Of course I have lied       been caught         and lied
again               have tried to speak delight          into life
like a promise       but I am you              who too have
lied          about it.        And we try                 in truth
to be good       ever coming face to face         with
end and aim         when engaging soul stuff.              All
this water  these other shores               the under-
current meaning in it.           There’s a kernel of truth
in metaphor:         the translucent pea crab that lives
inside a horse clam.          All my interior processes
laid bare.         Every pleasure is an exercise.          Static
pleasure of being       greater than the fleeting
pleasure of having        for a moment           been.        I
could align desire to my workflow.              I want to
say.        I want to want.        Which is to say         I
want.        To calculate the angle       at which light
makes          crow-black shape on grass.      I guess
we couch communiqué          saying this       instead
of it.   What is life if not for joy.             I’ve got work
I think to say      I want to show            the deep
function of O        but how to show it          without
calling gods to heel      here  can you see them?
Philosophers want       to yoke my joy to virtue
which doesn’t carry        the same measure of weight
in the long tail of           the present loll.        We’re up
against time.       Take pleasure in work           that’s
another lie    but time to think.        Time to wing
a way toward     what matters is     to map it.
It’s funny        virtue.         An honest offering I give
to gods      touching stone         and being filled by
feeling it.          Funny now        how what joy is
travels with me.           Making joy beneath the sun.
That Agean-pink-and-red   chariot descending
over Filopappou Hill.         Even through haze
it’s goldering profile cuts clear         into iMessage
blue and text.
I say eudaimonia         to mean
human flourishing         that daimon          inside it
having led us here         in the long           view of it
some flaxen        now silver         elements to which
the mind ascribes such symbolism.       I am
happy here.  Are my spirits good?         I name
my pleasure the absence of pain        of trouble in
the soul.        I rake my name        across the sun
all a lien         to not recoup the simple path.        Tie
thee asunder night let me jot the moon in me.
Cut the light           it’s not meant to wait   pale can’t
over all of it.         Here a moon of terrain is it.
I can in sea cull a want         I think         but a cool
comes with silt.         My method mutable       what
caught lemons        my cantilevered meaning
is a telepathy.         My only meaning          no two
versions verify it.          My kinetic way is line.
O I say      I wrestle with        what the mosaic
incorporeal head       wants of me.        Here in
the human world       the hero must         intervene
and I erase it.
There are too many swimmers
too many stones      and songs about war.       Too
much time is lost to translation          and too few
words for want.         The sun feels like tourism here
a bright room to let         and none in which to live.
Too many antennae        tenses       and Teevees.
There are too many themes        layered on these
too many Roman bones.          Too many coins
for currency’s eye        but that’s the lure of capital.
That’s a fee for death         what joy in the afterlife
affords it.        I am getting accustomed          older
learning how to say    these too many things will
I to leave   and too many Marys to hail.         I still
call     too many names into the void       happily
if one calls back.