1.
The syllogisms that hold up silence
Are understandably invisible and
Full of oranges and greens and yellows,
That aren’t colors at all, but the fullness
Of a late afternoon.
2.
The wind in the trees
Picks up the wishes that will one day become a new cosmos.
3.
A bit of blown leaves holler at the chimney.
Afterward, now below, the blown leaves caught in the chain link.
On the abandoned apartment building
Someone spray painted gothic arches.
4.
Forever is a verb
With clouds for hair
And coat buttons
Of highways
Germinating into the
Sky
An eclipse
Is the mailing address
Of dark matter
Forever is the typeface
Of letting go
5.
The rain sounds out the road, into the windy streets,
The cosmos of walking.
That’s why there are stars,
Over and over, love is something new.
writing
It’s Different Than Prose
I don’t know how it ends. I imagine it will end with a hook and a hat and a sigh. Like at the end of the day.
Or a treatise will be inaugurated by the passing clouds.
Written on a wall of the bus station, where you wait for the interstate, “The baritones at the rodeo / Dance for the baronesses.” Accompanied by artwork. In black marker.
Everywhere complexity experiencing the waves and particles and chemical bonds, electricity and gravity.
The questions of infinity are no nearer completion. Thankful for that. Sitting on the bus seat, counting the landscapes. Dreaming or being dreamed. Probably both.
End of Summer Poem
The pigeons wing a faraway blue.
And the singsong crickets are the color of fields.
And so, by analogy, we are not robots.
And so, by the many horizons theory, the sky is forever.
With the shoreline on the tip of your tongue, the clouds head out to sea.
Our Shadows are Complexity
Like the tall grass fielded
By an inkling of eternity.
Shaped by wind and sun
And rain and a poet’s pen.
A charisma, of sorts.
Like a darted valentine
Bolted to the breast.
As a meteorite to a flame
Upon atmosphere,
The cosmic act of self.
3 Short Poems
I’ve written a hundred poems underneath
The blue post office collection boxes, scribbled
On telephone booths these tribes of words.
Counted paint peels on weathered lampposts.
Till it came down to a coin toss in a dream.
~
I know I can be disjointed, and ramblingly
Quiet. Fragments of fragments.
And what is the point of these iterations?
If I haven’t said my ghosts outright, fair enough,
Yet I give them the haunt of these pages.
~
Where does it go? Is a rainy question.
Why does it tumble? Out of the pure summer air.
Your leaving is like the gospel of parting.
And cocoons are the opposite of mummies.
Meteorites
On the railroad trestles all over the city is all kinds of graffiti, which inspired me to write a poem: “On a railroad trestle, / Idle words, spray-painted, like falling leaves / Forgotten by guitar.”
Rain puddles make excellent calculators. Indeed, the square root of blue equals eleven triangles. This fact has weight, like the atmosphere. Which we hardly notice. And we should.
On my walks, I am glad to see someone I know. I ask, “How you doing? Everything well? I add, “Glad to see you.” And I mean it. But more often than not, when I am out walking, I’m alone. I like the mornings best. I like Walt Whitman and Federico Fellini. I also like to walk along the Niagara River and to stop and sit and pay attention to the birds. I like to nose around the old industrial sites and look up at the old factory panes or what’s left of them. They look like they haven’t brushed their teeth in four decades and have been chewing on bolts. I enjoy it when the orchestra brings out the percussionist.
A Certain Fancy
The mind loiters, the labor
Of which, like the dew on the
Spider’s web. Clandestinely we egg
Ourselves on. Or in outright
Ambush of all reservations.
And now that the rain has passed,
Brought to benediction
By a chicory crowded moon
Harboring an albatross neck tattoo.
A Trilogy of Moons
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.
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.
naïve haircuts 