Reason and One of Its Limitations
You may perceive the invisible man
By perceiving the air that he displaces.
In the dark of night, he is that part
Of the night that is not night, that takes
The place of night even as the night
Defines him. He is an opening,
A doorway that he may walk through, out
Of the dark into the dark, toward
A street where, at the corner, he becomes
What is not light within the light.
Japanese Aesthetics, I’ve Heard, Allow for the Beautiful Flaw
Most of my life, I have fixed, or tried
To fix, broken things—bicycles,
A toaster, a mantle clock, several
Houses—, but for years I didn’t know
Just how broken I am, nor how
Impossible to fix. It’s funny, all
That urge to fix everything else because
I was taught what cannot be fixed
Is trash, no matter how
Beautiful anyone may find the breakage.
The Apperception of Absence and of “Absence”
I: Rorschach
A little pond of ink and a fold
Make a symmetry of chance,
And so we find a young wife
Poisoning her husband, a father beating
A daughter, a masked man crawling
Through your window. Try to see
Your better life in this seep of ink,
A spread of thunderclouds, a stain
That doubles, that smears both sides
Of the mirror, that leaps across the divide.
II: The Position of Curator of The Museum of Absence Remains Unfilled
III: Despite What We Don’t See, No Void Is Actually Empty
Some frames are so beautiful, they need
No painting. Some structures are glorious
In their ruin. Some maps show best
Where we have never gone nor ever will.
Some words mean more in their absence.