“I love poetry because it makes me love / and presents me life”
—Gregory Corso
It’s out of my hands, or
it’s all in my hands
Grace, Faith, Beauty
O hell
I’m catching light,
city elm and fir, a loose tinfoil
gum wrapper This is what there is
Not all there is All there is is so much
more improbable than all the hell
I’ll ever catch The devil
charming everywhere, and
“Dumb green hands,” my friend
always writes Such exclamatory ease
like sitting on this porch, watching
the little rectangle of tinfoil blow past a robin
and the robin never noticing
only jabbing
at the earth
I have a problem, which is not believing
people ever really change all that much
Too much muck
to be enough like weather
shifting, adjusting, being carried
by the breezes
Third cup of coffee
Silver skull on my key ring
reminding me
of Hamlet, his thinking
too much, then poof, then dust Philosophy
only matters insofar as it’s a poem, free
from the tethers of logic and reason, which are merely
ways of ordering experience, not experience giving
orders—though it does, and its orders will end us—
end me—but today I am not a pessimist
I know what “five red apples” means
in context
I know “noise annoys” yes “dumb green hands”
“little pink birdhouse nailed to a maple” I know
“thorns of life,” “no birds sing,” and “This
living hand now warm and capable”
catching the light of the people I love
The devil remains, but so also does the owl,
so also does the frost on its way to this song
Vast distances between us, Scylla and Charybdis,
I am the demon
the demon
the demon,
not evil, just mischievous, in search
of the miraculous, some new oracle
to tell me not to hurt
so I can tell you not to hurt
I want our lives to be better, not worse
