A journey from pain to health in 8 poems, with thanks to everyone involved — and a warning to anyone working behind a screen.

https://telegra.ph/There-and-Neck-Again-in-8-Poems-03-04

@verse by MR

Ocean Local (sound on 🔈)

It was never about an actual train. I wrote this on a beach, watching the surf line (so yes, no typos here), and thinking of the subway at best – not the mighty Shinkansen. Yet, here it is now: a bridge between a bullet-train at Kyoto station and an Antiguan sunset, both shot last year.

@verse by MR

@verse by MR

Machine Teaching /

The helpless AI-God
flips through a trillion answers
to a prayer: would these bits
of recipes, a sutra and a thesis —
shaken, stirred — provide relief?
A sense of unity? A reason
to be good? He jerry-rigs
Commandments with the
abandon of a blind
photographer, six-fingered
moral compass spinning on.


@verse by MR

This too /

And every war will end,
if only when no people
have remained for dying.
Every refuge will become
a home – if just because
you’ve finished drying
bedsheets, freshly washed,
the seven-hundredth time.
And every pang of pain
will stay a memory, but fade
as you stop crying
until it's bleached out
like those ads in long-
abandoned stores.

@verse by MR

Crush /

A little bird
knocked on my window
with the full force
of its gentle body.
But I wasn't home.


@verse by MR

Astro-Physicism /

If you pray
to a black hole,
the answers
can never
escape ⦿


@verse by MR

An exercise in worthlessness /

A pound of teabags,
lightly used. In general:
last year's projections;
futures on goat milk;
certificates of authenticity
for snoring patterns,
chess moves, nasal hair styles;
Or, back to specifics: sack
of apple cores; a Caribbean
quarter (maybe not: its
flip side's got a ship...);
'Cease and Desist' from
made-up lawyers. Pitted
almonds, sautéed ice-cream,
sanded dates. The breath
of langoustines still moving
on the counter. Kidneys
(you can get one Bitcoin
for the price of five!).
List poems over thirty lines.
Mimes in the dark.
Mark Zuckerberg (except,
for his shareholders).
Ground microchips.
Some strange dude's hateful
comments. What you think
you could have said that time
instead of what you said.
Gourmet dog chow.
Your whole damn life —
unless you go to bed.
(Right. Now.)


@verse by MR

Holy cooked /
contemplating a too modern crucifix

The charred remains of Jesus,
blending with his cross,
fit for a world past nuclear
demise: I search his face for
seared-shut eyes to ward off
the imagined smell of kofta
(or kebab, depending on
the customs of your land) –
and pray, when He arises
from the blaze to leave
the tomb, his gaze be softer
than this stab, the hide of this
cocoon.

@verse by MR

Catjutants /
For my mother

Remember this:
wherever you might be,
no matter what your task,
no matter what your deadline –
at least one cat
has been assigned
to you and me
to dream somewhere
on our behalf,
as if it's bedtime.

@verse by MR

Now post this /

Try to remember for a day:
a war is on. Try to remember
every day it's there: it's there.
Try to hold on to that while
war thrives anywhere.
You will have lived a life
of wars: untouched, un-
spared. You will have sac-
rificed so much, they —
left unscared?


@verse by MR

Woe, awesomeness /

A ballerina trains
for decades to keep
her head up and
her straight defiant
back and — smile! —
when burning at the
stake for the affront
her mastery inflicts
on wretched hearts.

@verse by MR

Misfiring platitudes /

How many people
reading “you’re the
product if it’s free”
went “O-M-G! Why,
I’m a product from a
major corporation!
Move aside!”

@verse by MR

MBA /

Every poet in
Business class
Dreams of First.

@verse

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." (Seneca)

I’d fill my sail at once
with prayers and
sweet winds, were I
to know which way
my prow should face,
to hasten me
toward the shores
on which it grew
and first extended
gentle branches to
the moon – before
the shipwright’s hand
had hewn it into this,
the homeless figurehead;
the shores I do so miss.


@verse by MR

Cycling alone
Past Andrew Wyeth fields –
No lid on the world!

#haiku by MR

My granddad’s birthday,
but he won’t get older.
Starting last year,
every summer,
it’s just me.

Out of the corner of my eye:
an open fan. Who brought
the cake? Who took the slices?

Homage /

I didn’t buy Bukoswki’s book
for fifteen hundred bucks,
signed, first edition.
He would have laughed his ass off:
tiny earthquake in Green Hills, LA.

@verse by MR

I asked a genie
for looks worthy of sagas.
He gave me a saggy look.

Oxygen /

Three hundred seconds
spent observing the far end
of your Parisian RER,
the bark-like pattern left
by long-dried lines of droplets
on the glass, the kiwi marmalade
synthetic fabric of the headrests,
rubbings on the floors and corners
left by a fair share of the 47
million tourists (and their luggage)
passed through here this year alone.

Twenty five minutes, only watching:
clouds, the concrete domes
of Charles de Gaulle, the buckwheat
gravel on the railway, the
metronomic passage of the poles,
each one a “now”. The tunnels,
dark on “in”, open on “out”.

And by the time you disembark,
you’re ready to assist your loved ones
with their masks that dangle
from the ceiling.

@verse by MR