Penultimate poem!

Happy Monday.

slouches toward bethlehem

speaking of vexed: that contested strip
where nothing grows without hard labor
and now bombs rain down on schools,
hospitals, civilians scratching a living 

from desert soil. what do i know about 
that existence? by some accident, i came
to being in stunning privilege, my suffering 
firmly rooted in my mind. true, i thought, 

at twelve, we’d all be vaporized (eventually) 
into atoms, and so i developed a plan: i’d run 
straight for the center, make sure to go in that 
first flash -- not linger, dissolving into radiation. 

what do i know? the monsters revenge massing
in the shadows outside our houses? ourselves.

Sundays are for rumination

or ruination?

its hour come round at last

all of this anticipation, this breath held
waiting ... where will it end, d’you think?
some of us assume we’ll all be fired, let go
into the world’s indifference, to wander

purposeless and demeaned, begging
for scraps. others anticipate coming out
on top, in charge of the new regime,
writing themselves starring roles

in the script. a select few affect casual 
acceptance, elevating uncertainty to
a sort of static bliss. who cares? they
shrug, and smile, hands in their pockets.

all this human business and busyness,
while nature, faceless, stands at the wheel.

I can’t take a picture of the wind

So here’s a picture of my cat instead.

what rough beast

is the wind? crashing like a tidal wave through
pine forests, snapping ancient trunks in half 
like twigs, throwing roofs from houses and
crushing branches down on cars, smashing 

windows, drilling rain into nooks and crannies 
to tumble walls around us, whirling together
into fingers of destruction, plowing rows of
mobile homes into needle kindling as if

dispatching a field of dandelions into clouds
of seed. elemental roar, angry air, fuel for fire, 
water bringer and water denier, celestial broom, 
invisible fist. primal, inhuman, unstoppable.

Time to turn

Enough!

the rocking cradle

and the hand, and new beginnings, and hope —
all these i want to turn to now, before it’s too late,
instead of treading the murky rivers of anger and evil.
(re)turn to spring, rebirth, the greening grass …

promise, renewal, nature’s cyclical churning
of the eager earth. i’ll follow whitman over eliot,
dive into silky blades of grass, beautiful hair
of the resurrected dead, and pretend i’m truly

naked, wide open to the universe’s loving
energy, atoms to atoms. allow the warming breeze
to lick me clean. it might be foolish, yes,
you might call it “crazy,” but let’s face it:

the child’s mind is a treasure. it uncovers wonder
in every emerging leaf and petal,
it’s elastic, curious, it loves unconditionally,
and it explodes into blossom with every new

connection, like april’s luscious tulip trees,
glazed and shining with rain, holding their limbs
up and out to capture god’s healing breath.

A growing sense of ominous purpose

The birds are gathering to plan something.


vexed to nightmare

the birds grow increasingly restless. on my drive in,
sparrows, redwing blackbirds, and seagulls swooped
in front of my car, teasing me to plow through them.
and a brilliant cardinal paused on the rusty rail

by the side entrance to Boyle, flitting his wings and
flicking me side eye, head cocked, listening, before
flapping a few steps away into the cold gravel as i
passed. it’s as if they know something monumental

is on its way, a change to turn the balance back in
their favor. another cold snap holds us in its huge mouth,
though clear sun pours through new-leafed trees, warming
tiny chartreuse leaves into reaching fingertips. the church bell

signals the eighth hour. i’m safe, for now, in my office, though
bird chatter streams through dusty windows to find me.

Ugh.

Feels like I’m unplugged today.

twenty centuries of stony sleep

that’s what it feels like i’ve got in my head
right now, facing the blank screen. a buzzing
nothing, the color wheel of death, suspension
of the operating system. just an odd inability

to clear the current moment, to complete
the routine. i could be stuck in an infinite loop,
some typo in the program keeping me
from compiling. maybe there’s so much shit

in my brain there’s no room for more. memory
full. if this limbo wasn’t a welcome interruption
in the overheated revisions and subroutines
spun by previous updates, i’d be more alarmed.

instead, i’m going to relish this . . . . . in
the usual functioning of . . . . . to . . . . . . . . ..

The case against empathy

It’s getting hard to keep caring.

but now I know

the problem with empathy: you have to feel everyone —
even those without souls — you’re supposed to be open
to reavers who could care less about you, who shun
connection, who are poised, fingers over the buttons

that will send us all to hell, who celebrate meanness,
and bow down for garden variety dictators with death star
obedience. it’s a cold trip, inhabiting their gleeful hardness,
tasting their sour hatreds. i should be at some greasy bar,

blotting out my failure with bourbon. instead, i keep trying
to reach them, to connect, to find that infinitesimal spark
i assume they were born with, and kindle it against their dying,
against their blind determination to cut out their own hearts

and offer them in sacrifice to their plastic kings. oh my soul,
sometimes i wish i could drink you down and let them go

Rant Redux

The shit is getting old.

the darkness drops again

it’s monday and it feels like it’s always monday.
pushing a boulder uphill and hoping against hope
it won’t roll back and crush me. more late assignments
wait and of course they’ve been written by the

machine. i want to scream. to push a button and
set fire to the file, instant electronic conflagration,
explode the walls of that null set room to expose
the airless air inside. boom. but nothing i can do —

default setting these days. impotence. rage
disguised as sarcastic resignation. weary regret,
quiet quitting. this is no country for old women
or poetry or giving a shit. better to be a fake. better

to wear an embalmed smile and fill in the blanks
with unexplained 75s, machine to machine.

Paranoia D Destroyer …

Sometimes the Kinks play on repeat in the back of my brain.

moving its slow thighs

let’s return to the idea of the future --
how it hangs in front of us, sometimes
more concrete (it seems) than the moment
that defines us. i too face that specter

with welling anxiety, a semi paralyzing
fear that i thought i’d left behind with my
agonized forties. more than ever now i wonder
how i will die, and when, and why, and hope

it will be swift, crashing me from behind.
is that why more and more i think i see
a hulking presence in the corner of my eye?
it startles me, electrocutes my blood, then

spreads through me like hot ink. is this
the next chapter, or the last, stalking me?
chasing me with agonizing languor into
that future’s black body, that living grave?

Bird brain

the indignant desert birds

are nothing compared to the flocks of
canadian geese hooting and stomping by
the fox river, or tittering hordes of black
bodies in bushes that chitter scream

and wrestle, unseen, shivering branches 
like god’s voice across the parking lot. spring
brings a conflagration of feathers, a rising tide
of robins on lawns, the cardinals’ call and

response across campus, and bully crows 
shredding the house finches’ nests. if birds
are psychopomps, ferrying messages back
from the dead, whose indignant complaints

rain down from the trees? whose warnings
follow me from car to sidewalk to sagging Hall,
where empty corridors and crucifixes glow
dully, and wordless, in ancient yellow light?