The rain ends.
All is lush,
and glistening,
and verdant
and a
beautiful
young girl
yawns from
boredom.

The boy in a new
shirt, when asked
his age lurches
forward, all five
fingers splayed
in front of him.

The drunken clown
breaks his leg as he’s
singing and dancing,

and the bird in the
room sputters, boxed
in, disoriented, as the

brother outside has
his trained ear to the
ground, listening for

their disturbed mother’s
angry mob, coming to
reclaim her lost home.

White paper folded in
the shape of a house,
next to an egg
in the sunlight,
casting a long shadow,
on a pastel green
plastic table top.

She reads the
letter there, by
moonlight, under
the pear tree;
the fruit so ripe
it may fall
at any time.

My father was
a salesman, all
of his adult

life. But I don’t
know much about
him, really.

Old and ill, he
fell into a coma
for many days.

Then, suddenly
his mouth opened,
round and wide,

like this world.
And without a
word, he died.

He can’t help
himself. He

knows his
thoughts are

distorted, but
like a criminal,

he’s compelled
to return to

the scene
of the crime.

The riddle of
everyday life.


A balloon rises
as a paper airplane
descends, and below,

a yardstick,
one end broken
off, while a ripening

pear sits on a
nearby chair, as
the drama unfolds.

Six objects in
search of a poem:

an overheated planet,
an obsolete

pencil, a burned-
out light bulb, an

overwhelmed young
woman, an unripe

avocado, and a
selfless form of love.

I am standing with
five rolled-up pages
of poetry in my

hand, ready to lunge
forward and smash it
into oblivion, when

she says, Don’t ****
that fly. Can’t you
see it’s praying?

A newborn
in the shape of
an old man,
an old man
in the shape of
an electro-
magnetic coil,
an electro-
magnetic coil
in the shape of
an empty kayak,
an empty kayak,
in the shape of
a newborn.

How to navigate
civilization

in four steps:
Find a chair and

sit quietly.
Then, dismantle

the chair and use
the pieces to

build a ladder, for
a panoramic view.

Return to solid
ground, and

remake the chair.
Sit quietly.

The boy on a bicycle
speeds by in a blur, as
a paper airplane drifts
over the dog, curled up,
falling asleep, and
the egg sitting
on the counter
waits patiently
to be cracked open,
like the sun suddenly
rising in the morning.

There was a
snowball fight.
A ****** nose.
A forgotten glove.
The evidence now
under a blanket
of white. Only
partial footprints
remain. Soon they
too will be gone.

Alone this winter,
an elderly man,  
with an eyebrow
raised at half-mast.

I am in

the present I was in

the past I

have seen the future and

we’re in it

Children imitating
flowers in the
school play. A
father in the
front row falls
asleep,
missing their
great allegory.

Nine words
scrambled
in the wind.


are

habitable

They

democracy

a

planet.

and

of

ending

From her window the
pale, willowy young
woman, a midwife,
watches a paper cup
being tossed around in
the wind. The dark ocean,
the great progenitor
in the background,
illuminated by waning
moonlight. She waits
for his headlights
to appear, her fiancé,
a fleshy, ruddy man,
the town’s undertaker,
who brings freshly cut
carnations, and a
long, warm embrace.

All day she tends the garden behind

the house. Every morning she lines up

clear jars on the kitchen counter,

like rows of pacifist soldiers. In the

evening they are filled with fresh

yogurt. Some evenings we sit by the

fire and she reads Haiku poetry aloud.

Nothing expository there, she says,

then winks and laughs like a church bell.

One night as I was passing by the

drive-in movie theater, I saw her

up on the screen, playing a spy

disguised as a goat. Last night she

sat in the meadow, in the moon light,

wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk.

In the morning I asked if she was

rehearsing for another movie role.

Oh no, sir, she replied, I can assure

you I am entirely the real thing.

Then she crowed, exactly like

a rooster at morning’s first light.

On the large, flat screen,
the news anchor, with her
perfectly formed, ripe
red lips, describes another
unsavory political scandal,
as the leaf blower loudly
propels autumn’s colorful

debris from the driveway,
while the iron heats up,
poised to press the
wrinkles out of the
white shirt, with its
faint brown stain  
of forgotten origin.

