poem

 Life vs Death

Battle Royale, endless chess match, cat and mouse. Everyone over here is on Team Life, for obvious reasons. Dental cleanings and colonoscopies. Cholesterol levels and coronary calcium scores. 30 minutes of brisk exercise 5 days a week. No processed foods. Moderate alcohol intake. Rumor is, Death always wins. But we’re not ready to concede yet. To Life and Death themselves, it’s always been a zero sum game. Every match ends tied at the final horn. Nobody ever wins. They play for fun. Not us. We’re keeping score. Every day lived is a point lost and another coin in the pocket of the great adversary. Two weeks elapse and it’s a rout. I’m never catching up. Another year goes by and you’re mathematically eliminated; may as well forfeit. Life and Death don’t see it that way, though. The points just get passed back and forth. Every loss comes back as a reciprocal win. Every second someone is born and someone dies. Life takes its gains as it can. Sex acts in seedy motels. Bees burrowing into tulips. A summer rain after weeks of drought. An infant is the biggest boon of all— 83.3 more years of life! — and cause for celebration with sleepless nights and unpredictable bouts of incontinence. But Death is the wily old veteran. It knows it gets it all back. It sees an old man on a bench in a park and thanks him for his decades of timely remuneration. If nothing else, the old man can take pride in that. Good old sport. Death, though, has always been a notoriously slow starter. Finds Himself deep in the hole after only two minutes of game action. But give Him time. Even you, once way ahead, are starting to get uncomfortable in your chair. He sees you sweating on the other side of the garish green table. Those are your chips stacked in neat little piles in front of Him. It’s getting late. You look at what you’ve got left. Win or lose, it’s time to go all in. 

5/19/25

poem

 Himalayas

The Himalayas are still going up

Driven by a collision

From millions of years ago.

Love is also tectonic

Whether passionate or platonic

Sometimes you have to wait 

To see the effects of its orogeny.

In this world everything takes so long

Even the dawn’s light is 8 minutes away. 

Who knows what heights ours will someday reach?

I don’t feel like I’m moving at all.

But you can’t always tell

Outside the scale of geologic time.

Our apex is a distant progeny, a snow-

Capped peak someone else will have to climb

5/19/25

poem

 Days of Doubt

We all go to our graves 

With a certainty deficit,

A gap between what we hope

For and what we know.

This hole is best filled by

Love, of course, but when 

We go to retrieve it 

As doubt demands it

We find the lacuna empty.

Where is it? Where did it go?

Did you forget already?

We’ve given it all away, silly,

To everyone we love

So they will have it

When they face their own

Days of doubt.

The only certainty

Is the love we leave behind,

Poured into a hole

With a hole in the bottom of it

5/19/25

poem

 Be Nice

Tell a quiet kid he has a great personality. Eat the whole banana. Measure before you cut. When the birds are singing, be polite and listen. Don’t turn all the lights on; feel your way through the dark. Let her sleep. Watch for a while the way the moonlight curves around her calves. Forget to breathe. Remind your heart to beat. First thing in the morning take your socks off and go outside. Skip the coffee. Think of something nice to say and save it. Be patient. Don’t rush. Let the ice cream melt a bit in the spoon. Learn to recognize hidden sadness. The kid grows up and thinks he’s funny. And he is, to the ones who love him. But you’re the one who told him first.

5/19/25

poem

 Conclave

Black smoke like a flock of sparrows

Fleeing the startle of heavy tires

Backing up over broken glass

A dropped bugle clangs

Against cold concrete

After the last note of Taps fades

A group of selves get together

And melt into a river

Winding around chain restaurants and strip malls

A college of cardinals

A school of fish

An encyclopedia of anxiety

A lesson in humility

Gets outsourced 

To an office park in Bangalore

Everything gets burned,

Not just the trash. Either that

Or you freeze to the core 

Who you think you are.

Who you thought you were.

The one who can spot the difference. 

Baby birds nested in a wreath

Hanging from the front door.

We open and close it gently.

White smoke like the collective exhalation

Of a congregation of homeless saints

Huddled under the shadow of an overpass.

We draw straws, best two out of three

Scratch and claw, suffer and bleed

But there’s nothing to see.

A man in a white cassock stands on the balcony 

Overlooking a silent, empty courtyard

While the absent world mourns its choices

5/19/25

poem

 Semantics

Psychopaths and cycle paths

Gonorrhea or gonna leave ya 

Enunciate and listen

Pay attention

Every sound a discrete meaning

It’s the lapses that lead 

To catastrophic misunderstanding.

Every new understanding implies the existence

Of a previously elusive, defined significance.

The converse, however, isn't necessarily true.

Any potentially comprehensible tenet

Could conceivably remain forever shrouded in mystery,

Beyond the reaches of earthly knowledge.

Worse, an absence of understanding

Tells you nothing about whether a meaning exists

Or not. Some even say that most understandings 

Are strictly semantic, disconnected from actual maxims

Like compendiums on ancient mythologies

We all now know were completely made up.

This asymmetric juxtaposition of knower and known

Characterizes the essence of the human condition

For those who still try to understand

But don't.

Understandably, it can be too much to handle.

For some, insanity ensues

While others enjoy the ride 

On the paved trails of the metroparks.

