poem

 Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning. Driving my daughter to school. Passing the house with the grim reaper mailbox. We stop at Dunkin Donuts. But she doesn’t like chocolate frosted doughnuts with sprinkles anymore. A glazed is fine, like she’s some anonymous commuter drone. She stares at her phone. What about the math test, I ask, do you want to review a few things before we arrive? No dad I don't she says. But you said you were worried about it. No dad, she says. I’ve got it dad. No dad. Dad, no. Rather than turning up the music to its previous volume I try again to tell her about the algebra of all bodies how each of us has some corresponding variable expression that can be plotted on a multidimensional coordinate plane along with dozens of partial differential equations that account for the change that accrues over time. That this equation cannot be solved is beside the point. It is enough to know that very smart people have been working on it for many years and will not stop because it will prove that we are, if not here, then at least somewhere, anywhere in the vast universe, at least for a short while, that the space we occupy is real. The Hodge Conjecture and Riemann Hypothesis are lesser priorities, or at least I hope so. I see in the rearview mirror that her AirPods are in her ears and her finger is rapid-firing the volume button like a trigger. In any event, it’s only Tuesday. The weekend is a long way off.

6/30/24

poem

 Silence

I’ve done enough blasphemy 

Cursed the christ

Pissed in the holy waters 

It didn’t get me anywhere 

I’m ready to give it another chance

But I won't sing any dumb hymns

Or kneel upon the hassock

My knees hurt

And I won’t wear a tie 

Or show up at Easter 

With all the Lexus phonies 

I won’t give strangers 

Stuck behind me in line

At the DMV my testimony.

In lieu of obedience

I will give you a silence

Easily mistaken for reverence 

I will be as quiet 

As answers to prayers 

I won’t say a word

I’ll cover my coughs

And sleep like a corpse.

What I can offer 

Is only a collection of words

I’ve been saving up, one by one,

Figuring out the puzzle 

Of how they fit together 

With each passed year 

Of roughly acquired wisdom.

Is this enough?

It will have to be enough 

This silence which is really 

A poem trapped inside 

Me that cannot be said aloud,

That cannot get out 

Without shattering everything else.

It will have to be enough—

One dumb poem 

That only god knows is true

6/30/24

poem

 Hide and Seek

It’s hard to keep coming up 

With new ways of saying 

What I mean without

Actually saying it. 

In the beginning 

I embraced the challenge—
It became a perpetual game

Of hide and seek,

Secretly hoping you would

Always eventually find me.

But one runs out

Of suitable hiding places 

You reach a point where

Everything you try

Leaves you dangerously exposed.

Soon enough my leg 

Is sticking out so far

From behind a sapling

You can see it 

From a mile away.

It stops being fun anymore.

There I am again!

Hoping you don’t notice 

My naked body

Standing on the other side 

Of your full length mirror

While you get ready for dinner.

And so I either 

Fall back on cliché

Or the metaphors get so weird

You need a separate metaphor

To explain them, meta-metaphors,

Which can take you

Places, I’ll you that,

But never with anyone else,

You’re on your own..

And I only really need to to say 

This one thing without

Actually saying it.

Just one thing.

