accursed

You've done it again.
For yourself, this time.
And last time as well.
Will you never learn!

You're giving your karma a hand, again
or building a world of those who can

A world of people
who know who you are,
from only what you have shown

of your self.

You've given them this.
It's the realest thing.
Do you think you have more
inside?

Oh, well.

The person you make
out of all you give
is quite a bit realer
than what's inside, or

what you say is,
that you never use.

Your name is a curse
that rebounds anew, from all
who have learned what it means

from you.

It is time to choose,
but it's always been time
to choose.

us everyday

I feel like I've only seen you twice
in a very long time. But it wasn't
so long. Did we say so long? Next time

we say that, let's lie. Let's let it lie
between us, where there is no space,
and will be for so long. Let me contact you

all along the embrace, there'll be nothing

between us but time to make up

new things to do, and ancient things

to be made and unmade and remade

in you.

"Where It Hurts"

I can see
you're clearly in pain
I have come
to share it with you
Two can bear
more burden than one
I'll bare yours
- if you'll bear it, too
Bare your soul! Spill it out,
let me shadow all your doubt
and all of your anxiety, but first...

You can tell me where it hurts,
and I can make it worse.
Or you can try to bite your tongue,
or you could let me bite it first.

You can tell me where it hurts,
and
I'll be brutally frank:
You brought all this mess
on yourself.
Should have come to me
at the start.
I would not
have put you through hell.
You've tortured yourself for way too long,
come on give someone else a turn
It's only purgatory at worst, and

You can tell me where it hurts,
and I can make it worse.
Or you can try to bite your tongue,
or you could let me bite it first.

You can tell me where it hurts.

explanatory power

The gods were born
in the first white flash
of a lightning strike, and clothed

in the crash of thunder upon
the virgin ears

of the man and the woman

who had appeared
in the lee of the storm.

They were spared the brunt
this time, but they couldn't imagine
what force, what fury directed
its downward stroke

all at once, flash BOOM

...was it Greek? Or Norse?

But neither of those
were invented yet. There
was no one left
over rain-soaked plain
but the mighty abyss,
the howling void -

and neither could face such a thing

again

vectors of inertia

People give up on their blogs.

They drift away,
after a time.

Maybe they die.
Some move on to Wordpress.

I suppose that's more dignified
But I can't contend with the press of words
that I'd leave behind.

So I'm going to stay
right here,
and add to them
if you don't mind.

some business

I hide in the other room,
when she's on the phone with you.
I try to give you your privacy.
You have a confidence or two
with me, and I would feel
remiss not to help you

preserve yours with her.
It's none of my business

so far. I like to keep separate
things how they are.

I trust you with yours, and hers
with you. I'd trust her with every
thing you do, so I'd probably

rather not get involved.

I get up, and I go
in the other room. No problem

solved.

behind a drink

I always apologize for the alcohol
even though everything I say is true
when I'm drinking it
Sometimes I think
the alcohol should apologize for me,
but it can't
it won't. So I apologize for it,
and the truth

I know you will not get.
I'm always behind
a drink or two.

I could try to catch up,
but it's only fair
that I don't.

Magic time

My favorite time of day
As rose and gold come into the sky,
and the ranks of trees, deep green
as we know they are, begin to glow

All the colors and shadows will deepen
from here, and the sky just now
is a seashell blue, cast with seafoam clouds

for a calendar, that never comes out
but it's there for you,

if you go out now.

I can't help but think,
my favorite time
quite probably comes

twice,
if I got up early enough,
I could watch it unfold in reverse. And I love
things backwards, so I'm

sure - wouldn't it
be nice?

But things being as they are
in the universe,
I am satisfied
with the magic time
that comes but once, everyday

I could set my calendar by
the sundial, as the shadow grows

so tall and wide, opens up,
and the earth sinks in.

Intermission. Begin
act two
of the play

We shall see how it goes.

missing traditions

What people don't believe is that Moses went to Iran
during the block of missing time in the accounts
that his trip to Iran accounts for. He showed them
his staff of snake, and explained about the tablets
and how he came to have horns on his head
due to a mistranslation - dangers
of scriptural literalism, it seems. This also

explains the striking parallels. It was because
Moses was there. He got lost or something.
Later it was all cool, he found his way
back to the tent, where they kept coming to him
with disputes, settled on the spot

by new rules to obey.

critique of good bones by maggie smith

Yes, I love that poem. Although,

she really does overstate the terrible
by a factor of at least
ten. She does it
so quickly
and deftly
you barely notice
until it's over, and she's already

sold you.

She's sold you the poem.

And she's done it so beautifully, 
you don't begrudge at all
how grossly she's overstated
the terribleness of the world,

to sell you a poem.

Why, the world isn't half
of a half that terrible, you protest -

- and then grin. Because
she sold you the world, too.

beholder

She stands at the window
observing people
destroying the trees
around her house, so
the tenants won't have any leaves
to rake.

They don't understand

and neither does she,
but they won't get away with it.
She sees

What they're going to take.

She sees the workmen, impersonal.
They arrive in small
white trucks, for a job
they were hired to do
like any other.

