Belief in the Seated Artist

Lorca said he lacked it.
The artist he believed
Was walking down the road.

Such healthful sentiment!
A bit of Whitmanic
Manliness there—open

Road, discovery, fresh
Air! Matthew Zapruder
Recently quoted this

Favorably, in terms
Of readerly surprise,
Language liberation,

Poetry’s purpose, hope
For possibility.
Forgive us for staying

Seated. Not everyone
Can walk the road safely
Or at all, not even

Among the newest, best
American poets,
Never mind the older,

Lesser varieties,
The poets without roads,
The poets where the roads

Will kill pedestrians.
The communal spirit,
The lyric as uplift,

As dreaming, resonance,
And determination
Are all admirable.

The seated artist may,
However, yet surprise
You, come back from your walk.

Names for That Unspecified Object

Shay, yā, cosa. Or, x y.

Mathematicians made names

Centuries ago for this

Thing, whatzit, unspecified

Object, the general case.

You could plug in specifics

Later. It’s variable.

It’s algebra. It works well.

Isn’t it fascinating

Though, you need a special kind

Of name, a placeholder name

For it, this x, this thingy?

The rough contemporary

Of sunya, sifr, cipher,

Zero—are they not like twins,

These names, one for the empty

Nothing, one for whatever

In the world could hold this place

Within this operation?

Let all the zeroes be x,

And let all x be zero.

Shining Sky

Shining sky, shining earth—
Rains briefly coat desert
With a silver mirror.

Technically, it’s darker
Than in the usual,
Staggeringly bright sun,

As any reflection,
Technically, is darker,
But this silver brilliance

Delights sun-blasted eyes.
The sun’s still behind it.
Ongoing explosions,

Burning collapses are
Behind all reflections.
But reflections remain

Somehow shinier, more
Peaceful, and why not be
Pleased with a silver sky?

It won’t last long, not here.
Let your eyes enjoy it,
When you can, the small while.

Predawn Flash Flood

Every drought entails a flood
And greater drought here greater
Floods drowning lives somewhere else.

Balance is the mystery
Hiding within everything.
You uncovered its absence

At least when you invented
Zero. That gave you a name,
A notation for balance,

The null set as a fulcrum,
But, given it hides nothing,
Nothing tells you nothing much.

You can see the likenesses
Are inexact samenesses,
That nothing’s ever the same,

But also that the outcome
Of all these differences
Is nothing, the same zero,

The most terrible absence,
The most permanent desert,
Flooding someone’s world somewhere.

Unsustainable

As life is
For any
Part of life,

It goes on.
The roots draw.
The lungs draw.

What does life
Want from life?
Just more life.

It’s Too Early to Be This Late

Well, if you must,
You might as well
Go back to bed.
Avoid the dark,

By dreaming more.
There was a storm
In the city
You were dreaming.

Lights flickered out.
The windows broke.
People living
On upper floors

Cried out and watched
The city’s death
By the lightning
That brought the dark.

The Sentence

In this world everyone gets
What, at most, a few deserve,
Maybe the most awful few,

And even they might tell you
They don’t think they deserved it,
Their portion of suffering

That went to war each morning
Against the less-deserving
Under the banner of life.