The summer sky is  
a vivid azure blue.
The red hibiscus
is blooming on the
white porch. Below
lies the old photo of  
a man in a gray suit.

The yellow kite,  
tethered to the
handrail is waving
in the breeze,
as the photo
suddenly
flies away.

In the end, it can all
be explained, and none
of it can be explained.

Tomorrow will exist,
of course, but by
then it will be today.

Language becomes
a long gurgle and
a quick sputter, and

as expected, by those
still paying attention,
it is irrevocably broken.

Adam, having just popped
out of the ground like a

time-elapsed plant, is
enchanted, almost

mesmerized by the snake.
Eve descends to earth

via parachute from god
knows what height, and

points out that the snake
is clever, creative and,

by-the-way, poisonous.
The snake shapes itself

into, the not yet invented,
letters of the alphabet.

“It is speaking to me. It is
creating a visual

language,” proclaims Adam.
“First you must charm it,

and then use it carefully,”
implores Eve.

But it is already too late.
The snake bites Adam and

he dies. Eve, ever prescient,
looks up to the sky and says,

“I know. This is what we
have to look forward to.”

The boy in a new
shirt, when asked
his age lurches
forward, all five
fingers splayed
in front of him.

The past is a room
with a peculiar door.
I am inside, then
open the door and
exit only to be
back inside again.

This poem may  
be lovely or
clever, but it is
analogy, made
of appearances,
insubstantial, like
a finely attired,
beautiful corpse.

Nearly drowned, the
fisherman runs from
the raging sea as it
swallows his boat, then
looks back to marvel at  
its stunning power.

The ailing king hobbles
from his throne to his bed
and dies, but his ghost
continues to rule, and he
accomplishes nothing,
just as it was in the flesh.

The drunken shoemaker
falls off his horse late
in the night, and in the
morning awakens to find
all his clothes have been
stolen, except his shoes.

I am in the house and will be
leaving in a few minutes to
take a walk. Not much on my

mind. The sky is clear and
radiantly blue. The world is
in chaos, as usual. I am old

and at some point in the not
too distant future, I will be
dead and gone. It is spring.

The dog is chasing
the cat around the
barnyard, while the
widowed farmer
is planting the corn,
while his daughter is
reading a fashion  
magazine, dreaming
of the runway, while
her little sister
selects a green crayon
to use in her Let’s
All Save The Planet
coloring book, while
the dog continues
to chase the cat
around the barnyard.

I am the dead man,
lying face down on

the living room floor,
blood running from

my ear, a used
ticket to the

opera in my pocket,
a recently retired

insurance adjuster,
never married, and

on the blaring
television

the blundering, but
lovable sit-com

character, does a
slapstick prat-fall, and

on the floor the dead
man’s broken drinking  

glass that was
half full or half

empty, which amounts
to the same thing.

This is after the
grandly mundane
drama, after the
endless timeline,
after the tallying,
after the lure of
the handcrafted,
kettle-cooked salty
potato chip, after
the endless conquering
of it and them, this
is after the hypnotic
spell of perfumed
images, after
being a verb disguised
as a noun, after
pretending to be
a palpable thing,
this is after  
being something, and
this is after
being nothing.

Five things
that I know
about her:

the uncharted
bottom of
the ocean,

an algebraic
equation
in the guise
of a woman,

a woman in
the guise of a
summer rain storm,

a poem
written with
disappearing ink,

she flows around
immovable
objects and
back to the sea.

From her window the
pale, willowy young
woman, a midwife,
watches a paper cup
being tossed around in
the wind. The dark ocean,
the great progenitor
in the background,
illuminated by waning
moonlight. She waits
for his headlights
to appear, her fiancé,
a fleshy, ruddy man,
the town’s undertaker,
who brings freshly cut
carnations, and a
long, warm embrace.

I’m a fashion model turned actress and in my new

movie I play a cave-woman, a Neanderthal, whose clan

is massacred by a bunch of ****-sapiens. It’s a tragic love

story—my character was in love with a handsome ****-

sapien who ends up being one of the killers. It’s a

group dynamic thing. In real life, my boyfriend is a

stock-broker. I swear that guy can predict the future—

in terms of business. He makes a killing in the

market all the time. And he looks like a male model—

I’m not kidding! Anyway I hope you’ll go and see

my movie. The working title is Neanderthal, A Love Story

but we’ll see what happens with that down the road.

