Neither Footnote nor Marginal Comment

These poems don’t seem like true poems
Anymore—more like the frames
For Cornell boxes, or windows
Pretending to be portals
Pretending to be to worlds,
Or tiny wedges of prayers
Slipped in between the real poems.

Between the true poems, maybe
There’s always a wailing wall,
Always an alternative
World only portal to more,
Each window a world itself
As assembled—translucent,
Crystal, sealed—locked arrangement.

Floating, First and Last

How many people have you

Floated through who are no more?

How many people will you

Float through? What’s meant by you?

You imagine someone home,

Reading beside a warm fire,

The way you always wanted

To be sitting and reading,

And look! That name on the book,

That old-fashioned, paper book,

Is yours! You’re moving through them,

Your phrasing, your borrowed thoughts,

A long braid connecting them

To much, much earlier ghosts.

Pacifist Dinosaur Army

Who hates the past
Someone else bought
And suffered for
Back then, back then?

Below the floor,
Layers of stone
Swallow fossils
Small children would

Love to handle
And show to friends—
Megafauna
Being the main draw—

Dinosaurs best
Of the best, yes!
Values converge
Where time’s submerged.

Vaguely a Vagabond

You drift along best alone.
You don’t have to own a home—
Rooms to rent, credit to rent

Whichever rooms you might want
As long as you might want them,
All the paperwork you need,

All the documentation,
ID, local currency,
Traveler’s health insurance—

Oh yes, no doubt about it,
You drift along best alone
With privilege for your home.

Your Advanced States

You’re reading an article
On the laptop, all about
The flirtation of Russia

With North Korea—muscle
In potentia for the war
In Ukraine, more fresh soldiers—

And one of the cats decides
To mark the laptop corner,
And only a lunge prevents

The whole set-up sliding off
And crashing onto the floor
So that, in your advanced state

Of drug and cancer-addled
Desuetude, you’re briefly
Sure that a cat’s behavior

Could be connected to war,
As if domestic moggies
Could influence wars’ outcomes. . . .

Well, causation seduces
The finest minds, so why not
Imagine cats as agents

Of apocalypse, why not?
Sun floods through the open door.
Soon you won’t think anymore.

And Then What Happened?

It was late in October,
Back in twenty-twenty four,
And the balance of the world
Registered precarious.

There were people caught in wars
Or fleeing collapsing states.
There were people expecting
Wars and preparing escapes.

Democracy resembled
Endangered, charismatic
Megafauna—far too cute

To allow to go extinct,
But not a beast most people
Wanted to clean up after.

Donation Store

The idea here was equable
Treatment breaking down barriers
Between those with and those without

By convincing those with plenty
They could cheaply get even more.
Those without were confined to hope.

People have needs. People have wants.
To get at all their needs and wants,
People have people help them out.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it won’t.
If you feel like it worked for you,
Does that mean someone else was screwed?

You wait in your wheelchair as parked.
The sun’s brilliant on the concrete.

Compos Mentis

Can you sync with the air,
With the planet’s breathing
As apart from human rhythms?

Peel apart completely
From the pulse of the news.
Keep from living too long

Within the violence
The era promises.
Die peacefully in bed.

The glow of the sun goes.
The evening will not spare
Quietists from vengeance,

No more than activists
Or anyone else caught
Between inhalation

And coughing helplessly.
But nor will the evening,
As an evening, attempt

To harm you. You watch night
Arrive. The old human
Hearth occupation—watch

And listen to the night
For whatever’s out there.
Watch the night. Be the night.

You can sync with the air.
Live your last without fear—
It’s not next. Next there’s here.

Searching the Seam in the Rhythm

The evening settles slightly
Blue and green at horizon.
Everyone’s planning what’s gone.

It’s ok. It’s got to be.
Every excess leads to dusk,
Every dusk to excess dark

Or the lights of the cities—
Evening’s going down to ground,
Taking its jewel box of lights.

Calm means no obligations
To the quiet you’re craving.
Blue along the garden fence,

Here where there are still gardens
For those without small fortunes,
And the birds sing blue to bed.

