The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
The Proximity Paradox

Swipes of sumi engraved by the end genetic
fail to embody the toil of the foreminions 
for so much life overflows the stories told 
with vim and vigorous gesticulations
the point never follows the lines that
pivot upon excesses and famine's toll

Brooding appears as the activity of history's hive 
each tender caress lost to an inky blackened outline
and the underscore of heavily engraved signatures
while the rut of peach-fuzzy boys blooms inside
cherryless vanilla beans sewing nacreous doilies
for borrowed blue-silver plated place settings

Can my handful of falling sand pierce the boudoir
after a million ventured projections return 
more necropsy than forgotten scent rehydration 
such bleed-through would denature the dance
of proteins whipped into a lather by instincts
unsublimated and congealed to a carnelian aspic

Melodies are enjoyed more than litanies of progeny
for the dew before the first spring rain defies the
lightning bottle into a leyden jar of our own hackles 
while imaginings fall away from their orbit to
burn up in the cool of midnight's slumbering prune
never to be consulted by culture's euphemous scribe

The vowels of eponymous summarians lose their connotations
though some semblance of the song is still sung 
after funerals dip bread into tears of self reflection
the wanderer for a moment remembers his homeland
snuggled in the wealth of daily iterated curvatures
every bloom sheds its last hair to emerge into pearlescence
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