Assumptions of Omnipotence
God is everywhere, they say, so why not
kissing the dice in your hands,
arm around your neck, guiding the fall
of a grown man in a feather boa
just enough that he avoids a fractured pelvis,
taking the wheel or the traffic light
so your commute is that much easier. I mean,
you deserve it, you dropped a nickel in the basket
& God remembers. His mind is like a bear trap,
which is why He tips the neck of his beer a tad
before drinking it, setting it on the coaster,
which is really a miniature cloud,
as He kicks back & digs a thumb in his arch,
maybe even swears when the angels can’t hear Him.
They’re always thundering in & asking
when He’ll get back out there
—the brave ones, the ones with nerve.
When trying to fall asleep, I like to imagine Him
catching up on paperwork. I remember that
I, too, am a father—36 trillion cells
capable of what seems like an infinite amount
of worry, painfully aware that I can’t control everything,
which I guess is why I pray, why I look tired
in so many photographs. Love does that.
Sacrifice. Being everywhere all at once
must be exhausting. I imagine even ethereal
beings have limits, which might explain why
every time God catches praise,
there’s a bullet going so fast, He misses it.
On the Disassembly of Dreams
My wife goes missing on a hike, then
my kids, then the lambent stars & Saturns
on their ceiling, the laptop, the smartphone
& miscellaneous gadgets, TV, a half-eaten jar
of peanuts, sad ties drooping in the closet
by the moth-eaten shirts & shoes & dresses,
which also disappear, as the shingles unhinge
& fling toward the horizon, the sheet rock
turns to snow & the studs tip over like a train
of dominoes, with the last one falling at my feet.
But it doesn’t end there. I’m disfigured,
blinded by the blistering sunlight,
with a sinking feeling that I’ll have to start
all over again, unforgivably late,
& not a soul on Earth will recognize me—
Damn, my therapist says, that’s bad alright,
closing his notes like a coffin.
the problem with everything, especially poems
is u have to sit through all that gooey bullshit
about the world & love & blah blah blah
& just nod like ur taking it in.
everywhere u go: the supermarket,
the principal’s, they all seem so damn cheery
all the time—it’s enough to make u sick.
all those smiles plastered on their faces
like I don’t know they’re fake, salty, like
thank u Mr. So-&- So, so nice to see you
& ur basic house & ur basic car
& everyone’s selling a ten-minute miracle,
including probably him in some office downtown
they say I can possibly, one day, maybe fit into
like there’s a recipe for turning this whole world
into something edible, marketable, slathered
in lip gloss & some disgusting perfume
that would send me to the hospital if it didn’t
snatch away my breath & make me all wobbly-
kneed, especially on the girl from third period,
but it’s more than just her, it’s debilitating,
& I know ur supposed to be vulnerable
in these things, so I’ll admit that after
my neighbor’s suicide, I thought about it
for a minute, how sad u’d have to be,
& I don’t really hate the world that much,
even though it’s sometimes almost unbearable
& I say that only because this block right here,
as far as I know, is the only place in the universe
u can take a crushed aluminum can
from the street & stick it on the back of ur bicycle,
where it becomes a megaphone shouting something
I don’t even know, but it’s loud & dope
& for a second sort of beautiful…
& the birds & the oak trees & blah blah blah
Janus Finally Contemplates the Act of Being Present
I’m standing in a graveyard &/or at the end of a long, dark road.
The ash-swept trees are barren &/or budding, pendulous &/or rigid.
The time is uncertain. There’s a sense that so much life has passed &/or
so much of it will follow. Through distant silhouettes, the horizon is visible.
A pinkish &/or fiery hue washes over the sky. The sun’s great, smelt skull
is vanishing &/or just beginning to arrive. Will I go backward &/or
persist in this direction? At my feet are many stones etched with names
I don’t recall. The earth seems swollen &/or pregnant with life. How
it shifts, gently, to accommodate the armadillo &/or star-nosed mole
in their ambitions, built upon &/or within the constellations of bone.
I feel my sins have been forgiven &/or forgotten. Is this possible? I am here
&/or I am elsewhere. The present is a dream from which I can’t wake up.
Distance
It’s only now, eight years later,
I consider that my grandpa—
a man who was almost an astronaut—
quite possibly knew what he was doing
on the Zoom call. It’s true, his best days
were behind him. He would go on
about the marvels of smart phone technology,
before repeatedly threatening to buy one,
as if a salesmen from Verizon was listening
in through the speaker. He still remembered
street names, Sinatra trivia, how to tie a clove hitch.
He sent letters on all of our birthdays.
It was painful to watch. Sitting in my car,
beside my six-month-pregnant wife, saying
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just so inconvenient.
How could we have known, when booking
the tickets to Chicago, that one week prior,
Grandma would die in her sleep?
This was our baby moon. I mean,
it was the last time we could travel before
our life would irrevocably change.
There was a spot on the shore of Lake Michigan
where, if you looked out from the beach,
if the wind was still, blue would stretch on
to infinity. & my grandpa was there,
on the other side, looking left & right,
as if listening to a voice he didn’t recognize,
waving, like he didn’t even know me.
One Day
You wake up to a bolt of lightning
as your son. You wake up & he’s asleep
inside a cloud. You wake up
& he’s the color of exhaust, shaved clean
with electricity. I guess it doesn’t happen
exactly like that, not quite so suddenly.
But you remember, reaching out
for Earth, how sparks flew from his eyes.
Now, he rumbles to the kitchen, rumbles
to his car. He coughs & coughs & coughs.
It’s like there’s always been more to him
waiting just outside the window. Multitudes
of flash & fanfare, of roof-trembling scribbles
splintering the night.
One day, he sails off while you are sleeping.
You grow to hate blue skies, the sun.
You curse every summer day.
& then, you wake up to a crash
that nearly throws you from the bed.
You wake up to the softest pattering.
Secondhand
My brother did drugs in high school.
Cocaine, uppers, other things. Heroin
was too much for him, he said
in his diary. It didn’t really happen
if no one hears you say it. Like Vegas,
which I’ve never been to sober,
except for the time I was invited
to speak at a conference, deep inside
the Bellagio, & I could almost feel
the haze of desperation weeping
from the tables, the cigarette smoke
stroking my lapel. It triggered a memory
from childhood: Dad dangling
two pinched fingers out the window,
begging Just one, just two minutes,
breathing in the misted tires & asphalt.
Later, the image of my sister, alone
in the garage, hunched over a flaring
orange glow. Taking a drag, she called it
in her diary. No one saw this.
She kept a lot of things inside,
which my wife tells me she can’t do,
she has to tell someone, after hanging up
the phone call confirming her friend
had just overdosed the night before
his young son’s birthday. I’m telling you
but I know you won’t believe it.
The drive home wasn’t very long.
We were staying at a rental.
When we parked, we turned to the kids,
cradling their porcelain faces
in our hands, & made them promise,
on their lives, not to break a thing.
