Half Open

quick before the short month ends
before memory fades vision recedes
before the next new solution arises
behold the caravan of my experience
quick while the door is still half open

already tomorrow in New York still
yesterday somewhere else reminders
that I am merely here where I was
before I am not now everything else
goes on my absent presence unnoted

Passing Beauty

shiver of mortality on a gray
morning clouds consider tears

nostalgia for forgotten dreams
hiding their secrets forever

chaos entropy void threaten
retaliation for better times

should anything be as it is
passing beauty our epiphany

Now I

I thought Uncle Mark
going out on the porch to smoke
was a sign of the tyranny of marriage
now I do it myself
without being asked

Later Better

I had something to say
if I didn't say it forgot it
if I forgot it didn't count
or came back later better

Gray Awakening

dreams disappear
when I wake up
vivid thereness
suddenly gone
irrecoverable

where have I been
unremembering
still wounded
by loves revisited
pain of missing

these the times
that try my soul
these lessons lost
unresurrected
gray wakening

Better World

is art a retreat from
whatever there is or
was or vitally part of
the seething center

is art an excuse for
doing what I like
instead of working
for the general good

I need to know if
what I choose to do
is entirely selfish or
key to a better world

In the Play

some exit never to be seen again
die offstage between the scenes
in some colonial misadventure
gone wrong his time had come
his wife unfaithful bored ready
to move on to someone better

others reappear as themselves
or as someone else in another
century symbolically speaking
we are all so terribly intelligent
if we could remember who we
were to be in the play of reality

Playing God

casting is like naming the world
playing God brings being given
names everything follows after

Perfect Poise

fun may be funner
laughter after all
arises on demand
cue the punch line
wink take cymbal

love still lovelier
if you think it is
invest whole self
give more than all
returning interest

compounded wit
tickles twitches
without a word
missed misplaced
with perfect poise

Events Unfold

every which way softly colliding
yields unpredictable complexity
nothing is surprising expect the
worst will eventually happen not
here right now we can be open
about our lives within prudent
limits while significant events
unfold on another salient level
time and macroeconomics rule

Later Still

with or without herbs the meat is rare
the weather warming or suddenly chill
the night comes on earlier or later still

whether you prevaricate or plainly tell
the story will unfold its peculiar spell
the hero rise to glory or crash into hell

so seems the subject to be rashly bare
exposed to mockery and feckless wit
if a diner's hunger were the sum of it

Thinking

don't think other people think the same
way or thoughts or about the same stuff
you don't and you might we have so much
in common but not how or what we think

about issues we probably agree I hope so

I want to hear what you think without
thinking it myself or doing what you do

each of us thinks he's right and may be
need not persuade the other to agree
what is real and matters most to each

The Doing

if this is a symbol I mean the doing then
everything is
I prefer not to think that way
let what is be
let dreams be forgotten
their work is done before we can remember
and even if we don't
or think we don't
it will all come out in plays or poems
or not
we may die first
or not bother

Ready Answers

don't tell me what I already know
ask me about my writing practice
just don't expect ready answers I
only now sense ambition's spur

instead I listen to others speak
loosely connected to my reality
I don't know what I want to ask
only partly believing their line

instead thinking it isn't like that
rather we are exactly the same
doing what we do because we do
everybody has to do something

Waking Thoughts

interesting because it exists
enough for me it's my dream
and waking thoughts about it
if I care to evoke regard them

reality is like that too if you
have nothing better to do

Hope Again

as many therapies promise hope
again the universe preempts idea

number replaces actual edibles
breathing presupposes fluid air

flight the trick of minimal mind
assumes a credible destination

who goes cannot likewise come
home a function of virtual time

Different Languages

writing is like waiting for yourself
liking may be your way of relating
way more than words tell whether
you are staying here or going away

when you do remember my name
my face having changed my body
waiting for the second shoe who's
a representative of altered reality

if two words both mean the same
they must be different languages
no one alive can fully understand
still writing comes back for more

Far Apart

untune who you were reset the temperament
to be who you want to be newer harmonies
arise from the destruction of the former self

disortions accumulate small deviations lead
far apart over time's distances errors echo
and compound thought forms not final word

who you are doesn't work forever conditions
change requiring something you hadn't seen
possible when you still were who you thought

First Round

where your bellybutton was first round
like the center of the universe unfound

finding her way to the sound of rain or
fan with a fun birthday moment or so

laughing at everything you don't cry at
good parties bad news inevitable loss

this is not the shape you were found in
preparations for whatever is to come

Choosing Less

habit excuses continued self
identity what you did before
without knowing any better

fatter duller blinder slower
therefore resolve to revolute
upon the opportunity of Lent

or earlier if occasion grants
will engaged in choosing less
without ceasing to be the same

What Is

fragments of the meaning come through
or you pretend they do not just another
person or machine the whole wintry mix
hardly just myself but everyone I know

am I the only one who feels this way if
not so what we still don't understand I
feel we should we are of this world all
made together one piece with what is

Last Gasp

show me what I missed
if it's not too late snow
hush reveals machinery
we can't exist without

maximalist pageantry
last gasp theatre missed
for a solo walk in snow
trees spurn machinery

am I being negative no
future without number
faith still resisting wow
of technical machinery

A Universal Nothing

(for Philip Seymour Hoffman)

From Cooperstown
the curtain billows past,
sighs soft songs and dust
of distant tennis scores
which no one understands,
just sitting, moving ancient toys
on patterns in the rug.

Quiet!
He is distracted
by the creaking parquet floor.

Vermilion, madder, scarlet, rose
carmine cinnabar, geranium, red
persimmon ruby, rouge cerise
lips now gone to others
kissed and needing love
we unreel reality in waves
from distant shores particular.

Now, if youu can save a piece
let the rest be silences
musical space.

Hah!
Unsatisfied?
Count the extremes,
glib, dandy worshippers
tie fruit on trees.

Be frank,
whose headache do you feel?
Is every whinny innocent?
Who's surreal?

Little radios at the beach
half heard in unknown languages
lap our darkest caress
with ripples of laughter.
Infinite curtains billow
and all the grandfathers
you can imagine
hover over spilled blocks.

The great juggernaut,
an infinite snowball, rolls
picking up everything
lifting attached poets
who run beside, crying
hanto yo, make way
make way.

—Daniel Potter

Other Memory

five minutes more fast
then slow beginning if
I so decide I'll tell you
when to put shoes on

taken off again slowly
breathe without other
memory show future
gestures indistinctly

From Beyond

now is better than never
better off later than now
are you paying attention

you will never be certain
things forever unknown
calling you from beyond

pause sufficient to think
higher than you thought
spontaneously emerging

naturally it is better now
never to be or not again
attention was rewarded

Local Conditions

the scare is there
learn to live it
gleefully poised
 
rain pattering
same as it was
local conditions

Trivial Choices

clear intention is enough
to guide the trivial choices
that constitute our lives

the haze like Sirens
makes the easy harder
the simple more complex

delusory misuse of centers
not required for interest
in present world of love

dependency on the other
part of the normal human
longing to be understood

Erasure

I don't want it to be there
so I don't see it
keep the trees and sky
erase the power lines
and everything else
erase annoying people
or make myself invisible