Poetry is a measure

Poetry is a measure of the inaccuracy of imagery.

The mandate of poetry

The mandate of poetry is to utilize exactly the inexactitude of language.

Go

Go to the ruins to rut in the rubble.

Only for

Desperation is only for the living.

In the interval

We dwell in the interval between intervals.

The lake thinks

The lake thinks it likes the bird but only knows the shadow of the bird.

Markers

But dawn and dusk are markers of movement, not of time.

Briefly

Civilization resists, briefly, against oblivion.

The skeleton of the seed

The skeleton of the seed is the seed of the skeleton.

We spend our lives

We spend our lives trying to compress the expanse.

Pop

The past is a swell, the present a bubble, the future a pop.

Real things

Real things are made up of unreal things.

The greatest surprise

The greatest surprises often lie in the obvious.

So often, so eagerly

Why do people so often, so eagerly, mistake price for value?

One person

If one person went to heaven it would become hell.

Sleep is

For many sleep is not, but for me sleep is.

I believed my life

I believed my life included the prior and the next.

Every line

Every line of poetry I read, I ask: "Have I written something better than that?"

Many opinions

There are many opinions about what is essential to poetry. I say it must first be interesting.

Am I?

But am I wrong when I say I'm not wrong?