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Forgiveness Fell Onto The Floor One Day
Rolled on the carpet and stopped.
I went to pick it up,
But would it break if moved?
Forgiveness can be fragile.
Maybe I’d make things worse.
So I called my wife into the room,
She always knows what to do.
Except this time she didn’t.
“All you need to…,” she said,
But then stopped.
“I don’t know. Deal with it.”
It’s been a while now.
Forgiveness is still on the floor.

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I remember saying 
to a friend
in high school
nothing is true
which troubled me
isn’t that a truth?
he asked in response
making it even worse

for while 
it seems in the realm of possibility
that nothing is true
language can’t be made to say it
to be a speaker at all
you are committed to the existence
of at least one truth
it doesn’t seem fair
that language should so encumber the world

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1. A Decently Encouraged Eye Does Happily
2. Buckminster Fuller in a Bathtub
3. The Lethal Clumsiness of Jar Jar Binks
4. Practicing My Writerly Gaze
5. Changes in the Chin of the Chopfallen
6. The Adorable Worrying of Sally Field
7. Paraphrase isn’t a Poem
8. Penises: the Long and Short of it
9. Mind on the Sea, a Thought in the Foam
10. The Good, the Bad, and the I Don’t Care

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I miss the future maybe more than the past
what was to be and now will not
tragically gliding forward and away from us
there were happier men in that future
there was justice in that future
and most of all there was great poetry

can we bring it back forward
or is it gone forever
men will never have the character and intellect
that was to be so

being of the future
this loss cannot technically be 
a fall from grace
but being so close to realization
it feels we really did lose something
and now that wisdom, gentleness, and peace
is never to be had, or almost had, again

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four paws,
in this trap again 
are we?
let’s not begin with goodbye
you know the interesting thing
about collision– 
it’s so mutual
stop trying to right the wrongs
of law and love
the children of man
are naked and featherless
feeble and querulous
and you want to be 
Moses on a motorcycle

don’t think it isn’t a junkie fall
many wish life was 
one long blow job
but there are dimes
on the eyes of the walking
there is a poetry
to that kind of blindness
the world says no,
and all they hear is yes, yes, yes

four paws, listen to me
this net is a visible sign 
of my continued support
it’s old sad music 
always comes into major
sometimes the second chance
comes first
there are opportunities here
for a comfortable earth 
and sumptuous heaven
there is now parking 
free parking
in Jerusalem

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Turned away from heaven
I went to the underworld
But the Devil said
My company for eternity
Would be “onerous”

And that is how second hell started
I called to the cloying
The grating, the unambitiously mean
With no small pride
I say we are many

The double-parkers, the naggers,
the peg-backers.
Artists of self-pity and blame
Those that do not return shopping carts
Gossips, click-baiters,
know-it-alls, and do-nothings.
We are legion

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nobody said how boring dishes 
sitting in their cupboard would be
it all felt right and ordered for a while
the bowls were full, warm
contentment rose like vapor
from the table
and on the streets
the nods, the glances
the fellow feeling
and commerce did thrive

what would it take 
for this to be forever?
can one write a poem
for a peace that lasts?
not one written
in the bosom of strife
but a poem for peace
after years of peace.
a poem whose desire 
remains undiminished,
a poem that longs 
for what it already has.

there is a book about peace 
in the Bible
that no one ever reads
things happen for sure
but there aren’t the stakes
no plague of boils 
or a pillar of salt
peace is promised
only as a tonic 
to our worldly suffering
and that promised salvation
lasts forever
there is no book in the Bible
that hints how we might
endure this salvation.

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Jim was minus his head
and looking for something
nice to say
propped up in his bed
45° of cogency
addressing his doctor

Kate, I love
your Negro otherness
having a bird in the basement
made me rethink the day

well, he tried
as we all do
to say something honest
to be well-received
I felt a-Jim

a few hours later
Jim has found
his head 
the bubbles have
left his thought
that worries me
I am again
scared of his mouth
and its intentional offense

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looking haggard
a dream of summer shade
a body is one of those weird places
you find yourself again and again

the man on a platform
addressing a crowd
cultivates errors of speech
how dearly the lives of the dead
the early morning light on their wings

there are birds of prey
and birds of prayer
both at home
in the same yellow sky
only their beaks shaped different
the dream of shade 
versus the dream of shadow

a man and a woman
build a garden between,
a river in repose
through the valley
the locusts come to chrr
in the late afternoon

South America, a myth to itself
no place really
a span of black feathers
an iridescence
a shadow play
screened on a valley floor
circling forever
high in the Altiplano  

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I kissed his mouth 
it tasted like bananas
and thus our will 
and fate
did so contrary run

some people enjoy
verbal pleasure
and employ long sentences
letting water spill sweetly
past the lips

if a poem has no conceit
the emphasis falls
on reality: square, severe
the words now stretched

I remember Portsmouth
sleeping, the window open
and it felt like the sea coming in

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One time I got a bad case of “the man”
I started telling my poems what to do 
like I owned them
slapping stanzas on the backside
as they walked by- What? It was a joke?
My privilege got out of hand,
I was micro-aggressing every line
and messing up all the pronouns.
There were repercussions of course
a heroic couplet threatened
to cancel me and go authorless.
I hated doing it
but I had to mansplain
the nature of the poet-poem relationship
right before rewriting that couplet 
in blank verse
who uses heroic couplets anyway?
Everything’s good now.
I reflected. I read some books
the whole incident brought out the best
in this white male savior

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There was the time 
we thought we knew better but didn’t
There was the time 
our indecision made everything fall apart
There was a time
and a time after that

Once we made the powerful and brutal
more powerful and brutal
Once we lost interest
halfway through
Don’t forget the time 
we did it on the cheap,
or the time we gave them
what we thought they needed
not what they asked for

Regrettably,
there was a time
we gave them refuge
but no home
and, how did we not 
see this coming,
the time business interests
co-opted better intentions

Apologies, apologies, 
more apologies
and still there was the time
we gave them something
they didn’t know how to use
and there was that time
the worst time
we gave them something 
so precious
they killed each other for it

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Check out other work in the Bookshelf series here.

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My company for eternity

Would be “onerous”

Said the devil

And that is how second hell started

I called to the cloying

The grating, the unambitiously mean

With no small pride

I say we are many

When we meet
We always meet in Steve’s head.
I invite him over he says great
But has always forgotten something
Or remembered something
And so we are comfortable again
Inside his head.

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Dan Pharo, King of Eygpt,
lives where motley is born.
The tackle of ornaments,
Mod yeatspeare gone.
And my line?
Fill a bucket with a hole.
Catches me on the corny.
On the weary.
Crowd dearer,
if I’m the solution,
what could the problem be.
We bleed our enemies
to give them their senses,
Dan Pharo said.

I don’t care/don’t care (9)

flower of you with arrow offshot (8)

I make train the way I go (7)

those two talked, quiet on the blossom,
wise or not, of a blind spot (7)

I, error, I (6)

to gnoss is to know (6)

If you lack time, don’t (6)

I see here a trend
for the greatness you lack (6)

be that grass lies
how untrue
the importance of elsewhere
as attention removed
swan: diagonal on the water
hardly an epiphany

Poem, write!
Hands, move!
Hard to say else where
Didn’t move
Couldn’t lie in one line
Over?–no, I thought..oh well,
Swan Ted.