Sometimes it’s best to disagree and rue the poison
that’s so divine; not all vanity is vanity. Otherwise,
the poet and poem and words and feelings are all
so vain in being figurative; they cannot help in any
of the ways we hope to heal the flesh.

Great vanity of arrogance, perhaps, but not vanity
in a sense of completeness—the sculptors of
epitaphs and romance are words. All words are
words and all poems are ego but not all writing
feeds rage, only art touches us.

My mouth cracked
and bent emptied;
Pulled taut, my dam
against the light.

I still don’t know why,
but down the stairs
I went, with thirst
as my excuse
(although, I suppose
I was thirsty)

I left almost everything
upstairs in bed:
My arms and legs
wrapped warm under
misty sheets,
my teeth and torso
unclenching in sleep.

All I needed to see
was an eye and shivers—

An eye to see
Grandma sleep,

An eye to see
her husband’s paintings guard the room;

Shivers at those paintings
and knowing her from then on.

Ah, the sobering cold—
The ice breath of passers by:
a smoke, a calm.

Welcome back! I hear it,
calling and ringing
as if it’s from another;
But I know I greet
my return to self.

How it stings to be digested
by a creature of many needs,
to be a cell, once again:
bustling, scurrying.

What a plunge to relinquish
to the organism.

How infuriating, knowing
of the infinite supply of “hope”
and how it is and will continue
to be so—defying the abyss of
our debt.

Smug! That’s the word, not
what Emily Dickenson wrote
in sympathy: hope
is a thing with feathers,
is a bird’s song, Extremity.
Somehow made heroic
by abstinence from reward.

“Hope” does not hold it’s hat
out to us for crumbs and drinks;
we have already buried hope in
bread and drowned it in wine—
for with each hope that hoists us from
the depths, another lets our grip slip
off its palm greased with
false promises.

Let yourself stare and wonder
Move my hand to shame
Open both eyes wide to blunder
Rain and ice to smoke my flame
And when I try to slip away
Don’t leave me in my youth
Just try to trust the strong don’t stray
So freeze me in the truth
But somehow you’ll find me sated
Sheepish itches all been scratched
You’ll wonder how I fed a fire
When forbidden from a match
Before you brand all my fingers with a ****
Check your palms, they’re black with ash

What is it that impels us to know
in so many words,
that we are no different.
Not conspiracy theories,
and certainly scared of the
pulsing and inevitable
common experience.

It awaits us, I suppose,
in every crevice and
all but anything we shirk
in disgust and anguish—
Because it is only struggle
braved alone that brings
a new day of knowing
that everything is part of
something solitary and stoic.

Fortunately, our giggles
never fail to fill the gaps,
pulling each other closer and
closer and there are no more reflections,
only impossibly identical blurs.

When conversations lull,
or I’m left alone with myself,
(or unexplained shivers
puppet my shoulders)
I think of writing the perfect poem.

I have so many wonderful ideas
that have all been thought
but were too messy—
and they would all be rethought
until they were polished;
until they were spotless;
until they were blacksmithed
and welded and tallied and measured and remeasured and immaculate.
Then I would have written
a flawless poem.

But then again,
if someone (even me) wrote
the perfect poem,
it would be written.
And that would be that.