Captured Class

What a difference a definition can make

What a cake, what a day, what a beautiful bride

Picture don’t last forever and memories are always being refigured

And so the light falls on the walkway just so

And so falls an entire way of life on a particular day

Or maybe it’s a million airborne interlopers.

No room for parachutes here and no room for prayer.

Nothing for rent, nothing to borrow, and still, sea-levels rising everywhere.

What to order when one is facing down the end?

Not to fear, the world doesn’t end, they say,

But we certainly do.

And again the backup singers queuing for auditions.

And look at all of Nashville holding its breath.

If we can’t finally slip these strings, all is lost.

When the Weather Was

When the moon mists, let’s say

Or when you’re steering into the groove of a hard turn

And there are stiller truths waiting for you.

What is bad? What must rise?

I fall asleep before the visitors arrive

Again and again I’m myself all over again.

How would you have it? Whole-hearted but also quick

All the days in a pile, all the nights on a string.

It’s the sea that begets mist, begets fog, begets centuries-old sentinels.

And you, laughing in the face of any silence.

But you’re saving the best jokes for Permanence

Because all our lives are braided into the End of the World.

Every decision made as the plates shift beneath our feet

And spaces already impossibly far to cross are only getting farther.

What Address Is

Is there still life to be lived in six?

The problem in what goes back goes forth

As empty clubs lead us to lonely singers.

Italian would surely drift in at this point

If not earlier, if not the time of day

When the sun is slanting and the canals are aging

If not the weight of this life or its habits

Or the asymmetrical beneath all these symptoms.

It is the Great Uneven that brings me here

Again and again brings me to you

Leaving equations and details and derivative behind

Because before every road there was a path and before every path there was dust.

You have boots and I have boots, and we have the sun.

We’ll keep making sense just long enough. 

So Very Sonnet

A collection of birds

Keen on adventure

Imperfect mornings, clouds, considerations

Impossible motes in very real eyes

It’s something magnetic this Sunday

Peacetime artillery would require peace

But there is cake and ice cream this time

The sun’s daily retreat, no less fantastic

Carving patterns and byways and that which will be

Let more air in

Welcome restraint

Admit resting, admit error, admit joy

Skywriting my passwords over the crowded beaches of crowded seaside towns

While we huddle around the last fire on earth and make funny faces

Come Again, Please

When we circle the clouds and here we are, safe

Or open one eye after another onto a new day

The sky, a door, a season, a safe

And the intentional way we put our palms to the table

Next, participating and/or breaking bread and/or outright celebration

We’re cycling through all the times of day, here

We’re doing our best with what we’ve been dealt, here

We’re caring for the elderly around the clock, here

We’re making potatoes and making it, both

Don’t bother me with this static, it’s raining

I’m a up to my ears, but will it ever be enough?

What will we be left holding whenh the bell rings?

And so the calls for a little bit softer now

As the real begets the real-real at the end of all things

I Mean We Say Wow

At every turnstile of every subway

And all the points packed tight we call it educational

The Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta, the Babylonians, and the first guy to build a fence

Various clergy, restaurants, and battlefields

If we could can this air

If we could bottle this coffee

If we could slide into the right boat on the right night with just the right drinks in our belly

The nights we dance, the nights we hold onto

We’ve forgotten enough interesting people to field an army

We’ve smashed idols and we’ve crushed dreams

Swollen moments, several sunsets, and you’ve got all manner of livestock

That’s how it began and that’s how it will continue

A pair of pants, some good shoes, and

You’ve got it from here

All the Abilities vs. All the Days

He tells us about Kid Chaos and the end of time

This is in Japan, Present Day, give or take

It’s a thing about breathing and marks and spaces

He wraps them around his finger

You’re keeping everyone company

And there is that way people spin tops in older movies

We’re Not Quite There

How big galaxies are and how they measure them

So much heat and dust

A house and all its corners

We, one, they, all another day

Another handful of abstractions

Another discovery under the same sun

Always learning to pour forth and pour and pour and pour some more

That’s the click of a TV from the time when TVs clicked

The wood finish of a fine wood cabinet

The decades-long marriage of tubes and sound

And there we go with warmth again

There we go with evenings and evening comforts

Before the notes we’ll never finish and all that darkness

They Built Fences

We built fences

Even while we looked for a way out

And and and and and

Another night with roman candles 

Or wrapped in lonelier smoke

Gather the world around you

Skirts, sea-level, trace elements

A bag that’s a tube that risks being another fence

Somewhere someone is painting a silo

And somewhere else a silo is refusing to be painted

This is a rainy day vs. a hearty stew

This is the space between vs. the space in all things

This is all things like livestock and repetition and forgotten rules

There is a braid that brings us together, those that’ll make it and those that won’t 

These flowers in my arms, this oxygen in my eyes

The gas we’ll save when we get there

What I Meant to Say

I’m sorry I didn’t call, I fell down the steps

Background radiation in the 50s

High definition photography, 4K even

The sunset as the sun sets later and later throughout Spring

A little hop off the last step as you’re on your way

Locking the front door when you’re closing up the bar

Remembering what you forgot 10 miles into a roadtrip 

An important message in a code that hasn’t been broken

Defense making the best offense after all these years

The quiet last days of a national hero

Building a fire and wondering if this is the last good cold day for a while

Ahead Fault

Out of others

Ahead of ouch

Hellacious in address

Comportment with hands

One over the other again waiting

Count up that you’ve always forgotten

Scales plus logs plus perfect rectangles or little dogs

Even even after all

Strangely solid

Strangely shaped

Sagging some

The way it carries itself

This day, this way, this

The way it ambles nightward

No more jars

No more fireflies

One more

Focus You’ll Mean It

You’re here

You’re gone

You’ve been and you’ve been again

The thing about quartz

The thing about long afternoons and long drinks

Piled up in strings and salvage

Corners were made for turning

Deserts were made and dunes were made

Beaches reconstructed, bridges stood up

We’re disarming now

We’re ready for it