Long after the first
fall scrapes at tender skin, long
after innocence.

Streets full of mourners
hands up pleading for justice
and frightening cops.

Students at play with
their problems, a child’s surprise
lifts the birds to flight.

Strange reassurance,
so many fish in the sea,
not to be a catch.

Maybe money should
buy happiness. Its lack can
buy lots of sorrows.

One plus e to the
negative i times π is
equal to zero.

While it’s not pleasant,
being a disappointment,
it is familiar.

To love what was is
as true, as real, as certain,
as hopeful as death.

The perfect victim:
the victim who fails to be
the perfect victim.

To the extent that
happiness can be bought, yes
money’s just the thing.

Now—right now!—be still.
Be silent. Let the leaves speak,
and forget these words.

Time marches on and
around in a circle, one
leg being longer.

Official reports
determined no victims were
harmed by the killing.

New York Times confirms
police shot and killed unarmed
young man, not angel.

Standing, she glows forth
warm summer sun. Ripe peaches
weigh the swaying boughs.

Exalt at spring birds—
warbling, dappled, graceful—but
remember the worms.

The yellow-sleeved girl
turns momentarily from
her page forever.

Wanting not to be
lonely, I have let someone
think too much of me.

Quiet starlit night:
Suddenly, a hundred geese
vee through the moonlight.

Captain, my Captain,
this April I am making
trout mask replicas.

Technological
investments are discouraged
by low labor costs.

A bowl of small stones
recalling lakewater waves
so cold in my hand

Involute tiers of
elaborate emptiness
guard a simple point.

The future is quite
possible, maybe even
inevitable.

People remember
and fit their recollections
to their suffering.

Keeping late hours, I
meet my stranger neighbors. They
can say the same thing.

Data that change our
account of uncertainty
are informative.

Carefully scheduled
curated moving walkways
snake through the garden.

Knock knock. Who's there? Hai.
Hai who? No, haiku. It's a
syllabic verse form.

generational
armature of forgetting
memorialized

A blue neon wave
crests the vacant shops' facade.
At night, it's still lit.

Decoy smorgasbords
lure predators to dead ends:
damming with feigned preys.

Still unmelted pools
by banking boulevard dams
made dangerous smooth.

In the markets, such
wonders! It's a shame they have
been capitalized.

Over there past that
there there is that that is past.
That's over. That's that.

Patience. In due time,
as a signal to others,
we will burn this bridge.

"Shut my eyes and make
a film, and the star of it
is Photo Jenny."

I release an egg
into a bowl, from the bowl
I release the egg.

The ratio of
the circumference to the
diameter: π.

Let x equal 3.
Update x as sin x plus
x. Keep updating.

To get Bayes' rule from
the multiplication rule
exchange the events.

Branching paths surround
the yearly wayfinding teams
sounding out old songs.

Not per dag by miles,
but on the other hand two
outta three ain't bad.

A shame I mostly
notice women I don't talk
to if they're pretty.

Ah, coincidence:
That there is some John Jacob
Jingleheimer shit.

Gardening seems so
mysterious and would be
except that things die.

Knock knock. Who's there? Boo.
Boo who? Oh, quit yer cryin'.
It's only a joke.

Bangle the phone lines
with dance slippers! Come out and
paint the town lipstick!

Looking closely, look
again, though looking again
means looking away.

Something is changing.
Something is always changing.
We notice sometimes.

Schools are terrible
places for learning, except
by comparison.

How real is the line—
such order depends on it—
bordered and boundless.

Repeat and repeat
all our ritual errors
again and again.

The river sings to
the bridge, and the bridge sings back
the river its song.

The larger the space,
the more room for surprises,
but you have to look.

I was aiming for
something very subtle and
I have missed the mark.

Such quiet such nights
in the cold of cold winter
the world is itself.

For Paul Halmos

It's not hard to write
without thinking about the
alphabet, just wrong.

"He drew upon the
blackboard, for all to see, the
streptococcus chain."

How precarious
these many tiny footsteps
in the cold cold cold.

My neighbor wonders
why his dog always climbs the
high snow banks to shit.

Something is amiss:
my students keep telling me
I am grading wrong.

Analogies are
like not focusing on the
actual topic.

"...but I'm thinking of 
the sea, thinking of the sea,
thinking of the sea."

Invariants make
iterative processes
out of recursions.

What is the deal with
rhetorical questions? Why
not just state your point?

Toasting Don Ho

Tiny bubbles in
the wine make me feel happy.
They make me feel fine.

You know what would be
funny? A turtle with a
big bushy mustache.

Just imagine: a
shivering yipping stampede
of wild chihuahuas.

Despite biting cold
the poodle embarks on a
midwinter tinkle.

Without time and space
nothing would come to an end
or be out of place.

And you can't make an
omelette by just breaking
a few eggs either.

Silly rabbit, in
this cold, you should wear a hat
that covers your ears.

Over my face, I
grow a beard. Over my beard,
I grow icicles.

Point arbitrary
endstart turn forward again
fail to fail better.

Grace Murray Hopper:
She used to live in the same
complex I used to.

For Jacques Hadamard

Intuition built
from rigor—that is the soul
of mathematics.

Nature delights in
endless forms most beautiful—
each with its own death.

The leaves change colors—
dying to be loved, they fall
for time's oldest trick.

Often, things that should
go without saying are things
that bear repeating.

Within each atom
there is a love, and within
each love, a struggle.

It defies logic
that so many humans are
terrible people.

"This magic moment—
so diff'rent and so new—was
like any other."

The "Om Namah Shivaya"
scene in Temple of Doom: that's
why "no time for love."

Because is a bad
explanation, but it is
the case in this case.

I have some advice
about how to give advice:
Do not give advice.

The moral man is
a glutton for punishment—
mostly of others.

All that is the case
is more than we know how to
express in language.

The ad hominem's
a shame since mansplaining's a
great word and real thing.

I don't like Metal,
but Up the Mountain, Down the
Mountain I do like.

The innocence of
children: following orders
and being cruel.

Math problems come in
two forms: the obvious and
the as yet unsolved.

Signifiers are
arbitrary, got it. But
roses don't smell sweet.

Please note: without words,
there would still be moving and
beautiful music.

Treating depressives
as diseased discounts the fact
that they're mostly right.

In my dreams for this
prison, all of the inmates
escape gracefully.

Knock knock. Who's there? Owls.
Owls who? That's right! And little
piggies go oink oink!

Love, be careful with
that knife. The armor I wear
is only cardboard.

"… and the boys say they're
concerned that they are concerned
with these accidents."

Who's a good boy? Who's
a good boy? Who's a good boy?
Puppy Cerberus.