5/11/25

poem

 Messiah

A certain man appears in times of trouble. When all seems lost. When the first plumes of smoke escape from the peak of Vesuvius. When the launch codes have been stolen. When the oceans lap against the last slivers of land. He goes about his business as if there's nothing to worry about. He takes his bath in the evening with a drink and a cigar. Women gather round to listen as he reads from the works of Charles Simic before everyone drowns. Everyone takes comfort from his equipoise, his nonchalance, his Othellian voice. What they don’t know is that he was selected. He didn’t have to figure it out. He was told. His bravery will only ever be known by strangers. The ones who know him best have already absconded. As can’t be said enough, the situation was impossible. Half hearted explanations will have to suffice. There was actually never anything to be done. This man accepted his fate in such a way that became a model for others to follow. Every civilization needs one. We called ours a Christ and the rest was only one possible history. Right now our future Messiah is at the cleaners, picking up his shirts, then to market to get a wine pairing for dinner. He greets everyone with a smile. He tips well. He remembers names. He offers reassurance and validation. Yes, it’s ok to think you are someone worth loving. Yes you may have my parking space. Yes it’s your turn to go at the roundabout. Even this, a shallow, acquisitional civilization needs such a man. The accountants call it the currency of last resort. It isn’t the same as market value but the demand never wanes. We all know he will not abandon us. Like when dad gets home and checks the attic for the source of all that scratching. He’s here for the duration. He represents our final salvation.

5/11/25

poem

 Yellow

What we understand as yellow

Varies from person to person.

It’s all a matter of perception.

My yellow isn’t necessarily yours 

Even if we use the same word. 

Light from Wordsworth’s daffodils

Has to travel through clouded cataracts,

Sometimes, and splash up against

Flickering arrays of aging rods

And cones in the back of the retina.

From there it gets shunted down 

A slowly demyelinating optic nerve to a place 

In the brain that generates a sad version

Of the color we know as yellow.

The edges of it can seem

Orange or green

To the practiced eye

But I still know what you mean.

Love is like this too

Only on a much wider spectrum

And the journey it takes to get 

To the raw garden where it grows 

Is far more perilous.

Rare is the love that arrives uninjured.

Sometimes barely enough gets through

And when you waste it 

The world gets dipped in its dye.

Sometimes it arrives so damaged 

You don't even recognize it—

Slam the door in its face. Never get to meet it.

Too much, if you’re not used to it,

Comes as a flash of blinding light

And all you can think about

Is how to see it without ever looking at it.

But it’s all shades of the same color 

Regardless of how much gets filtered.

That’s the only guarantee here—

At least a little bit always find a way through.

You take it as it comes, like any gifted thing: 

Sometimes it shines as joy

Sometimes you start to cry.

Sometimes you sing.

It all depends on

Your angle of illumination.

Sometimes flowers 

Are the color of cowards

And sometimes 

A harbinger of spring.

5/1/25

poem

 Middle

In the middle of the night

I had a nightmare set in the des

-iccated middle of the day

and I was surrounded by children

and I was a child myself

and we were all very afraid 

of the hot red noon

bearing down on us 

and forgot about the night

and the darkness to come 

when none of us

were ever allowed to see the moon.

At the end of my life

I recalled a moment from

the beginning of my life

when I had wandered away

from distracted adults

on a balmy summer day

and just kept following a path.

Sidewalks erupted in thrust faults

of adventurous texture

as archways of trees shielded me

from the terror or limitless sky.

The old lady who invited me 

inside for cookies and milk

called the police

and my uncle came 

and took me home 

in the back of his cruiser

with the lights flashing

like a dangerous criminal.

In the middle of my life 

I imagined the end of my life

chasing after the little boy

of the beginning, shouting his name

but the kid never looked back,

his little legs churning so fast.

No surprise, the end of my life

was tenacious and single minded—

It just kept coming and coming

as the boy grew bored and started to slack off.

He never turned around, not once,

even when the pursuer was close

enough to cast him in shadow

for the rest of his life.

At the beginning of my life

I imagined a middle and an end

of a tale which could be read 

either forwards or backwards

and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference

but if you opened to a page randomly

and just started reading,

the sense of sequence 

deliquesces to irrelevance

as all the boys I’ve been 

gather round to listen

to whatever happens next

5/1/25

poem

 Gap

We all go to our graves 

With a certainty deficit,

A gap between what we hope

For and what we know.

This hole is best filled by

Love, of course, but when 

We go to retrieve it 

As doubt demands it

We find the lacuna empty.

Where is it? Where did it go?

Did you forget already?

We’ve given it all away, silly,

To everyone we love

So they will have it

When they face their own

Days of doubt.

The only certainty

Is the love we leave behind,

Poured into a hole

With a hole in the bottom of it

5/1/25

poem

 Crossroad

This is the crossroads with no signs 

And no directional indicators.

To further complicate matters

You aren’t sure where you started

Or where you’re supposed to go.

You’re just in the middle,

Crucified on a cross

Of someone’s else’s roads

Radiating out into the distance.

There may be other routes you can’t see

Overgrown with grass and weeds

Perhaps this is only the center point

Of an asterisk of infinite possible paths

Referring you to the bottom 

Of the page for additional context

5/1/25