 

to be defeated 

than destroyed, 

and anyone 

who will not let go 

of a fish 

is an idiot—it's 

just a goddamned fish. 

WHY WE DANCE

Because motion 

and parallax 

are confusing  

to the senses—

the omnipotent synthesis 

of centripetal gravity

must couple 

with inertia's 

brute imperative 

and cancel, tricking us

into forgetting 

at the chorus

that someday, "we"

will no longer be.

JUST SAYING

It's good 

for the conscience 

to admit 

you'd been wrong—

edifying 

to allow, for instance, 

that spring 

should have been called 

the changing of the leaves—

not fall—

if only its first 

observers hadn't been 

cowed by trembling 

shades of green 

never named 

for never seen—

stupefied (since we're 

being honest)

into truth-

ful silence.  

POEMS ARE HOLES

Sotto voce missive 

from the little distant 

tackhammering woodpeckers: 

often, you must drill 

before the reason 

will appear; 

it takes practice, not precision 

to make swiss 

cheese out of the hidden—

hunger, not fulfillment 

to think of whispering 

for emphasis, 

to make the unlistenable 

something to hear. 

MILLENNIAL PAUSE V. THE GEN Z STARE

By the way the sun 

after 4pm 

starts to shamble 

through your window 

like some slack Byronic hero 

and ooze through the green glass 

bottles littering your shelf

like an afternoon drunk 

still too numb to feel shame,

you can tell 

there's something archetypal 

happening here,

but unlike 

those swashbuckling 

try-hard romantics,

you wouldn't dare try 

to give it a name. 

OFF-THE-SHELF

Perversely, the wrongest 

thing of them all 

is the reassuring tedium 

of grief's routine;

the TV procedural 

of nullifying feeling—

not the insanity, 

the mundanity of loss.

Everyday  

as the mouthfeel 

of dry toast 

and lunch meat—

that Wonder bread 

and Butterball taste 

of their goneness. 

NEVER FAILS

Every morning, walking 

in silence, when the ache 

of my plainness seems 

to flare up anew, 

that same tawny female 

cardinal harkens, with the crest 

of her head 

and the shape of her tune

arcing to form 

an arrow pointing—

like the flame of a candle

to show me what to do. 

I can only surmise

that the meekest among us 

might be the bearers, 

not of burdens, but pardons—

for who would have guessed 

such a small tongue of light 

could lick away such 

a preponderance of darkness?