One of the most
important things, to me,
I’d say. And
look
I’m sure whatever is whatever and it works
but here we are
with me and more things in life I’m learning about myself.
There’s my bedroom, the nursery and the kids’ room
And I never knew until now
the importance of sharing a hallway
but what I’ve found and look
I’m sure whatever is whatever and it works but
it feels like they may all
look the same
though they’re not. They look the same but they’re not. They all appear the same. So
when the villanelle becomes
the vignette and you stand staring down
the hallways and the
smoke bordering it. There’s no
fire.
The villanelle becomes the vignette and the complex becomes a tenth
becomes a sound of a little voice
asking for your hand
and a song
As the villanelle became the vignette became the villain in her sleep
And she needs another voice
in her head, another song to help her dream.

My dear, this dust (was laid among your feet)
Could rarely deemed a framework, period, be.
The oversaturated concrete wept
A foundation of partial tensile failure,
But all good construction, the kind that lasts
Through generations, if we get so far,
At first begins with measured demolition.

The night she told me, first, I saw your eyes.
Bespeckled hazel tones, Morrocan sand
Surrounded by an oasis of hers,
While piercing, mortally, like mostly mine.
She kissed me, fast, your lips were pursed in jest
Of eating sour citrus from my cup,
A year ago, or maybe more or less;

I wish my—I…I wish my penance could
Have been just leaving her, your tiny fingers,
The pain (I felt you almost letting go).
Instead I let it linger through a month,
Before I smelled your hair enough to grasp
At anything that kept your dimpled cheek
From disappearing altogether. Lost

Were any indications I was making
An errant brushstroke, off enough to mask
The lilting of your laugh I heard in hers
When she, and somewhere you, were in my arms
The second day, whose morning I began
The final iteratation of myself,
(But first I’d have to smother my creation).

At least attempt to prove I was deserving,
And cast my empty bottles at his toes.
I felt your lips anoint my forehead, then
She sang me twinkle while I dug my bed.
For years I tried to find the truest pitch,
and kept myself, barefoot, to busk my way
The forty-five it takes to Rotterdam.

The Epping has a stop somewhere in Rhodes; Colossus I am not, though I was saved,
By one who had some overlap of lives
When I was just a boy, and you a fish,
Or maybe more a frog, but I digress,
And simultaneously am vaulting steps…
I suddenly can’t recall how it went.

But you were there, a tangible and tangled
Knot of brain, and not of curly hair,
Though curly is an understatement now,
Before you started, naked (head at least)
Like me, and though I know it’s not the only
Variable that will keep us tied,
I hope reflections have a purposed edge

That you may shed the blights of bananas,
And learn they aren’t the only bruises left
Without the texture issue that persists,
Along with tastes and hates (that don’t exist).
And may you, like the Celtic queen who bore
You, up until we found the hull was breach,
At which point, we ascended to your whim,

Decide your worth is more than trinitite;
You will not need some blast to cut or facet
The mineral, or stone, you will become.
Should tarnish, rust, or Phoenixville alum
Find themselves at threshold out and in,
We’ll ask your mum the applicable laser,
And char them from your orbit, evermore.

If you listen carefully until the silence tugs
At heartstrings,
Or just whispers to the sky in confidence,
With patience, you may hear the sorrow,
Feel exhilaration
As it trickles through the veins of all posterity.

A certain segment of the circus we call
History
Has been assigned the task of keeping track
Of all those things that haven’t easy passage
To the concrete and sequential.

Love, and hurt, and loss, and endless worry.
Heartbreak, death, abandonment, betrayal;
These are life’s immutables,
Though they lend weight and mass to every
Cleansing breath.
No measurement exists to tally up
Collective sum of all the mortal coils.

So all this serves as an apology,
An affirmation for the poet’s craft.
His calling to give voice and record to
The essence of humanity’s parade.

Read any poem and feel the chill of death,
The hollow song of absolute regret.
Or turn the volume up and hear the bass -
Anticipation warming up the blood.
The heat of all the treble and the strings
May overwhelm the brass or tame the drums.

Something divine runs through the length of verse.
So that all poetry is just the same,
As any other while it stays distinct
And offers testimony to but one
While paying homage to the core of all
The family of man and woman too.

Let everyone experience, in awe
The subtle genius punching at these chords
Whose brevity is only overwhelmed
By overwhelming unintelligence.
To wit is fine, to wither, yours, more apt,
As fleeting as it is, its stain persists
And fogs the broken mirrors of my day.

What point did poetry become the medium
Of blighted conciousness with which the dumb
Lead blindness like a bellows to the hearth
With flippant, trash bin, faux-intelligence.
Has mediocrity a gravity?
Something pulls the loathesome to your voice,
And concentrates stupidity by gallon.

You’ve got them by the ears, now loose your chirp!
You’ve got them by the eyes, so add some flash?
You’ve got them coming back and digging in
Like dogs atop a concrete block for bones.
So piss your nothings, scream your blackened tones
In time there will be no more collars here.

You’ve gotten here, a flea, on shoulders less.
Illiterate corpses call your verse “a mess.”

If matter lasts forever and its energy endures,
A piece of Caesar, one of them,
May march right through your pores.
If not an Emperor of Rome,
Then one a bit obscure.
The largest point – is anything
Quite ever truly yours?

I think this covers why it is that simple folk prevail.
Within the scope of character
A hero wags his tail.
Or maybe its resistance swells
When bravery goes pale.
Regardless, in our marrow
Flows the willingness to fail.

Let’s face it: some things precious override the risk of death.
Those things you cannot live without
If nothing else is left,
Are worth the time and effort;
Every single, painful breath
Is justified by righteous pride.
Rewards come after Death.