If they had refused,
then somebody else

would be watched, right now

by the girl who is watching you

Who is trying
to help, to witness,
to do what she can,
to see what is wrong,
and not turn away
from such business.

These aren't their trees,
but they go right through
and they take them down.

These trees belong
to whoever will pay
to cut through the living trunks
and leave stumps,
like ready-made headstones,
marking graves.
These trees,

there was nothing wrong
with them, and no one
and nothing
to save.

These trees,
they belonged
to the birds, all around
dropping down
what they think
of us.

While they couldn't have known,

we can see they were right,
by how we treat
what we say

we own.

She stands by the window
and sees it all. In her mind,
she holds who's responsible.

And maybe, one night or two gone by,
she'll sneak out with a knife
and carve some sign

to show "goodbye,"
and "I wish I could save you,"
and "I know who did it."
I saw it all.

And maybe they'll see,
from their own windows.
They'll see and they'll know

she saw everything.

They'll go out in the morning,
to find the stumps marked
with a love heart and date
of the tree's demise,

and everything eerily silent
- no birds to sing.

And then, uneasy, they'll bring
themselves

to look up to the window

and meet her eyes.

chemistry set

There's no antidote to memories
No theory to explain how what once
we drew our strength from, now
is poison to us. Everything we base
in its remembered sweetness tastes
more bitter than acid ashes, and

we weep for it. We weep
for what was good, with the bad

even then, growing alongside.

If it was a case for going back in time,
knowing what we know now, which even now

we know means nothing - could we tease
the good and bad apart? With warnings

and encouragements, in every right direction
that presents itself? Even then, it's doubtful
the operation could restore us,
to where we wanted once to be.

It surely wasn't here,
now - lingering in thought,
asking questions, learning lessons
that are never any good to me.

city limits

When we robbed the city limits,
there was no one there to let us,
so we had to give ourselves up

The plan had gone awry.
But we took our chance to bolt
because we saw nobody looking,

And we haven't stopped escaping
ever since the city limits

We've been reaching for the sky

We've been reaching for the sky
We've been trying to get a way
back to where we hatched the plan -

but the city limits everything,
it comes in close around us.
Like no one's ever watching you,
even though they can

uncorrected proofs

I'm trying to learn not to say
the mistakes I make.
I know you will notice them,
I feel you'll understand,
and I've come to believe

I am forgiven. But
I can't help suspecting
they drive you nuts!

You know that I'm better
than this, I trust.

It was too, not to
And an, not and,
And, and I can't even

face the one
with the parentheses,
man. I mean damn. Please, no

just know
my humiliation at this
is beyond non-existent.
All I am is indignant,
all of it leveled against myself
at the inconvenience of these
imperfections, tiny,
malignant, eye-jabbing

scattered through. So few

Three, maybe. Two. For
what?

To ruin it. This

is the total effect.

And I have already paid
sharp penalties, pangs
of missed chance, of
should have with ease,

what could be and was almost
effortlessly achieved,
arguably too effortlessly,

and far too almost.

But I feel that I owe you
something else.

To make up for the strain
of my failure to impress,
which you no doubt by now

had looked forward to.

You can see as well as I
how close I came, and could have

done flawlessly all
that either of us

could have asked
or deserved of me

so true!

And instead of which, both of us
deserve an apology,

probably.

First to me,
(Which I give and accept with solemnity),

And then, with a pause for gravity,

to you.

white noise privilege

Somehow a noise we're making
is much less interesting
or irritating. It's like
we don't even notice it.
That squeak, squeak
from the chair is just part
of the motion of our leg!
We're in tune with it,
like the thrum of our blood
in our echoing skulls,
as we cheerily turn a page

and around us, everyone's heads
explode.

the rapture

When the bus stop stopped working
we all had to run to jump on
The bus driver tried to slow down for us
but we were gone

When they ran out of things at the thing store,
We ran everywhere we could to go buy more
but they were out, also

They tried to sell us different things.
They tried to sell us different things.
We didn't want them anyway
it wasn't what we came in for

God is Luck, God lucks us all
Like people licking puppy heads,
or people-licking puppy heads,
the verse translation is obscure

God's luck is mysterious, and
sometimes looks bad, but

When said and done is over with,
we stand here, shaking hands and sweating
in our clothes and bodies thick.
Wait to see what comes of it
Just wait to see what comes of it

They tried to sell us different things.
We didn't want them anyway
it wasn't what we came in for.
We think "Of that at least,

we're sure."

fashionably absent

I like arriving never to every occasion,
and having amazing times. Sometimes I wonder
about fun I missed - before I arrived, or
after I never did - but for the most part,
I know why I'm completely at peace
with the sacrifice. It's a realization,
and though I came late to it:

some never arrive at all.

I feel fortunate.

well research

If you live your life,
you'll learn enough about love to fill a book
about giving up on it.

And each time you quit,
you'll go back and revise
each chapter in stronger terms,

add appendices on for all the lies
you tell yourself, and how to spot them,

and everything else you've learned
but why.