Living With It

It’s weird to be dying and thinking,
Frequently, that everything works out.
After a bizarre day Halloween

Costume shopping around town with doom
And the death of the free world at hand,
Or at least at the backs of our minds

(One teen, still too young to vote, asking
A group of friends around the table
If they felt as anxious as she did,

Nods greeting her, a generation
That may soon undertake resistance
They’re not yet prepared for as they shop

For items with which to craft costumes,
Scary but silly, for now, for now),
You noted how that day’s obstacles

And trivial, personal worries
Worked out well, worked out just fine, ok?
The way everything keeps working out,

A fine life, another holiday,
Another holiday, calendar
Full of them, so many quirky days,

Leading you to chuckle at yourself,
Thinking, You see? Everything works out,
And your death sentence you just live with.

When Conditions Were Good

The sudden swell of pink light
Surprised you that morning. Dawn

Is a gradual device,
Even in desert canyons,

But that time, if not a switch,
Then sort of a dimmer switch,

Surging background radiance,
That made you lift your head, look,

And notice the rush of pink,
Day that knew how to begin,

How to wave a bright hello
And wink at good things to come.

A really old-fashioned poem
Would claim humans light dawns, too.

On the Need to Stay Uncertain

What would certainty
Obviate? A doubt,
Any need for faith.

Can you imagine?
You can’t. You are not
Anymore evolved

For life without doubt,
Faith, or mystery.
Leave it alone.

Even a shadow--
Eliminated
By a firm scholar

From the scenery--
Could make you quaver
With uncertainty—

You need it. You might
Perish without it,
Your uncertainty.

In the Waves

You’re so far gone, not only
Do you catch yourself dozing
While in the act of reading,

You catch yourself translating
From English into English,
Though what’s in your head isn’t

Really English, really words
In any language, is it?
There’s a rush of proto-speech

You’re more or less aware of,
And then you pull out of it
Before you break in the waves.

Joy

Waste time. You won’t find, can’t find,
Joy, unless you can waste time.

But wait! Weren’t these poems a source
For advocacy of time’s

Absolute nonexistence?
Yes! Maybe! So celebrate,

If you wake up confused,
Losing what no one has had.

It’s a challenge, isn’t it?
To feel no anxiety

That you’ve completely
Lost an hour. A day. You won’t

Care later, likely. But right now,
The thought that you simply slipped

And forgot your life, dropped it,
Lost the plan . . . Your visitors?

The podcast conversation?
A beetle wanders the floor.

Nope. No beetle was ever
Wandering here. But you are,

Determined to embrace this
Loss, this lost loss of nothing.

Yet Another World to Go

And there it is again,
A screen this time, a jolt
And a panic something

Has gone missing. But look
What you’ve gained—a roadrunner
Big as you’ve ever seen

Has wandered to the door
You left open, and looks in.
All this mystery while

You dozed off, phone in hand.
A few flicks of rhythm,
And it’s another world.

A Person on Business

Scare yourself. If you’re dying

As quickly as doctors said,

You’ve got a lot to get through,

And it will hurt, and will burn,

And be terrifying, so

Start practicing daily now.

The cancer, the opiates,

The nights your sleep’s demolished—

They all distort how you think,

Creating a world by turns

Confused, disoriented—

Which is what dying will do.

Might as well get used to it.

If poetry, per Ada

Limón, is the true language

Of mystery . . . the unknown,

Might as well try unknowing

On for size. In blazing sun,

Someone knocks at the west door,

Casting a shadow. Answer,

Even if they’re from Porlock.

Poetry Adjacent

For some reason, right now,
Every poem you compose
Doesn’t feel like a poem,

Feels like the middle of a poem
As pastry, a kind of treat or filling,
Or it feels less anxious, less

Like the effort at capture that it is
And more like the composition
Of an empty form for readers to fill.

Or they feel like stacked, cardboard boxes.
Or like leftovers of real poems. Whatever.
Well. Well, welcome to this one.

