All I Can Suspect

 

They rise like mushrooms in the rain –

or polyps pre: a colonoscopy –
involuntarily: these species of incursion

in the brain. Their net effects may vex

or numb or entertain. I’d like to say I know
more than I do about them – find a moral

in their perilous unheralded appearances –

but their adherences defeat me.
All I can suspect is, they complete me.











.

Most Ghosts

 

Most ghosts don’t much get along
with other ghosts:

tethered, when together,
to their fraught irresolutions,

all their solo solipsisms
cannot breathe to misconstrue.

Banshees like to wail alone
to seethe and rue.

But last night they came through
my dreams en masse –

as redolent and rude
as passing gas.











.

More of You

 

Clay is stardust

mixed with water
which amounts
to stardust, too –
into and around
and out of which

constituents are

soon supplied
with what they
need to make up
more of you.
You look around

and blink at what

you think is utterly
unfathomably
other, but really
it’s your mother
and your brother.

Face it, darlings,

it is done: we’re
inextinguishably
one, if intramural:
singularly
plural.








.

Oddly Calm

 

for Mike Rubio

Someone wants to know!

Suddenly there’s flow!
Stop can turn to go!

Allowed to take a ride,

the crowds inside decide
they do not have to hide.

They come out

oddly calm
and preternaturally
gratified.








.

Not All Poems Rhyme

 

Am I doing enough?

Do I have
sufficient
ambition?

Oh, wait a minute.

The Universe
is infinite.
Never mind.












.

Body Contact

Bundled and encumbered
in a plundering
preponderantly bodily
conglomerate response –

shaped by space-time’s

pull and gravity –
like an embracing
brace of seals – without

much suavity – an awkward

and unwieldy pile –
though not without its wily
mild to wild charm:

today you wouldn’t mind

becoming involutedly
enwrapped in everybody
else’s leg and elbow,

butt and chest and lap

and crotch and fingers,
neck and head and foot
and lip and arm.







.

If There is Enlightenment

 

If there is

enlightenment,

we think it

criminally blasts

from blue

to yellow

by barging

indiscriminately

through

some sad,

beleaguered

fellow.











.

Reasons God Wants to Unfriend You

 

Your ineffable

stupidity.
Your passive-aggressive
flaccidity.

Your utter abnegation

of the mind.
Forgive us if we aren’t
being kind.











.

La Condition Humaine

 

There is no time.

Past’s as much
the present
as the future is

and memory is neurological –

a seasoning of something
in the flesh.
Everything is biological.

But what about the lover part?

What about the space
a lover doesn’t take
inside your heart?

What’s inside your heart?

Muscle blood and artery
so metaphorically inert
they cannot hurt –

but something hurts –

at any rate abashes –
today, in fact, amasses
burning form. Today

the lover that you never had
came by to sit with you –
petition you to make him
warm with impropriety –

to counsel you to let

your yearning languish.
La condition humaine
is not anxiety, it’s anguish.






.

Why I Live in the City

 

It’s raining in the city –
a development in point of view.
Points of view
never seem to come from you.

Have you ever had one?

The city is a crowd
and getting wet.
As usual you’ll have to let

it be. Where in anything

is what you might call “me”?
You get
the royal we –

except for why it’s limited
to royalty.
The city is a crowd, and wet.
Perhaps that’s “me.”











.

The Ruby Realm of Things

 

You know the ruby realm of things

where rich suspicions bloom
into expectancies which soon collectively
assume an assonance that sings? –

the place in dreams providing for the sweet

embrace of singularity which brings
a nihilistic whiff of the complex,
which generally has to do with sex
but quickly forms a union with the vexing
depths of parsing the perplexities
of what, next, you should do? –

which then, enslaved to some unmediated

mission of the brain, attains divided form,
intentions split in twain, expostulating
to themselves absorbedly? –

that space in which one part explains it

to a counterpart who doesn’t have a clue?

Of course you do.

.

Going Solo

 

You used to think that purity

meant going solo – extricating
everything that mattered

in you from the folderol

of others’ hazy expectations –
lovers’ lazy predications –

but it still sticks like crazy glue.

You think it isn’t part of you.
That might not be true.











.

Sometimes, Soft, Aloft

 

Sometimes, soft, aloft,

art rises past surmise –
emerges at no cost –

burgeons and surprises

into something human
you can use – excuses

your confusion – exacts

a vision from delusion –
induces choice – allows

a voice to speak – seeks

a pact: produces a
decision to make contact.












.

If I Have A Soul

 

If I have a soul

I think it wears a baby as a hat.
If it has a goal
I think it’s got somewhat to do with that.














