for esme

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder 'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

--Dostoevsky

mr. beeps

one tiny note

One philosophy thinks
happiness must be
birdstyle, built
one twig
at a time.

Another thinks:
there is no nest.

So much is possible
with so little.

David sang
his song to Goliath
with one tiny note.

The Same Dumb Run

1. The bathtub is grayed at the temples.
   
2. The pigeons asleep in their chair.
   
3. Twice hideous, once loved.
   
4. A raw feeling at dinner.
   
5. Red knuckles.
   
6. The faint strains of roadwork.
   
7. Pistol whip chorus.
   
8. You speak only in striations. Obligatory turbans and you don't have to see me.
   
9. The bearded croissant.
   
10. Cleanliness rarely equaling happiness.
    
11. Along the ________ edge of my knife.
    
12. Given up to perfect hair.
    
13. An unlikely confusion.
    
14. If you believe it's the same you'll never make it.
    
15. By radiant bus drivers.
    
16. Everywhere, everywhere a peach.
    
17. Grandstanding the pipe.
    
18. From many years ago a letter.
    
19. Oh, god.
    
20. The checks inadvertently in the checkbook.
    
21. The horrendous nature of ink. Of thinking.
    
22. Four orange flowers and nothing is better.
    
23. Volumes of Tolstoy and nothing is solved.
    
24. To argue at length the proper placement of the bookcase.
    
25. The love of you never rising above my hands.
    
26. The hue.
    
27. Dogs in the doorway; don't bother.
    
28. One day we'll walk an imaginary wheel.
    
29. An ever-increasing canto.
    
30. You might be less sad if you listened to Pavarotti.
    
31. You would like to pretend there was a first time.
    
32. Do you have a favorite bird.
    
33. Is your favorite bird the one you both loved and murdered at some frequency with BB guns.
    
34. Too much fabric at the ankle.
    
35. You imagine you whistle and they hear it.
    
36. You imagine they understand.
    
37. "Fashion Coat."
    
38. Every day write down the song you'll die to.
    
39. Math for the meter.
    
40. So much discussion.
    
41. We drove in one sitting to Pittsburgh.
    
42. Between gargantuan movements of light.
    
43. Who wins whose insanity.
    
44. A more complete recollection of scraps.
    
45. The collective holding of breath.
    
46. Legs crossed and waiting.
    
47. We came upon a clearing and within the clearing lay _______________.
    
48. Oh come on. What doesn't lie within a clearing, somewhere.
    
49. Some's and every's and an's and the's.
    
50. All the power to possess it.
    
51. Drive fast in white heels.
    
52. The one bass note that will win you.
    
53. It's impossible to predict what happens next.
    
54. To make the bed or pack a picnic lunch.
    
55. We walked out into the clearing on the tips of our half-ripped shoes.
    
56. There must be a scientific term for saying very little.
    
57. There is a term, like a shirt, for everyone.
    

jurgen, jurgen, rectify torpedoes
the lack of turtledoves in your thin little world
tears popping balloons as they float upwards
coming hard gloom to surface
and then not stopping, you rose
a different dive, like the kind you drink

captain captain, stroke your movie star beard
your imaginary charming sister
who finally falls apart when she hears of your demise
your own face as the thing you wanted most
sinking in shallow water

kitten, kitten, you went down as well
chronicled
damaged film in salt water
over you, and yours

prochnow, prochnow, did you ever milk a cow
in the large hum
boys in the road scrum of your listening eyes
until the words arrive
irrelevant
dead
migrained in barracks
these are my ears, and they have a nice house