settle down

you can talk about your heart and vague things so vague the photos will be out of focus

or while you talk about them in fact you stop talking as talking is known mid-sentence

there are these sounds airs they taught you and will take the place of actual things

but, mister, the particulars acting up around salaries pensions insomnias they go on

they get you to love your folks more fully in the daylight before the governed choose

who to convert to fuel for smart security requires an excellent and caring commodity

your heart at last prepared for shipping placid under sheets of gauze or dry gelatin

and there you found it where nobody talks about or needs an explanation a proposition

regrets

Like a thick bird gone up so high not caring how far or how solid the ground. Piece of cake.

Then upended. Tendencies. He had. Them tromped.

I’m following a famous pianist through his tunnels toward an uncertain conclusion. She knows.

The woman is an unfortunate metaphor. For an uncertain conclusion.

One work then another and so on forms a pattern in time and points in space. The work fits there.

No escape from telling, but no fresh news gets past the wall. Old man.

The way (is not worth) (is worth) the weariness. Harsh call.

a personal cloud or laundry

In which a chocolate chip cookie and iced mocha drink given to one who asks become the media through which a mood is formed.

As a train rushes north, so my heart rushes into a curious roundabout where it goes and goes until it might find an acceptable outlet.

It isn’t food that produces this unusual sensation; it’s the thickness of time.

As far as walking on the edge that may be inviting you to fall off goes, take a minute to consider its generosity, its mercy.

Instead of talking about certain memories, set them on this bright ledge for a pigeon to consider.

Anywhere is literally nowhere with and without the grit known as sand in more careful publications.

I didn’t miss the history book until it confronted me in the rain sobbing like a little kid.

Anyone might presume to have made something, but when the geese cry hark we understand why the wind is so blind.

If everything requires our assent, who’s hungry when the storm passes but how could we be hungry then.

And then something turns the closet into a great vacation.

a story

When I was younger I read about an older poet who when he was much younger even than I was at the time wrote poems of such wonder that older poets of his time took him under their wings as if they were raptors maybe who’d spotted some unusual motion far down on a page of the younger poet’s own magazine and called him up to New York where anything can happen and some things go well. 

disinterested but

talking louder and louder till I notice

one sudden yellow bird that seems to be part of this

ever so smaller bit of an idea

the word right above it

the poem of one who sits in a room all day

who reads books and screens for hints of it

life on earth who guesses the animals come

resentful of sky the way any earthbounder

would who looks like himself in the dreams

when no one recognizes him or knows where

a truly frightened frugal apologizer goes

once the plans are duly drawn and approved