Instructions Hope About Anthony Robinson

Anthony Robinson Instructions Make it up as you go along, make the victim responsible for the speeding truck, make the evening shine into being with figs and goat cheese, stainless steel and a look that says, "I'll take that!" Make five dollars for a minute's work, make the coffee strong and bright, make the black outshine the white, and look further into the forest, to the message scratched in bark: "Meet me in the park. If you love me." Make each hour a sporting event: life plays a certain basketball, drives up the court and hangs on the rim! so make it technical, make it dazzling, swift and sinuous. Make me a sandwich, a steak, a moment to hold on to -- Keep your ego in check and your torso sheathed in a Brian Wilson tee-shirt. Make today the first day of the rest of your imperfections, a celebration of the nicks and chinks, the babble and hum that issues from your hung-open mouth. Make it worth someone's while, give the pistachio reason to be green, make out with me. Be silent and unaware, be empty and full of grace, and above all things, be sad and fearful of that moment, a hair's breadth away, when you will know what it's like to be alone, and until then, take up a candle and go caroling, vanish into the arch, there, beyond the trees, the nut-gorged squirrels, make it strange and good. Hope Came here looking for a sign: stop or yield or one of those pretty stars, lighting the way somewhere, limning a path one should try to follow. So many gods, so little, this soul. The why is what escapes, usually out the window, like frantic conver- sation. Fervent conversion will have to wait just one more day. The headlights coming up the drive, this curtain flapping against the pane, this evening settling over: a bit here, a bit there. Anthony Robinson teaches English composition at the University of Oregon, and is an associate poetry editor for the Northwest Review.