For the Deniers Who Deny Even Their Own Existence

here’s to you   so rich    a perfumed letter
left for you by your own pollution

here’s to your mailbox
barely holding on to the edge of your world
here are the rusty nails biting into its past
the long-dead wood of you    its grey pride

say goodbye to the ruin you’ve made of yourself
the world dies and you die too
say goodbye to the eden you’ve tramped into sludge
your tree of knowledge long ago stomped away
say goodbye to the deity you still think you are
it’s not a forest that’s closing in on you
it’s the solid stink of your own burnout
that’s closer to you even than your own past

enjoy the desolation of your own death
the fire of your future is more burned out than ashes
go ahead    stare    at the dust of your own non-existence

enjoy the sweet scent of this letter
that you never anticipated receiving
go where it tells you to go
just don’t take the rest of us with you

Written June 28, 2025

Elegy of Veil

em morf ta     enog from me
the dnah that had included you
hated evid the upswung dive
mid li ght cut in dim hope
dim glum mid dim exclusiasto
denepo hand held out in evident mist
tsim     cut cold hopish freeze i mraw
warm opened death     flitted horizon     grief
	so to jaw waj     iaw     mai
	maia the sight of slipping away
	dozens of uoy the time seeping
	hold fast     my gnivil friend
	deeper than this eht veil of sraet
	tears be liev this veil gone     enog
 

from Yew Nork (2014)

Flowers in the Barrels of Their Guns

brian wilson dies
trump tries to conquer l a
music continues forever

talk to the soldiers
they’re human
they like music too

June 11, 2025

The Task of the Gods

the people who fought over troy 
the troy buried under five later troys
and then dug up by a nineteenth century romantic
are safe enough to be dead now

even millennia ago they were safe enough
that when a poet codified their exploits
blind     to their terror and pain
that he had them all speaking the same language
his dialect    which none of them
had ever heard     and had them
all worshipping the same gods that he did

the same gods    that we toy with now
raise your hands    statues
if you still believe in zeus or aphrodite
raise your hands    or we’ll bury you again
under the roadways and apartment houses
that we’ve built over your ruins

zeus is a toy is a stand-in
for the power of the curses people thought he could make
i said zeus is a stand-in    the weather’s bad today
the guy who thinks he owns the country
is angry and insane    i feel a sinking quickening
of my pulse as i say this    but some young man
is looking for a woman who will make his heart
come alive for him    i have been that young man
he is not buried    aphrodite help him
please

from Trump Tics (2020)

What I'll Do Next (from quotes from Donald Trump)

it’s like in golf
i want this
every other cut wouldn’t
i will be a dictator the first day

a well-educated advantage
over starting off today
they have the actual educated
it’s no good    it’s for me

course i was for me
it’s like you make a poker game
it’s for me    interesting to me
it’s for me    then the odds
are much better    and your odds
sort of interesting to me

May 29, 2024

Schrodinger's Ears

my ears can’t decide whether they’re alive or dead
his voice flows out like the claw of a chair
being scraped against a blackboard
instead of being thrown at you outright
someone thinks that’s music    who’s the composer?
does this noise really count as composition?

i want to participate in conversation
i don’t need to listen to a dictator bloviating
or watch his buddies give nazi salutes
i want to listen to hear other people talk
appreciate other voices    then talk
even talk back

one live ear    one dead ear
one’s real       the other’s imaginary
can’t even hear myself whistle without hearing his voice
now now     he and his swastika buddies will take care of you
you know for real that both of your ears are alive
not even inert    the way he wants them

May 12, 2025

Month

it’s when the blood 
runs again in the tree
that the winter deities
born in snow
first hit adolescence

this happens every year
even though it’s april only once
that’s when it’s first april
and after that april
april’s only april again

i hate looking at myself naked in the mirror
october  october     ha ha     october
it’s really october and it’s been october
for years and years now
i don’t like the feeling
of getting used to this
october has thirty-one days to it

from Yew Nork (2014)

Aunted

thes amet ime
ha da visi on:
ah aunted
thi ckness
an dat rapdo or
   hi ding
the reis so meg hostly
du ring then ight

