but then again…

Up and down the escalator of hope and despair.

the ceremony of innocence

starts with a single clear drop, a wordless
reverberation like a clap of silent thunder 

bodiless, it can’t be conceived or heard except
as a wordless thought among thoughts

that sinks into sod, gushes into hidden springs
breaks concrete with silent menace

that evaporates into April air, to be breathed in and out
by lurking herds of wild and wordless animals

that swells polluted rivers, rushing ever south
through industrial towns stinking with silence

to find the ocean’s many mouths and tongues
ravenous for its wordless blood

and drift out to nowhere, invisible island 
where salt and sun collide in merciless silence

Spring wins

I’ve been down in the dumps, per winter, and now the earth’s movement is waking me. 

everywhere

the earth keeps shifting
inch by inch 

and here 
sun floods 

stubborn roots
loosens dirt

melts 
air and sap

wakes bulbs 
that thrust shoots 

through winter’s 
debris

everywhere 
life 

reasserts itself
despite us

Back on top for the moment

Like the weather, I think I’m a collision of beauty and terror, love and revenge.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide

recedes now into the calm breath
of a living universe, each 

atom expanding and contract-
ing with a heartbeat louder than 

love, more infinite, enduring. 
Here on the mat, molecules fall 

back into place . . . impatience, rage, 
frustration, and grief subside, settle, 

float downriver like yellow leaves 
on their way to eventual

resurrection, a string of word-
less prayers, seeds for future trees.

Grumpy gross snow day

It’s disgusting outside right now.

Mere Anarchy 

With all the ways and means we have to communicate
-- text, Google docs, f2f, IMs, class discussion, email, etc --
why do you ask me the same questions, 6 or 8
times a semester? The answer appears quadriplicate:

on the syllabus, in an email, on the freaking sign up,
in a calendar invite. I’m dizzy just reviewing it, losing
track, spinning, disintegrating, madly bringing up the
schedules, links, documents, assignments, shit!

How many times will you make me clean your electronic 
rooms? It’s right there, I bet, the info you just demanded, 
offered over a week ago, see? Lurking under ads for bionic
AI, pizza, appeals from politicians -- I’m offended

by the implication I don’t know what I’m doing. Can’t
you pay attention? Why should I be your mind and mine?
Meanwhile, my inbox explodes with redundant asks
for the same information I’ve already offloaded 4 times

into the ether. What else is the internet for? I need, like
you, to drain my brain. It’s outdated, overloaded, exploding 
into pixels and lithium fireworks. So don’t ask me to reload.
Read your email for a change. And write your own life.

Never say anything about the weather

If you don’t want the gods to spit freezing rain in your face.

The Center Cannot Hold

Never write There is        no real winter --
what gods persist.       will smite you with
their slick facsimile:        now a gluey rain

that by night will turn        bitter,
coat your budding world        bit by reaching bit
in frigid and         pedestrian pain ...

Pathetic fallacy.        Poetic shit.
Seasonal affective        disorder, happy switch
click. Boring, the usual        despair. Don’t explain.

At the polls again,         splintered
from neighbors        by invisible 
walls thrown up in       back rooms, contain

this thick sinking.        Just use it to fill in
all the proper dots.        Circle it into those button slits
in the white fabric        of human shame.

It’s poetry month

Time to blow the dust off the gray cells and dive into “poetry” again.

Trigger warning: it ain’t gonna be pretty this year. I’m grumpy.

I’m fearful, tired, downtrodden, pessimistic. I’m fighting against the tide.

Things Fall Apart

We’ve had no real winter. It’s a sign. Perhaps the earth
is cooking now with a billion evil passions,
each human cauldron sending its burning deep
into tree roots. The optimism I’ve tried

to whip up against these boiling passions
is melting now with the ice caps, flooding
under gnarled tree roots -- optimism breeds
fools, patsies, losers. That, at least, is what

the old ghosts tell me, icy breath melting 
the back of my neck. My ancestors are agitated.
Fools, they whisper, losers, craving the classical
dictators, the ruly frenzy of righteous mobs, iron fists

on the backs of hopeful necks. The dead patriarchs 
refuse to rest quiet; they won’t lie down again without 
a fight, the iron fist, an organized frenzy to end
in a cataclysm of epic proportions. 

I try to quiet their apocalyptic voices, each a
cauldron boiling the lava of fear and hatred
into a storm of cataclysmic proportions --
we’ve had no real winter. It’s a sign.