Equation

Hunger is a variable or hunger

is a given. Let time

equal patience. Let patience equal

anything but virtue unless you are Chaucer in which case anything

but vertu engendred. Let the flowers

just be over there. I have forgotten

what goes on the left and what on the right side

but I remember

the equals sign goes in the middle.

Atlas of the Opaque

 North of the House:

From a distance the lights

  looked slightly surreal but as one (read: I) got closer the artifice

became apparent. The music, or soundtrack of any sort, was not

  just inadequate but entirely absent. A few people awkwardly dressed milled about;

     a few occasional halfhearted woohoos

            drifted…

You may have surmised I was not impressed.

You may have surmised I would rather

            dance in the kitchen than eat my dinner hot anyway.

I had, however, removed the wasp nest and seen two owls take flight.

The day was completed if not complete.

Oh, reminiscence. How I haven’t missed you.

(because I neglected)

            

because I neglected to look

at the illustration when I would have been instructed I imagined

the image instead and what I saw

was alive

itself

there was no shelf, no wall, and the green

was green and the yellow was yellow and there

were eyes, I knew

a different bird and a different boy

because I skipped this instance like a stone skips

over water

oh, I have not become accustomed

to headlights and sirens

still bring an odd relief that I need not respond

because I neglected to respond

what’s gone is not gone

but is somewhere inaccessible

this brightness must dissemble

because I grasp like a reproduction of the original

like a stone, yellow and green

like a different boy and a bird

like sirens (you decide what kind)

calling

(the world as we know it)

The world as we know it

   is always ending

and

  the way to manage a project is the opposite

    of the way to live

fully

The world is always ending and it is therefore

   always beginning again

Nothing comforts me