Attention Is All

Builders xeriscaped this subdivision
With swaths of stone in various sizes
So that water would be trapped under rocks
To pool, then to be absorbed more slowly.
By and large, the design performs poorly,

And, as a consequence, sort of a wash
Has evolved along the margins of stone—
Dry and sandy most of the time, faintly
Damp after the odd shower, and rarely,
Rarely but alarmingly, a flash flood

Of brown gook that could snatch your ankles,
Club you with tumbling fist-sized and skull-sized
Loose rock. Today, the bare stripe is fine sand,
And, as a teenager, you don’t notice it,
Except when your attention’s called to it.

What’s Next Is Also Past

It went on. Nothing much clenched
In dread anticipation
Way back then, but it went on.

Two patterns, especially,
Remained reliably fixed—
No matter what you dreaded

Or how much, it came and went,
And then it went on. And then,
Fresh anxieties moved in.

That was it. But when you looked,
All you had of dread was past.
It went on, and all of it past.

Do Not Risk Closing Your Eyes

Dozed into a dream someone
Recently deceased argued
With a more senior lost soul

That this couldn’t be the place—
Then things disintegrated,
Not into waking, into

The next dream, people chatting
About the previous dream
In which you were painting and

The painting was of a boat
The point of which was to float
Away from all these faces

But now the boat is crowded
And new dreamers float new dreams.

Of Memories

Peace recently located,
Or relocated perhaps,
To an easy-to-find place—

Only requires accepting,
Fully, truly accepting,
That how this turns out for you

Will never matter for you.
Can you embrace that absence?
It’s not just you don’t matter—

It’s not all wise perspective.
You can’t possibly matter
To your disappearing self,

So let yourself disappear.
It’s all always behind you.
Of what could you feel afraid?

Drift

It’s already done.
Let go of the ropes.
Feel the way your boat

Rocks back and forth
But floats. Will you coast
Out of the harbor?

Go so far as half
Way through the Bay,
Then sink forever?

Given it’s matter,
It doesn’t matter.
Mattering is for

Precisely those things
Immaterial,
For which meanings are

Created so that
They can be proclaimed
To really matter.

Course Correction

There’s no formula for it,

That’s for sure, and who could say

Whether the person one meant

To receive the formula

Were not, in fact, the starter

Kit for the peculiar script

Any such formula would need

To enact? You bump down the road.

There’s a little road through the woods,

A two-track rut into grey scrub

That you turn left to bump onto.

The woods are the ones that greeted

Bishop on her chemin de fer—

Impoverished scrub pine and oak—

You won’t get out of them without

Some pleasantries from the hermit,

And if you get lost arriving,

Remember, there’s no formula—

There might be an alligator

Or startled swamp deer.

There might be some tattered pages

That seem to contain corrections. . .

What the Fish Spell

They will not wait.
They will not happen.
They happen.
They have happened.

Will they happen?
If they are at all
They will have happened—

The most solid existence
Anyone’s accorded
Within this happened.

Everything you can be
Or be aware of is among
The things that happened.

Linny’s tragic, scrawny story
Doesn’t yet exist— hasn’t
Happened yet, then, has it?

Hasn’t had been, hasn’t been yet,
Has it? Linny’s story—how soon
Can it have happened?

Can it have happened?
Wait—did the girl who crouched
Here happen?

Pale Peach October Sunset

The outer light
Started to fail.
You asked yourself
Of your safety—

Make clear what was
Happening here?
Or be cryptic,
The take that is

The more trusting?
Years had taught him
Right laziness
In the artist

Creates a gift
For the viewer—
The chance to make
The meaning yours.

Dawn

Three months into six months
To live, there hasn’t been
Much dramatic decay,

Although, oddly, the squad
Of thoughts, trouble in mind,
Has grown haphazardly

Anxious, random moments
About time left right now.
You may sit in cool dawn

Of a loose day, reason
To relax with angels—
Who can be like you, free

Of work and effort, so
Much free time? For no good
Reason you freeze, thinking,

Something’s almost gone now,
But you can’t think of what.
It goes, and you feel fine.

