The Wiseacres Live in Tokyo Tour, 2006-2007

Butterfly Net

Lately it seems, i’m fishing for words
with a butterfly net.

Just to capture these notions of beauty-

Just a shred of that great gravity of art
that escapes through the mesh
into the exodus of dark

I only want the perfect word tonight
to frame this splendor,
to put it in a crystal jar
and sit in its company-

before she folds her painted wings

and dives for the bottom.

Lunesta

against all practicality
as if art itself is blooming
beyond any welcome or reason

as if symphonies are orchestrated
in melodies undeserving to the human ear
or the mysteries of our expanding lives
revealed themselves in foreign tongues
for just a single, condensed moment,
before skittering back into the trees
in a twilight laugh of branches

as if time were not only tangible
but an ally, as the fireflies sweat
to skywrite letters in the night
and spell our names out
as even we may not decipher them.