.

On Remembering It’s Valentine’s Day

 

It registers as shy –

this inward state of yours –
a sort of loneliness – soft cry,
perhaps, from somewhere
in you you’ve not understood:

or understand too well.

Though here I swell
with psychoanalytic narrative
again – imagining I know.
That can’t be good. Today

I wish you were my pet.

I’d cuddle and caress you –
let you sleep right in my bed.
Unless you wanted
something else instead.










.

Mid-February, or Human Life

 

Mid-February mirrors

human life the best
of any time of year.
It hands itself the same

queer, sometimes gelid,

sometimes melting,
ambiguities – the tepid
grays, the chilling whites –

which constitute

the basis of what
each of us perceives
is going on. What is

going on? Three

witches bumble through
with explanations;
one of them is terrified

they might be true.

Here we have the Human
Mind – and February –
tripping off in trinities

towards the Spring with ties

that bind them back
to Winter. Which rhymes
with splinter which is what

we’re doing every instant

we’re alive and skirting
hell. Mid-February does
this too, and well.







.

Eve and Adam Redux

 

The Serpent is benign.

Its rising, sinking surfaces
may wind and slink and twine --
but it pursues its purposes
purblind to yours and mine.

The Eden thing's a fake.

Don't kneel to it: rue it.
Give the snake a break.
We're the ones who do it.









.

Attempted Reassurance

Irresistible, the lure of Chinese takeout –

when you know how roast pork egg foo yung,
steamed broccoli, and wontons in a “special
sauce” can make four days of meals ahead
a real delight – the wontons, first, tonight;

one slice of egg foo yung with broccoli

tomorrow; and another similarly garnished
piece the next day; final slab, floret-adorned,
the last – wherein you know you will have
grappled happily with one of your past vexing

exigencies of self-care – because you know
that you can have delivered just exactly
what you like: in minutes, zap! – it’s there.
So, you see, there’s something you can do.
There are ways to deal with other hungers, too.










.

Too Much

 

Too much

came at me today.

I had to shoo it

all away.














.

In Extremis

 

 

They say that when you freeze to death

you feel a warmth and calm before you die.
Appealing thought – redemption in extremis –
but let’s not try. We might catch them in a lie.














.

That February Ambled By

 

That February ambled by

and caught your eye
and nodded “hey” made
all the difference today.

Such unexpected scrutiny! –

affection, almost! –
interest in what sort
of thing you were!

You’d been wondering

with whom or what
you could be intimate.
February might be it.









.

Personified, Your Lovely Traits

 

Personified, your lovely traits

would make a subtle crew:
a quilted human mass –
soft ambiguity – a slew

and suite of assonance –

a murmuring phantasm –
all conducing to a tremor –
mild sussurating spasm –

of a whispering intention

which would manifest at last,
because it had to, as a thing
that moved and spoke: amassed

into the strange illusion

you’ve persisted in evincing
that you’re singularly you.
We might still need convincing.







.

Quantities of Things

 

He wonders what he brings

to getting old.
Quantities of things
now leave him cold.














.

Sitting In It

 

They’re sitting in it.

Tightly fitting in it.

They say: no room to spare.

But you’re already there.

Dreams make up your furniture.

Is this the cure? You’re unsure.









.

The Last Time You Were Sitting There

 

We thought we’d give a little less
attention to the news today and air
some less remarked-on views:

reporting on the un-decoded way,

for instance, everything construes
itself from nothing. You know –

the last time you were sitting there,

besieged with care, distracted by
the blaring self-attack to which

you privately subject yourself,

so that the middle distance you
could be accused of looking into

might as well have sheltered several
rings of Dante’s hell? – when suddenly
you felt an overwhelming urge

to nap? And you awoke to something

nestling in your lap? And it was
not your cat? Account for that.








.

Smoking Existentially

Remember

smoking

existentially? –

exhausted

on a summer

day – willing

to be dumped

into whatever

Fate had

had in store?

Have you found

a better way? –

progressed –

attained some

higher state –

won your vast

internal war?

Well, you

aren't

smoking

any more.

.

My Friends and I, My Friends and Me

Here we are again,

my friends and I,

my friends and me,

the three of them

a constancy

within, without

my consciousness.

Sometimes they’re

more or less

the recognizable

and analyzable

examples of their

species that you see;

at other times,

they’re not. It doesn’t

seem to matter what

they’ve got

or haven’t got for me

or what I’ve got

and haven’t got

for them. We promise

this or that, or don’t.

I could go on,

but won’t.

.