DIAGNOSTIC

The results are in—

inside me, there's a knotted fist 

of string 

where the beginnings 

and endings 

of things ought to be—

long twisted tangles 

of some equally inaccessible 

near and far, 

some tension 

that's connected to, but doesn't 

end with me 

and the start of which has 

always been 

somewhere else entirely. 

*

I used to be more 

exact than this, 

but that was before I knew

letters and numbers.

Now, every frightened thought 

is less a mandate 

than a blundered attempt 

at a revolution—

which is 

to say: half senseless 

directionless, 

nonproductive motion

and half little battle 

for the truth 

of some previous-

ly governable situation. 

PASSING FAIR

What is there left 

to complain about now? 

Will the dead still need the living 

like the living 

need the dead? 

Has the gist of our conviction 

has been weighed down 

by old inference yet?

By way of answers, 

here comes spring again—

all penitent mallards 

wing north 

for the season 

and fingers of rain 

massage moss 

from dead tree trunks.

Things soften, then streamline; 

so certain, they're 

redundant.

Life in such times is 

tedium refined;

ease 

that's insistent;

reiteration 

with a difference. 

OLD HAND

There is, in this life,

a kind of strangeness 

so pervasive as to turn 

innocuous—

an eerie glory 

so often repeated 

that, even in its transience, 

it doesn't bear hoarding. 

Picture the proverbial 

overflowing bowlful 

of tropical citrus 

on a Midwestern table—

and tell me

we're not experts

at gorging 

on the foreign 

while ignoring 

the incongruous. 

MARCH MADNESS

Day by slowly 

swelling day, a collective fever 

becomes visible 

as the bashful sun 

tickles baubles of frost 

from the mud-mottled grass

and the geese overhead 

blare back northward 

in a huff. 

With spring still little more 

than an R.E.M. dream,

little sounds appealing  

in the rawness 

of wind and spent-

matchstick look of lawns—

but even though 

that pulpit-crowed hope

of resurrection still feels risible, 

we have to admit, 

it's a joy 

just to realize 

even our muddy, most 

juvenile feelings. 

LATE FRAGMENT OF STEPHEN DEDALUS

Dreamt I was love's 

last living vampire; 

loneliness 

was my familiar—

but for once, my lust 

and your concern came 

teetering back into 

phase with each other. 

As I opened my mouth 

to bare my teeth 

and claim consubstantiality 

of words and reality, 

your lips—which were wet 

and pressed close enough 

to, at least temporarily, 

shut mine up—

felt like not so much 

of a big deal by contrast, 

and, as such, were 

all the sweeter. 

 

LET'S FACE IT

We love to hurt 

the way a baby loves 

to look around 

after it has 

just fallen down 

to make sure its mother is 

paying attention. 

*

Our preferred form 

of diversion 

is a pleasure 

deferred—

a day 

without timestamps;

a poem 

without all the troublesome 

words;

a "referred" pain 

as an analgesic 

substitute for the real thing.

("Better them 

than us," we exclaim.)

We like our 

soft feelings

like we like our hard truths: 

registered across town 

in seedy hotel rooms

under nom de plumes. 

*

We are not into 

"pushing the easy button."

We are into regretting 

easy buttons don't exist. 

TIME OUT OF MIND

                   —after Emily Dickinson 

"Forever," we've been 

told, "is composed of nows,"

but unfortunately, now 

is also flooded 

with forevers—

and the only way 

we know of to endeavor 

to cross over 

from one specious present 

to the ill-defined next is 

to caulk the twin wagons 

of hope and regret 

and attempt to ford

(via brute summation) 

the biblical river

of pleasure-

cum-pain 

which has burst the cheap 

dam of this 

same time and place 

and laid waste 

to that oasis from horizon 

to horizon.

But the hell of it is:

the place to which we 

think we might escape 

is just another maddeningly

familiar-looking junction 

between that which can 

neither be found 

nor forgotten.