poem

 Approx

Rounding down or rounding up?

What are the rules?

One the one hand it’s self-

Aggrandizing, getting phantom hits

And now there’s ghost runners on base.

On the other hand you’re just corralling

All these extra numbers in a box to erase.

Nobody wants to deal

With awkward situations.

I’m certainly not a whole number.

Nobody has ever remembered my name

Down to the last decimal point.

The more you know me 

The smaller I get.

Unfortunately I’m not special.

I’m not irrational.

There is a final number that puts, 

At last, the finishing touches on defining me.

Oh damn, I’m just realizing

It will only get rounded off.

5/17/26

poem

 Inside Us

There’s an anger inside us 

Seeking simply to be spoken.

A rage simmering under a heavy

Lid of repression

Now trapped in the silence of uncertain action

I would call it a peculiar kind of alienation

Only I’ve forgotten the object of our yearning

One day a strange man comes along speaking

Familiar words from the dead language 

In which we have become so fluent

We sit and listen attentively to his diatribe,

How the words have devolved to mere sounds

Like the way ancient coffins become empty again

Once the last bone turns to dust.

It’s a suicidal praxis that cuts the music

And everyone stops dancing

Oh man!

We were just learning a new language

That will allow us to express

Everything we were always meant to say

5/17/26

poem

 I Would Do Anything for You 

She took things into her own hands

Regarding our little mouse problem

I should have acted earlier

But I didn’t mind the little critters—

Soft and furtive and so very polite 

Never making an appearance 

Except for late at night or early morning and 

Not that I’m advocating 

For human/mouse cohabitation

For me it was like bacteria on my toothbrush—

Gross, but I can’t really see it 

And I’m not going to buy a new one everyday

But then she brought up certain practicalities—

The image of mice chewing through important wires

Behind the walls. If this happens, I could see her point. 

So she ordered a set of glue traps

And positioned them strategically

In key locations throughout the house 

I should have been paying attention 

She didn’t know this was cruel

She saw the black algal goo

As a void into which the mice 

Would fall and never be seen again

One morning I heard a faint scratching 

Behind a fake log in the gas fireplace 

One of her traps had lured its prey

And the little guy lie there 

In a gelatinous bed of black,

Wide eyed and exhausted on his back.

Eventually it would have starved to death.

Sometimes the young males rip the fur

From their skin in their frenzied escapes.

I’ve read of horrified spouses finding traps

With isolated limbs torn from torsos.

I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I carried the little torture chamber outside,

Placed it level on the driveway 

And brought the head of a hammer swiftly 

Down on the skull of our unfortunate prisoner.

I looked away when I swung 

Like all good executioners must.

It wasn’t blood I wiped from my face

But the spattered black remains

Of an uneasiness

No one even bothers to name 

5/17/26

poem

 Time Machine 

When the time machine is invented

Everyone will want to have one

Some will live entirely in the past

While others keep bouncing further

And further into the future

I went back and forth for a while 

But none of it ever made any sense

Without at least a few days in the present

To think about it. Now I stay right where I am.

Woven to the fabric of someone else’s fate

So many men abuse this technology

They become the smoothest player 

Who ever existed or the ballsiest short

Stack who ever called a bet.

Every success story is now under suspicion 

Listen, I’m one of those people too.

I just decided to go in a different direction

This moment right here is a bridge 

To a future that dissolves the past.

Pay attention. Love itself is at stake 

I have this strange certainty that when I’m dead

You’ll be able to feel me in your actual body

Tickling your feet or jabbing my fingers in your ribs,

Sort of fake kneeing your ass from behind in the bathroom.

Instead of reckoning with that you’ll just take another tylenol.

Well, here we are again

By now we’ve done this a thousand times

And I have a good feeling about tonight 

Long ago we agreed to finally get it all right 

I love you. Then, now, tomorrow.

5/17/26

poem

 Power Outage

I hate to be the one to say it

But no one really cares 

Your power has gone out again.

Get a generator, jackass

But no, you’re missing the point—

The power shouldn’t be going out,

At least not so often,

Not every time it rains or thunders 

In this godforsaken society

Where the billionaires are plotting

To commandeer the warmth of the sun.

We should all be in the streets

Chanting, pitchforks and torches

Because we deserve a much better life

Given what they force us to pay

In taxes. What do we get for them anyway?

Where’s my high-speed train to Sausalito?

Why do you need a debit card first

Before you fix this open femur fracture?

I didn’t sign on to genocide

I don't care about the Ayatollahs,

Apache choppers, aircraft carriers or F-35’s.

Don't make my kids weigh 

The risks and benefits of Hamlet’s

Dilemmas, “useless” degrees

That don’t pay the bills

But should. Turn the lights on.

Turn all the lights on

Now.

5/17/26

poem

 Ads

I like commercials with a beautiful, perky actress and it’s just jump cuts of her in different brightly colored outfits. I like commercials where the dogs end up with fancy meals on white plates. Mélange. Haute cuisine. I like commercials that are loud and obnoxious like entitled toddlers ignored by bad parents. I like commercials with a genuine narrative arc where the climax is the appearance of a product they all start laughing at and the denouement is me writing down the 1-800 number on the back of an old magazine. I like commercials that are an easily solved puzzle. I focus on little things. Like which direction to twist the shower knob to get hot water. I like commercials that elicit feelings of 45 years ago. Cicadas and cigarette smoke. Driving home from Akron, the front windshield a snapshot of the universe while our spaceship's hyperdrive accelerates into the stars. I like commercials that have stopped trying. Embarrassed by the product. But I’m a sucker. I want to help them. Don’t give up, I say. I’ll buy everything you need.

5/17/26

poem

 Moon Poem

The moon was once alive

With all the potential of any planet

Careening through the early solar system.

Seeds of rivers, mountains, flowers 

Sleeping in its roiling interiors 

Until the moment it collided with Earth

And everything needed was stolen.

Now it loyally follows us around 

Like a lobotomized pet

Spinning through space,

Patiently waiting for us 

To give back what we took.

Unbeknownst to most it drifts

A little further away from us—

An inch or two every year.

By the time we’re ready to share

The fruits of what we had taken

The moon will be so small,

Easily mistaken for just another star.

It will be like finally telling the one 

Who loves you, you love them 

But it’s just somebody who kind of looks

Like her and even she’s way over there

On the other side of the bar.

By then it will have been decades 

Since anyone mentioned it in a poem.

5/17/26

poem

 Conversion

If pure, a straight line promises

Many things— division, separation,

Over and under, left and right.

But focus on the line itself

Summoning a notion of infinite 

Extension, as far as the eye can see

In either direction.

Hop on

It doesn’t matter where

Only at the end do you notice how straight it was

And how little choice you had all along

It was always going to be point A to point B

Which, frankly, is an irrelevance in the context 

Of your own mathematically impossible existence.

Whatever the case may be, it sure did feel real!

Even though you’ve only stumbled infinitesimally 

Closer to the terminus 

And negligibly further from where it all began.

It’s as if you never went anywhere at all.

Saul on the road to Damascus

Had the old flash of light 

That happens to everyone 

Once or twice—

What if the line traces a circle

And wherever you are is both

A beginning and an end?

The rest of course is history 

5/17/26