Something like a chance

The letter arrives on time

On time running late

Another chance chanced too faint

For a moment its so intense

A sort of peace dawns where

Anxiety would only wake

The crooked calender with missing dates

Complete and running straight

Funny its what was so demanded

Like finally getting up out of bed

Only to see that the whole place is falling

Some time ago, we walked for time

A bright Cambridge day

On that day a hundred angels

Brighter than the people

Studying on Harvard’s lawn

Blocked out all our skin

So when we looked at each other

We saw something like grace

But later, you only saw a mistake

I, wounds ready to borrow, even take

But someone once told me

All of this belongs somewhere else

Not where I am

But where I’ll be going

Please hurry then

I’ve spent so much time

Borrowed from the other day

Now the birds are flying away

From winter rooftops searching for May

 

The Cancer Tree

I don’t know what’s growing on the tree in the field

Those strange and unpleasant black protrusions

My friend, half joking, thinks its cancer

But maybe sometime a man sees the solitude of the field

And can’t help but think of the crush of traffic on the way to work

Maybe a man sees the steadiness of the world reflected in a pond

Only to be reminded of the ever changing frames of a computer screen

Do people find there way through a forest without a map

Thinking about how life’s going wrong?

Maybe its cancer after all

Growing on that tree

All the worries ever thought in this field

 

Still Tree

The morning brings rain again

But the tree remains on fire

It got cold fast these past few days

Still, I thinkI feel some heat

Through that window and across the dim living room

Coming off from that still tree

The rain falls straight down

They’ll know where to find it

The leaves fall straight down

The tree won’t ever lose them

The air has laid itself on the ground

Nothing stirs despite the storm all around

If I stare at the burning tree long enough

Will I too become still?

Stop being temporary

Will I burn fire in the rain?

Or are we all victims of the weather and seasons after all?

 

Futurology pt 2

Jesus died only once

Each time you refresh the page

Don’t blink

Or you’ll have to (tediously) move your finger again

 

Futurology pt 1

Rockets, sputniks, satellites, burning through the emptiness of space

As the night falls over autumn

 

Knowledge

As the test date approaches it seems certain

That I will not recall the sauciness of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela

The geography of Joyce’s Dubliners

The pompous tone of Austen

The things Melville wrote that didn’t end in Dick

I will not recall tales of Tubs, Green knights, or Yeomans.

All things gerund, subjunctive, and vocative will escape me

Villanelles and Sestinas will become one and none

All this and more I will utterly forget when I most need it

But I will remember this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dark+star+orchestra

 

Prognosis

Considering that I have made a solid recovery from the last year

The doctors tell me that the chances are good

That I will survive the miserable year

That I am currently preparing for myself

 

To live

Sometimes it seems like a waste

To study the lives of saints

And listen to fires in desert leaves

To believe in bread

And in the power of lambs over lions

All in order that I may live the life

Not of a patriarch or a prophet

But of a man of this world

Half ready for his coffin

 

a brief moment of intense experience, bordering on trauma

The seat heavy with thoughts

Lips strain through the glass

The world outside the still but moving glass seems closer, steadier

As it explodes in blurred movements at the call of green

Or was it red? Oh my God will we….?

Its safe. Its quiet, free of caucophony

For the moment

 

The First Day We Visited

In the field behind the cemetery

Past horse manure soaking up the summer

The grass follows the wind into the trees

Just as the fishermen followed the Galilean

If I stand and turn my head just right

There isn’t a single house, telephone pole, or road

That will remind me that people live in this world

And for just that short moment

The moment it takes for a butterfly

The color of the summer on your skin

To lift off from a flower

I can believe that there is no one here on earth

Left to go away