Kill not, cause no pain. Nonviolence is the greatest religion. —Mahavira I’ve been swayed to believe the guy next door is a Jain. The way he creeps upon his toes divulges all—then bounding between the ant hills like The Nutcracker ’s in his yard. His every limb’s akimbo akin to Gumby— ensuring the snails won’t have their ceilings rent like the crack before an omelette— which is a half-assed simile— since he never nudges eggs unless one’s fallen from its eyrie. I’ve spied him

Poets have missed the boat when it comes to light. Married to its speed & incandescence. Its stars & twists of time. Its trope for love & virtue. Yet its preeminent trait is silence. Decipher the stealth of Sol: its tiptoe in the woods of recumbent colours; shushing the white of winter; the green of toadless lilies— for splashing is for show-offs— like the bro who’s sporting Ray-Bans in the rain, revs his Mustang Sally so the world will hear his coming. Forgive my divagation.

why am i not the barber at the corner, snipping locks & doling sweeps to the parquet tiles? why am i not the farmer who grew the sorghum which made the fibres of the broom? why are my feet on the ottoman, while his are ankle-deep in muck & mire? why am i not the cloud that plopped the rain that effeted the ground, like a sponge that’s gorged on suds? why am i not the clerk from royal doulton, who pitched the vibrant, efflorescent motif—gunked with guacamole in the kitchen sin

Everything’s a substitution. The burrito that’s on your tray resembles regurgitation— not the one you saw in the ad. If you fell for it again, Barnum’s selling a schooner in the Mojave just for you. The Dildos hit the stage without the voice in the StubHub clip. You shelled out seven grand for seventh heaven— its rush of front-row-centre. Their tenor’s an octave lower than profondo. Makes John Lee Hooker sound like Mr. Bill. Destined for Les Acres d’Senokot. And the cousin of

Your love is like the housefly I cannot snatch. The way it squats so still upon the counter—feigning it doesn’t see me as my fingers prepare to curl inside my hand as if a hinge; baiting me with its leap, its darting aviation—like it did back when I used to use a swatter. The Swami said discard it and I did. None of this helps with you. They say that if you love then let it go. This devil doesn’t realize I would merely prop the door—mumble hang with the hummingbirds— who ne

The dark gets a bad rap. Everyone fawns for the light. Poets & the Pious are the worst— rejoice when night is over. Angels fall to its abyss. Demons crawl from out. We’ve been schooled to flinch from its embrace. We forgot its tender comfort in the womb. We pity the blind, assume they’re unable to see. They are the first to tell you there’s nothing to fear. Horror has usurped them with its guile. Black is cast as villain. Glory's always white. Darkness tells it different. I

I respond to your dour critique with poetic license. It lets me get away with much. I weave my revving coupe to the Froot Loop aisle. Upturned avocados, the smash of window slab, aren’t an issue with my privilege. Everything’s a shard in modern verse. See how well I’ve ducked it? Like lapis effing lazuli. What else can a poet spout? I taped my only Webster’s with Bazookas. The gum, not the gun. That still counts as rime. My permit makes me cleverer by the 2nd. I dabble in ob

It seems one & all will scribble of the rain— but not in the rain. I get your ink will smear. Paper will be sodden like an overzealous Scotch-Brite. Unless your poem’s called Waterlogged, that simply will not do. And unless your tale has L’Oréal— the cliché of a runny flume—you’re better off beneath our gleaming star. People are always beaming when it’s sunny. I’ve yet to see a frown within its rays. I’ve yet to see a smile in a cat & dog deluge. I doubt Noah’s barge of pets

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house. —Zsa Zsa Gabor Character is what you are inside your car. Forget that in-the- dark rubbish. It’s when you’re driving solo that you’ll cuss to kingdom come. Raise a phallic finger to the putz who’s jumping lanes as if it’s tennis; Zsa Zsa flipping husbands like she’s Century 21; then the Sunday morning clods inside their putt putt, plodding to St. Satan’s like a slug upon a sloth. Their honk if you love J

With my every endeavour you comment baby steps. It’s irksome beyond conviction. I attempt to master French, you blurt out baby steps. Rest assured, pas de bébé will be words I learn from rote. Elsewhere it’s Italian, birthing spaghettini from the scratch of semolina. I serve it past the semblance of al dente, and though you up my age—povero bambino— the condescension lingers like Romano. There’s enough on my plate already en Français. I spit the flesh of melon but not the see