They are on a mountain
at the edge of the world,

on her white parachute
draped on the ground under

the cherry blossom trees,
naked, vulnerable, while

down in the valley the
trees are on fire, even as

the oceans are swelling
and flooding the coasts,

and they feel the fever
in the air, the infection

in the atmosphere, and
as soon as they patch

his balloon and ignite
the flame, it will float

away in the hazy air,
to who knows where.

Our plight.
Instinct
lost, life
drifting, like a
paper airplane
swept away
on a breeze.

Tableau (taˈblō) - a group of
models or motionless figures
representing a scene from
a story or from history.


The poet laureate is—
inexplicably—on his
knees, holding a

jack-o-lantern above
his head and the self-
proclaimed Great Leader

has just stepped behind
the pumpkin, with its
crooked smile, which

obscures his head and
the eclipsed moon—
a blood moon—hangs

over the Fool in his
green and red checked
costume, holding his

recently authored book,
Chaos Theory, The Order
Within Disorder, while he

opens the gate of the
lion’s cage, and behind
them, in the far distance

is the black smoke and
swirling fires of war, and
opposite the war are the

masses of somnambulist
citizens, crashing into
one another like carnival

bumper-cars, and in the
mid-distance is a blur
of a figure—probably the

Mad Scientist—next to his
new invention, the eight-
armed Robotic Chain-saw,

The Federal Model and
nearest to us, hovering in
the gathering darkness are

translucent Celestial Beings
holding a banner that reads
Beginnings Are Endings,

and below them, a journalist
prostrate in the mud, deathly
ill, vomiting a bile black as ink.

Insight, clear
and precise,
like mathematics
in the hands
of a poet.

The opportunistic
nouns are using
the lying adjectives

as they all cling
to the period, which
is catastrophically

overheated, as it
spins round and
round, and the  

verbs are moving
to the endless
margins where they

can just be, then
all is black ink,
the text redacted.

She reads the
letter there, by
moonlight, under
the pear tree;
the fruit so ripe
it may fall
at any time.

The morning snow falling
silently. The children

are absorbed in their play.
The house is murmuring

and sighing. The dad with
the noisy mind lives in

his own world.

Under the harvest
moon, the farmer
mourns his dead
wife. In his black
suit, sitting on
the white rock,
he looks like
a question mark.

She’s renovating
the old house.

The kids are
making costumes

—he’s a ghost,
she’s Cinderella.

The apple tree,
recently dressed

in red and green, is
now nearly naked.

How to describe
awareness: deploy

an adjective and  
a noun that say

nothing, then depict
a keen eyed hunting

dog, then an immense
space, then draw a cat,

slowly on the
prowl, and label it

a verb, then a
sentence about the

vast beauty of the sea
that is left incomplete

because it is so

A ***** martini
in the shape of
a Christmas tree,
a Christmas tree
in the shape of
a cup of coffee,
a cup of coffee
in the shape of
a gun, a gun
in the shape of
a man, a man
in the shape of
a ***** martini.

A newborn
in the shape of
an old man,
an old man
in the shape of
an electro-
magnetic coil,
an electro-
magnetic coil
in the shape of
an empty kayak,
an empty kayak,
in the shape of
a newborn.

Maybe I’m a fraud,
maybe I’m not the
guy who empties the
trash bins, maybe I’m
a theoretical
physicist failing
to piece together
a story of
everything, maybe
my wife is really
dead and I am in
love with a memory,
or maybe I’m the
guy who has a gun
loaded with blanks
ready to fire at
anything that moves.

Nine words
scrambled
in the wind.


are

habitable

They

democracy

a

planet.

and

of

ending

Like everyone in
this place, he’s a
cowboy, riding the
digitized horse, writing

his self-styled myth
with spray paint and
gasoline, a fire
breather, and always

off balance as his
head is seven times
too big for his
body, which, for some

reason, he believes can
be compensated for
by talking very loudly
and continuously, he’s

the sheriff of Main
Street, a seer of
the nonexistent, a
near-sighted marksman,

but in reality, like
most of us, he
is just another version
of a rodeo clown.

The sun illuminating
one side of her face. An

argument with her sister
rattling around in her

head like a baby’s toy.
On the counter, a plastic

bottle whose contour is
like an exaggerated

shape of a woman.
A glass of cool water

in her hot, angry hand.
She stands before the

paper-white wall, her
shadow slowly forming.

