Marginal Note

The glue spreaders are dying  

and the eaves are drying

after their nightly cry.

Nothing sticks anymore.

The singularity of doing

something for the first time,

the myth, the superstition, 

the melancholy. 

We must imagine Sisyphus 

happy, Camus tells us,

doing the same thing everyday 

as if it were the first time.

[LSS, 12/3/24]

Couplet

When you wake up you will see 

all of the houses are now trees.

[LSS, 12/3/24]

What The Falcon Knows

in 1992 you and your children watched the sparrowhawk

tear apart a songbird, steaming guts in the snow

much better than the make-believe violence of

Saturday morning cartoons

thirty-four years later I pause on the paved

bicycle trail beneath miles of high-voltage wires

stretched between iron pylons parallel

to splintered wood poles moving electricity

into houses and mobile home parks

two kestrels perch there, occasionally dropping down

for lizards and grasshoppers

a short lifespan of less than five years

fires the intensity of patient waiting and

promises of fulfilling meals

just watching them makes me hungry

for things I can no longer experience

the first time

[RK, 11/28/24]

“Naked in the Snow”

“It could be kind of Scandinavian,”

he says about the title he’s suggesting, 

“but don’t show any bodies.  

You’re not good at bodies.”

[LSS, 11/22/24]   

 In Media Res

Not for beginners.

[LSS, 11/21/24]

In Media Res: Lullaby

When opening any one of my sketchbooks to any random page 

you are likely to find a house floating above its foundation,

no lag bolts, no tethers, no long chains of thought holding it down.

The house you will find on any random page

will never be my first house, if I ever had a first house, 

but always the house I am drawing right now.

[LSS, 11/21/24] 

Last Accessed

You say
We are always turning the pages
to the same page
Not the same page over and over again
but some random, successive page

I say
I’m going to use that phrase

You say
It’s a poem, your poem

I say
possession is nine-tenths of the connection
positively charged electrodes and copper wires
making your dream house elevator
function properly
those tight line drawings distort perspective
the cabin becomes a mansion
the yurt becomes a pyramid
all that time invested in the exact placement
of rooms and doors

I say
we are always opening the doors
to the same room
not the same room over and over again
but some random, successive room

[RK, 11/16/24]

Updating the Password Book

The synchronicity of a new password 

entered onto the blank line

and the ending of a period of mourning 

for all the things you thought 

would never change.

[LSS, 11/16/24]

The New World

Here I have made my life 

again and again and again 

remembering what it is

to live my life again.

[LSS, 6/27/24]