if it were all chrysanthemums
and no sting,
all landscapes
and no crumbling,
all minerals
and no sediment,
all revolution
and no debris.

It would be great
if reality were not reality,
it would be great
if life were not life.
It would be great
if there was an idea machine
that could sift truth
from lie.

To press a button
and get an answer
and never ever
have to wonder.

But for now we bathe
in freckled light.
Zap, spark, corona, thunder
and then the aftermath,
the morning as indistinct
as wet clay.

Tears watered
the beginning
and in the beginning
there were brilliant colors,
and in the beginning
there was all events
prior, and in the beginning
something amassed much
bigger than great.

are the first among us
in early spring to notice
the flowers, taking notes
and comparing posture.

they look strangers in the eye
like no other, as though the least
amount of recognition
were the most familiar.

they sweep lonely men off their feet,
just one encounter and the lonely men
in turn go searching for the trail
they've left through this city,

in crowded alleys, in libraries, in the park
at dusk, in a statues rust, at a trafficless
intersection. everywhere there are traces
of their presence, like a dustbowl

in its aftermath, if only the dust
were silver and the violent winds
intruded on the stillness to hold
up shelter against the oceans
of desert.


i met the loneliest of them all,
the postulate that nature offered
was now her ex-lover and recovery
would be backtracking.

lonely women are the last to be pitied,
and lonely women were not always
lonely. you must have experienced
the kind of love that is unbridled
to experience that kind of lonely.



Lonely women will be lonely
until they die, so that by the time
lovers wake up together she will
have already offered herself to the soil

so that by the time they take their first
step out of the bed she will have
already become minerals.

All this time I had thought
it was rock versus air
and then came the day
we exchanged names,
because there was no other way
because all those others we adored
were no less than infinite
and you cannot trap sunlight
in your hands.
Our communion was instinct,
a song from the deepest cave
and our love is like the friction
of bowstring against violin,
there as long as green vines
continue to crawl up bricks.
There as long as the cynics
ignore the saws of radiant light
that cut through the fault lines
of their enemies skin.
Our love is the final resort
of metaphors, the place they go
to rest in peace, the farmers
overalls. You greet me
without a smile, at your front door,
paint chipped, hair that tells the story
of your difficult day and I remind myself
that means and ends
are both offspring and kin.

We met like they all do, second
glances, eyes wearing the best
kind of suspicion, an exchange
of names, insidious
and innocent.

Today I encountered the most holy
of holies, all cloaked in ordinariness,
sawdust, flowers, and paper clips,
and our love is like any other,
making us feel as though
that we are the last
to witness it .

as the seconds sparked
and the minutes glowed
brighter and brighter
until time finally burned
on the blue horizon.


facing each other

the blind-folded Now
and the dumb Hereafter.

I don't
know I don't know
I don't know I don't
know I don't
know.

"I have gotten from there to here"

Its a simple tautology, chant it

either/or an uncertain accomplishment.

From there to there to there until there became here.

This too is fairly obvious,
but still, it seems so strange,

how many times must you be reminded

that you are too ill-equipped 
to string the sequence.



And what about those weak suspicions

that reappear from time to time,
the ones you are
 quick to disregard
out of the fear that you may be a lunatic.



What if they were correct, what
if a moment were nothing more
than a brown package
of stimulus.

They came to you, one after the other
and you what could you do but follow
them, like crumbs in a trail that lead
you further away from home
and into this carnival.
Where people who sing lullabies out loud
carry pistols and globs of color
are merging in all
directions.

Wedged in between "there to here"
and "here to there", the laws of tenses
never made this much of a difference.



Babies know this all too well.

That's why they're the last 
ones
we turn to for wisdom. 

But should they ever decide

to permanently stop crying.   

You'll know what they mean by their silence.

I stood upside down on the watery
side of the sea line and looked at the
world I was standing on, the stars
blew out and re-appeared like the people
walking past the cafe bench. The guy
with the newsboy cap, made his
rounds around the city, a white-out inscription
on brick caught his attention:
“You anticipated
this time in another place.”

The daughter of the woman
behind the flower stand
draws chalked fish completed with
succeeding circles to indicate
bubbles, bubbles on the asphalt.
She was right: I had learned
to breathe underwater and as a litmus
test I turned my eyes to the single
tree on the island. It shivered
like seaweed. I went up to the stand
and purchased the ugliest peony,
the one with petals that were
chiseled like frozen waves.
I gave the lady
my last quarter and as I
turned around I saw the face of the guy
with the newsboy cap, only this time it was infinitely larger,
peeking over the horizon like the sun
when it first rises. And then, a hand coming up,
from under, fingers tapping from the other side,
taps reverberating through sky,
as though there was inside and outside
and this whole time I was
in an aquarium.