ALONE
Because we ate, you thought,
we sinned and
we would die
like other creatures.
*
To arrive
at an idea
as if
at a town
with long established,
if obscure,
customs.
*
Pioneer Villa Diesel
stands alone
CHIMERA
Neurons phase lock
to produce an executive
summary;
a throng of fish,
each one swerving
to avoid the rest
in perfect equanimity.
CHIMERA 2
Okay, mind
is a mackerel
bait ball.
Bigger is better.
Except what?
Except we love color
which doesn’t even exist!
It’s something we invent
without trying,
though we do quibble about it
as we do about the lives
of celebrities we’ve never met.
Red’s a slut
and purple is so self-absorbed,
so abstracted.
HOUSEHOLD
The climbing rose,
dead on one side,
half-killed by summer’s heat,
looks like a stroke victim,
though its remaining leaves
wag idly enough.
What can I say
to make things better?
Yellow “lamps”
instead of leaves?
Yellow lamps
and this stagnant haze.
Come home.
We’ll watch the debate.
IT IS
“Is” concusses.
“Is” with its
orbital rings.
Heavy drops hitting
the surface
of a pond,
one after
one,
always.
The sweet voice
of its
hollow-bodied gong
left hanging
THE ACT
1
Atoms are speech acts,
courting and shunning
like teenaged girls
at recess,
exchanging zingers.
Sans organs,
they sense each other
at a distance.
So what are your chances
of finding peace
“within?”
2
Let’s say your shtick
is to perform a version
of the trick you’re dissing,
but so subtly
that no one notices
or, when they do, nobody knows
if you “meant it”
or what you could have
meant by it.
3
“Stay in the moment.”
Find its contours,
like the walls
of your stomach,
that uniform sensation
of emptiness
experienced
as weight