Which means the unsaid thing

Could potentially be anything 

Which takes us straight to the realm 

Of clever summer tautologies

Where even this lonesome dog

Snoozing on the driveway or

This lost fly zizzing 

Disconsolately against my window 

Could be exactly what I mean 

6/24/24

poem

 Incarnation

And suddenly the present moment seemed to escape abstraction, pinned as it usually is between irretrievable past and unknowable future, became imbued with geometric extension and manifested itself materially as a large room. And in this room was everything I knew, had known, would ever know. Blink your eyes half a millisecond and you’ve been transported to a different realm, a place where everything there had never been seen before. This was the place where all the changing occurred. Where everything happened. The more I stayed with that thought the more the room expanded. Soon it was the size of a concert hall, an underground parking garage, a domed stadium, a vast open plain under a roof of deep blue sky. The notion of an all-inclusive universe. It could be as big as it needed to be and sometimes needlessly small. In order to be there you had to be a changing thing yourself. Which meant that you, right now, considering this wrenching fact, imagining what it will be like, once you have a chance to look back on it and reflect, will never be the one who is there when it all sort of makes sense. Anyway, I was convinced for a while that all this would only ever occur in this very special room. Alas, even this vision began to flicker, as it must, in order to have arisen here. And the walls wobbled and then fell down and the ceiling wisped away like steam. All that remained were the old frustrations. In the end I was able to save the room, but only in miniature. It fits perfectly inside my head. In this diminished room, the only thing that doesn’t change is that everything changes.

6/24/24

poem

 Boys to Men

Some men look like little boys

Trapped in giant bodies

With their gray hairs and ill fitting shirts

Pinched faces of petulant ire

After so many years 

Not being taken seriously 

Then there are the little boys

Coming home from school

Who look like beatdown men 

Just getting off a ten hour shift

At the metal processing factory.

Carved frowns hinting 

At the jowls to come.

They sit at quiet kitchen tables

In empty houses alone

Eating snacks

Before homework and chores.

The men who never lose 

Their boyish mien

Wage war against the boys

Of hardened visage

When they grow up.

It ends the way it always ends:

With scrapes and bruises and burial

Mounds of unspeakable tragedy.

All that remain

Are the boys who look like boys

Playing in the backyard dusk

And then the men 

Who look like men 

Concealing silent wars

Fought within themselves

For as long as they can.

They save their final doubts

And anguished tears for when no one is home.

Every day is a battle to stay alive. 

Thrashed by the froth and churn 

They man the helm

Until their sons are ready

To take a turn 

6/9/24

poem

 Happiest

I am happiest when I forget who I am,

When I lose all sense of self.

The big joke in life is that

All your friends and lovers

Love a person 

You can’t recall.

When they speak of you

They speak of a stranger 

You can’t remember 

How to be.

6/9/24

poem

 Infinite Peril

Never forget the inherent danger

Fibrillating at the heart of infinity

In an infinite amount of time anything 

Is not only possible but inevitable.

Us here, me and you, it isn’t special

It was always going to happen

We just didn't know when. 

Think for how long we’d been

Patiently waiting on deck

Bats on our shoulders

Wondering if we’d ever get to hit. 

Infinity explains the existence 

And the meaning for everything

In due course.

And also the absence of meaning 

In a world that doesn’t yet exist

But will.

Infinity will snatch your joy 

And spit on your wonder.

Who do you think you are

Other than what you’ve always been?

Infinity is the golden goose wryly 

Grinning as we clutch at its hatched 

Little eggs of time, which are

Quickly traded in for material trinkets

Of immeasurably lesser value. 

Somewhere along the infinite timeline

You’ll become the sort of person 

Who learns the lesson

Of the pricelessness of time

Just before a voice whispers:  it’s too late,

By the time you get it, you’ve missed the point.  

So you get dizzy with acquired time,

Lose your balance, fall face down. 

Laugh at your peril. 

The only way to save this

From utter trivialization

Is to join a doomsday cult.

Become a man on a sidewalk 

Wearing a placard proclaiming

THE END IS NEAR 

Not as a warning

But hope.

6/9/24

poem

 Maslow

I have no memory of being held 

When I was born

But my mother assures me

She never put me down

Until I stopped crying 

Nor will I recall after death

Whether I was held

As I lay dying

But heaven or hell hinges

On whether certain needs

(Remembered or not)

Get met.

6/2/24

poem

 Upside Down Flag

My upside down flag is a poem

I’ve written under duress

The siege is still ongoing

We’re all under attack

No one feels safe

These lines provide only

A few moments of security

Please send love

And a sliver of beauty

6/2/24