I've been set free and I've been bound
To the memories of yesterday's clouds


Zak Smith, Full-Spectrum Dominance in All Theaters, 2007

Standing Together
-- by Klipschutz (1993)

President and Pontiff
Have a private chat
Then one takes a jog
One takes a long nap

One vowed not to touch
One said yes to sex
Two men at two helms
Differed in these respects

One wakes, early evening
A shower, a rubdown
They huddle with one aide apiece
The sky turns piebald, brindled, brown

In the fire sale of western civ
A ray of beggar’s hope
In Denver on a Thursday
A Prez stands with a Pope


Devotio Moderna
-- by Graham Foust

Who but us
could know wisdom's cut,

the pain of pain's
leaving, same as you?

Who would smooth us to
a circle? You would. You would.

You and your planet. You
and your fragrant blue room.


On New Terms
-- by Deborah Garrison

I'd like to begin again. Not touch my
own face, not tremble in the dark before
an intruder who never arrives. Not
apologize. No scurry, not pace. Not
refuse to keep notes of what means the most.
Not skirt my father's ghost. Not abandon
piano, or a book before the end.
Not count, count, count and wait, poised -- the control,
the agony controlled -- for the loss of
the one, having borne, I can't be, won't breathe
without: the foregone conclusion, the pain
not yet met, the preemptive mourning
about which
nothing left of me but smoke.


Daffodils
-- by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.