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At The Axis
Of Imponderables
God sits eating
popcorn watching
the soap opera.
Here,
the dent in the pillow
left by my wife’s
head.
There,
the bird trapped
in my ceiling
who flew in a vent.
My cat sits
staring at nothing
in the corner. Maybe he sees
what I can’t—
my guardian angel chewing
a piece of
rawhide,
twitching? Last night I loved
her lips,
nipples, skin,
worshipped at the altar of flesh
searching for the
map buried
where X marks the spot.
Oh where are you
now, dead father,
today this link in a long chain
of etceteras?
Could you be watching,
telling God pass the cheese puffs
as I stick my
head out the window,
looking at sky, wondering
is this the
chick’s view from inside a shell?
For We Are Not Meant
to
understand the architecture of wind,
how leaves shudder touched by the invisible
causing us to pause a moment, inventing
in the mind a reason for the silent,
obscure clamoring inside our body’s cave
as branches bend, barely noticeable,
and
the moon peels its skin allowing us
to imagine a lover, naked,
paralyzed by desire. We are not meant
to penetrate the mystery of fireflies,
sexual twitching dots of living, dying,
reminding how alone
are
all things languishing over what
they can’t know swirling around
like breath, the unsayable, the unsaid,
half-spoken, muted, scraping the cheek
like the kiss from a ghost.
At This Moment
someone dies on the brink of happiness,
his true love finally found,
the world showering success;
Meanwhile,
color is the blood of objects
pouring out of them,
passion is indifference
with a knife to its throat.
I study the bald guy's head
sitting in the bus in front of me,
tiny blood vessels, sun spots
working together like a map
of Brazil.
Maybe all the sadness everywhere
is God playing dead so we'll give Him
mouth to mouth.
Maybe all He wants is a kiss.
The
bald guy gets off at a stop
leaving me to look at the air
where he sat.
We occupy space like a lover
then leave it.
The
bald guy's head is somewhere else,
I'm here.
(It occurs to me nothing could be more profound).
In
how many waiting rooms do people
put down magazines in the middle of articles
they're reading because their name is called?
In
whose mind as a memory do I dance?
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