Proof

I have devised an ingenious Proof of the Incompleteness of Man, but unfortunately it will not fit on my Wrist.

pillow

Would that I were her pillow
to cradle that sacred head
and blot away her sorrow
in blesséd teardrops shed

(2025-07-07)

 

pollutions

looking for a place to coagulate my mind

stir a steady precipitate,

form a sedimented state,

a firm cemented solid,

from elemental factors

mental extractions,

abstractions, distractions, excitations, ablations, ablutions, absolutions, dissolutions, dissipations, pollutions, collusions, illusions, diffusions, confusions

(2025-05-09)

 

 

happy places

"Go to your happy place!" they say

But my happy places all make me sad

Galleries of all I have lost

(2016-02-22)

 

 

"It's never too late to become who you were meant to be."

But my fear is that I already have.

(2016-02-22)

Grief is a Golem

No matter how fast I drive, 

I can't escape from the grief. 

it flies beside me as I travel; 

it lies beside me when I sleep. 

Grief is but one of the company of phantoms that dog me.

Grief is a golem I conjure with my own hands —

hands of desire, 

ego of expectation.

The dark highway before me

will be washed clean by the deluge of my tears,

and a dawn of understanding will break over me.

(2027-07-03)

 

Looking Back

I wonder if you ever found the note
I left in our flat in Somerville
folded beneath the sugar jar.
Beloved Aine,
I’m sure it began

(2025-07-02) 

Latent History

Take the last train out to the highest mount

Remain three days

Eat lichen and shrike eggs

Follow the flocks through the gorge of grey rocks

Trace to the source; melodize with the spring

Then you will receive word -

Latent history foretold

Abide ten thousand years til next Spring

Larksong -- too high, almost, to be heard;

Swallows swinging low over dolomite lake

And diving into cathedraline crevices

Hear the frozen mountains' tongues proclaim 

your name in the chatter of new-thawn streams 

Moraine-enciphered rumors dispelled

शृणु - Attend! La baguette du dôme céleste 

touche le bol doré terrestre!

 

Last Trip

It was a pretty successful dinner party. He had brought up several different kinds of wine from the fridge in the basement: A couple different reds, some whites, a bottle of something fizzy, and a split of sauterne. And some of the guests brought various bottles of wine as well. In the end, people pretty much just stuck with reds. After everyone was gone, and he was cleaning up, he made several trips back down to the basement with all the bottles of leftover wine. On the last trip down the basement stairs, he lost his footing –– maybe it was too much wine –– and he stumbled, and several bottles of wine broke, and some shards of glass lacerated his arms, and he bled profusely, and the wine and blood commingled in his hair as he died.

Watch Out! John is Loose in the Kitchen

Here's what happens when I cook: 

I put too much butter in the pan
and heat it until the detectors go off ...

    I dice the onion and peppers far too small ...

        I cook the pasta until it slumps into mush ...

            I sauté the veggies until they're nearly burnt ...

                I use too much cumin, thyme, and paprika ...

                    I put too much salt, and too much pepper ...

Then I boil it all

until it's tasteless 

and satisfies no one.

I Told Myself

I didn't love her.
It wasn't love.
I don't believe in love.
It was merely a deep admiration, and a bit of envy.

Yes, those were the truths I told myself
To make myself believe
But I never could believe
Those outrageous lies.

she makes me want to lay down arms

she makes me want to lay down arms 
that all the wars have been fought, and won 
that it is time to turn tilth the blood and bones 
of all the fallen yesterdays 

so, with mine own sweat my tree to nourish 
and it thereby to diversify, to edify 
to cultivate a towering silver city 
so ageless golden civilizations to flourish

I need a new set of dishes

I need a new set of dishes.

I mean, I like the old ones.  They have a nice shape,
and a nice heavy earthenware feel in my hands.
But I've had them a long time, and I've broken so many,
I can't set the table for a full dinner party anymore.
I thought they'd be more rugged!
But my clumsy old hands...
And the ones remaining are kind of scratched and dull.
They say don't stack your dishes.
Now I know why!

