You and the progressive rock airplane that is your love 
are making the crazy leap to stratosphere
when something comes knocking on the hatch door.

It is the object of your affection,  wearing a jet pack.
She’s holding the ring you gave her in her hand.
She hurls it into the plane and swoops away.

Your crew secures the hatch behind her.
They turn to look at you,
stoic in the pilot’s seat.

How did she get up so high as to get to you?
Some questions are meant to be unanswered,
or to be incomprehensible

without a life change, or to be aged into
before answering.  It rarely matters which 
of these is true.  What matters is what the pilot does 

with the progressive rock airplane of his love 
after a rejection.  Does the pilot choose
to settle into an awkwardly worded power ballad nose dive,

or surge higher on waves of bass triplets
and Mixolydian modal guitar runs until the plane
reaches its structural limits and explodes?

You push a tear back into its duct 
through sheer strength of will.  As if in 
a coda, you head back to base.

Dawn halo behind the wind turbine
on Holy Name Hill — and 
a young buck in the fringe of the woods,
just back from the road, staring at you
seated behind the wheel.

Go home and
go back to bed, old man.
You’ve been around long enough
to know a day’s highlight
when you see it.

Taking a leaf from a new book
he will clean out his closets
and simplify his life —
take charge of his clutter 
and follow his bliss —
birth the new him
and embrace the old him —

he will end up pooled 
in the center of his bedroom floor
yet again,

clutching 
her old T-shirt

and weeping into
the definition
of his bliss.

Jonah on the blanket on the sidewalk
yelling at the passers-by
to look at his paintings and sculptures

calls them philistines
confident that few will know
what it means

however the biker
who just kicked his face does
or knows at least he doesn’t like hearing it

Jonah sobs 
as the biker picks up a painting
from the blanket

loudly admires its composition
tosses a greasy twenty at Jonah
exits laughing

Jonah wipes
his mouth
with the bill

straightens the blanket
and his wares
goes back to work

keeping an eye out
for more bikers
(just in case)

Tell me
for the love of this song
what’s this floor
we are dancing on
I thought
when I stepped into the room
it might
be a trap and I’d be falling 
through to
the basement or worse
but it’s solid
and the music makes it more so 

Tell me
for the love of this night
what the clock
is trying to say
I thought
when I took off my watch
it would
stop the night from advancing
but now
I suspect dawn’s found us
and the night
is a lamb waiting to be slain

Tell me
for the love of my love
what mister
she is trying on now
I thought
when I turned my back
she would
by her very nature follow me
but now
she’s dancing with everyone
and everyone
looks happier than me

Tell me
for the love of my name
what man
I am supposed to be now
I thought
when I got here
it all would
clear up the last questions
but now
I am forgetting eveything
and everything
looks like something I’d long ago forgotten

When presented with evidence
of an apparently effortless genius
at your chosen expertise
often you see it and fall
to your figurative knees
with what is either scream
or prayer caught
in your throat

Though you know in fact
there’s hard work behind it
you can’t see it and 
you unworthy fall to 
a state of worship and
envy

Pyramids for tens of centuries
have done this to us too
We argue about what it took
Some talk of magic or space
Others of physics and slaves
In truth we only ever
think we understand
and any view of them at all
raises mostly awe we can’t contain

Coming across a talent you can’t fathom
(as if you’d come across a pyramid
balanced on its broken tip) leads you
to supplicate and call at least within
from anger or envy upon
Deity, Nature
or Nurture
Magic
or Muse
a plea as to 
why it was not 
why it is not 
why not
you

Man, you wanna know
what’s wrong?
She’s gone and I’m
just figuring out I
was in love with her,
I swear —

Krystle,
Krystle was a cashier
at
the Walmart, 
at the Walmart
on 16, out by the new 
Ford dealership,
the one that used to be
farther out on 16 but
moved closer to town — 
yes, that one  — anyway
Krystle,

Krystle,

Krystle — 

listen, man,
stop laughing,
stop laugh-interrupting me, people
got to eat, got to work, and yeah
I’ve seen the damn website —

what you’re saying by laughing is
that you hate the people there
along with the store —

listen,
Krystle
was a friend from high school 
and I was in love with her all these years
and I just figured it out
and she just died.

I can’t tell her as something
she wasn’t.  Maybe —

no.
Man, I don’t even fucking know 
you.  
Don’t want to.
Go.

they all step away
from recent effort
saying “isn’t that the greatest thing”

a portion
then look back and say
“isn’t that the worst thing ever”

even fewer 
say “hmmm…”
and get back to work on it

how few indeed of that last fragment
look at it when they’ve finished
say “it IS the greatest thing”

and then discard it
knowing that to have perfected it
is to have reached a dead end

those few drunk on growth
are the ones whose feet
I bend to kiss

Sourdough,
good ham,
codeine.
 
A sandwich,
a sip or two…
tang on tongue;
then, relief in head.

Hanging 
in a hammock, at rest,
reluctant
to let go all my awareness
and slip under the
surface, but
I say it’s time
and vanish into
flavor, music,
thought, 
worship.

Yes,
worship:
why do you care how I get to my God?
How is my path more false than yours? 
I also break bread, sip syrup, am redeemed.
The only difference
is in the distance
to my Paradise.

Today
more than one
person (dog, cat, bird)
will leave home and
not return.  

Tomorrow,
more than one husband or wife (or lover,
mother, father, or owner) will sit
nervously on a couch, twisting its hands
in its lap, turning them over and over
in a motion not unlike that of
a kitten tumbling with a ball of yarn
in happy ignorance of how the world
kills and takes away casually, every day,

as if it were nothing —
and it is nothing,
but do not speak of that
to the nervous ones.

Today, tomorrow, or
on the day after some number
of the missing will return, and joy
and recriminations will begin,
or joy alone,
or recriminations alone, 

and some will grieve and among them
will be some of the returned
people, dogs, cats, birds
who only wanted a moment apart;

and there will be some who will not come back,
not at all,
not ever, 
because some of them will have no doubt died

while others will have stretched their moment apart
into new lives far from former lovers, spouses,
parents, or other owners.

It will be impossible for the ones left behind
to tell the difference,
impossible to explain it’s not a certain tragedy
for all concerned,
impossible to recall that the words 
“happy ignorance”
existed right up to the moment
the person 
(dog, cat, bird)
slipped away.