Poetry
five
Source Code
1
In that cave, each reverberation
created a semblance
in which the echoes
began to hear themselves
speak.
2
Sometimes
the rumble of a nearby lawn mower
would make her sex
give a ping.
3
Rapid eye movement.
The menace
behind sudden motion;
for a person
the meaning.
Communal
You stop to catch your breath,
dizzy, on the crowded trail,
so tired you
let the Lord in, oops!
in the form of
a fern-like conifer
undulating slowly,
each limb
drawing its own
lazy circle
in the air
from below.
Don’t worry.
He/She/They
won’t stay.
But remember your breath’s
not your own.
Knots
“Force-posture in place.”
That’s not funny!
Small dogs yip
after an ice-cream truck
circling slowly
in the asphalt melting heat.
Sasha says,
“Let’s just pretend
to be Sasha and Renee.”
No one is someone
in a dream, yet
dreams are full
of urgency.
I say,
a paradox
is like a knot;
a knot is like
a roundelay.
Picture This
Particles, whether long or short-lived,
arise from “a permanent
traveling disturbance
in a quantum field.”
But we all know that
when a disturbance
is permanent,
it no longer disturbs.
Picture a tent city.
*
One way to think about it
is as a kind of tension
rippling through space.
We know how tension
distributes itself
in a body, now
behind the eyelids,
now in the shoulders,
how it can be moved
but not removed
so that, when we suck
on our knuckles,
our neck muscles
can relax
briefly.
*
Why so tense,
we might wonder.
Did God yell “Hey!”
just once
as if testing
the acoustics?
In Passing
Perfumes, teas, and wines
are ranked
on their complexity.
People appreciate
a cryptic smile
in a painting.
Midway
between knowing best
and unraveling,
you look incredulous.
*
Now the small cloud
with the head
of a hippopotamus
has aplomb,
sitting just beneath
its shapeless gray
mother.