Poetry

not a voice—a trajectory 
                                       of wings

Is programming not a kind of poetry?
Ones and zeros of the heart.

Who knows how many of us 
                                                  you’ve killed, dead set 
on what flows beneath, your mouth

At thirty, I am a child again learning
banana, apple, and orange,
clasping words and fumbling my meanings.

Driving in the American West, reading Celan
and the Mahabharata. After the war,
Arjuna drops the bow forged by Brahma back
into the ocean, relinquishing it

In those days when I was the academy’s darling 
I borrowed phrases and made no claims, 
digressed gracefully from every absent thesis 

We watched a movie about
an orchestral conductor, a powerful 
woman who groomed young musicians. 
I didn’t understand the ending. 
Driving to the beach, it began to rain. 

In the end 
the world is empty 
enough to move in 
—to learn how best to hold a lantern 
drunk in the forestdark— 
 

Between Los Angeles and Oakland, 
there was snow on the grass-covered mountains,
which made a strange pattern, like brushstrokes
on paper.

Tired of silence, tired of rock, tired of orchestration,
let me tune us in this evening to FM 91.1, The Point: 
“All y’all’s favorite home for the candid sounds 
of people sleeping.”