All Art is Quite Useless

I ought to give my poems legs,
send them round the house at night
to kick up and swallow dust.

In the morning, when they lie
engorged and exhausted at the bottom of the stairs,
I’ll shake them out on the balcony,
stretch their letters in the wind.

For others I’ll pen a pair of hands,
shoo them out into the neighborhood.

A few will stand and point at the burning red
of the Japanese Maple leaves at the corner
of Beacon Street and Warwick Road.

Some will tug at the heels of pedestrians
until they turn and catch the last breath of a sunset.

One will skip around convenience stores
and warehouse floors
tickling everything it can get its tiny, rotund
fingers on.

For a few poems I’ll craft wings
out of stamps and glossy photo paper,
send them down the Masspike
to Mother.

They’ll flutter through the window,
perch in the oak ceiling beams
beside the dried azaleas and rusted washboard
to whisper in her ear as she scrubs
cereal bowls in the sink;

He’s okay. Eating well, not too sad.
He’ll get a job, toughen up. He’s okay

or

Your father is happy now, in heaven.
Drinking a whiskey on the rocks
(it’s allowed). Your mother will be there soon.
She knows how much you love her.
You’ve done everything you can

Better yet, the poem will land
in her twisted brown hair
while she sleeps, to murmur;

It’s okay not to know, to be scared, to be sad.

It’s okay to be sad

In the morning
she’ll stretch and scratch her elbow,
find the folded piece of paper
on her pillow, tuck it into her top
drawer and smile.

All these other poems
just sit around my room,
yawning on the radiator
or drinking in the closet.
They ruminate on death
and spurn the names of ex-lovers,
but are really all quite useless.

Milton with Mustard on his Shirt

I must know
if Monet ever sneezed,
if Melville mixed up
yours and you'res,
if Moore misplaced
her keys.

Did Shakespeare sometimes
stay in bed on sunny Sundays
snoring?

Did Whitman ever wake up
with strange wo(men) in the
morning?

Does Carson often buckle
and order awful take-out
food?

Has R. Hoyt ever burned
a song just 'cause he was in
the mood?

If you say no
and tell me that these minds
were all pristine,
that writing comes from style
and style comes from being

composed with class
and careful, that they
were never ordinary,
than I'll retire
regretfully, that's too large
a load to carry.

What a World

This evening
as I left Fulton 511
after watching a hip-hop/spoken word
performance by two men
who were born women

I met and fell for
a delightfully nervous
British woman
who had lost her red plastic
Timex watch,
and I promised to return it if found.

I wonder sometimes.

The One

Yes, I've kissed them all.
Some with tongue.

But please believe
that each kiss,
each whisper of skin upon skin,
each lip whetted upon a stranger's
was preparation for yours.

So I understand your surprise
at my lack of action
when we met today beneath
the bridge,

when I smiled with my eyes
but kept my hands
and mouth to myself,
against both of our best wishes.

To kiss you would be to keep you.
We would hold one another,
share secrets, and make love.

Eventually we would bicker
and someday even fuck.
I never want to fuck you
and I never want to be fucked by you.

Instead we didn't kiss
so you will stay forever
in my mind,
perfect, polished,
and a stranger.

Sabbatical

On Sundays, I stroll down Beacon Street
with no particular destination,
just enjoy the clear sidewalks
and overhanging trees.

Every week the monk joins me
pulling up beside my stride
somewhere between Strathmore Park
and Star Supermarket.

I don’t mind it, except
when he asks the inevitable
Have you been praying?
Have you kept the moment holy?

He always smiles
as I stammer
to explain that I’ve tried
but there’s the mail to send,
laundry to fold,
sisters to visit,
books to read,
mountains to climb,
demons to strangle,
loves to pursue

and I’ve been really busy
preparing to tackle each one.

The monk just winks,
clangs his bells
(I hate those bells)
tightens the rope
around his waist,
stays one step ahead of me.

The Universe is an Endless Pomegranate

Once all of its infinite seeds
were bundled together
at the very center
of the pomegranate.

Until o ne by o ne
they packed up and hiked off
through the thick fruit
towards the rumored rind.
Each seed picked a different direction
and they split,
unaware that the rind itself was on the move.

Now you stand alone
in what was once the very center
of the pomegranate
looking up at the night sky
and the spaces you see
are really the holes dug
by those seeds.

You can still catch glimpses
of the slower ones
twinkling with ambition.

On the Perpetual Certainty of Poems

Just as they laughed at Azophi's
crude cloud constellations
later coined the galaxies
and corrected Kepler's
widely obtuse orbits

so too will future committees
and young academics find fault
in our modern understanding
of the anatomy of quarks
and the love-hate relationship
between quasars and black holes.

But no one will ever
have proper authority
or power of fact
to correct me when I say
that your eyes burn like novas
with more color than the Cat's Eye Nebula

and no one can refute my massive
mathematical error when I say
that even though I love you
you will always be light years
away from me.