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. Failing to pivot my cheek. Your body dies a minute before your brain. What to think those final sixty seconds—and how do you tabulate time? By the scansion of the lines? No one’s ever scribed a true haiku. Tha

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.

Live is a peculiar fellow. When you meet it for the first time, you’re unsure if it’s Livv or Lyve—like bumping into Job at the liquor store, uncertain if he’s probing for employment or is drinking because he’s swathed in sores & boils. I know I cannot blame him. Alas, I have digressed. It makes it hard for a listener of this poem— hence I’ll refuse to read it in public. Of course, read is a whole new bag of worms. Reed or Red. Damn it I hate English. Even whole & hole bring

Nothing long-suffers like love. Always coming back despite her woe. Stuffing her duffel bag, stomping out the door she’ll thud behind her, loosed from rusty hinges, while she swears she’s had enough. She’ll catch a city bus outside its route, reserved for the un- consoled, one that does no favours—not for you nor Dagwood Bumstead: face half-shaved with foam, untied tie a motley anaconda—laces like some larvae yet to kiss, jouncing in their failure to be fastened, take to th

There is no lotus without the mud —Thich Nhat Hanh I never asked you for a flower. I prefer my floorboards clean. Who’s to spout what is and isn’t worth it? Spare me all your Mahayana prattle. There cannot be redemption without the blood. Now is not the moment to be queasy. Am I spared your skyward rapture if I confess my fear of flight? I’d make a lousy eagle. Hiding in the bushes with my baldness. There’s no living without a pogrom. Tell me of Treblinka, the measuring of

We’ve driven down this street for seven ages & haven’t seen them. A diamond sign that lies. Or maybe out-of-date by a country mile. Kids on Phones would be more apropos— hinting we should creep at a loris’ pace—they’ll never see us coming thanks to Apple. I’m Methuselah- enough to think of Beatles. Or maybe Eden’s garden, a sluggish serpent/snake. They’ll step in front of our Audi— every gaze is drooped—like flowers in the crack of pavement where the rain has failed to re

There’s a moment when you’re grieving you forget. It’s the quarter- second glint when you peek up at the solstice; your first banana sundae since it happened. The stain that’s on your T- shirt once you’re home— it hadn’t been washed since … You’ll catch yourself in chuckles from the sitcom in her cache— this isn’t the time for Netflix— that pang of guilt that judges with its wig: how dare you play at happy. The first time you’ll awake it’s slipped your mind— albeit for a sp

“Partly cloudy” doesn’t cut it. The sky is in one hundred thousand moods. Saying it needs Zyprexa would be meiosis. Everything’s understated. It’s pouring pups & kittens when it’s not. More like danes & seals. Have you ever heard its bark? Not the dog I mean the seal— underneath the Big Top when the circus still had creatures great & small. Big is never massive in Manhattan. We’d look like Lilliputians down in London. Of course I mean Kentucky. Its festival honours the life

Bro has got his blower out again. It rages like a Harley a mote away. I wager that he waits until I’ve tallied the final ewe before he’s revving up his demon once again. 5:55 a.m. is no man’s land. The night begets its slumber. The dawn before its yawn to cue its shift. Calm’s unwritten law & understanding. He’ll do anything to breed my aggravation. Envisages the clenching of my teeth & promptly chuckles. My dental bill’s been doubled since he moved into his hovel next to m

They say you shouldn’t snack ’n’ read. Dill and chocolate nougat, diametric. I won’t even attempt it here. There are pickles in the jar the size of swordfish. Phallic has no place within this poem. Neither fruits de mer. The Musketeers were a Triune rapiѐre. Just the thought will drive me mad at Dollar Junk. There’s a reason for confections by the cash. The fourth is but a third extraneous wheel—poor ol’ dear D’Artagnan— made it to the novel but when the candy came to call,

If elephants were as smart as you maintain, they’d have authored poetry. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson wrote they weep. Grieve a death as much as we. If so, where are the poignant elegies for their forebears? Where are their lamentations à la Job & Jeremiah? I’ve witnessed the curl of trunks, a nose up like a cobra poised to strike— but innocuous in its stead, sloshing all the children not with venom, but the spray of a water gun. They’re capable of having fun, and a memory secon

I’ve come up with a number of ways to stick it to A.I.—overload its circuits, watch it ramble for the hills without its shoes. How many waves in the ocean? Of course I mean Lake Erie. Drops in the Deshkan Ziibi? It isn’t the Thames this time. And forget about your crumpets—I’m talking Krispy Kreme. When did they up & flee the Forest City? Tell me about its ratio of trees. Speak to me of God. Anyone will do. Any one will do. Surely you know the difference— between a spire & mi

Stones have spoke of Judgement for millennia. I don’t mean the little ones you toss into the pond to hear kerplunk, hoping to startle a toad to leap mid-air. Or those you’ll cram by twos into your pocket, competing with your keys for dandling touch, as if feigning they can open any door. Stephen knew them well—jagged asteroids—in the fists of righteousness; the bill for blasphemy; levy for ever-loving whom you will— whether the Christ or whether the Kevin who lives next door