The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox... They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain... —from Isaiah 65:25 And the crow will fuse with starlings, learn of murmuration. Surpass us in the wisdom of the skies. Long after we have gone comes Shangri-La. There’s a reason it’s in the massifs of Tibet. Rest that comes too easy isn’t earned. Knees without a scrape? Can never fathom love. See it on the cobbles to Golgotha. T

What we pray for transcends to whom we pray. Don’t bother with a bow of head—a snowdrop’s winter slump. Fingers interlacing as a jigsaw. Kneeling in your pew? It’s not the Via Dolorosa after all. It’s there within the fire of your altar. One face meaning more than any other. Wax is not a conduit to heaven. It isn’t ease of burn— it’s the freezing rigor mortis of your sorrow. Consider tear and tear. Tell me which is mourning. Which of them has torn your supplication— in the t

You have yet to live until you’ve understood the way to live without. Mystery’s never answered without a query. Note Arthur Conan Doyle’s punctuation. One key on his Underwood worn the most. He said a blind man sat beside him, read his every line as he was typing. Recognized the patterns of the strokes. The sound of 40 gunshots. Able to solve each case—before Holmes had scribbled a shortlist in his head. You ask me why the sightless shut their eyes before they sleep. I’v

At this stage, I cannot give you chocolates in our abode. They would go fondue in a matter of minutes— the apartment at 92 degrees. Our matching fuchsia sweaters? Swollen at the waist, like a pair of stretched balloons, pregnant with the air. My belt has snapped again. Now everyone thinks I’m Amish in suspenders. My strawhat hardly helps. Blossoms would simply slump within their vase, like you by the end of cribbage. At least I stay awake, stroke your thinning hair as you ret

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground —Genesis 2:7 The ground is the humblest of creation. We give it no lauds or praise. It drinks decomposition. Feeds on grisly waste. Gods would deign to dwell; it’s why the sky is holy. It gets no gratitude. We curse the way it stains our blues & whites. Belittle its worth—call it dirt and grime. We rid it of the ice— not so it may breathe, but we won’t slip & topple. It gets a once-in-a-lifetime kiss—only when we rea

Forever is not a diamond. It’s an airy, plastic knickknack from a box of Cracker Jack. One year, there was a baking powder powered submarine. Of course, the powder wasn’t included. But love is not endowed within a ring. That part’s up to you. I’ll refrain from the chemistry lesson. The buoyancy of foam. The bubbles of CO2. The bobbing up & down— the spout of a bargain beluga that’s held its breath. I’ll spare you how I snuck into the pantry— not for cookies but for Magic. Th

I loathe this time of year. You get an extra hour’s sleep. That hardly atones for a sun clocking out at 4:44 pm. And everyone’s falling forward when they trip. Your shitty little ditty to remember has been wrong. This gift of 60 minutes comes with strings: my conscience is a brutal, drilling sergeant— not Schultz & apple strudel. It will hardly let me slumber my way to 9:30 Cap’n Crunch. It’s an hour to live again— make up for my sloth upon the sofa; scrolling through a kitte

I caught you toasting to a bygone epoch. Of carriages, titles, truffles. The manner in which we merrily bowed to betters. You’d bestow your very soul to the Prince of Darkness for a woman in lace. There in the breath of green. Blossoms on her bonnet— we’re at our loveliest when we’ve passed. Take a goggle through the forest. Google what is dense. Nature’s a mortician, too. You scream at the QR code. It’s nothing like Rossetti! Even grandmas are tattooed. Ink should be strictl

The worst thing you can do is murmur your little secrets to the Wind. It gave away my “illness” to the principal by his window—my kite became a chopper flashing lights into his office. Despite my pleading keep it below the trees. I told its fickle bluster I was going for the bleachers— a cannon shot beyond the outfield fence. Not only did it signal to the catcher— the swing I had in mind— it began to howl in the opposite direction— the shortstop had a breeze with the stunted

Mementos are the strangest things. Sunday in a sachet, Monday they're a shrine. Warded by my candles like a presidential guard. The last of the stones you gifted never skipped. The french fries from that final meal together— why you chose McDonald’s you couldn’t say— but I’ve heard they’ll keep a hundred thousand years. The pair of mismatched socks, each with a mammoth hole. It was the last time you would laugh. Toes like the heads of turtles pushing through. Now hung upon t