The sun has gone on strike. Luna will not cross the picket line. The stars have birthed a wildcat constellation. Blue & white no longer waltz aloft. The kites are full of soot. Verdancy is pewter never scoured. Even the fish are foul. Everything is fume. The runner on third is home. Dug into her basement with the fetid. The clematis has been climbing in reverse, slumming with the moles & our decay. Someday in the stratum, they’ll wonder what we were. The reasons why we

It’s essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Poverty is an entirely human thing. Aardvarks have no ghettos. Foxes wear no rags. A den is a den is a den. Being a realtor would be murder. The cheetah doesn’t need a Lamborghini. The porcupines have balked at private jets. Their needles are enough. One might even play a Brahms concerto. My stylus has a fracture and I’ve nothing but the sparrows for

When the final pinion’s flown, of what will minstrels scribble? Huddled beneath the last arboreal, not a single leaf to rake, no water left to water. Roots like bloodless veins. When no one’s plunged in love, where will be the verse of veneration? We'll crave forlorn clichés. Where are poems of nectar after the drone of bees are stilled? The keeling strophe that’s void of any blossom? We should’ve been swaddling weeds— they were flowers & we failed to see it. The stars are

No one’s ever wrote about a grape that saves the world. Sure, in the form of pinot noir it brings me joy. Though this will hardly suffice. Due to Jesus’ Thursday lamb, it’s gifted us with chalice, in memory, shed for you. Carrots couldn’t cut it. It’s adept to gag a villain if it ever comes to that— kerplunking down a gullet. Bond has turned his nose and stuck to bullets. A bunch is Russian Roulette. Which is seeded? Which is not? Which is sweet or tart? Mother said if I sw

has not been naked since her birth. That’s not to say she bathes in her chador. But the bubbles are a screen of air & water. And they alone are worthy. From such we’re gifted life. That’s not to say a zephyr hasn’t whiffed her tawny skin. That the moth has never ventured to her breasts. For this is why they rest in white apparel. A nun from down the road will pass her by. Glossed in an obsidian sentry. Slowly going umber from the sun. Says Christ is not Allah’s. Both will d

You’ve one-upped my joke on boredom. And now my smirk has been exfoliated from my face. Sure, you’d rather watch the paint—not to dry but to chip and spall then plummet— like a corn flake to a bowl. We agree it was the dullest cereal around back in the day. Cheap because we snoozed right through our breakfast—while our dad was docked an hour for being late. Grass will grow a snippet every morning. And the swallows swoop to visit. Glidden? It takes its time to reach aridi

I gift you a book of crosswords— with all of the answers filled by a fountain pen. You deride me for frugality, for the gall of the Sally Ann, the time I gave a jigsaw, bereft of its final piece. You spent ninety days for naught; a fossil in the stratum sans a bone. But please don’t misconstrue—they’re simply not the same. Cogitate the squares—blacked out like the houses in the blitz, unwilling to yield what’s hid, a mother & her bairns behind a curtain; a doctor sawing an

When you’re a poet, you never know which strophe will be your last. It could’ve been this— had that stroke I’ve always dreaded slapped me silly. They say you slur your final words when it has hit you: see shells shesells up by the shesore. I practice it again & again. Flunking to pivot my cheek. Your body dies a minute before your brain. What to think of those final sixty seconds—and how do you tabulate time? By the scansion of the lines? No one’s ever scribed a true haiku.

The neighbour calls me Black Thumb. If you saw my drooping zinnias you’d know why. She’s never known carnations to go charcoal after rain. I call my roses thorns because that’s all they really are. Miracle-Gro’s a charlatan with a ferret beneath his hat. He might as well be a mortician. The vines upon the bricks are pretzeled bones— they’ve never held a leaf in all their life. No one mistakes my Ivy for Cambridge U. Everything reeks of death. Even the rats have fled. Begoni

is a jade-eyed middle sibling, missing Autumn’s pageant by a gale, then lingering for yuletide snow it cannot grasp, like a boy in line for Kringle or Pѐre Noël. November has no gifts—none pick All Saints’ morn over Hallows’ Eve, and memory of the fallen is the best it can bestow. We are the Dead McCrae had penned by the poppies of Ypres. A Belgic pregnant poem we call our own. The eleventh would be barren if not for the bullet of Bosnia. It is better to receive than give.