To hear poetry and to read poetry are different acts.

Reading poetry makes me feel calm.

And you, dear reader, I wonder if

you also feel this way.

Consider this articulation.

Reading poetry: You must gaze upon, pay attention to words, and

consider pacing,

an attentiveness not usually asked

in our contemporary world.

I gaze into your eyes, we remember to breathe.

Turn the page.

Reading poetry is the opposite of eating with

your phone

Without thought to the

opening and closing of one’s mouth

The taste and texture of the food on the edges and tips of

one’s tongue

Warmth of the food, and how it envelops you.

A different kind of information than the Scroll.

^{for my mother}

This one moment I loved: you
in the air, permed hair flying
wild in the rain, around and through
and not a thought of us dying

in the air, permed hair flying
against the storm, lashing hot rain
and not a thought of us dying,
strapped in the plastic car, chained

against the storm lashing hot rain
on our faces as we’re hurled up,
strapped in the plastic car, chain
clouds glowing, whirling—the gust

on our faces as we’re hurled up,
launched into the electric
clouds glowing whirling, the gust
as you laughed and laughed. It’s

launched into the electric,
wild in the rain, around and through
as you laughed and laughed—it’s
this one moment I loved you.

^{Then into your life
there comes a darkness
    —Radiohead}
 

It’s never our finest hour in America but right now,
most things at the ledges of my life are like the sad
shuffling at the edge of an LP. This one time, I forgot

to pick up the tonearm & heard polyvinyl lamentations
until Thursday when I finally realized the sounds were from
my speakers & not one of my own haunted creation.

I would have laughed, but it was war time yet again:
more air strikes crumbling schools, more drone opportunities
& misplaced homilies. You got to be kidding me.

Polished tanks cresting possibility’s hill for another,
unrequited salvo. All the mystifying UFOs & split
infinities in the record’s imaginary are in the past as it

kept playing its static goodbyes: little hiccupping pleas
until somebody, finally, flipped off the infernal machine.

Watch any day his nonchalant pauses, see
His dextrous handling of a wrap as he
Steps after into cars, the beggar’s envy.

“There is a free one,” many say, but err.
He is not that returning conqueror,
Nor ever the poles’ circumnavigator.

But poised between shocking falls on razor-edge
Has taught himself this balancing subterfuge
Of the accosting profile, the erect carriage.

The song, the varied action of the blood
Would drown the warning from the iron wood
Would cancel the inertia of the buried:

Travelling by daylight on from house to house
The longest way to the intrinsic peace,
With love’s fidelity and with love’s weakness.