Riddleface Mountain
is on my bucket list
of places to visit after
I die. The name

tugs at me like a pup
on a cuff. I want to hover
before it, a midair ghost;
stare into the granite,

and let it make me whoop,
delighting in the punchlines. 
I’d have that slight twinge
of regret when I guessed right

and then of how I’d beg for another,
another, squealing for more. 
At some point I know I’ll need
to float away and see the rest

of the land around those parts.
But before I do, I’ll hang suspended
before the cliffs
of Riddleface Mountain,

laughing one final time
at moments of silly human delight
as if I were a four year old
delighted by small things.

Some days
we wake up
inconsolable
atop a mountain
of bones.

We settle 
upon the summit,
snow caps waiting for
the full sun of hoped-for
summer.

If the mountain
is tall enough
we may never
melt free
and pour back down
to the green lands;

in the mountains of bones
some peaks remain
frozen forever.

A day will come
when we pass and become
bones waiting
to be grieved
and covered by those
who loved us once;

for their sake and my own
I pray I shall not end up
part of a mountain
that will never thaw.

I eat all the words in my head
as soon as they arrive.

I surge from skinny to fat then skinny again
ten thousand times a day, ten thousand times

a minute even. I’m a pulsar, not a man:
huge for a flash, then vanishingly thin again.

If they ever stop I suppose I’ll become normal.
No more extremes. No me to be found. 

1.
To have been here as long as you have
and seen so much without seeing 
how little you have mattered 
in the ways you were taught you would matter

and at the same time not understand
how instead you were of the utmost importance in small ways
to the continued spinning of this Rock
where you have lived your whole life

is to prop yourself against a grand doorframe
and insist you are in fact in the room where you truly belong
as it dawns on you that you are truly in neither room
and you’ve never lived anywhere that wasn’t Limbo

Let me assure you that you look just right standing there
Let me assure you the doorframe understands your confusion

2.
To see how bifurcated you feel 
when there is no need to stay that way
is to miss a world defined entirely
by existing under a door frame

If there’s a single God it is one with the doorframe
and not in either room on either side
You are there to be a part of that divinity 
and to be serene in seeing how all rooms are one room

If there’s no God you may do as you wish 
and move between rooms or stand between 
and if there are instead a multitude 
ask for a tour and come back to the doorframe refreshed

Let me assure you the view from there is genuine and complete
Let me reassure you that you may lean there as long as you wish

In the corner of the front yard
Siberian Iris are preparing to bloom:

flat blades, oval buds. Every year,
I imagine a ship with that image

blazoned on the sail. I am waiting for
the ship to launch — but how it will go

from solid land into deep water,
I cannot say. The iris whispers

one thing, logic insists upon 
another. It’s a mystery,

of course, how to move
from one world to the next;

how to trim the sails, 
how to set the course.

It’s not about keeping
your mouth dumb. 
Not this time.

It’s the notion
that one can speak
and should speak
a vacuum into existence
and let it suck meaning
from what’s around it. 
It does seem like
that’s how you succeed,
you know — by aiming
a void at the world
and letting the world
fill it. Think of it:

all those philosophers,
politicians, spiritual
leaders. Your teachers,
your parents: 
they spoke, you filled in
the blanks.

Some of it
was nothing but blanks:
a kid’s game gone adult.

Make it make sense
if you think
I’m wrong.
I’m cynical,
but tell me
I’m wrong.
Look at
how it’s going
and tell me I’m wrong.

Tell me something
to help me
convince myself 
I’m wrong 

and I will say out loud
that I love you
and I will promise to follow you
into this void we both know
can be filled so easily
once we refuse to accept
that we are all
most likely wrong.

Stray corn plants 
in the flower bed
from birds
who shit feeder kernels 
mid-flight;

random tomato
in an empty bed,
likely from last year’s
crop, variety likely
to remain unknown
until near harvest;

what’s this
sunflower doing here,

what even is that
growing there?

Where to begin — 
what to do with the volunteers
once you understand 
their origin; to see
how they grow,
let them stay or to
replant or cut them
mercilessly down
because they do not fit
your designs and desires.

What is this sunflower
doing here
by the front walk?

I bought
a stove top percolator
to replace my broken French press 
which replaced my messy single cup maker
which replaced
my unrepairable
12 cup programmable drip machine

People on the street
stared after me as I walked to work
as if they knew me
for an eccentric
and how I had filled the stainless steel pot
with fresh cold water
and measured the tablespoons
into the basket
as it sat upon the hollow stem
and put the basket lid on and then
replaced the top of the maker
with its glass dome 
and set it on the gas flame

How I’d waited for the first sound
of the perk and watched 
the good brown bubble up

How it smelled in the sagging kitchen air
How it tasted with my eyes closed
How I’d tried to figure out
how long since
I’d last made coffee 
in a percolator — forty years?
forty five?

Is that long enough
for this coffee to be retro? 
Am I hipster now,
Luddite so far behind
I’m now ahead?

I don’t care
I must have needed to do this
for I remembered something
about myself when 
while measuring in the coffee
I covered the hole in the stem
with my other thumb
to prevent grounds from falling in
and getting into the water
and getting into the cup

It’s the care
my father taught me
to take
when you make coffee 
in a percolator