One day, it switches from miles to kilometers,
which is annoying, but you know how to adjust.
The next day, it’s switched to nautical miles,
then furlongs, then cubits, then angstroms, then
seems to settle on regret as its unit of measurement
and lingers there momentarily. Choices
you could have made differently. Paths
your life could have taken. The way you chose
a liberal arts college when you could’ve gone
to that university out east. You found a career
in textiles, but you could have been a dancer
on a stage, rose petals landing at your feet.
The odometer knows you are far away
from a life you could have lived,
but it doesn’t dwell on that, nor does it
emphasize how blasted with joy that life
might have been. The system changes almost daily.
Here’s the number of birds you are from peace.
Here’s how many spruce trees you are from self-actualization.
The distance between delight and now. The length
of road from memory to tomorrow. You press
every button on the dashboard. You’re trying
to get from A to B and just want a simple
number to tell you how far you’ve come.
But a journey through life is hard to quantify,
and the display only wants to show you railroad tracks
or fireflies above the mill at the edge of town.
Press the button again, and the distance is
baseball cards. The distance is transistor radios.
You and your car are whizzing over highways
and bridges. You pass small towns
with one stoplight and one general store. You pass
mountains and forests. You pass cows
foraging through the rain in fields of alfalfa.

Now is the time of alarm clocks and morning traffic.

When you open your eyes in your new reality,
you’ll be disoriented, possibly alone.

Sunlight through the curtains might be too bright.
The room itself, not what you imagined.

It’s okay if you don’t want to be there,
if you want nothing more than to return to the dream.
Too pull the covers up and go back to sleep.

If only it were that easy. If only one could linger forever.

Many of the greats tried to extend their stay, believing
that if they worked hard enough, if they were lucky enough,
they could create something that could last.
A lyric, a film, a collage of feathers and magazine clippings. 

To make something that—when the currents began
to pull them away—could, like an anchor, hold. 
A novel, a song, a sculpture made of nails. 

Marie Howe once said that an elegy
is not made from grief. It’s made from love. 

Those of us who remain knew you’d go before us.

In the dream, everything seemed possible—
but I can’t imagine the dream with you no longer in it.

It’s hard for me to give advice. I’ve never woken
in the room you’ll find yourself in.

But I’m told that the ground there is solid.
I’m told there’s still laughter.

And once you get up and leave that room,
there’s a door that opens to an entire world.

To unlock the lock, you offer a key. To insert the key, you offer your hand. To turn the hand you offer your arm, your shoulder, your body. And what is it that’s behind that body? What initiates the motion which, we hope, will extend the arm, rotate the wrist, turn the key, exonerate the lock?  Attached to the body is a life. The life in question follows the body in question like a shadow. Inside a shadow are childhood traumas, interest payments, tension headaches, desire, friends you’ve forgiven, and long walks in the autumn of your memories where the leaves change color and continuously fall but never seem to come to rest on the observable ground. All of this—the arm, the shoulder, the shadow—is contained inside the motion to make the thing turn, to open the thing that’s presently shut. The thing that’s presently shut is a door.  In Ancient Rome, the god of doorways was Janus. All prayers had to pass through him before reaching other gods. Each of those other gods has made the long journey from being real to being mythology. It is painful to be forgotten, to fade from the public record. The old gods are very much like us. We who stand in front of a door, a door that is only now beginning to open.

‍

The king sent a knight to kill the dragon. The knight did not want to kill the dragon. He thought the dragon was majestic, an embodiment of the world’s natural splendor. He just couldn’t do it. So, he circled the dragon’s lair on his horse for a minute, then rode off toward the horizon. This enraged the king, so he sent another knight to kill the knight who refused to kill the dragon. But the second knight didn’t want to kill the first knight. He thought the first knight was principled, honorable, someone with true ethical standards. So, he followed the knight’s tracks for a while, then veered off in the direction of the horizon (but not the same part of the horizon that the first knight raced toward). The king sent more knights, and when there were no more knights, he hired mercenaries. When he ran out of mercenaries, he had the staff wizard summon goblins, demons, and other assorted miscreants. One by one, they all went to the horizon and didn’t come back. Then the king was alone except for us, the villagers. No one was sure what his next move would be. But he asked us to gather at the drawbridge. Said he had something important for us to do.

        We don’t need children. I have your bad art to hang on the fridge.
         —My spouse, Vievee

How to classify the curious artistic productions
of Matthew Olzmann? Early Cave Drawings?
Postmodern Stick Figures? Witness
the savant who believes mustard stains
on Detroit Lions sweatshirts are an aesthetic statement.
Mingus says, Making the simple, awesomely simple,
that’s creativity, and few artists are simpler than this guy.

Not to brag, but Olzmann is also a national tragedy
when singing in the shower. The concept of “notes”
eludes him, and making him understand lyrics
need to be sung in a specific order
is like explaining Vasiliev Equations to an aardvark.

This is a poem about failure.

If you zoom out far enough, your life
will get smaller and smaller
until it’s a speck of nothingness inside a greater nothingness.
How do we make this meaningful?

The first instrument I tried to play as a child was a drum.
The teacher said, The inside of the drum is hollow.
There’s only emptiness. To make the sound, you hit it
as hard as you can. You mean hit the drum? I asked.
No, he said, You have to hit the emptiness.

—For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
‍                  Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion

According to this law, if you ever feel
the entire world conspires against you,
there must be another world radiating
in your honor. And each part
of that world. And each part of each part.
The minke whale, the mountain peak,
the Swingline stapler on your desk.
All of them, holding you in their hearts.
The safety pin, the picture frame,
your father’s binoculars, the Mariana trench.
Applause and best wishes from each.
Because for every Eden from which
you’ve been expelled, there’s another, equal
in the opposite direction, where you are welcome.

Skeptical? Don’t believe me?
Have I made you roll your eyes so hard it feels
like they’ll bruise the inside of your head? Fine.
I didn’t make this law. Newton did.
So sit your ass down, science is teaching
a lesson. The lesson is that which cannot
be undone, is already undone. The ashes
unburn themselves until all that’s left
is a shivering forest. The wrecked motorcycle
hauls itself from the ravine and buzzes back
into traffic. The blood you believe
is on your hands has returned itself
to the body in which it belongs.

Is there a catch? Of course, there’s a catch!
This place exists, but I can’t tell you
how to get there. For that, I’m ashamed,
but every time I fail you, there will be
another guide, more than my equal, who will not.
A North Star. A tuning fork. A thermometer
whose contents forecast the arrival of the fever.
Everything on Earth bursting with love.
The road that will never appear,
and the next one that already has.