FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT

why do i search so hard
for meaning
when i'm somewhere
up in the air?

why do i feel
the most self-aware
when i am neither
here nor there?

why is it the spaces between
places with nothing
underneath me

that seem to inspire
poetic reverie?

WINTER AS A VERB (for Tom Hess)

he's only in love
with winter as a verb;
he finds snow "absurd."

to be wet and cold
and on top of that
old is "for the birds."

and when he reads this
he'll say, "that son of a gun
really got me."

SERIOUSLY (for Kevin Eves)

we yearn
to be

free of earthly
conventions like gravity
and humility

and yet
we submit

to aggravations
like punctuation

willingly.

BURNING

these days the blank page always
begs questions. for me these

revolve around existence
and meaning: why this?

and in light of that
now what is to be

done?

and answers never
seem to arrive

just as planets
keep safe distance
from the sun.

MATURITY

as the day of our life moves
past noon, and then the light
begins fading into

night -- the time for chasing
what we hoped might
sustain us gives way
to embracing

what remains.

DON'T BANK ON IT

you assume
it will happen

organically --
"discovery."

all those veins laid wide
open, blood poured and shaped
into lines, fixed to dry;

you donate poetry, why
don't you get a cookie?

PERSISTENCE

the trouble with life
after enlightenment is
it is all
that it is
and nothing
more.

IT HAS BEEN SAID

you want to start
with the most important

words, like love
and faith and hope,

words which have nothing
to do with this moment;

and you understand you
ought to let go:

the harder you squeeze
the sands of meaning

the more significance
escapes your hands.

ENLIGHTENMENT

and
for
what?

HELPLESS

i stay in
out of shame;
too many drinks
on the brain.

i'm too old
for this shit, trading
nights for days, wisdom
for dumbstruck malaise.

bargaining with god
over giving up
once and for all what is
too frequent and selfish,

i find myself left
with no one to tell this:

i'm afraid
i am helpless.

TO LIFE

we don't get older;
older gets us.

by the time
we are any good

at living, our days
have melted away.
we forget our lives are

like trick candles, always
blown out and reignited
and still the wax

wanes and sooner
or even later they won't

come back
to life again.

I MADE IT

i have written yet another
beautiful airplane poem;
pray god this flight gets me

home.

nothing more tragic than art
that never escapes
the artist's heart.

RESIGNATION

and you get to
thinking oh

people should be
brought to their knees
with all the dying
going on. and you

wait for the inevitable
gnashing of teeth
and crying out
to God, "why hath..."

and it's only later you
realize how many have
already lost everything or
what they perceived
as such. and you

settle down to suffering
alongside everyone else.

NEVER CRY

people say it's okay
to cry; says who?
those that never do.

people say go ahead,
let your guard down and
then they stare; they're the ones
who wouldn't
dare.

people say forgiveness
is divine, but if you want
the truth:

it's better to lie
and hide and
never cry.

INSTINCT

what is there

to write about other than life
and death and why

we’re here?

what is there

to live for other than chasing
our tales and trying

to endure?

and we wonder
after towers fall, how
can we ever return
to poetry? how will we

be compelled to invent
in the face of certain death?

easy: what else is left?

STEALTHY

you're using google
to ogle your past, making

search strings out of old
friends' names and the cities you

have projected
them into.

meanwhile they're doing the
same to you.

GO AHEAD

people vie with various claims
to relevance and demands
on your time. they lie

through their beliefs, trying
to get you to surrender
something meaningless
in exchange for same. you

know better, and yet
how boring life is
when we're too wise to

make mistakes.

BY ACCIDENT

he grew
tired of being

everything. he wept
after reading criticism.

he was divided
alive between
the things he'd seen

and what
his heart heard,
all of which went
forth in verse only
by accident.


(photo swiped from here.)

IS AND YET

in the moments
you forget

yourself, id invisible
you dissolve, go

stealth, you almost feel
like someone else.

trouble comes when you want
something other than what

is; and yet
the stress

you wear like a weight vest
lets you know you

exist.

(image lifted from Flikr.)

MY MUSE

my muse she doesn't dress
too nice

she seldom gives me any
advice

and if I could I'd trade her for
an extrovert dressed like a whore.

RUBBLE (for Steven Bauer)

oh dear
sweet dis-
array, do not visit
this house today.


uninvited chaos
team, things here
are never
as they seem.

unintended
consequence, go
you back from
came you whence.

oh happenstance,
you two-
edged sword, must punish-
ment precede

reward?

POET SPOTLIGHT: KENNETH KOCH

To be rid of troubles
Of one person by turning into
Someone else, moving and jolting
As if nothing mattered but today
In fact nothing
But this precise moment...

- From "To Kidding Around"

A POST-IT ON THE DOOR OF THE CHURCH OF POETRY

what makes me feel
so horrible
is when i read your poetry

and i can't find the meaning
past the imagery.

call me simple-
minded but i have never met
a soybean that could sweat

or breathe
or a god-

damn piece of farm-
land that could hold
secrets in her soil

or leaves.

and another thing:
nobody uses the word
'tendrils'
anymore, not to mention Greek
myths or long-lined confessions
lacking calculation.

an admonition:

we are dying, pal,
and it has absolutely nothing
to do with anything

you're writing.

TUNDRA

she was sated
by promises and poems
written from a high-above,
in-between place --

may as well have been
outer space.

she was kept
even-keel by emails
brow-beaten
out of him. oh!

it's so
cold
down
below.
a white place

bereft of purity
where nobody

ever wants to
go.

WORKSHOP

write now.
oh right.

write how?
and for whom?

and by the way:
start soon.

