NON SEQUITUR

I am trying.

I am really trying

to stay with you.

To stay with the diversions 

and deflections

because I think

you are taking me,

taking me some place

worth going to.

So I wait for the punch line,

for the needle in the haystack.

But they keep not coming.

And so, I finally just ask:

What’s your point?

And that’s when it comes

like a catapult, the non sequitur,

your answer that makes no sense  

given what we’ve been talking about.

It sends me flailing away

into the distance, into a mote

of confusion, from where I see,

bobbing all by myself,

a fortress that will have

no visitors today.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

I am the helium

that fills it,

the plastic

that surrounds it,

the string

that has me holding it

in the carnival

where I carry it.

I am the child in the circus,

in the Big Top.

I am all the children

that are there

with their big red balloons,

who at different intervals

let them go 

while they excitedly watch 

as they rise toward the tent’s peak,

toward its tight pucker.

There the balloons stay bouncing

against each other—against 

all that red—trying 
to get out.

I am all these things at once

if I go through the world

always thinking I’m right.

THE AUCTIONEER

Maybe the problem is…

I am trying too hard

to be the wheeler-dealer,

the go-between, the fast-talker,

the auctioneer.

Maybe I’m the wrench

in the works.

Maybe I should go

straight to prayer

to do my bidding for me.

Maybe I should ask it outright:

Prayer, how do I pray?

And if I do…

Maybe the real Auctioneer

will wordlessly answer 

and serenity will become 

my Sotheby’s.

APIARY

Just decide one day

to buy some, some

bees, and begin.

Bring them home.

Keep them.

Take them in,

into your heart, your lungs.

Become the buzzing,

let the honey be your blood.

Wake each morning and say:

I am the Beekeeper.

Today I make dreams,

honeycomed and hived.

THE STICK AND THE SNAKESKIN

Don’t keep poking at it.

Leave it be.

                                                              

It’ll turn to dust

in its own time.

The life this shed flesh

once clung to

has moved on,

you should too.

Let die in you

what needs to die.

Leave it like a rind

by the side of the road.

STRANGE PASTURE

     after Robert Rauschenberg

A taxidermist had already done his handiwork

when you came along and rescued me 

from a New York City shop window.

You cleaned me up, tended to my fleece,

married me with a tire,

daubed my snout with acrylics of many colors,

installed me at the center of a canvas on the floor

adorned with the detritus of the everyday: 
a strange pasture.

I became part painting, part sculpture.

A Combine, you called me.

An enigma open to interpretation.

Here I stand, your most famous survivor,
facing modernity like a monogram 
stitched into the tarpaulin of time.

MISALIGNMENT

We are meant to look after
our own damn selves,
to make our way through the world
standing tall, heads held high, 
strutting our perfect postures.
If we do this then
form follows function.
If we don’t and we acquiesce
to the needs and will of others–
if we let them choose our way for us—
we are like atrophied muscles
that enlist less capable neighbors
to do our heavy lifting.
And when we do our bodies
fall quickly out of alignment,
their inherent design
compromised, and balance
is only a muscle memory.