In comfort slight our course is laid,
the din immense, the light decayed
until all thought is full replaced
by Mesmer's veil and Ares' waste;
Though all is real, still relative
is how we spend what we might give
without a wit or winning plot --
what should inspire compels us not;
And so our minds like doors shall close,
then follow eyes in blind repose.
 

in the still
voices fill
pages with
elation
each new line
is not mine
but divine
creation
 

i don't mean
to crush their spirits
like glass underfoot

even shattered fragments
sparkle when light
hits them just so
 

the more I know you
the less I can conceive
of your entirety

we are outside remade each day
a hundred times fertilized
and implanted in other minds
by snapshot presumptions
falling into blueprints
indefinitely measured until
the finished portrait
degrades with observation

clarity is a gift to the persistent

and so each time as I
apprehend you anew
I realize the delight in seeing slowly
reconceiving you again and again
until the portrait diminishes
and you become sculpted
beyond conception
 

What if he gave us imagination
to make the mundane bearable,
and gave us the mundane
to make adventure beautiful?

 

i could skim your heart
across a pond
watch it skip three -
no, four - times
until inertia gives way
and gravity swallows it
with a liquid gulp
 

i am amazed at how
little i do when there
is little to be done -
amazed again at the
pace i keep as life
turns from a Sunday
afternoon wagon ride
to bullet train commute -
and how i waste the days
when it turns back again
 

why can't we be friends?
you ask
and i have to laugh - again -
at 36, my friends
do not lecture me on how to drive
or attempt to set curfews of 8:30 pm
or coat every conversation with
this potential layer of
perpetual correction
and that is why i laugh
because it is either amusing
or tragic - in a Shakespearean
sort of way - and I've had
enough tragedy for one lifetime
 

she did fine until late spring
when a soppy blanket
of over-eager heat swathed
the garden like wet muslin;
now those swizzle-stick twigs
are shriveled and dull,
life gone from the party;
erect, if less fetching,
she persists in this
late-May oven of a month;
still, she is Mediterranean
and we are Gulf Coast -
how can I ask her to grow
so far from her first home?
 

why is it God's silence
is rife with meaning
and yours
makes my heart bleed
 

my favorite days are when
i slip down into
the cushions of my couch
joining the bits of lint
pretending to be a lost sock
amidst snack mix and dull pennies
all of us retreating from
a world of circulation
and consumption
happy to avoid notice
even if it means
being useless for an afternoon
 

What if I never kiss a boy again?
'Boys' I call them, for to me
love is an ever-adolescent thing.

Did Mother Teresa ever
think of kissing men?
(Is it sacrilege to ask?)
I like to believe she might
have missed - on occasion -
the taste of lips.

Imagine it...
no kisses.

But I am not Mother Teresa,
(I am not even Catholic)
and what if I never kiss a boy again?
 

i am careful
not to touch you
my hand reluctant
to settle loosely
on your shoulder
an obtuse gesture
meaning nothing
other than what
you believe
it to mean
i am careful
however
because i know
what it means
to me
 

No more leading lives of quiet desperation -
it's all noise now;
surround sound and plugged-up ears
devouring any semblance of sacred space
and rain drowned out by reality TV;
freeze-frame relationships
made possible by our sponsors
whose products are guaranteed
not to shrink or fade
unlike our brains and memories
in the boisterous cadence
bleeding from screens and buds -
sometimes both at once;
and there we sit in the din
anesthetized
yet still desperate.
 

strip all hints of success
from your existence
forget objectives
measurable parameters
mission statements
endeavors with end games
ballpark assessments
and benchmarks

none of which actually matter

even without accolades
we are the same ones working
to earn that roof, eat that food
to splurge - occasionally -
and feel grateful
even while performing the most
thankless brainless pointless
unfashionable task

which matters because it matters to us
 

it's as if you're a gnat
flying blithely along on an
ice-box-pie-patio-sun-tea-fresh-cut-daisy
spring day when...sfloop!
raw inertia sucks you into the barrel of a
grandfather-hand-me-down-rusty-butt-heirloom
.22 rifle

it's the bullet that did it
catching you unaware in mid air
chasing you into the back end of a
well-oiled-no-escape-slippery-slope chamber

now all you can do is wait
for the explosion that will conclude your
humdrum-pumpernickel-ignorant-bliss-happenstance
existence as a gnat while
the impending big bang distracts onlookers
who never realize you're
trapped inside
 

I think you have
begun to see
conspiracy
in the coincidence
that has us always
lingering
in the same places.
What a shame.
I would take it as a sign
or maybe a compliment
but then I am not
handsome
like you.
 

My mind is always dancing
in the middle of a poem.

It frustrates people who know me
and think I should be responsible.

But if I do not entertain the words,
who will?
 

Last week I stabbed the middle of my hand with a pen

Before I would have spluttered curses
blamed everything with feet
shown anyone who would stop to look
and spend the day's remainder hating that pen

But this time I laughed at my own carelessness
stared at the black divot in my red flesh
let the incident fade with the pain
and wondered, when did I wake up?
 

If the earth can turn itself
upside down
why can't I turn my heart
away from you?