Inheritance

The door is ajar.
The teen is upstairs.
The patient, dying

Feels only too stoned
From medication
Gulped down in the well. . .

And down in the well
The mind could relax,
Except it’s spooky,

These conversations
The ghost faces start
In opium dreams—

And down in the well
They’re half an army,
And all talkative.

You surface, alarmed
For your sanity,
But down in the well

You can’t defeat them,
Debate them clearly—
They’re ancient versions

Of people you knew,
Mangled together
With a chance to prove

That down in the well,
Bottom of the drought,
What you can’t know yet

Can scare you to death,
Yet not directly
Harm you at all.

Still, who wants to talk
Through an open door
To twisted shadows?

It distresses you.
The teen is upstairs.
This world will be hers.

Everyone Hates Mr Tate

Say the children in middle school.

It has that jangly rhyme to it,

Just enough clang for chanting it.

Let us contemplate Mr. Tate,

His name being taken in vain

By unfortunates on the bus

Who have no one to pick them up

From these ex-urban nerve endings

Of all-American learning—

When did his decision hit him,

That he should be a school teacher?

And did he ever consider the state

His career would have to be in?

The kids on the bus would, loudly,

Chant Everyone hates Mr. Tate.

Practice Is Learning How Not to Sink

During the solo
Meeting in the room
For practice alone,

People visit you—
People and their pets.
You know you’re dreaming,

Hallucinating
People who aren’t there,
But they’re returning

And you can’t stop them.
Dangling like convicts
From the ripped, white edge

Of drawing paper,
Just before dropping,
They’re consoling you.

Otherwise practice
This solitary
Would eat you alive.

On the other hand
They’re shadowy and
Alarming—oh, wait,

Dark water’s building
And the light’s fading.
You should be bailing.

Your Name Here

Words so rare
No one cares—
The tongue still

Works for those
Grown in it—
Not dead yet,

Just stuck with
Words so rare
Who could care?

Apples and Oranges

Life, not yours, just life, still has
A long way to go. You have
No evidence either way—

No other living planets
Known that died so suddenly
Everything crisped in a day,

Or so slowly, five billion
Years made barely middle age—
No points of comparison

To triangulate a world.
For all you know, worlds don’t die,
Can’t die. Life, once it gets started

May be impenetrable—
Which would only make the small
Lives with mandatory deaths

Seem that much more tragic, no?
Or repeatedly starting
Over again—maybe so.

Textbooks give wise estimates,
Not that they know. Your best guess?
Life's got a long way to go.

Wanting for Nothing

What people believe they want
Haunts them in too strong a way,

Until almost everyone
You talk to has their own way

Of staring far, far away.
Is it the intensity

Or the density of wants?
How ferociously

You want or how many wants
Cluster around you at once?

Either way, not so simple
As a straightforward desire,

Given belief is in there.
It reminds you, you can’t be sure

Of one thing about wanting
Except you’ve encountered it.

What you’re convinced you want now
May be the last thing you’d want

In another hour. What haunts
You then might be what you miss

Out on today, not wanting
It, you thought, at all. So what

Want do you want, and why that?
See? You’re already haunted.

Graphic Design

See those words printed
In factory-bright colors
Along the outside of the mug?

Everyone who composed
One of these memorable strings
Of phrases in the English language

Is dead now. The phrases
Were chosen by someone else,
Presumably at a desk,

Maybe working at a screen,
Maybe surrounded by piles
Of papers and books. Probably

Only searching other screens,
Scanning lists of famous phrases
Of various kinds to use

As designs for this novelty mug
For avid readers, stocking stuffer,
Between reading lights and bookmarks.

Imagine being clubbed to death
By a colorful coffee mug—that is,
If it hadn’t shattered?

This, That You Never Wrote Down

An extremely bright afternoon
Sprawled, life inside it, in the sun.

This was several days ago.
An old friend, hallucinated

Out of long-sunken memories,
Seemed to be sitting in the sun

Offering, from the other side
Of the table, some good advice,

But you were writing it down
You forgot what it was, and now

You sense that not writing it down
Amounted to the same advice.