An hour in the gallery was more than enough for you. We only know the goldfish when the revolving door gets stuck. People watching people watching people. In the canvas or the marble or the woman pouring coffee in an urn. It seemed so sacrosanct— a place you cannot sneeze; and we pondered which was worse— the itching or the scratch with a pruning saw. Why is it only art when in museums—not the shed? The mice Automatistes. The woman on our heels, caked like Tammy Faye. Perha

You’ve come to the point where everything’s either/or: Incense up to God. Wisps from cigarettes. Either way it curls, like the tail of a Manx at play. Where else could it go? All that moves is ghost. It’s why we have to blink. Nothing to do with moisture or the dust. Your marble was a croc and not a cat’s eye. When the bully said he’d won you simply nodded, assenting to the A-bomb of his fists. You appeased like Chamberlain—they never left his side and blacked your sockets.

Every stone is different. Even snowflakes can’t compete. What does & doesn’t linger with the melt. I challenge you to find its doppel- gänger. Like a face you’ve seen on subways—then never spot again despite the birthmark on a cheek, mirroring Richard Thomas, or the crater in the visage of Dafoe. We write off scars as ghastly—yet the zenith of what survives. Just ask Joaquin Phoenix, lifted from the embers by his cleft. There are flecks upon a stone— like stars they look al

Wars have raged on every single continent but Antarctica. Our children have been murdered on every landmass— save Antarctica. Antarctica’s exempt of taxes, of shady flimflam men. Even plagues have stayed away. My dearest Emperor Penguin, your kingdom is truly bliss. Paradise is never where it’s warm but where it’s cold—and not just any kind of crisp, but the type that rimes your beard—like stalks of winter cattails poised to snap— not the Santa sort of whiskers— he’s up in t

The 555 prefix was never real. Reserved for every show & movie made. I picture my mother calling Cary Grant, or maybe David Niven in the night. I might have dialed Jaclyn Smith myself, who would have passed me off to Farrah, my saying something daft about the billowing blonde of her hair, the swimsuit on my wall, and then a tone like an electric razor, humming as if the one that’s used by Bond, ask him if he’s ever gone by Jimmy, what’s the secret to getting girls—directing m

No one else’s landscape will be exactly the same as yours. Either the water's gone downstream a micro- metre, or the rocks have aged a grain in the sands of Earth. Or maybe the Nikon you've been toting weighs you down, like a feather & a camel’s back. The caboodle will have dominoed by then. The clouds have strayed the length of a fruit fly’s wing—in your half-Planck hesitation. Your hands have quaked a magnitude minus twelve. A duck has shook her head of excess wet, a sing

I’ll stop before the start, its lines ubiquitous, knowing I can never catch my breath, no matter how it waits around the bend, faithful as an umbra under sun; or the other excuse I hold: the stench of suffered sweat, laurel of green & glory to make me itch, weaved like a crown of thorns without the thorns—defenders of the rose, inhale the waft of angels at your peril—the scratches aren’t worth it; or maybe it’s the bullet that is fired to a blameless sky—perhaps it pierced a

These are not my hands they are my mother’s. Fashioned while I floated in her grotto. A torso like Laurasia; every limb a language in its drift. They are small. They are delicate. Tender as a nurturing tongue— the soothe of her evening song. A man should not have palms so silked & supple. It’s a woman’s watch I sport around my wrist—since it’s the only one that fits. It wasn’t hers— that was entombed about her carpus in ‘89. Mine is just a thirteen- dollar knock-off. It rem

I never would have pronounced it Myeengun when I was 3. A name needed to be mono- syllabic, in the utopic “Summer of Love.” There is little I recollect— and wouldn’t—save the T of tangerine. I remember our philia—thinking it utters ally— bedfellow back in the day. There were 67 left in ’67. School is now synonymous with his death. And I bemoaned a rubber ball against my skull. Just a welt and not a crack. Bequeathed a lasting phobia of lacrosse. For the single year I knew h

Bad things come in threes has been debunked. A deuce will clearly suffice—for maleficence to unleash its ruination: the left/right dénouement— to the goblet of a boxer’s chin; the fentanyl which will follow— gulped with Whitley’s gin. The discarding of the gloves that botched the job. We thought that two had spoke of balance— the drop of the other shoe; a seesaw’s down & up; for better and— the nuthatch on the bough, tearing itself asunder, each wing off to flee their sep