Steve Levine

from “BLIPS”

MYSTERY TO ME

I wish it were more
comprehensible

a lot less
unpindownable

rooted in
some other music

not at all
like this

keening
siren

and barking
of dogs

*

NOTE TO SELF

Bummed
by the morning

thrum
but unwilling

to bend or bow
today don’t

take flak
or yield to that

shadow cast
on the brightening path

No can do
OK?

*

TRAIN TO NOWHERESVILLE

Just passing through
this difficult world

Rinky-dink hamlets
dot the route

Insipid simplistic
beyond bland

they could stand
to be knocked down

*

ASTERISKED

Against all odds
how can it be?

Oh, no!
Fuck me!

Somehow only
a footnote

in the Big Book
of Poetry

*

LIGHTWEIGHT

I rise from
my desk

crack
a window

the slightest
of breezes blows

this poem
right off the page

---

Steve Levine is a poet whose writing is primarily collected in A Blue Tongue; Three Numbers, with Jim Hanson; and Pure Notations (Toothpaste Press) and The Cycles of Heaven and To and For (Coffee House Press). His work can also be found in numerous anthologies and magazines. Keep an eye out for In the Hall of Arms There Is No Legroom, forthcoming from Idiosyncratic & Epigrammatic.