Literary Critic, as Lover

A subtle probe – a sweet considered pose – softly

incrementally investigating motive – an assuaging

and engaging private glance -- a sense of immanent

romance which darkens into secrecy -- an inward

leaking fear, preternaturally near the source – all this,

of course, to wield his deep discourse – his field of art.

How proud he is to commandeer this steed! He’ll talk

around profound circumferences, indeed – tracing

tributaries of the heart to summon up their seeping

mysteries – make them bleed – detect the differences

between the random force and the involuntary blast --

attend to the remotest rhythms of a horse’s ass.

.

The Gods are Gloating

Frail as a surmise,

your fragile eyes

a globular surprise,

you came back pale

and floating.

The gods are gloating.

They knew how boldly

you would grow.

They whispered,

winked, and nudged

each other:

“Told you so.”

.

Good-bye

from godbwye (1570s), itself a contraction of God be with ye (late 14c.)

We like to think of life

as episodes –
but episodes are magic
thinking, sinking:

done – foregone –

as quickly as begun.
The scheme
of narrative won’t hold.

Although hello

is nice to hear
and sadness may ensue
when you or I effect

to disappear

and say good-bye,
sequence is a dream,
my dear. All is here.








.

Confess To Me, Oh Broken Thing!

 

 

Unspoken and unsung --
unable, here, to speak or sing -- 
the thing that breaks now tastes,

and takes itself into, oblivion.

It can’t be fixed: there is no fix.
Whatever mix evoked it

into being long ago

cannot be re-invoked. We lost
its recipe. Confess to me,

oh broken thing, the secrets

of your past! All I seem to know
so far is nothing lasts.









.

Sometimes You Aren’t Sure You Want to Visit Monuments

 

Sometimes you aren’t sure

you want to visit monuments.
You hear you should:

you’re told it would be good

for you, though less to see
them than to say you've gone  

to see them, you suspect.

You’ve got to read up on their
history, and load up on respect.

You’d rather things be fun.

Can monuments be fun?
Perhaps this might be one.











.

Temporary Dislocation of the Head

 

Not everybody understands
that temporary dislocation
of the head expands

the heart, relieves the pressure

on varieties of glands,
and can free up the speculative

curiosity of hands,

released from all those blunt
prefrontal cortical demands.












.

Destiny’s Physics

 

Balance will insist upon itself –
ruthlessly it varies to produce
what will conduce to the dispersal
of exactly equal weight. What had

once come early now comes late.

What was once revealed will now
be hidden. It doesn’t seem to matter
who is riding, who is ridden.










.

Higgs Particles

 

At first you felt enraged –
engaged in some incensed excursion
in and to and through the depths of you

whose genesis

you sensed like distant seismic breaths
arising from some dumb unruly beast --

the least last bit of you was under

its control – until the sense began
to roll and weave and interleave

like vines between the lines

and other colors bred from
the incursive red and bled

beneath the skin

of an unprecedented sentiment –
a rich presentiment:

the presentation

of a wholly different feeling:
now appealing

to new torrents of the soul.

You are Higgs particles: currents
of a multi-verse: oceans in a bowl.










.

Calm Clowns

 

There may be bearing up
but that alone
won’t do the trick.

Nor will money.

There is no cheering up:

no shtick is really funny.
Depression doesn’t want
a clown around.
Clowns make you wary.

Clowns are volatile and scary.

Except when clowns

are calm. Calm clowns
are a balm.









.

Mix and Match

Chromosomally, we are

a random handful:
toss of traits,

propensities

and tendencies
which conjure up

our destinies –

a kind of je ne sais
exactly what we’ll be

except that somehow

it proceeds from
an array of DNA.

But aren’t we a treat

when it comes down
to serving up what’s

on the tray! Unconsciously

attending to genetic duty,
how we pick and patch

and trick and catch

and mix and match
it into beauty!









.

Marriages are Strange

 

Encompassing, as they must do,
the range of all the unexamined
and unexpurgated and unfathomed

shames and yearnings and bewilderments
of two frail creatures pledging their fidelity
to they know not quite what,

marriages are strange.

Biology commands them.
But no one understands them.













.

Coming Back

 

You thought you’d be late.
But there is no “late.”
Just come through the gate.
They’re happy to wait.













.

Sometimes You Aren’t Welcome

 

Sometimes

you aren’t
welcome.

You aren’t even

in the queue.

Blooming into view

comes some
quite other coup

of an ado

from you.

There isn’t

room
for more.

The open door

has shut.

And has

turned
to but.

Oh well.

So what.







.

Emergence

 

An emergence
just emerged
from yet another
new emergency
in my dream's sea --

then sank back down

into its liquid urgency
to join the others.
All revenants
are brothers.












.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics

 

Secondary sexual characteristics,

by the time you’re thirty-five,
may tend defensively to flare
and bare and flash and jive
and dare to “speak” about themselves

when they begin to sense the prospect

of becoming weak and turning tertiary.
Aging is an estuary: fresh encounters
salt. Nobody’s fault
but God’s, if there’s a God.

So if you feel at odds,

and find you’re stripping down a lot
and flaunting it, that may be why.
Unless you’ve always done it,
and you simply aren’t shy.












.

So That’s What Happened.

 

Conversation’s long.
Nothing’s ever said.
Something’s oddly wrong.
Everybody’s dead.













.

Asleep

 

Is influence malignant
or benign?
Does it ally with chance
or with design?

Do you have

to know?
What do you have
to know?

But oh! -- you find

the current!
Sometimes you find
the current.












.

Anonymous Sex

 

He sat there, naked on a bench --
off his rocker
where he’d spent his silence yesterday –
seeking soothing swaying rhythms
none of which, he knew, today
would stay
the tumult or allay
his sense that everything inanimate
and animate now held a grudge
against his skin’s existence.

He knew exactly what had happened.

Yesterday God had fellated him
and drained his juice
and baited him and rained a sluice
of quantum-busybody
vitriol which poisoned
all and left him here, on some now
God-forsaken sphere
where silence was the only hope.
He’d try to cope.










.

if there is enlightenment

 

If there is enlightenment,

we think it often blasts

from blue to yellow

thru some random

sad beleaguered fellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Infinite Transgression

 

The mind's an infinite transgression --
commuting joy as easily
into depression as eruptive lusts.

While outwardly exhibiting a show

of comme il faut and should’s and must’s,
it secretly entrusts itself to nothing –

as the stuffing of the life it putatively

seeks to spice and mold disperses
in the breeze like droplets

in a bad cold’s sneeze. It conjures

easy rhymes like these to cover  
virulence – cheap handkerchiefs

all full of holes. It has no goals.

And yet the delicacy it can lend
a face transgresses into grace.









.