They’ve Already Given Out All the Awards for Participation

Break through your veils of lawn—
The gauze of medicine
On the gauze of sickness

Have muffled what’s left you—
To feel that you’re still here,
That there’s something to do,

Requires that you forget,
Can’t be bothered to care
That there’s something to do.

The ten small things at once
That you should be doing
Will leave you, all undone,

Unless you find a way
To completely resist
Any doing of them.

Fame, Curiosity, Greed

A Norwegian chronicler
Near the end of the era
Of Viking expansiveness,

Maybe sick of it himself,
Asked the page what made people
Go to Greenland and why fare

Thither through such great perils?
Risky question. Short answer.
Man’s threefold nature, seeking

Fame and curiosity,
And lust for gain.
Fame. Curiosity. Greed.

Nobody wants to hear that.
Bravery. That’s what we want--
Divine plans for everyone.

The Alumni

You never expected this,
Although, really, you should have.
Among all the alumni

Of life, why wouldn’t the group
Include those unexpected
Alumni of other plans,

Of other universes,
Other forms of awareness?
Something’s humming in those lines.

Tick Tick

How about no legacy?
No oeuvre, no books, nothing left?
Not merely no one wanting

To dive into the archive
Curved like a body pillow,
Held close for too many years,

But physically nothing
Of remains but dust, trash, and ash,
Black hole cloud of horizon.

How about no audience
Or bizarre non-audience,
Consisting of aliens

To all of earth’s history
Maybe scanning their own skies
For signs, recognizing none,

Or free-range intelligence.
There goes your best legacy.
Or leave it to the machines.

They can read it, store it, they
Are storing it even now.
Your motorized legacy.

The Night Is Young

How to climb in
The right story,
The one you want
To just live in—

The one that haunts
You with it gate,
Its treed entrance
Into more trees.

That’s the story
You don’t break down
Trying to write.
Write what you saw,

Fast as you can.
This is that one.
These are your woods.
Although you’re old

In Which Case You’d Lack the Power to Shed It

Power isn’t powerful
In the way it seems to be.

Consider the State’s power
To seize control of aspects

Of the most ordinary life,
To brutally constrain acts

Too small to concern power
as an actor on the stage—

Already it’s confusing
To wander around these parts—

Power, by definition,
Can destroy the powerless,

But how do those words help us?
How can knowing anything

Help us in our helplessness?
What are you talking about

When you refer to power—
Power wants this, seizes that,

Corrupts the other? Power?
There are people, stacked inside

The halls of power. (Power
Palaces only have halls—

No one ever references
Their bathrooms or libraries

Or kitchens or cupolas
Of power. Halls of power,

That’s it.) Those people have it
For whatever stretch of time

They’re carrying what’s granted
To them by powers that be.

And what are powers that be?
Who are they? Those who have it,

A share of it, thanks to those
Who had a share before them.

Power’s not an entity.
It’s neither god nor angel,

No one individual.
It’s something coursing through you

That you’d be wise to shed, if
You were wise, not powerful.

Cut into Shades

The prize you did aim at,
Pilgrim, you did procure.
Your sights were level, broad,
Low, and your aim was sure.

You wanted a flash flood
In a drought-struck meadow.
You got a level lake,
Shallow but well-shadowed.

You wanted a vastness,
Oceanic in awe.
You got time’s whatever,
Exceeding what you saw.

And you get the picture,
Now, don’t you? From the edge
Of a shield of salt lake,
This world’s water and sedge.

You made so much, it looks
Like something someone made.
You made so much, the want
Cut landscapes into shades.

Why Ice Age Armageddons Feel Truer than Hot Weather

Things really no one
Knows about at all
Can only be guessed

To truly exist,
And it’s likely that,
As one approaches

The truly unknown,
Lack of memories
With which to construct

Purely imagined
Scenarios starts
To slow, then strangle

Imagination
Altogether. Once
You’re trying to write

About what’s missing
Experienced life,
Then, no matter how

Vivid the unknown
Would be if you met,
It’s a blank page here

Where no one’s footprint
Crosses the landscape,
Which is now true snow.