Ahab was a whale. Who became a bird. A singsong hatred that drained the oceans. And took flight over the leas. The moon was a pedestrian. Who became a rucksack. Logged all the throes: a genius of throes: and covered in tattoos of all the famous mountain ranges of America. Gregory Peck was an actor. Who became Ahab. A cinema of life and a trilogy of moons. Above our heads we heard the longing step across the sky, wooden leg and all. In a flight that resembles a parade. In which all the children sport mountain-colored mustaches and wingspans of verse.
Abstract
By Song
My city travels by picket fence
And rain puddle,
In the branches of trees miles
Away,
Or catastrophically part of the sun’s eyebrows.
Even so, you ask, what is the fashion sense
Of these other dimensional citizens?
Conversation at the Diner
You drew a triangle on your napkin. How thoughtful. The rain will help. I can answer your questions. Though I am not sure of the answers myself. This triangle, for example, has three sides: but where are the doors? The clouds should be pretty and a mess and if you include them on your napkin, barometrically accurate. Here, look, I drew a picture of a bird on a branch. You said, the clouds are all messed up looking without being messed up at all. That’s perfect. That’s it! Let’s exchange middle names and bury our pocket change under the old telephone booth.
Attire
So much for the attire of ghosts:
A broken lantern
And words that cannot move the air.
Poetry places
What can’t be placed.
Especially if keen, then in the heart.
Furthermore, the singing crickets
Just outside these summer windows.
And for clarity’s sake: a motel
Pool in the moonlight.
Poetry practices
What can’t be practiced.
Without thought, into words.
Probably
In the grain between the stars,
Probability stripped down to the studs,
Yet probable enough.
In the anteroom before a dream,
Probability slips into the uncanny,
Yet palpable enough.
Over the eons probability evolved into choice.
In the busy air the summer bee says,
Yet all the more real.
Summer
Let’s hear it for Jupiter,
And for blades of grass.
Jupiter is the largest planet.
The blades of grass
Are almost numberless.
Jupiter is storm, the blades of grass
Are stepped on.
Petal by petal this cathedral
Passes into autumn.
Four Poems
Humming the Score
For sidewalk tramps baptized in the changing of the leaves,
Hurled to other dimensions by the rustle of the seasons.
What Poetry Could Be
Words adjacent to meaning squished together by music,
And the lemonade of time travel.
Scenic
A heap of mountains
And the collateral moon.
Upon Waking
The dream was drawn
By an esoteric cause and effect
And edited by a bumblebee
In July.
Of the birds that live on the sun
Masquerading as spring.
The Drive
Black canvas, blue roads, all night
Drive like a dream from a magic lamp
Or in the belly of a firefly over the pond
The wingspan of the highway
Is the puzzle of the horizon
Every inch of which is an infinity
Every mile is nothing more than a mile
Poem
Small biography:
I like dark coffee. And apples.
I will tell a very simple lie:
Last Tuesday, around 6pm, I drank a glass of water.
Small biography:
Though it is moving the river is absolutely still.
A stillness that is no different than time.
On Friday, it was chamomile tea at noon.
Images
The theory of an image
Is imaginary.
The butterfly of an image
Loots the universe.
The box set of an image
Available while supplies last.
The printout of an image
Is the shoreline of a shadow.
The road of an image
Are never ceasing sole-thoughts.
And the guesswork of an image
Are images too.
naïve haircuts 