I need a new set of dishes.
I think I'll get Corelle this time.
It has the feel of glass, but it's virtually unbreakable.
I can fumble it
You can stomp on it
I can run it through the oven and the washer ceaselessly.

I might never feel again, but I've had enough of heartbreak.

(2014-04-04)

Ghost World

The problem is that everyone who ever cared about me is dead.

Well, not necessarily literally dead, but 
passed on into another life

Another world

A world without me in it.

But
By that measure, perhaps I'm dead as well.

Perhaps I'm the only one who's dead.

It certainly seems that way very often.

Like a ghost,
I can see the world, yet remain invisible to it

I linger near, yet can never touch

I hear, yet can never join in the laughter.

(March 5, 2014)

Ephemerescence

On the underside of my parchment skin, tissue thin,
An automatic writing slowly resolves in venous blue calligraphy

Each day that passes, each fading year,
I seem to see it ever clearer

Yet it remains asemic, unintelligible, undeciphered
A pulsing message in an alien language

Each day, I peer closer, examining
the grey traces and capillary filigrees
For some subtle sign of intelligence

Ah! my dewdrops of hope have all but evaporated

In another year, or another year,
I shall be entirely faded

Ready for His next
palimpsest

(Feb. 23, 2016)

No phoenix, my love

The house -- our house -- is a smoking ruin
Electricity's out -- no lights left, save for some random embers
I wait for dawn to go in and see what remains, what's lost, what's salvageable.
The TV - toast.
The couch is bare springs and a skeleton of blackened beechwood.
All the food in the fridge - baked.
That's ok. I can live with that loss.  
You reflect on what's really important.
What is?  What is it?
To the bedroom. Where is my wedding ring?
The dresser is a charcoal cube
An ancient altar after the annual ritual
The precious things we placed on top -- consumed
The incense of that cedar and burnished cherry
rose -- to whose nose?  What god found this sacrifice acceptable?
Fine.
What else?
I turn and survey the remains of the nuptial pyre
The scene of the sacred ceremony
Nothing lingers but a shadow
A smudge of grey, the bed ash mocks the entwined occupants 
What love lay there?
Down, down, into dust, blacked out and bedashed
No phoenix, my love
But eternally darkened cold and still. 

(Apr. 3, 2014)

My father, on leaving his home for the last time

As the orderlies wordlessly wrangled me out of my ramshackle rambler
With a rattly bang of the aluminum storm door
and a rump-bump-bump down the steps of the stoop
My deleriogenic dread of my final stop
was momentarily displaced by a fear of sliding off the stretcher
like a silenced sailor being committed to the sleepy deep.

(Feb. 27, 2016)

Longing

What painful pleasure there is
in embracing you from afar

O detestable Love
That brings to me absence
and fills me with emptiness

And satisfies my heart with longing

(May 8, 2001)

dry ice

day grows sere 
eon grows serer still

dawn draws near
eschaton draws nearer still

The Man in the Moon

That silly silent moon slowly ascends, a buttery balloon 
Its bright mellow gleam splinters my watery eyes 
Its beam like a spider-spun silvery string 
Chaining my soul to its glimmering golden bowl.
The moon is mine 
mine alone, as long as I linger in its thrall 
it breathes its clay-cold life into me alone 
and all the wide world evaporates into blind oblivion.
I am knighted, crowned, exalted, sanctified
Purified in its frosty furnace-font.
Thus emblazoned I reign over a world of one
me and my benighted moon —
La luna sordomuda mia
— that pale-haloed harbinger of monotone doom.

Exile

Behold the willows watered by thy wandering soul —
Yes, the very willows whereupon I have hung my heavy heart.
Lo, how they weep!
Oh, how wondrously wise.