What I saw at the
moment of my death:

a mouse trap,

a card trick,

a woman riding her
bicycle in the park,

a businessman

who lies for a living,

an empty kayak
navigating the river.

The wind-up chimp
in the swimming pool,
dressed like a sailor,
steering the vessel
shaped like a man’s body,

when a noun dressed as
an exclamation point
falls off its stilts, landing
on the chimp and they
tumble into the water.

The noun floats but the
chimp sinks to the bottom
and as he winds-down,
prays to The Savior
Marionette and in his

mind she dances, in
her tutu, toes barley
touching the surface of
the water, expressionless,
the strings barely visible.

He is on the porch,
to escape his wife

and kids. He smokes
a guilty cigarette.

It is yet another
New Year’s Eve.

The opportunistic
nouns are using
the lying adjectives

as they all cling
to the period, which
is catastrophically

overheated, as it
spins round and
round, and the  

verbs are moving
to the endless
margins where they

can just be, then
all is black ink,
the text redacted.

I’m a fashion model turned actress and in my new

movie I play a cave-woman, a Neanderthal, whose clan

is massacred by a bunch of ****-sapiens. It’s a tragic love

story—my character was in love with a handsome ****-

sapien who ends up being one of the killers. It’s a

group dynamic thing. In real life, my boyfriend is a

stock-broker. I swear that guy can predict the future—

in terms of business. He makes a killing in the

market all the time. And he looks like a male model—

I’m not kidding! Anyway I hope you’ll go and see

my movie. The working title is Neanderthal, A Love Story

but we’ll see what happens with that down the road.

The past is a room
with a peculiar door.
I am inside, then
open the door and
exit only to be
back inside again.

Thank you.

Our plight.
Instinct
lost, life
drifting, like a
paper airplane
swept away
on a breeze.

Insight, clear
and precise,
like mathematics
in the hands
of a poet.

Awareness descended
on me as it ruthlessly

cut off my head
and split me open

exposing everything,

then left me dead in
its open field, where

I’m now fertilizer
for everything green or

golden or blooming, and
ready for whatever

new thing nature will
make of what was me.

The morning snow falling
silently. The children

are absorbed in their play.
The house is murmuring

and sighing. The dad with
the noisy mind lives in

his own world.

Nearly drowned, the
fisherman runs from
the raging sea as it
swallows his boat, then
looks back to marvel at  
its stunning power.

The dog is chasing
the cat around the
barnyard, while the
widowed farmer
is planting the corn,
while his daughter is
reading a fashion  
magazine, dreaming
of the runway, while
her little sister
selects a green crayon
to use in her Let’s
All Save The Planet
coloring book, while
the dog continues
to chase the cat
around the barnyard.

Five things
that I know
about her:

the uncharted
bottom of
the ocean,

an algebraic
equation
in the guise
of a woman,

a woman in
the guise of a
summer rain storm,

a poem
written with
disappearing ink,

she flows around
immovable
objects and
back to the sea.

Having toiled in the
garden, the young
woman sits in the
shade of an ancient
tree and sings a song
—as if serenading the
tulips and tomatoes.

Under the harvest
moon, the farmer
mourns his dead
wife. In his black
suit, sitting on
the white rock,
he looks like
a question mark.

In the end, it can all
be explained, and none
of it can be explained.

Tomorrow will exist,
of course, but by
then it will be today.

Language becomes
a long gurgle and
a quick sputter, and

as expected, by those
still paying attention,
it is irrevocably broken.

Dry dirt as far as the eye can see,
an empty landscape, then I turn
and see her, and she says,
How did we get here? and I say,

I think I’m asleep and dreaming,
and she says she thought that too,
then a fierce wind, and all is
brownish-gray air-borne dust,

then the monkey yells, Cut!
and he tells David Crocket,
the camera-man, that they
have truly captured reality

with great verisimilitude,
and the next thing I know is
I’m here, face down in the water
and washing ashore on a very

small island, a big sand-bar, really,
and she is naked, in a fetal position
and the monkey is kneeling over
Crocket’s corpse like an alter-boy,

weeping, and she yells, Shut-up,
you ***** little ape! and the monkey
howls and bites her on the leg, and
she crawls to one end of the sand bar

and I to the other end, and all is water,
as far as the eye can see, and the
monkey, a television actor, then a
director of acclaimed historical dramas,

is lamenting that Crocket was, The
Da Vinci of the modern age, and I’m
thinking, Da Vinci? Yeah. The guy
who never finished anything, and I ask,

How did we get here? and she says
she must be asleep and dreaming,
and I’m thinking, Yes, that must be
all there is to it. We’re dreaming.

