Following The Muse To The Ends Of The Earth

To get there, you have to 
Imagine the ends are 

There only insofar as 
Your mind can reach that far— 

In the meantime how-
Ever the means always 

Remain elsewhere. 

'Murican Oxymoron

We all wanted to be 
Proud we were 

Free—it’s the slave 
In us kept us 

Bound to be. 

Skirting The Mortality Issue

How 

Does one wait 
For a flower 

To die? I don’t 
Know but I 

Don’t want to be 
There when it does.

Endgame: Gotcha There, Didn't I?

All through 

Your topsy-turvy 
Life, more than once 
You thought 
You’d always be 
Basking in the 'eternal 

Sunshine of the spotless 
Mind' but where 
The longest day of the year 
Always turned out blotted
By the shortest 

Night. 

Demise Of The Overweening Demiurge

You kept twittering I am 
What I am, God’s gift to you 
I am so blusterously 

Brooding I think 

Said morose twits made 
Of you a blundering 
Twitching dodo, too.

Getting Comfortable With Trying To Write Like Someone Whose Poetry You Really Like

--for J.L., master locksmith


Say he’s called 
Jim (though that’s not his 
Real name) and you want 
To sound a lot like him, 

So after reading reams 
And reams of almost 
Everything he’s written, 
You try your hardest 

To unlock the mystery 
Of his poetic mastery, even 
Using many of his words 
In the same order he does, 

Though you’re extra 
Careful not to be too exact, 
Because in all fairness 
To the poem 

And to your suffering 
Self, what comes out 
Has to be yours and clearly 
Not someone else’s—how 

Else could you live with it?

Votive

After eighty harsh 
Years of living 
Off the inscrutable 
Face of the Earth, 
When it came time 

For him to leave, 
My father took 
The chiseled wrinkles 
Of the centenarian 
Olive with him.