The Worst Moment

Gentle as eyelid kisses
From a hesitant lover

New to the scenarios
Of effortful tenderness

This kind of kissing promised,
The confusion of labor

With love’s capital lost, dreams
Of a brave world requiring

Creative capacity
To think though the hours of night

The willingness to transcend
The effortful tenderness

In the name of rescuing
Everyone who might get left

By a too-inattentive
Lover at the worst moment.

The Old Means of Insurrection Won’t Work

You take out one brick,
Replace it with books.
Take out a few bricks,

Replace them with looks,
Smoldering stink-eyed
Glares from the border

Of the circular
Sick crew, churning well.
Take out the last looks,

Suspecting you’ll give
Up right about now,
But to your surprise

Find yourself ready
To take on a fight
On the books’ behalf,

The behalf of bricks,
Of anything used
To store dangerous

Intel on the world.
The world needs to know
Rather less these days

Than more. Put a brick
Back on the bookshelf.
There’ll be no ending,

Or it will be quick.
When no books are left,
Take out a fresh brick.

Steel Wind Coming

A thin wind to begin with,
Faint wailing, like a siren,
A passenger jet failing
To maintain altitude far off,

Then a little huskier,
More throat in the voice, closer,
And you think of all the times
You’ve braced yourself for anger

From a predictable source
With unpredictable twists.
Likely, this time will be worse.
The wind’s enough of a roar

To portend or to pretend
An actual, coming storm.
Difficult to tell with wind—
Can blow all night for nothing.

Or can lead in the great storm
Talked about generations.
Which one is this?
It has curl in its throat

And has grown loud everywhere
In the neighborhood. The roar
Is constant now, imminent,
Wind tunneling through itself.

This wind is targeting. How
A wind targets anything
Is impossible to say.
This wind grows conscious today.

Leaving Alone Alone

This is good, the sun on the table,
The music of no music at all,
The rumbling of the propane heater,

The handful of voices murmuring
Through the interior wall next door,
The shadow of a large roadrunner

On the glass door, stalking past stiffly,
The shift in upstairs noises, a range
Of solitary teenaged prepping

For a drive into town for errands,
This is all good. This is what you’ve got,
Which tends to be good, when left alone.

Not One Wait So Much As Many Small Alarms

You sat with a spade in the sun,
Considering what you had done.
Why you? Consider someone else,
Some other events than the ones
That flutter around your actions.

The soil remains damp, here and there
From yesterday’s rain, but that’s calm
And rich with local petrichor—
Why would you have an anxious twitch
When something moves behind you, why

A small rush of relief hearing
A shower start, meaning you have
More time to relax, up until
The completion of the bath? Why
Are you always bracing yourself?

The simple answer is right there.
You’re supposed be dying, but
The worst of it hasn’t started yet.
So you’re prone to trembly waiting—
Not what’s next. What’s last. You hate it.

Interiors

They’re all containers,
Translucent boxes,
However they’re shaped,

Algal necklaces,
Like rectangular
Paste-glass emeralds,

Or hollow glass tiles,
The kind restrooms use
That diffuse sunlight

Into clouds of gold
A kind of beauty
Easy to miss, say,

At a highway stop
Among Idaho
Hops and potatoes,

That sun caught in tile,
Life caught as a cell
Of sheer folded light.

Once a Life, Twice a Life Never

There would be no answers to these questions.

What won’t happen overwhelms

What will. There are so many

Alternatives through living,

So many things might happen

In the days that don’t exist,

But only just what happened

In the days that are finished—

It’s a good thing, all in all,

Our imagination’s weak,

Ghostly scaffolding that looms

Endlessly into shadows

In ranks that fade to black.

There are no alternatives.

You’re always just what happened.