Days of Vagrant Youth  

We sit around drinking poison 
that’ll give half of us  
cancer  
             and the other, madness, 
mistaking ill euphoria for 
wisdom of the moment.  

We’re shell-shocked for sure.  
But the real bomb 
hasn’t gone off yet.  
We just heard the boom 
and started bracing  
years ago.  

Unbridled Pangs Prior to the Fit  

On the rocky beach of black stones,  
we found rogue waves and animal jawbones,  
and there at the crux of sunset 
pain implies its counterfeit origin: 
a cruel foundation of weathered driftwood 
and sandworn remains of off-bone white, 
the unnatural cross.  

This is funeral season: 
listen to the waves’ symptom of dangers, 
the shroud gray caress of risk and ruin, 
and that rood’s gnostic sense of struggle 
betrays itself. Backward the betrayal,  
before the trauma there there  
is where we’ll make camp and hunker  
down, and offer better prayers 
to survival.  

Between Bright Giants  

Between bright giants 
                     and brown dwarfs 
the stars live 

the galaxy is the same as 
                      the Way of the Wild Goose 

some rogue stars 
                     roam the cosmic void  

in the house of the holy acre of an hour’s time 
                      the whole manic mile 

one must imagine 
                     when the Sun is set to expire,  

when white dwarfs are bound to fade,  

             when novas near 

                                       their end.