When you've spent your way through
the advances you've earned, maybe

it's time to turn it in. Let it go
to print. Buy a copy for yourself,

and let it burn.

calm, cool

Calm, cool,
she collects herself
to decide what penalties are due.
It isn't as bad
as the time he thought
she'd had enough before she was through.
It wasn't as bad
as the time he felt she ought
to do something for her health.
But this time,
he said it out loud.
That opportunity's not
going to knock itself.

horrors of the past revisited

I wonder what it would be like
if we found ourselves in the past
married, because society
would demand it, thronging
our cottage with pitchforks
and torches, sending us off
to honeymoon in some bucolic
by-the-sea, where you'd find

yourself

mine,

constantly subject in any
given moment to your clothes
coming off and giving yourself
with abandon, sexually possessed
and possessing wildly, willingly

because you'd been conditioned to?
"These are our roles," you'd think
"How fit!" Like we had a choice,
we'd choose them again and again

giving into it horribly, like

some trashy historical romance
novel, read together in bed
for laughs, left behind

at a bed and breakfast
by some other couple,

not us.

our mutual confusion

I liken us
to algae and fungi.
Alone we can
survive, even thrive.
But together we
leap into spiraling forms,
reaching and climbing far beyond

what either could dream to grasp,
exploiting new niches,
becoming new life.

Together, we
are stuck fast.

mirror delay

childhood memories
of everything except
for myself

it's like the lens bends
with nothing at the center
and all the events

come towards you,

reaching
to remember

within your power.

Actually no, it's not

important to be understood. It's important

to be clear.

To mean what you know you mean,
and not

something else. This sits
solely

among your burdens, which
ride duly upon your shoulders,

as long as you don't shirk them.

And it is entirely
within your
power.

That
other people

understand you

is an accident,
a concern possibly,
and none of yours;

To be busier meaning
what you say

than striving fantastically within the other's
imperfectly-imagined brain, tweaking tone, twisting points,
spinning them 90 to 360 degrees to appreciate

difference of perspective, angles of rotation,
arc and yaw, and other aspects of "how

will they take it"

is your business. What you give
is your business. What they take

is accidental. Partial.
A creative and experimental collaboration

between inference and implication,
so leave yours out, why don't you?
Hanging out for all to see.

As clear as you could make it for the world,
without contortion and adjustment for each

little mark you're trying to con. Each
little oyster you're trying to imperil. Each
little bird you're trying to line up

for the stone.

No.
Be about
meaning what you say, and put it

unmistakably. Directly.
Unquestionably. If they fail

to understand, fine then.

Take questions and answer them.
One by one, once again,
following where they lead

- all the way home. Being understood

is not important. Just like being
fallen in love with

is not important. What's not within your power

cannot be important. Just give

what you mean. Give

what you feel.

Give others what they need,
if they want to.

If they see their way clear
and want to take it. Don't lead them, or sell them,
or spin them. Just find out what you mean,
where you're going with it,

and continue.

tactile sense

I remember you
touching me, from a dream
I always wake up from too soon.
I know you're here with me,
right here

in this new memory,
we're singing snatches of our song -

you haven't got the words, but
I haven't got the tune.

You've got it locked up
like a secret
one to never be repeated
and I feel you moving over me,

and I'm this close to begging you,

And we will be completed.
As you whisper
something I can't catch,

I'll say it back to you
And that
will be just ours,
for no one else. We'll fall asleep
for once, both knowing
this time

we will keep it.

"Is It Better?"

Is it better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all?

No.
It's better to have lived
several years past the loss, to the point
where you can answer that question honestly:
Yes. "Honestly," by then -

but that wasn't the question. The question was:
is it better?
Not: do we eventually
reconcile ourselves to as bad as the worst
was?

That yes
will creep in eventually, a lie
made out of time's unwinding, which
has bound all wounds and limbs, pulled
tight the tourniquet, and we call it
"healing" as the numb sets in.

Has it ever once been better
to have loved and lost?

No. It's only the whisper
of flying, lying time
that dulls the senses
in the intervening years, gets us
to forget as they fall by, lost to us
- or rather, to change our mind.
And so lose our sense,
and loose our nerves to try again,
and so, try again, and if at last
we won't succeed - the timing
will answer that question, then:

A fresh and open, honest wound,
or a tight shiny-knit lie
that smiles
where the thing that gets pulled out
keeps growing back.
The entire, sick, quasi-religious
pageant is monstrous,
and then you die.

Parted finally from all you have found,

And no. It never was
better to have loved
and lost. No,

not once.

But do you know
what's worse? Some love,
and do not lose.

Now, that hurts.

So it's worth the risk for someone, then.
Those who know it is better
to have loved

and won

than to sigh, pick yourself up
and decide

whether to try again.

things in place

I put them in a glass if you want them.
I put them in a glass for you, if you
want them and if you don't, for

anyone. That will be their place,
if you don't want them, that
is where they'll stay. So that

we always have some.

One day you may find
you want some, and you will go
where you know they are kept,

to find I've thrown them away.

I had to. They looked too sad
there

everyday.