QUESTION

How can a smoke stack
limned in sunset
suddenly seem so beautiful?
Or the pink-tendriled steam
cloud from a rooftop vent?
Or the distant, glass and steel
skyscraper, now a brief,
flame-filled skeleton,
like some pagan sacrifice
at the border of our memory,
to stave off the coming night?

NOTE TO SELF:

Careful what you look for
in the mirror. Negation vortexes
are not part of the bargain.
They’re off the table, non-negotiable.
Difficult to control when unleashed.
Buy an averted gaze, instead.
A self-taught lie. Universal patent,
pending.

SHELL GAME

Have you guessed my identity?
Of course not. I have ladled such hints
with dollops of cyanide.
Have you spun the threads of my eye net
to their logical conclusion? Of course not.
Such dramatic dividends are limited.
Have you seen me for who I am;
a smooth-faced fellow laying all his cards
on the table, just asking for the tell,
the reveal, the release?
Of course not. That’s my cover.
And who are you again?

TOTEM

This golden-flamed totem had to be
doused before he spoke; of another time,
an amoebaed past, one tendril to the next,
the smallest of touching, an uncertain
grope in a larger ocean, and there was no
talk of god, or gods, or anything,
just the busy, hard-wired communication
of filaments wavering in the currents,
who would think of nothing past
the blind brush of immediate contact.

“Greetings. I am Dr. Hayden Grace,
of the Wellspring Institute, and I’d like
to take you on an amazing journey
through the exciting field of bio-psychic
fusion technology to a radical new process
we’ve developed here, called…

CONVERGENCE.”

APPLY POMPEII DAILY!

The graven few might not have much to say,
stricken just short of the wanting urn, but I can fill in the gaps missing in mid-translation,I alone speak for the dead, outcast to memory’s
scarred and buckled edge, I alone have gained
their confidences, the exclusive interview, even
as their mouths are paved mute.

PILGRIMAGE

From your lips to god’s ears,
just the barest, stripped whisper.
From your heartbeat to the gnashing,
oil-drunk reservoirs of want,
merely a metaphor that could lend
your walk across water an extra mile
or two, your miracles stuffed and bundled
into a couple of old steamer trunks,
your budget cruise built on a pyramid
scheme of endless savings.
You, a hollow pharaoh, barely able
to cough up a decent blight or wind,
skimming off the top, never ready
to come in for a landing.