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Station

the cool warm beast of my youth keeps himself preserved
in a cold dark locker in the city inside my head
in the train station that disappears at dawn
with the blind automobiles of nighttime awareness
	i really feel lost without him
	as i walk the teeth of the bathroom floor
	that keep the bottoms of my feet awake

airplanes are asleep in my ears
and far under my feet is another city
where i would have wound up     brain awake
had i taken that last train i saw last night
before the streets turned to scattered marbles
and the cars shut down their lights and turned coward
	missing the train ride that continues this next morning
	along the long track 
that circles the sun and comes back to earth
	after a century of bright light and brilliance
	on its own genius journey     its own instant of eternity
	simultaneously on its start and its return
	to the beast that keeps all-night walkers awake
	in their stations of finite years and visible darkness
	in their stations of teeth cutting into footpads
	

from Yew Nork (2014)

Dawn Too Over the Medieval River

sitting wondering    smoke from his quasimodo cigarette
the battlements of paris are still around his brain
sunrise caught in their crenellations
dawn yawning and the earth turning under his feet

petrification is a long dirty road
earth dropping like dust from the rolled bottoms of his trousers
existential comfort is good for only a moment or two
then back to around the city walls     his endless pacing

the world is so nasty now that the middle ages seem like paradise
rasputin fingering the car company in his pants
the king worshipping himself as the incarnation of all gods ever
so don’t give me another medieval romance as a cure for anything
smoking your dreams is lethal    you burn yourself out
the thousands of this city    are ready for the light

Written March 27, 2025

Denly Ware

i hear them:

	sucks in abs o phorical saint
	munal soul just before it shakes hands with
	isolated     itted     denly aware of
	click     clack     prayed with after timing
	itself open in public     gument     glibly to say
	clear throat     rection     ar gue     think of myself now
	a self-delusion imagining itself in real time
	walk     walking’s free     come on over ethereal meatball
		hot city at the base of the clouds

	newly seized power from its house of wart monkeys
	mermaids and sea elephants dunking green donuts
	in one of the side fountains where dren fidently play
	a biolinguistic image of a stewed dragon projected on a cathedral wall
	a kitten carrying a barrel of water in a coffee cup

from Yew Nork (2014)

Two Kids Playing Catch

that once     as i was a kid
made no idea
the storm drain was much louder then
old age brings secrets of helicopters

to an older body     the black sky of sleep
at first draw a blue stripe at the top of the picture
the first time i went down to the subway
i hold its bones like dice in my hand

	behind grey clouds there is invisibility
	the water’s at the lip of the cup now
	then there’s green     that’s grass     at the bottom
	people waiting hardly moving for the next train
	you’ll never reach this age if you think about it
	so much space between green and blue
    
    
    
    
    

from Yew Nork (2014)

Pomp and Circumstance

i once thought of life as a play
one’s own play
with one’s seat center stage for the duration

but now i think that that isn’t true
that one’s life really is a play
that all the characters one knows are in it
that they are all in the play their entire lives
and     still     that one’s one’s own main character
but that that character is born and dies
in the middle of the third act

from Yew Nork (2014)

Another Measure of Decadence

as the blows against trump get harder
his skull gets thinner
until it’s like eggshell
    so beautiful    he thinks
    like fabargé
the romanovs 
would have been proud

from Trump Tics (2020)

Through the Dark

my mouth makes a noise:
     is it a cat?
     a child?
it creeps through a graveyard
its tongue pulling it along
     the great vacancy
     behind it
     a new kind of oblivion for the dead:

in mouth there is no rot
no bones to be dried
nothing ostentatious
even breath and eating
are from some other place

and it pulls itself along
swallowing nothing
soul's antithesis
leaving nothing
but tracks
an occasional belch
and a faint noise of invisible wheels

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)