POET SPOTLIGHT: STEVIE SMITH

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

THE WISE MAN

find strength, i was told,
in compassion; be bold

and alive, defer seeking
approval, he said:

be loved after
you're dead.

JEALOUS

wipe away that
smirk of drink
or privilege
or both --

from your mouth and your walk
and the way you are and you talk.

QUOTABLE

"There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be an answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer."

- Gertrude Stein

POET SPOTLIGHT: KATHRYN STARBUCK

A GIFT

Who is that creature
and who does he want?
Me, I trust. I do not
attempt to call out his
name for fear he will
tread on me. What do
you believe, he asks.

That we all want to be
alone, I reply, except when
we do not; that the world
was open to my sorrow
and ate most of it; that
today is a gift and I am
ready to receive you.

Source: Poetry (March 2009)

QUOTABLE

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float."

- Alan Watts

PRACTICING AS IF

people say what
do you think you are
doing? as if

anyone can take you
serious, what
with the short lines
and absence

of imagery.

but i am
practicing as if
my life depends on it.

QUOTABLE

"Obscure or 'difficult' poems are often neither. They are merely arbitrary. Quite often arbitrariness emitting from a quite brilliant mind, but arbitrary all the same. There’s plenty of room for strangeness, mystery, originality, wildness, etc. in poems that also invite the reader into the human and alive center about which the poem circles."

- Thomas Lux, as quoted in CERISE PRESS by Sally Molini

UNEASY FLYER

next to you
is a pilot who
today is only a passenger

but nevertheless wise
to uneasy flyers
and he tells you: think

of air like water.
they have the same properties.
imagine you are

on a boat, bouncing across
the waves. you are
not afraid of the motion.

do you worry, he muses,
you'll drop to the bottom
of an ocean?

("actually one time
when i was nine.")

well you're not
going to drop
to the bottom of the sky,
at least not today.
which is awful

nice of him to say. you
don't tell him you know
two people gone
down in crashes and so
his analogy makes you think

more of drowning
than bouncing,
more of clinging
than letting go.

POET SPOTLIGHT: E.E. CUMMINGS

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

POET SPOTLIGHT: JOHN WIENERS

Pain and suffering. Give me the strength
to bear it, to enter those places where the
great animals are caged. And we can live
at peace by their side. A bride to the burden

that no god imposes but knows we have the means
to sustain its force unto the end of our days.
For that is what we are made for; for that
we are created. Until the dark hours are done.

And we rise again in the dawn.
Infinite particles of the divine sun, now
worshiped in the pitches of the night.

- From "The Acts of Youth"

QUOTABLE

"The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it."

- Robert Creeley

QUOTABLE

"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."

- Thomas Merton

NARCISSUS

i am writing this
as if
i'll be dead,
he said.

you won't die,
she lied,
you are more than
just a man.

ALIKE

funny how when
pain is

at its worst,
sometimes it is

easier than ever to see
spirit, to stand in

truth, to want
what's best

for enemies
and loved ones...

JOY RIDE

you must be crazy to think
you could spend all day alone
with wine and poetry.

and why not?
you've got
the driver, the gas, and the car.

the question is not
a matter of subject

or whether --
but rather:

where to
and how far?

CAUTIONARY

you wait
so long
as if

your life runs
on forever.

in time it grows
clear you are
over this or that
hill.

and maybe
the work becomes less

a stop-

gap to your future
and more
your final resting

place.

BY DESIGN

you think you can
transcend human

nature?
maybe

you have your words
mixed up.

human
nature

is
not

clever.

it's our dim machines
with god's
hands on
the levers.

transcend?
to what

end?

never.

I WONDER

do you drink only
on the weekends
when your body
is at loose ends
and your soul
no longer fits your head?

and do you dream
of flying clear
of your disease and all the people
who well-wish you without
anything true ever being said...?

YOU'RE IT

experts say poetry is
either 'x' or 'y'
while i maintain it
is neither
'z' nor even 'pi.'

poetry is about telling
the truth through
words arranged
however you see
fit.

there is nothing to

it.

EXCUSE ME

i know my shadow is behind
all these dark conversations
taking place in my mind.

like: how

could she wear that,
the fat cow, or

he is not really that
sick, the lazy
prick. i am not

nearly so mean as
my shadow makes me
seem; the key is in

not believing

the discussion belongs to me.

STASIS

always swearing i will
change and then another
night's merry-

go-round
of more
of the same.

never caring but still
masquerading, as if
promising new steps will

lead to feet someday
marching in place.

MEMOIR

when in our minds we
step back from what seems to be
going on

sometimes we think we see
patterns in our history.

we have the illusion
that, "hey,"
if we could somehow

interject

our will here or there
maybe we could author the future
rather than simply living
like passengers encased
in some unfolding
memoir.

but this thinking
like all life is
folly; we are never
stepping back
just as there is never past
or future, only...

present and presence.
we are always
here and nowhere.

and the truth is
we are not

writing our lives, nor will we
ever be given the idle opportunity
to read it from a repose;

we are more
like the typing, we are

symbols of letters
reconstructed into symbols
as words, struck to paper --

the embossed, upraised
outlines soaked in black
ink, propelled to the page

by one unseen
hand or the other, the dull flesh and
blood-filled appendages of some
illusion that imagines itself
whole, but is more like --

hole.

STRATEGY

you want it all and this
makes no sense
but try it

now: pretend

you want
nothing.

you're on to something.

THE RIGHT AMOUNT

there is in the right amount
of beer or other godly byproduct
a kind of quietude
that meditates you.

so that when
walking home from some
BYOB you
stop thinking so perfectly
it is as if
you finally thought

something just right
for the first time ever.

an entirely empty brand
of slack-brained clever.