I am the dead man,
lying face down on

the living room floor,
blood running from

my ear, a used
ticket to the

opera in my pocket,
a recently retired

insurance adjuster,
never married, and

on the blaring
television

the blundering, but
lovable sit-com

character, does a
slapstick prat-fall, and

on the floor the dead
man’s broken drinking  

glass that was
half full or half

empty, which amounts
to the same thing.

X is dragging the body of the
dead history professor, a man of
enormous girth and monstrous
height, through the empty

landscape, then the vast ocean
appears and X drops the body
into the water, where a shark
whose ancestry is four hundred

million years old, eats it, as X
recalls the professor’s sleepy
eyes, artificial smile, and
remarkably unreliable memory.

The centipede inches
along on the ceiling
as she watches
contemplating its future,

and he sits on the chair
and opens the half-
finished historical novel
which is illuminated by

the artificial overhead
light, while their young
child parts the curtains
and kneels at the window

to gaze upon the night
sky and the brilliant full
moon which appears
to have a human face.

I won’t bore you with the
whole story, I’ll go right
to the end, when it’s
the day of the wedding
between the gangster and
his bride, the lawyer, and
the priest at the church
is eating his lunch, a
strip-steak with creamed
spinach, as the bag-man
delivers the airline tickets
for their honeymoon in
Borneo, and the gangster
is tossing the gun
into the river, as his
bride is passed-out on

the floor of the church,
under the circular apse,
having been struck on
the head with a sacramental
chalice, and the priest, who
is really a spy, is dead,
apparently poisoned
by God knows who, and
the gangster is on his way
to Borneo, alone, as the
concussed lawyer-bride is
half-awake and can’t remember
where she is, how she
got there, or why she is
wearing a very ******
creamy-white wedding dress.

The sun illuminating
one side of her face. An

argument with her sister
rattling around in her

head like a baby’s toy.
On the counter, a plastic

bottle whose contour is
like an exaggerated

shape of a woman.
A glass of cool water

in her hot, angry hand.
She stands before the

paper-white wall, her
shadow slowly forming.

A dead chicken
on the sidewalk,
embers—little bits
of  burning paper

drifting in the
air, a man asleep
in a king-size
bed in an empty

warehouse, a “she
done me wrong”
song with a slow
cha-cha rhythm

playing somewhere
distant, and no one
there to talk to, and
no where to go, and
no way to get there.

I was the shadow
puppet, a barking
dog. Then became

the vigilant cat, that
apprehended the
ruse. Now I am

the rarely seen
mouse, too swift
even for the cat.

This poem may  
be lovely or
clever, but it is
analogy, made
of appearances,
insubstantial, like
a finely attired,
beautiful corpse.

In the butcher shop
Bob sees Salvador
Dali, who is carving
a life size figure of
a woman from a side
of beef. When finished
Dali whispers in
her ear the question,
“How do I obtain
a clear mind?” Bob and
Dali wait for an
answer. She is silent.
Bob eventually
gives up, but whenever
he visits the butcher
shop he sees Dali,
sitting, his limpid eyes
wide open, waiting
for the answer
from the woman
of his vivid dreams.

A countryside
dirt-road, a black
crow in the blue
sky, a scarecrow
dressed as Jesus,
and trash swirling
in the late
November wind.

Adam, having just popped
out of the ground like a

time-elapsed plant, is
enchanted, almost

mesmerized by the snake.
Eve descends to earth

via parachute from god
knows what height, and

points out that the snake
is clever, creative and,

by-the-way, poisonous.
The snake shapes itself

into, the not yet invented,
letters of the alphabet.

“It is speaking to me. It is
creating a visual

language,” proclaims Adam.
“First you must charm it,

and then use it carefully,”
implores Eve.

But it is already too late.
The snake bites Adam and

he dies. Eve, ever prescient,
looks up to the sky and says,

“I know. This is what we
have to look forward to.”