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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.