The Pressure to Deform
Monkey-see, monkey C-suite see-saws
from one wrong answer to another fresh from
the table of random numbness scrambling
to the front a font of split-second gesture toward
life-changing circumstance, not to be confused
with romance, near weeds of dubious breed
all skittery with birth self-replicating
in the surf-waft blemishing the house paint
splurged against the building by the chemistry
teacher on summer break missing his beakers,
flasks, Bunsen burners, and pipettes.
Notoriety needs an audience
reported as weight rather than number,
“a ton of people.” The inhabitants
of the home have not much in common except
the skin of the house now being touched up
to last for years of seasons, the oncoming
fall with masses of mood leaves destined to stain
the white now viewable in the momentary
sun made rich for waking hours as far from
Waikiki as a gaggle of defragged bits
disguised as one big happy fam
slammed into an ephemeral frame.
First appeared in New English Review
I Need to Be Far from You to Still Love You in that Split Infinitive Spray of Muscular Language
Why don't you join a monastery
and embrace the vow of silence,
I say to myself shelving mainstream
culture's raw culture like kefir’s constant
cloud just loud enough to interrupt
the flow of loss indigenous to worldly floss
see-through far from the sea of seedlings
with invisible names.
I tame myself by way of staves
containing the containment of unasked for
tones wracked with requisite intonation
to discard on cue. I loom to myself
I hum soon enough for the daily rooster
whose caw smarts pre-dawn across
the strangely zoned lawns and stables and barns.
If there is a hell my father never believed in,
how is it that preaching stretches always toward
over-reach like a furnace pumped with coal,
to spoil the home of all of us a ruckus constantly
trained to char the brain. How does my brain
leech from my heart and nothing within
the sense of hearing jar the otherwise polished
windows with a quake we only believe we hear
there is a tuning fork, un-blemishing every caring
year we have lodged before us as if
what light flight scents upon the even oven line
of aloneness as meditation teaches one to cry
silently and preferably not at all?
I press my temples and bask in the asking price
for health and homing, if you can imagine
a sorghum-free savoury spree of wounded words
approaching affection disguised as solitude.
First appeared in New English Review
Cavalier
I have scattered my energy around
with both pitching arms as if ashes released.
Ambidexterity is not always
a gift. Rather, a quality gone adrift.
I grew up like this: kissing fertile ground
with thanks for the harvest I am vested in.
How to locate sacredness by sitting still
remains my chore. I’m inclined to report
An accumulated list of finished chores
becomes my matrilineal score.
Morning Song
You sleep at the limit of my lungs.
I’m not kidding anymore. You snore
like a truck stop. Stop, I implore!
Per usual, I’m talking to myself.
Help myself to fiction hatched from scratch.
Excuses made to balance likely stories
with projected dream. Reams of ideas
stream across my screen. Morning impends.
The night appends a coda mismatched
with lies we tell to save ourselves from winter,
from strains of virus narcissistic as chads
that wind up deciding elections as much as
savoury self-indulgent threads of work
quirky as flirtation disguised as communion.
Odd Couplets
I never asked for your perspiration or your chops.
Living in proximity meant half dying.
The strain of impending depth perception hurt.
I blurted out nothing except on paper.
Paper mirages filled the soon full house.
Did I say home; I intended house.
You have housed my indignation at least once.
Now I spar with ghosts living and gone.
Or you might proclaim my mind hell and gone.
It’s time to set the record sugar-cured.
A third of life, already sweet with sleep.
From the rafters much unexpected upkeep.
Too much upkeep in the steep overwork.
I never asked for your perspiration or your chops.
First appeared in New English Review
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