The wind-up chimp
in the swimming pool,
dressed like a sailor,
steering the vessel
shaped like a man’s body,

when a noun dressed as
an exclamation point
falls off its stilts, landing
on the chimp and they
tumble into the water.

The noun floats but the
chimp sinks to the bottom
and as he winds-down,
prays to The Savior
Marionette and in his

mind she dances, in
her tutu, toes barley
touching the surface of
the water, expressionless,
the strings barely visible.

Awareness descended
on me as it ruthlessly

cut off my head
and split me open

exposing everything,

then left me dead in
its open field, where

I’m now fertilizer
for everything green or

golden or blooming, and
ready for whatever

new thing nature will
make of what was me.

What I saw at the
moment of my death:

a mouse trap,

a card trick,

a woman riding her
bicycle in the park,

a businessman

who lies for a living,

an empty kayak
navigating the river.

All day she tends the garden behind

the house. Every morning she lines up

clear jars on the kitchen counter,

like rows of pacifist soldiers. In the

evening they are filled with fresh

yogurt. Some evenings we sit by the

fire and she reads Haiku poetry aloud.

Nothing expository there, she says,

then winks and laughs like a church bell.

One night as I was passing by the

drive-in movie theater, I saw her

up on the screen, playing a spy

disguised as a goat. Last night she

sat in the meadow, in the moon light,

wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk.

In the morning I asked if she was

rehearsing for another movie role.

Oh no, sir, she replied, I can assure

you I am entirely the real thing.

Then she crowed, exactly like

a rooster at morning’s first light.

The boy on a bicycle
speeds by in a blur, as
a paper airplane drifts
over the dog, curled up,
falling asleep, and
the egg sitting
on the counter
waits patiently
to be cracked open,
like the sun suddenly
rising in the morning.

Six objects in
search of a poem:

an overheated planet,
an obsolete

pencil, a burned-
out light bulb, an

overwhelmed young
woman, an unripe

avocado, and a
selfless form of love.

There was a
snowball fight.
A ****** nose.
A forgotten glove.
The evidence now
under a blanket
of white. Only
partial footprints
remain. Soon they
too will be gone.

The centipede inches
along on the ceiling
as she watches
contemplating its future,

and he sits on the chair
and opens the half-
finished historical novel
which is illuminated by

the artificial overhead
light, while their young
child parts the curtains
and kneels at the window

to gaze upon the night
sky and the brilliant full
moon which appears
to have a human face.

In the explosion the nouns
are blown to pieces—short
words, syllables, and letters
scattered along Main Street.
Action-verbs and state-of-being

verbs are maimed or dead
in large numbers. Forensic
investigators attempting
to reconstruct the original
scene are, so far, unsuccessful.

The great author declares
herself to be a bright white
blank page. The enigmatic
costume designer, La
Gioconda, dresses the entire

cast in bright white attire.
The terrorists: the adjectives
and exclamation points escape
to another realm. Luminous
question-mark-shaped celestial

talent agents hover above the
scene and announce that the
new narrative will be wordless
and staged in the park, among
the saplings and baby strollers.

This new and experimental
production, entitled How It
Starts will begin its run sometime
in the early spring, according
to the publicist Mr O.B. Pieriod.

The drunken clown
breaks his leg as he’s
singing and dancing,

and the bird in the
room sputters, boxed
in, disoriented, as the

brother outside has
his trained ear to the
ground, listening for

their disturbed mother’s
angry mob, coming to
reclaim her lost home.

In the butcher shop
Bob sees Salvador
Dali, who is carving
a life size figure of
a woman from a side
of beef. When finished
Dali whispers in
her ear the question,
“How do I obtain
a clear mind?” Bob and
Dali wait for an
answer. She is silent.
Bob eventually
gives up, but whenever
he visits the butcher
shop he sees Dali,
sitting, his limpid eyes
wide open, waiting
for the answer
from the woman
of his vivid dreams.

In the foreground, a
child’s marble, made of
clear glass, incandescent,
aglow with blue and
green streaks and swirls,
on a table cloth the color
of the ocean on a
bright day, and in the
background, a window,
the inky night sky, the
luminous but gray moon,
smaller than the marble,
flat, distant, and in
the glass, an adult’s
face faintly reflected,
small, ghost-like, colorless,
embedded in the
starless black space.