When We Catch Him

Today Death dyed his leaden beard

and deadened tresses molten yellow –

hoping to embolden his pale indigo

complexion into seeming closer to alive.

From time to time Death strives to be

the sort of fellow breathing beings might

not, at the barest thought of him, abhor.

But when we catch him trying to pretend

he isn’t Death we just abhor him more.






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Strictly Speaking

Everything’s impossible –

that’s the end of that.

Every proof’s a spoof

of proof. We think we're

sure we know how two

limbs link, bear weight,

perambulate. But their

availing joints defeat

arriving at an even

slightly satisfactory

explanatory point. Go

beyond your monkey brain

to ponder why a limb exists

at all – or how on Earth

or elsewhere it acquired

its kinetic call. Easy

to predict an end within

parameters you've set:

clever, tight and formal.

But ask a gluon, quark

or graviton what’s

normal. Might make

one thing clear. You are
not inarguably here.

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Incarnate Life

Incarnate life subsumes us in the dangerous –

the body feels, reacts, discerns – soon learns

that nothing doesn’t have a consequence

which isn’t deeply steeped in sorrow. We borrow

what we can from promises of hope, yet always

have again to cope with matter – not the fleeting

spatter of the spirit – of the soul we’re told

is what created us, and made us whole.

It’s hard for flesh to keep this notion fresh.







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Today’s Maxim

Despair sets an agenda –

so do rage and hope:

palliations meant to ease us into

thinking we’ve alternatives

to groping blind.

Let’s change this cast of mind.

Instead of cleaving to

a sunny outcome, moping into

the morose, or getting furious,

let’s be curious.








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Body Language

Your muscles, limbs and torso think, and speak –

mercilessly delicate and unapologetic,

they regale, declare – gesturally fostering

opinions past the brink of the acceptable: too

possible to be believed; articulations far beyond

the tolerably bright: they weaken me – deceive:

I cannot fight their lexicons and libraries –

conjunctions: glinting, slick – soft juncture of the lips –

tight linen skin – swift prepositions: flicking wrist,

translucent blink – the diction of a pinkness like

a mist when fingers snap me out of stasis, script

the air – the gilding care with which they lavish

purely fleshly points: the tender awkward syntax

of the shoulders – jointed to arcane vocabularies

in the slender spine – in shy subordination

to the sweet inclining theme of you, the wash

of wafting clauses in the dream of you: completely

there – beyond all reach. You ruin speech.





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Next Time, Honeys

Today they wobbled bare-assed out upon a rope

in hopes I might permit them all to cope

in their collective bumbling way

to get through their perplexing day

and into lurid night.

The scruffily egregious sight

of them was sometimes more than I could stand:

I very nearly used the thick eraser by my hand

to whisk their naked raggedness into oblivion.

But so intent were they on living on

according to their wanton plan,

I thought, oh well, I’d try to be the sort of man

who this time might decide to let them.
But next time, honeys, I will get them.

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Inside Info

Every day’s a gift.

A bundle with a shift –

or shifty eye –

sometimes a peanut butter pie –

sometimes a little guy

as fat as you are curious

why he is not more furious

at his obesity –

the least that he

might do

is tell you who

or what

or when

or where.

But that’s the sort of inside

info few gifts ever share.








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