I’ve heard the fire department will no longer salvage felines stuck in trees. If they can climb up, they can climb down. It’s more gruelling to descend. Ask the cat that’s scaled the summit of a pole, mistaking it for a maple because of the birds. You’ll weary from his meows. Do the job yourself without a ladder— the one that feigns it’s a stairway to the heavens— looking downward from the T of rugged wood, encircled at its base by mocking neighbours, hearing come down from

It jounces on your breastbone while you dig. Fettered to your neck & all its sweat. We only consider the headstand of the line within the wheel. Never note the space that’s pieced in four. Our hand had said it first: bearing the spreading V. Five or Pax Romana. Every Caesar has his Christ he puts to death. And each utopia— sentinels on its border. Circles have no birth. Nowhere you can point to as their finish. Just like all our wars. The shot in Sarajevo? Forever toppl

An acorn in the ocean doesn’t sprout. I only say it once you’ve flung it from the shore—like a bottle with a missive yet conceived—thinking a tree could never rise up from the sand. Which is the preferable death? Being stomped on by a child’s fleeing heel? Left in a forlorn castle awaiting waves? Everything’s tsunami when you’re small. You’ll say potential opted to float its years away. The sanctity of seed. Something that the seagulls leave alone. I wonder if it’s you of

It distorts my observations: The trumpet’s blow is out and never in. Antonym to our ears. Its funnel like a mouth unwilling to listen. Canals are a one-way route. I wonder why the drums don’t have a migraine. Even with Art Blakey on the kit. Even when the cymbals send out sonar like the bats. I’m always talking baseball. Before it went electric. Charlie Mingus homered in the single time he swung. He made more money then than in a decade’s worth of stand-up. I’m talking the

The day before you die there’s nothing to lose. Not even that which channels seed. Everything’s un- shielded in the end. There’s a reason eyes & ears will come in twos— even the breasts you never had but always wanted. When they what about the nose, talk on the duality of its tunnels. Inhaling & exhaling but in tandem. The day before you die you’ll cut your laundry card in half. Leave your hamper to the mice. You’ll saunter on the speedway in the cool of your deathday suit. Y

It takes 25 tomatoes to make a single bottle of ketchup —the Internet Coffee gets the credit in the morning. There’s none to write of the cup that’s keeping caffeine in its place—enduring a thousand- plus degrees in every kiln. Its oh well if you break it. A pitiful recompense. Ditto for the glory of Bordeaux. A barrel’s just a keg for wine & powder. As if the wood had nothing better to do. Like be a cathedral for the cuckoo. Or a perch for every owl resting talons. Nesting

Deity is forever above us. Yahweh & Allah, Jehovah’s triune face, the path of Zeus and Brahma, souped amid the ocean’s doppelgänger. The sun and moon the first to grace our incense. I tell you gravity must be God— with its power to imprison, pulling down our missiles, every feathered wing that comes in pairs. Then the satellites stuck in orbit—fated to flame & plunge. And Earth is but a trifling. Long ago we trembled if an asteroid had been yanked from outer space—smashing

My prof has graded my love poem with an F. Adding a little minus just to cauterize the wound. You need to write of red without its metaphor for blood. It was a simple rope of ribbon, stuccoed to the ceiling when she left. A belt I knotted destined for my denims. Note the sag & bag of jeans. That stupid Keto diet did me in. Not the too-despaired-to-eat. The rib cage that arises with the fluxing of the flesh has nothing to do with love. I think my prof’s led a sheltered life.

You say you’d trade your sight for a pair of wings. Writing pair is so redundant. Only a dolt would barter vision for a single pinion. What benefit is flight—if you can’t make heads or tails of nature’s visage? Flip a coin unto the heavens. Accept what isn’t yours has landed prostrate in the dirt. If you'd been blind from birth, we never would have met— at the screening of King of Kings. You say it’s not the case. The deafening of your slouch in front-row-centre, to absorb

The planet was his trope: A forest fire happens when the Earth quaffs cigarettes. We’ve birthed incessant stress. Quakes are but the spasm of withdrawal. Grandpa puffed on Camels by the carton. I pondered where their second hump had gone. The tar washed down with vodka like the plume of sawed-off logs. Focus on the flume—the forlorn polar bear, its chill upon a berg that’s gone afloat—cut off from the others— and you wonder why it drinks. His daughter snorted coke because it’

