Everything is Fleeting

To have desire,
torn from my breast
like an eight-armed tumor
restless with all I do not burn,
feels like nothing I want to feel.

Those I cannot put my finger on:
the quivering catch in my throat;
the taste of fresh salt trickling inland
through twin valleys half mine.

When my heart swells
with space or water
and my fingertips tremble,
scarcely able to contain
what I had tried to dampen
or temper I am reminded that this.

This too.

In a Vacuum

We played fools on the screen,
gesturing toward intricacies
of human contact
through a vacuum.

All Irises In Their Own Ivory Oceans

When the sky is flooded incandescent
and the pinhole pricks
for breath give way
look up.

Focus on the unseen threads
piercing our earth
in a radiant forest
born into black,

ever unfolding across
some saturated expanse,
to bend into convex exits
empty since time's inception.

There is no message
in the waves:
a Morse Code of particles
compelled to play at order.

Take heart,
though what once
lit the lantern
may have left long ago

the body is a filament.
I exist to burn.
I burn for existence
illuminated by another iris.

Poke

What's funny about poetry



is most people don't like it.

The Youth

I saw the youth beaming,
long-haired, their pants painted on,
quoting "You've Got Mail"
and listening to CDs on a boom box
ironically. What treasures will they find
relevant, running full-circle
from bad to good? Out imperfections
unintentional ornament, cheaply manufactured
and unavailable for retail sale.

When Ice-T came on the radio,
from his Gangster Spring,
spitting rhymes about the streets,
thugging, bitches, dealing, chains,
they thought of Law and Order
and wondered what it means.