Outside of the Bank

in the financial district      the neglected cardiologist
count the prostitutes

the executive strip club      tears too early to cry
count the prostitutes

the sterling reputation of the corner bank  
the empty middle of gold coins

the last lava shake at pompeii=s last coffeehouse
you could see from the aquarium room on the top floor of your greed
where cattle graze on their passports and entire armies are invented
where memories of trojan air raid sirens 
are the punch lines of broken condom jokes
and the men in blind grey suits     fight on their knees 
with cardboard swords and shields of woven rubber bands
where death is conceptual and sexy
and down several stories    they=ve thrown images of you
like you=d throw clay onto a wheel
and dressed the product in a bright red miniskirt
and a sign that says eat at standard oil
then pretend to give it their hearts    and yours
and give it legionary songs to be played
by quaint belching rodents inside sousaphones
and aim for the gut      it=s the biggest target

your eyes      your living room      your stuffed toy self
your memories of canyon de chelly lascaux and your childhood peter pan
your stray stuffed heart      pounding within the cotton batting
	don’t sell out
	please    world    
	don’t sell out

Subdigm

subdigm the domivert paranant

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)

1916

three a m 
the czar becomes aware that there are other russians
and of the moon     the memory of the sun
the memory of stars like insects in a field of dark wheat
he goes to the window     the stars are still there

far off in another wing of the palace 
he hears someone playing a violin
he relaxes     goes back     lies down
he didn’t know his heart was that high pitched
that it held in it the songs of peasants and children
he flexes his hand     getting his cavalry ready
he rolls onto his other side goes back to sleep

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)

Advice Column

suppose you’ve been valentine’s day for a week
looking for sunrise through the spaces
between the black bars on a bank computer form
looking for months every day for a home for news
or at least what’s rumored to be news

do it with a blanket
better than a blank bank form

do it with the smile of a laugh
better than an information dump truck

your fingers dance nude in cyberspace
even if their partners are words and numbers

don’t be part of a formal agreement
be love
be love
people are waiting for you

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)

The Eyes of the City

the eyes of the city
are not the windows
you pass on your way to the subway

the eyes of the city dwell
brightly in their own thoughts
thousands of them    all around you

you could love them
they could love you
love you without even knowing it
love you who are there with them
you    too
the eyes of the city 

The Hangman's Beautiful Children

fishing for muses     here on the subway platform
for the hangman’s beautiful children
full of wheel sharp of ankle
loose of blouse strap long of boot
and in her hands
tissue paper origami crane

bright of clothing even if her clothing’s black
eye shadow with eye flash bright within it
sinuous deep animal stride
even in the routes of his fingertips
as they cross the keyboard of a laptop
screen depth of light that can shut off in an instant

o hangman     how you envy your children
how you’d reverse polarity so that they’d
be born as dead as you’ve made yourself
how you’d bind the leather of your heart
tightly over the flesh of theirs
how you’d sew it cold without sweating

	don’t you know
	that unbound hearts beat faster
	than yours does?

		don’t you know
		they know the games of flight
		that birds in love make?

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Entranceway

the potatoes roll in through the doorway in a line
roll not walk    not quite balanced
because they’re not symmetrical 
but they’ve found out they make fries here
and they can’t stand not missing the action

the line extends past sight
going back to what was once defined as a farm
it’s rush hour    they’re going
as fast as raw potatoes can wobble
the cook’s wrists ache in anticipation
the deep fryer bubbles like a fulfilled stomach
the music roils hotly    in their heads
they dream they can dance to it
and that wealth will come to them
when they’re cooked gold and toasty

from Some Coffeehouse Poems (2022)

Sorrow Post -Trump

maybe tomorrow
the four solar appearances we’ve missed
will appear in the same sky
in the same hour

maybe tears
will become rain again

the hours you spent hurt    crunched
can fold in time to memory
with only the pain    of a cut hand
in memory to remind you

the skin of a scar is light and silvery
a road to a new firmament
where the stars show silvery and bright
each star    itself    a sun

from Trump Tics (2020)

After the Election (2028)

after the plague had passed
halloween was over

the suits of disease walked empty
no survivors wanted to fill them

streets no longer grew mad cars
and the seeds of abandoned concrete began to sprout

    see that dog?
    he’s enjoying the excitement of a walk
    so full of scents of mystery

    who owned this car?
    why are all these people so happy?
    the seeds of concrete finally erupt as sculpture
    and it’s up to dogs to figure out
   which survivor planted which one

A version of this poem appeared in Trump Tics (2020)

Style

sometimes his style of communication
gets in the way

when he says he wants to kill you
you know
you have to interpret that yourself

from Trump Tics (2020)