These paired repetitions in both stanzas make the lines more permanent, like a magic mirror effect and affect. Subtle as a disaffected kid, they play with mature audacity.

Because they believe that water is mute
dikes and levies have been built
but water remains wet
​so dryness cannot be truth

I see no plan
no justice in
any of this
and I no longer
accept the ineffable

Leaving the dance floor drenched but not dripping, breathless but not panting, hot but not fevered, enveloped in a glow of live atoms, they joined others outside on the steps, where discussions of politics and personality and miscellanea held sway.

all artists are social redeemers
we are changing the world
with our six figure canvasses
we are enlightening millions
​with our xenophobic obscurity poetry

Oblivious of her nakedness
she went racing through the
airport, shouting out that
they were adding weapons on

Not see-through.
No hole in the cosmic tapestry.
A deep, honest blackness that will slowly drink you in.
Where you don't have to run, brother.

she half-listens to me telling
how the numbers here and there
are rising, always rising
and i can see that she's
tuned me out, tuned out the math

Such a Grand Wizard, 'tis rare.
Once in a lifetime, they say,
perhaps in all of history, says he.
Spoken like a true Grand Wizard.

The failed dishonesty you call your lust
lives in the hollow carved out by your guilt.
Edges bleed where other edges meet them.
This battlefield is not without its charms,
till memory insists and meaning forms.

She told me of the cousin who caught it, serotonin depletion after 4 months still ill.  Solitary hours, reading, do tai chi, strong coffee and the rabbit who died under our car, of a rabbit illness we think.

“Time Travel.  Don’t ask me how; I never read that Stephen Hawking book, but it’s the only explanation that makes sense.  Something to do with wormholes I’m sure.  We first noticed the changes Friday night, which makes sense.  That’s when politicians always try to dump their bad news.”