Primeval Evasive Action in the Asphalt Jungle

mind you

(like this lone black cat stealing through dark
culvert under low bridge under construction
regarding man as clear and present danger
freezes momentarily before turning)

maneuvering way back

Resolve

Our hamlet’s unending conundrum:

If the quest to find one’s self is nothing
But tedious, bothersome, humdrum—

As some infinite jesters would have us believe—
Why does one find himself coming back

Ad infinitum?

Seer

—for Eleni, who saw it all from the start

If I still call my wife
Cassandra

After all these years,
It’s not

Because she’s foretold what will happen
Tomorrow, the next day, week, month or year—

We all know no one can do that, right?

But because when I see the incredible
Light in her eyes as she tells me

Dream after dream, I still can’t
Believe how it was

I foresaw my future.

Clean Slate

There’s nothing left to erase—
Even the eraser’s left

No trace.

After Porchia, All Over Again

All things happen in an instant—
Even when nothing seems to happen

Over a thousand instances,
It’s over

In no time at all.

Getting the Picture

How dark

Unseen forces behind that will
Color it accordingly

To how many lies remain
Exposed to the light.

A Test of Poetry: Charles Bernstein's Artifice of Absorption vs Davy Jones' Liquid Assets

Whatever the drift may have been,

I always say I am a professor of poetry, I profess poetry; think of me as a snake-oil salesman, a confidence man: I don’t want to test your accumulated knowledge; I want to convince you of the value of poetry as a method, as a way of writing, as a form of vision. . . . .

By the time it took us to absorb it,

. . . . .poetry is the ultimate small business, requiring a careful keeping of accounts to stay afloat.

We’d already been taken in.