INDEPENDENCE DAY

I was trying to land
A plane in the Andes only
To wake to

The squealing brakes of garbage
Trucks once again, the soft
Focus of death reflected in a pigeon’s

Rooftop warble, this is
What it means
For me to be in love

To swallow grief
In wondrous subvocal
Gulps, I think

Of all the fingers
Wriggling in their crepuscular
Pocketlight and wish

The cloistered sublimities
Of touch to open
When the singer says feeling

He says it seven
Times and the rain that wasn’t
Due until evening falls

In tiny drops against
The ketchup of your hotdog
As you prepare

To watch America
Swim, Long Beach lifeguards
Drowned out by the shrill

Calamity of spangled
July, this is a film
About the ankles of a man

Cornered in the alleyway
By a sudden vortex
Of refuse, a song about a woman

Trembling in relief
At the absence
Of god, her windshield

Speckled with the elliptical
Distortion of lenses
In daylight, It was I who

Dubbed the cat Thirsty and I
Who staked claim
To Dirt Bottle Island

Where spokes of illumination came
Crashing through its canopy
To fill its meticulous scatter of glass

With glints, your shins
Ornamented by scars, one
Hand around my

Waist, the other flat
Against your lips and you
Have said nothing

Of me until you take into
Account my most personal views
About chicken salad

And the weekly catharsis
Of montage, I
Who left Colorado

To revel in the obscene
Pageant of tender idiots we call
Art, to fail in

Habituating the scotomas
Of class, to listen
As the baby downstairs cries

Out to the world its astonishment.