The basset hound at the end of the street
goes by the name of Goose.
I wonder if from his lowly state,
(low in stature, perhaps, but never dignity),
I wonder if he can even see the face of his best friend,
the great dane who lives next door.

“Small and Tall,” 
I whisper to myself as I walk by,
or “Goose and Maverick,”
though I know that’s not Tall’s real name,
but neither is Tall,
and I’m not sure I like those narrative connotations. 
“‘cause we’re the best of friends, doo doo doo,”
I hum to myself as I jog by,
but I don’t like those narrative connotations either.

I walk by one day to find both the portly hound dog
and his portly human in the yard. I wave.
“These damn dogs are killing the grass!”
My neighbor laughs,
pointing at the well-worn tracks along the fence,
where the grass is not dying.
It is dead and has been for a long while.
Years of eager hellos and theatrical games of chase
have worn themselves into the surface of these two small patches of earth.
Each dog slides into his own groove,
one alongside the other,
like Pyramus and Thisbee,
meeting to kiss at their favorite hole in the wall.
Sniff at their favorite hole in the fence.

“Damn dogs,”
he says again.
He knows as well as I
that the grass is a fair price to pay
for the rarity
of time and love made visible.

precious are drops of garnet collected in the palms of your hand
merciful, your life’s ruby red poured out for a soul like me
sacrifice from the highest King, now my lips and pen must sing

I used to be my little brothers translator

He was too young

To understand

Or be understood

English did not roll from his tongue

The way his quick-witted remarks do now

And sometimes I wonder

As he grew

If I had been able to filter what he heard

a little bit longer

If he would still procure verbal self-abuse

It only does so much telling a boy not to listen 
To something he can fully understand 

do you ever think about how your life changes in an instant 
for the better or the worse
last May, i woke up to the news that someone we loved was not coming back
and next week i am taking this next step for him
because he never got a chance to grow up 
he never got a next time 
so I’m living my life for the person who should’ve grown up 
but couldn’t  

What insanity is this
To wish for excuses
To not do things
You love doing?

Wouldn’t it be great fun to…
Yes, it would,
But here you sit
Trying to think of reasons
Not to.

The blankness of this page,
With its blinking curser,
Has haunted me for days

Inflated humilaty,
Boasting pieces of shame;
Pervasive irony

Another unchecked box
Amidst the looming undones
Another pile of rocks…

And to think,
    I used to
        Collect them
            Just for fun

Because it loosens the soil,
and by soil, I mean
that part of me you might call
soul, hard-packed
beneath the leaf-mulch
of worry and waste of good weather,
by which I mean time and space
to wonder and wander
through layers
of seed and root,
tunnels and nests,
stone and silt and clay
and bedrock,
I mean 
the hand
that holds us all.

I think the universe originated in Nicholasville, KY,
I just drove by and it seems as plausible as anywhere else,
some might say that Nicholasville has it all,
others might say that there’s nothing in Nicholasville,
the answer (as always) is that both statements are true,
the aporia really starts puzzling
when you drive into the center,
US Route 27 Business (not Bypass),
there’s a strip mall on the right,
there’s a strip mall and a gas station on the left,
there is asphalt below and atmosphere above,
and on that street there is a house
where a person was born and lived their whole life and died–

—

I think the universe is still a rough draft,
typed out on a Notes app while driving
at a high rate of speed down US Route 27 Nicholasville Bypass,
too fast on an afternoon because of all the brightness
beaming from everywhere, wavelengths crisscrossing
and weaving into sync, it’s hard to slow down
when reality’s immense machinery has Gestalted
and is erupting through all its unfathomable cylinders,
disgorging its mysteries onto the windshield gleaming
then gone but wait here’s another flitting the periphery,
it never stops, it’s just the noticing that stops,
especially when the engine can’t rest
because it’s been green light after green light,
which is usually good but is currently bad,
for once it is time for a red light,
it is time to pause for a moment and add to the Notes,
one wonders how many characters one can type into
the Notes,
how many quadrillions of bits
stacking into googolplexes
before the memory overflows,
before the whole apparatus overloads
and bricks into a silent weight–