Tabula Rasa

Imagine, she says,

a world without burden,

of memory, sense or skin,  

unharangued by language or history,

the leisure of the unsortable experience.

Imagine no schema more complicated

than living ever after 

the reawakening to windchimes

each morning, 

clanging beneath the cold of a smug half-sun,

the sparrow singing somewhere near,

the fog of morning on the windowsill,
and you

with no thought of what any of it might mean.

A tabula rasa shaken smooth in real-time.

No memory beyond tenderness

No future beyond wonder,

No language beyond joy.

American Celebrity Matryoshka Doll Set

What if you found yourself the third iteration

In an American Celebrity Matryoshka doll set,

Subsequent to an uncomfortably oversized Walter Cronkite,

(he himself subsequent to a colossal Shirley Temple)

antecedent to a miniature Abraham Lincoln,

his top hat sweetly settled into the absence of humanity

just below your nose, and hidden in him a secret Clara Bow

and within her a pygmiesque Donald Trump,

where follows:

At the heart of everything (your heart?) 

a miniscule King George III,
clutching an even littler 

Declaration of Independence,
laughing, laughing, laughing.

soft spot

He glances up at the robin's nest,

nestled atop the loudspeaker box,

Blue eggs scarcely visible beneath their

mother's breast, their father off hunting the

succulence of worms. He ponderously adjusts his tool belt.

'Now, if it was a starling, a swallow,

a grouse or whatever,

I'd say to hell with it,
thwack it down.

But robins? 

Well, I got a soft spot for robins.'

A poem on my birthday

I awoke on my 28th birthday worried
that I was growing older,
wasting my life and given too much
to being alone and unproductive,
wondering at the living left.
Only to read that scientists
regrew ears and hearts and soon
many other bodyparts via stem-cells,
and though our hearts may grow weary
from love, grief and loneliness,
old age may never catch us again.

Imagined my 78th, my 128th, my 888th birthday,
maybe on Mars or the Moon,
Set to hurl myself from Olympic Mons,

Or winning a match of Moonball,
my nanoheart beating
like a conquering drum.

Thus,

Retreating from retreating
into the cavern ofmy mind,
I smile at my friends
in the soft wind rustling past us
as we stand on the edge of the roof,
watching the day's last light caress the hills
and lean. over the railing,
staring down at the city growing between the trees,
feeling tall and mighty
and for the moment
infinite.

Labors

Pressure washing concrete walls,

water spraying luminous and grand,

like a waterfall befuddled by gravity.

It's almost peaceful, slowly raking smooth

the mossy islands and paint chips,

of a concrete zen garden.

Much more zen than the snorting,

guzzling machine would initially let on,

much more zen than the art of carpentry 

would seem to embrace.

Slipping between pressure washing

and the book about Aristotle

tutoring Alexander in Macedonia,

his unmoored frustration

at feeling misplaced,

reciting myths and bad science with boy-kings.

Slipping between daydreams

and the Lamentations of the Chronically Underemployed,

trying never to surrender completely 

the pleasure of anger

to the pleasant emptiness 

of the task at hand.

Jewelry

Already, 

I can hear you fretting about the cost,

but let me smile here and explain that beyond postage,

I didn't spare a dime on this. Riding the plane

home from Chicago, a man sat next to me,

(and while you know how I am about conversations

with strangers, especially lacking an escape mechanism).

We spoke nearly the whole way home, 

about Love, God,

Science Fiction, America. 

He works as a defense contractor,

designing contraptions to save soldiers in work time
designing jewelry in real time,
just to blow off steam.
Jewelry he learned to fashion 

in a sizzling Moroccan bazaar.

He gives whole sets of this jewelry away for free.

He carries thirty sets with him at any time,

gifting them to men and women 

who leave some shadow of themselves within his heart, 

folks who are kind and openhearted with him

help him to learn new things 

or who perhaps just need a lucky break,

From unsettled Saudi oil heiresses, 

to cancer-stricken stewardesses.

And now to you, through me.

On the peculiar failings of the explorers

Francisco Pizzaro was deeply bizarro,

Ferdy Magellan an irascible felon,

Vasco de Gama had a thing with a llama, 

and Hernan Cortez preferred choking on Pez,

While Chrissy Columbus grew fond of Ohio.

Mythologies

Hera threw Hephaestus from Olympus,

just chucked him right down at some Neireids 

taking a breather from collecting seahorse census data

with a vigorous sea foam battle.

The Nereids gave Hepaestus a bath 

and taught him to be kind and hard-working.

Hera threw Hephaestus from Olympus 

because he was ugly and deformed 

and there are no standards for behavior among gods

beyond being obstructively pretty and uncomfortably stupid. 

And Hera was too blind to recognize Haphaestus' mind 

For the numinous clockwork of its genius.

Hera threw Hepaestus from Olympus,

and later he turned his fecund mind to blacksmithing,

forging feet for himself and trinkets for the pantheon,
fixing the profoundly shoddy plumbing around Olympus.

And for all that, they married Aphrodite off to him as a cruel joke.

(Aphrodite, who fucked around and played footsie with Ares and made

duck-faces into reflecting pools for hours on end).

Hera threw Hepaestus from Olympus,

which turned out perfectly fine for Hephaestus,

For from the core of the earth he forged a Harley for himself

and rode off with some Neireids

To plumb the depths of every mystery the earth still offered him,
disavow the why for the how and the when,

to fashion philosophies from hammers,

and a colossal padlock for the feet of the mountain

The keys to which he pawned off 

on the first middle school he found.