Any Street On a streetany streetpick oneodds area tastea scenta touchare enoughto make onepray.. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arean unknowngod’sabsent taste& scent& touchareenoughto killone. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arethe loveyou knowistouch-me-enoughto-make-me-pray. On a streetany streetpick oneodds arewhyswhatswhens&thereforesare pointlessin love. by Jim Culleny3/23/12

I’m still dwelling on how ironic all the feverish proclamationsof capitalism are going to look someday.…………………… —Justin E.H. Smith Gabriel’s Mad Ave. Apocalyptic Horn I’m through with dumpster dinnersat the corner of Wall Street and New I’m so unsold by the Coke sign’s faded blushthat thrusts from desiccated dollar dunes—an embarrassment a crass embellishmentstuffed in…

Pi pi is perfection with a loose end three point 1 four and so onwithout pattern or closure the precision of a mandaladrawn by a drunk on two martinis not scribing wholeness merelybut thinking odd numbers spouting them while rambling homedisheveled, irrational, unseemly as the similar square root of 2at the point of life and…

Dis Hate Taste Kiss Mind is what the brain does.…………………… —Marvin Minsky. ………. imagine this: this morning was so cold I thought, frostbiteand a vision (gloves) occurred if I hadn’t thought coldmy hands may just as well have feltthey were in Aruba, and gloves absurd ………. then the wind hissed..being mindful isthe best way to…

The Slim Hope of Ponce de León. best of all seeming impossibilities, of all the unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias, is the slim hope of Ponce de León (the golden nut of Eden’s treeto hoard and hold and keep alive,like the fire-tenders of prehistory,an ember no matter how smallof coals hot and red of…

Writing a New Leaf this new page is herejust as morning’s here without a mark upon it virgin territory pristine asPleistocene snow but the previous page belowis indecipherable through the new white sheetof this day’s blank uncertaintyit shows as lines of shadow the absolutenessof the leaf beforeis now unclear and as I look aheadand let…

$hip of $tate I'm on a big boat(which the nautically savvy call ship)if this ship's a cocoon of light atmosphere its steel will float, but it will tipif its load’s unbalanced—if its equilibrium is offit will start to list,if not corrected it will end a sacrificial goatsucked to bottomas Neptune's universal lawswill have directed and…

Fundamental Misunderstanding…. — thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, etc. everything ever written or saideverything drawn or played or sungevery headline that cried or bledevery fresco, every poemeverything wrung from our cranial spongeevery inky insult flungevery instrument ever madeevery expletive blasted from lungsevery face on a canvas hungevery righteous canto prayed…. that pounded the planks of heaven’s floorevery…

Xu Bing’s Phoenixes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine standing under Phoenix and his lofted bride both newly risen in the nave of a churchat a quarter of the height from floor to vaultI am small and still beneath their static glide a cross in the distance where they might have perchedis centered…

Winter Solstice With J. Kepler .we're deeply in— in as deeply as we get before we spin again round an ellipse's rimto a more congenial spot for blood and breath what the astronomical survival odds (our outer limits) arewho knows? for time is short by last report listening now to ersatz jazz I change Pandora's…

.—from a TED Talk Idea what is the space of creativity? lightning flash …. stroke …….. epiphany ………… eureka! ……………..something new? ………………….no an idea's a networka liquid network a new configurationa slow hunchhatched from the minds of many thinkers gaining capacity which for decades flickers and finally surges into view. by Jim Culleny 12/18/14

Poet Builds a House all that we are arises with our thoughts,the Dhammapada says,with our thoughts we make the world …….thing one: tour the foundation,…….scrape down its roughness…….with the edge of a hammer head,…….dis the mason who left behind a lumpy job,…….who forgot what a trowel is for,…….who was halfway home already when he bent…

In the Middle of a Cycle.everything comes in waves— some of which break like 70 footers at Portugal’sNazaré .… “Invest in a good surfboard”she said as if she’d already readthe morning edition of tea leaves, coffee grounds,or whatever her most knowledgeable herb my father, late in life,during his period of popping nitros,having sludged his lungs…

Elemental Earth Today I troll for a poem of humusdark and rich as the French Roastwhich always starts my dayand always is a gift In this four billion year terrapoemfungi, woodlouse and eelwormsspend millennia decomposingin concert with nematodesactinomycetes and protozoadoling water and, with bacteria,fix nitrogen in a schemeage old and symbiotic,while on it menwomen and…

“The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the twobasic words he can speak.” —Martin Buber, I and Thou.Conjugation In a diner my elbows rest upon Formica. I hold a book.Curlicues of vapor rise above the coffee you’ve just poured.I lure Thou with my take on Buberhoping to shift the poles of my twofold…

The Impossible Glamour of Istanbul the narrow streets on the hillleading from the mooring of our shipwere stepped and cobbled, or bricked.from overhead they must have looked like laces knitting together masonry wallswhich lined those ancient spaces greenhorn that I was (and am,in cosmic time at least) under the luckof many graces I walked, naiveunafraid/unbrave…

Hedge we unload the freight of dayas night wraps up what day has toldthere’s not much more to say—myself in shade, eagle in her hold both are restless in day’s throes.who among us really understandswhat night becomes, where daylight goes,who know the ground, the place we stand? still the worm in unturned earth makes way,a…

Early Autumn Surf …… it’s still the birds have gone knowing it’s time but today is an anomalous summer daywhich, breaking protocol,has oozed into early fallwith temperate trappingslulling me with spacious softnessand late brilliance,being the last echo of July,the final peal of August’s bellexpanding as I surfdown the hump of its luxurious waveformunder the comfort…

Add 30 Seconds add 30 seconds to anytime, what’s that interval? hell, double itwhat’s that? have you ever had a day that lasts threeor one that goes so fast it’s past —instantly? are those durations short or long,if hours mean anything? subtract 5 hours from anytimedo we really think we’ve minced minutes?as we tick them…

Parallel Universe everything unknown returns to lifeupon awakening in my bed supine in lightsun bequeathed day ignites a fire beneathmy blankets burn mind’s the filament of a lampupon awakening stupidity tumbles down a sheer of chancesmall thoughts plunge they start an avalanchethe ground gives way beneath my feetupon awakening where am I?light ricochets from every…