The Blue Patch

It’s like a love song
that seems happy when you’re young
and sad when you’re old.

A blue patch of sky
between luminous April
clouds rushing away.

Life’s paradoxes!
It’s cool to say that in youth.
Later, it goes with-

out saying. Still a
blue patch of sky on a cold
Spring day makes you look.

Bliss

The closest I can
come to describing the God
of apophatic

prayer—-I mean by
describing what my masters
call sin—-is the bliss

that I know in my
knuckle when I stroke the in-
sides of my cat’s ears.

That space of snap judge-
ment —- flight or fight—- but not now,
not unless I o-

ver do it and pro-
ject my stupid self onto
the cat’s true nature.

A Quiet Life

The sudden movement
kicking the covers aside
every morning.

A truer darkness
awaits the hero of your
dreams. But it can wait.

Your feet hit the cold
floor and you boost yourself in-
to the day alone.

Make the coffee. The
mere smell of it surprises
the old surfaces.

Ode

People can’t be trust-
ed. They keep going away,
you can count on that.

In Pindar monsters
eventually erupt
from under Aetna,

and it’s not pretty.
Why grieve prophylactical-
ly? Once you’re involved,

seize time by the neck
until it sings. God has no
use for time or song,

so it’s not that. Ex-
haust yourself. Take a nap. You’re
old but not that old.

At A Music

You go down, submit
yourself to the music, O.
They say Down is Up.

There’s some confusion.
Pain, too. Surprising pain, O.
Conflicted desire.

So, break it down; it
has broken you. O. Pause now
on music’s stairway.

You pass yourself on
the stairs, not recognizing
your new friend’s tattoos.

Writing Lesson

My life is a mess,
especially on paper.
I copy: ‘We are

a kind of onto-
logical love.’ I want to
say this for myself.

That’s not what it says.
It says ‘we.’ Sit with the we.
Listen to others,

the sound of their words,
the flesh they have in common—-
learn to write that down.

Try to understand
‘kind of.’ Your self is that kind.
Study your kindness.

Sex Talk

You wake alone and
think about sex and go back
to sleep if you can.

We say, ‘to sleep with’;
Plato says Want slept with More
and begot Eros.

Euphemism or
not, ‘sleep with’ covers it. Sex,
good, bad, or fake, if

rounded with a sleep,
deserves the lame epithet
recreational.