Poetry


	ON THE BANK On the bank at the end Of what was there before us Gazing over to the other side On what we can become Veiled in the mist of naïve speculation We are busy here preparing Rafts to carry us across Before the light goes out leaving us In the eternal night of could-have-been

	PYTHAGOREAN JAMBOREE The astral glockenspiel quivers As our bodies align in the orbit of Venus; Galloping stallions and mares Print with their hooves, pixel by pixel, The lights and shadows of mortal life, Pink flesh for the gods’ inspection ‒ Who clap their hands together at the sight; For the heavens love the authentic peep. Whence the orbs appear to us sublunars Empty, mute, and dimly lit; While on the other side the jamboree, Abuzz with primal harmony, Fluoresces with the ecstasy of being.

	FIFTY FISHES’ MOUTHS See the plucked chicken Its throat ineptly slit Over the abattoir drain Bleeding its life away See the man running Running for his life Chased by a rabid dog The pit-bull called Eternity See the fountain gushing From fifty fishes’ mouths Various parabolas Same filthy water

	SETTLED Took the path of least resistance Ended up in this hole Snug and comfy in my circumscribed existence Sometimes, awake in bed, I look up at the moon-disc and wonder What winds are sweeping the heath now, what outlaw riders But less and less frequently

	INEXORABLE TEMPORALITY into the hopper goes the queen of hearts two-faced treachery the extra ace sighs and jubilations the tangled neurons of the scholarly head thorns and twigs the little louse and the fat king all that was born goes into the hopper and in a bloody mist spits out the woodchips of history a nice jogging trail you who lope along here later with thoughts of dinner mind what you tread underfoot The ambitious gaze of Napoleon? The cries of Latimer? Though surely the odds favor a bumpkin fart

	HISTORY A river of blood incipient in dark caves dripping from bats then out into the open winding through agricultural fields and battlefields collecting tributes a rat’s skull, a caterpillar the petal of a hyacinth widening as it goes along and picking up speed down to where we are now. And then? Maybe round the next bend Not much longer Already can be heard the murmured rumor of the final fall fall fall fall into the great turbine. If we weren’t so busy making ends meet If we weren’t so busy If we weren’t so busy doing nothing If we weren’t so busy whistling a ditty Might we not wonder: How do the blades turn? And what do they power?

	JUICY EXCEPTIONS the young ones glimmer briefly like fourth of july firework then fall to dust in the nursing home sits an old rocker all that remains are his fading tattoos smells like centenarian spirit, how low well listen up youth, here comes philosophy like a hand outstretched from the back of a limo scattering Benjamins for y’all: strut on you arrogant pricks shine on you daughters of ivy occupy your privilege like a desert garden fig-nude amongst almonds and apricots let us feast our eyes on your impudence as you slurp that rough-shelled coconut with a pastel straw

	MERCY mercy for all that hurts mercy for the puzzled stare mercy for the faceless victim the forgotten the irrelevant the ill at ease the silent pain inside is it still yesterday the cry hangs in the air the echo won’t die down crank up the volume, let the booze flow distribute the zip bags with the synthesis cosmic ravers how hard we must laugh how loudly celebrate how ravenously kiss to mute the sigh of a woodlouse

	GÖTTINGEN the rush the rush the rush the fuse that’s burning down information glitters rain of idea sparks the thing is sprinting skipping, taking off to the waiting black powder now everything is happening faster than you can think at the speed of genius at the speed of a thousand geniuses competing at the speed of a civilization-powered light beam this special time, maybe to be revisited later but not really experienced as it unfolds we can see what should be done the vase falling slo-mo to the ground but we cannot help it the signals take too long from brain to muscle we are like statues saucer-eyed witnesses to explosive fate and so it is done now it is out of our hands cast into the realm of higher forces where what will happen will happen what started as clueless curiosity everything done without purpose sheltered from moral responsibility by blindness and childishness our stupidity a little fig leaf that hides the raging erection or makes it possible to pretend we cannot see

	FHI AT OXFORD the big creaky wheel a thousand years to turn thousand meetings, thousand emails, thousand rules to keep things from changing and heaven forbid the setting of a precedent yet in this magisterial inefficiency there are spaces and hiding places for fragile weeds to bloom and maybe bear some singular fruit like the FHI, a misfit prodigy daytime a tweedy don at dark a superhero flying off into the night cape a-fluttering to intercept villains and stop catastrophes and why not base it here? our spandex costumes blend in with the scholarly gowns our unusual proclivities are shielded from ridicule where mortar boards are still in vogue

	SCARS AND STORIES All our power is gone Our time came, it went Name tags have been replaced Different mints in the drawer Their fear is gone so their love is too Though the nicest ones retain enough fondness For a two-minute chat Before some other duty calls * But don’t think we walked away with nothing We left with scars and stories And so our dream was fulfilled For all we ever really wanted Was something to say And something to leave unsaid * The grandchildren are gathered To see the scars and hear the stories But they will not sit still would rather have their own Adventures, their own scars and stories Well then let us watch them play Let them come to us with their scraped knees Let them tell us what’s what and how it’s done We will kneel down on our clicking knees And blow gently on their boo-boos And we’ll listen closely to their accounts Thus are our scars shown, our stories told And then we’ll serve ourselves the cognac

	BUBBLE ONTOLOGY Soap bubbles Big wobbly ones Smaller spheres of a sociable sort Even one inside another Immaculately conceived Thought bubbles Inflating multiplying drifting Rearranging and annexing Little rainbows of wishful thinking Enclosing gases of concern Life bubbles Reflecting what Long faces mouthing commands Secret dreams of hubba bubba Ancient purposes served at night World bubbles Foaming profusely at every seam Sideways longways always Started and restarted Editing the heavenly concordats Let’s wash the thing with love, and pray, and wait If you hold your breath and listen You may hear in the other room A lowering hiss And the question about to be asked Milk sugar lemon

	CLOUD BEING we glide on invisible rails grades of pressure and temperature filaments of gas distinctions clouds going through clouds the sunbrush how daintily it dabs our furious contours so adamantly asserted with claims upon claims and puffing cumulus pride— we bestrut our moment making from nothingness and air what was called a summer scene an hour or so before the rain
	(There is also the earlier work Synkrotron, in Swedish.)

	On the bank (2002)
	Pythagorean jamboree (2007)
	Fifty fishes’ mouths (2008)
	Settled (2012)
	Inexorable temporality (2015)
	History (2015)
	Juicy exceptions (2016)
	Mercy (2016)
	Göttingen (2017)
	FHI at Oxford (2018)
	Scars and stories (2019)
	Bubble ontology (2020)
	Cloud Being (2020)