Saturday, October 31, 2015

Marika Wasn’t Pleased


“Eureka!” cried the alchemist Nikita
who believed at last he’d found the secret
in the blast he’d just invoked – but Marika,
his assistant and his sister, wasn’t pleased:

she knew that her ecstatic brother
had been wrong in his surmise. He had
provoked the devil into opening its eyes.
Angrily awake, the devil sneezed.








.

Friday, October 30, 2015

If Destiny Had Left It Up To Us


If destiny had
left it up to us,
there’d be
no fuss.

We’d intervene
whenever we saw pain –
we’d call the sun
out in the rain –

we’d work the business
till it gleamed –
we’d make all dreams be
what they seemed.








.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Our Guess


Our guess is this: the point is to look up,
accept whatever’s falling down,
and wait until it hits.
What other explanation of existence fits?












.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Faces of his Friends


He wore the faces of his friends around
his neck. He liked the captured warm

effect of it: the aspects and the affects
of Elaine, Alain and Ephraim met

with those of Engelbert and Joan.
He never felt alone.










.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

When We Look Into Each Other’s Eyes


When we look into each
other’s eyes, why not surmise
that something else is looking

simultaneously into ours? Fluid
swift concatenations seed
the Cosmos – breed our drifts,

and showers, floods and curves.
Existence buds and flowers
and observes.








.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Bearing Some Relation to the Human


Infinitely mutable, though always
bearing some relation to the human,

grand expatiations of your being
and your body loom into fresh view.

You’re here because the rest of it
is here; it’s here because of you.










.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

We’re Not Sure Which


Transgressions
come and go –
succeeding in
impeding flow –

ejecting
the expected –
selecting only what
you have rejected

as “appropriate”
or “nice.”
Infesting unprotected
psychic skin like lice,

they love to watch you anguish –
and take pleasure in – the itch.
They hop up life or stop it.
We’re not sure which.







.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Our Untoward Ennui


We looked out right in front of us
and saw what we could see.

Life seemed to bear the brunt of us
and our untoward ennui.

At least that’s how it seemed to you
and how it seemed to me.











.

Friday, October 23, 2015

To Drink Her Thought


He liked to drink her thought.
He liked the light it brought
when he was in a funk.
It never got him drunk.












.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Askew


Apparently we’re done with
what we thought we had to do.
But oh! – why has it left us
so askew?












.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Subtlety


It travels up you like a shimmering of fog.

It covers
what it can of you,
it hides you from some
aspects of the man of you –

it softens how the world
feels on your skin –
it keeps varieties of questions
you had almost asked within –

and yet, despite its ministrations, you’re agog:

entirely
beyond
all doubt,

looking,
wide-eyed,
out.








.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Murmurings


You think you hear a sound
but there is nobody around

besides the murmurings
that murmur in your head

which follow you from dawn
through noon to bed.










.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Atavistic Logarithms


Here we are again, variously doing
all our underhanded things,
wishing we had wings,

despite our knowing quite
exactly how to fly without them.
Atavistic logarithms! Essence of ahem.










.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

A Ghost is Lonely


A ghost is lonely.
It dreams of hosting lively parties, only

nobody alive will come.
So don’t be numb

to any ghost’s petition or appeal.
Think of how when you’re a ghost you’ll feel.











.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Love’s Book


The trick to learn in love
may be to learn to look

away from it until you find it
everywhere you look.

We think that’s written
somewhere in its book.











.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Adam and Eve and the Upanishads


When the spirits of Adam and Eve heard
the texts of the haunting Upanishads quoted,
they wondered: “Can you recall which of us wrote it?











.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

We Haven’t Said It Yet


We haven’t said it yet. It’s strange we haven’t.
That something so peremptorily obvious
should lack a name for its inordinately

patent game! There ought to be a lexicon
with labels for its archetypes – like one finds out
who superheroes are at Comic Con.

But so far we have not been able to do
anything but live it. If you have a word for it –
well, this would be the time to give it.








.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

On Your Modest Magic Carpet


When you’re sitting, doting, floating
on your modest magic carpet
on a warm October noon –

warm as any summer yet
with longer shadows coming earlier
than they had come in June,

sometimes a longing enters, oddly,
like a memory of moon,
and won’t leave soon.







.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

New York, Today


New York, today, was bestiary, estuary, salt and fresh,
profusely animal, unblessed, all unexonerated flesh
and untoward flush of river water, blaming and untamed

and bound for slaughter in the Fall. The Fall is resolutely
named – it heralds New York’s imminent innumerable ends
of enemies and friends, its immanent indifference to either:

New York, today, with these or those or them or they,
has had its underhanded way and will, to many but not
everybody’s sorrow, have its overwhelming way tomorrow.








.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Pepper Jack and Diet Orange Crush


Pepper Jack and Diet Orange
Crush, Black Forest Ham
and Pepperidge Farm Rye
Seeded Bread upon which

that which claims it can’t
believe it isn’t butter’s spread
its bland inert emolument have
put a dent in your demeanor –

your soul has gotten leaner
and the stroll you tried to take
to wake it has devolved into
a vapid mush of dissolution –

a rabid brush with what it must
be like to be entirely unseeing –
a touch of learning something
harrowing about Nonbeing.






.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Passion With No Object


Passion with no object?
Unalloyed experience.
You find that you’ve enjoyed
the Void! A vast luxuriance.











.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

A Translucent Partner


Choose a translucent partner –
conjoining gain and lack –
take him everywhere you go –
and always bring him back.











.

Friday, October 9, 2015

How People Die


People don’t die prettily and yet they do.
We misconstrue the flesh which
coughs up gunk and goo at death
as an unsightly mess. The thing it is
and was has brought the jest abruptly
to its rest – passed its test, done its duty.
The mess is beauty.











.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Toward Which the Absent Tulip Flies


Awkward and dressed up
like some great stalk toward
which The Absent Tulip flies –

or tried to fly, but glided by –
she stands there gladly
in the glad rags of her mint-

green gown – looking up
and down like an entreating
bride. I am always by her side.








.