Your sister Terra loved the clouds. Not the cliché of bestial shapes we think we see. Each one's there to shield. Not to occlude the sun and flare of stars. But for those who orbit the earth. When she was 10, she vowed she'd be a floating Cosmonaut— Astronaut, your mother promptly scolded. But the cosmos denoted distance, an escape to foreverland— blast the Russo-Commies. They haven’t got a patent on creation. The crew on the ISS post their panoramic views. TikTok’s good f

This website I’ve discovered is vastly sophisticated. It’s not imploring me to accept intrusive cookies —rather, crème brûlée— its outward, sugared sheen, in touch with its inner pudding. Oatmeal chocolate- chip wanted to know my every going; who I’m voting for; whether I’ve an innie or an outie. The crème brûlée inquires if I’ve ever studied Chaucer; my favourite Athenaeum; what I think of multiverse. Cookies are moiety at best; a crumbling, half-baked Mob, threateni

I’ve read squirrels are unwittingly planting millions of trees— by forgetting where they’ve buried their many nuts. We undoubtedly owe them our breath. Perhaps the ability to harken back isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Your grandfather’s unable to conjure the Legion he belongs to. Or the war in which his leg had gone astray. His prosthetic’s been misplaced. If only that meant it spawns a brand-new limb. He’ll hop into the mall when you’re away, ask the clerk if he can buy

My every chug of wine is utterly medicinal. I accept you won’t believe me. I wouldn’t buy it either. What I will buy comes swaddled in a paper bag— sheltered by the progeny of the woodland. If trees confer their blessing, who am I to differ? I’ll be completely candid— it doesn’t cure what ails me. I will still be limping to the door when FedEx beckons. Mourn my mother’s rot. Kvetch when I am worming out of bed. Oy vey is just a cultural annexation—too good to leave absconded

They say that it’s so cold here folks will gorge on ice cream to warm themselves up. It’s the kind of day a puck will feel relief— freed from being thwacked because it’s adhering to a glassy pond’s veneer, like a sucker that is stuck upon a seat— engulfed in someone’s slobber. No one’s drilling holes upon the lake, juddering with their poles like masochists. Trout are forced to bore beneath the silt, assent to muddy quilts of hibernation. And no one can bait with worms, since

There are times that the snow looks pristine enough to eat. Or possibly drink. The meta- morphosis of melt. Everything will be clean that final day. And then there are times the buds will stay clasped as a purse, unwilling to divvy the touch of maquillage; a huddled sort of beauty, like scallops in their armor, refusing the egression from a mouth— till the buntings trill their octaves to the stratus, hoisted beyond what auricles can hear— the limit of our lobes— before the

Those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. —Matthew 26:52 Sword must be the mightiest word in the world. See it for yourself: word is already contained, its double- daggered w left unsaid, mistaken for a pair of muted v— fleet-footed samurai set to slice; on tiptoes like the shrouded a in stealth. It’s the hero’s weapon of choice— unsheathed in half-a-second— the honour that it brings, a rod for Thorian bolts, epitome of Herculean effort. Conan was its servant n

In space, no one can hear you scream. In space, there is no need to. Only humans make us shriek. Well, the occasional bear and shark, perhaps. But they’re not up in the cosmos. Silence does not speak louder than any word. Silence can’t even speak louder than silence. If it could, you’d be donning earbuds in the forest, banging to Iron Maiden in order to drown the din of leaves, the streams of rock, translucence. The way a hummingbird stays aloft. We cannot make a plane that

There’s a man so attuned to the Earth, that whenever it quakes so does he. The doctor assumes it’s Parkinson’s. The priest? Seismology stigmata. Perhaps it’s empathy gone amok, juiced like Barroid Bonds. His mother thought it strange— as a boy he keeled to the carpet, as if a bullet struck him through— blubbered for dear Old Yeller till the set was off for good. He’s much too sensitive. His father will straighten him out just like an iron. It’s obvious that he didn’t— concu

My book has been in your TBR pile for an awfully long time. I notice it’s getting bumped within the queue, by that tome from Poet X— still toasty to the touch— the one you boast is a 21st-century Rumi. I get it. You said you’ll do a blurb. Posting it up on AssFace when you’re done. But Gray’s Anatomy—really? Just look at yourself in the mirror if you’re unsure where everything is. Robert’s Rules of Order would be commendable— if you actually showed for meetings. I’ve never ev