I GHOST

If I say I
Am romantic, I mean that
Any beauty that persists

In abstraction does not belong
To me, any longing
That does not conspire

With me nose
To nose is inoperable and little
By little it came to me

That walking along the street I am
Saying something even
The streetlamps are doomed

To listen to, to
Embattle within, to illuminate
Without, I observe

The illiterate ramblings
Of the F beneath the softball
Outfield, buy a new

Hula-hoop at the carousel
Concession stand and envelope
The blood-coursing

Hands of a dark-haired girl under
The surveillance of many
Horses, lions, giraffes lifting

And sinking in the paradox
Of frozen motion, if I
Say I ghost hummingbird-like

Amongst the braids
Bobbing atop a toddler’s skull, I mean that
Nothing is safe

From the interventions
Of sense and the color
Of the human face is not less

Mysterious, I remember the broken
Nose of the man that taught
Me how to kill with the sound

Of my hands clapping and emerging
Into the eerily natural
Light descending on Astor

Place I have been
Thinking about the quirks
Of anatomy, how they

Resurface, how even the disciples
Of disciples have disciples and I returned
Danger to the tiny

Inner disturbances we share, your tongue paused
On my neck, your nails grazing
My back, I cautiously pray we have the good

Fortune to avoid the habits
Of reduction and I would have my ceiling suffocated
With aerial photographs of the Nebraska

Plain where my mother was
Taught to read, red
Rectangles abutting black, beige

And the occasional green, or Queens
Just before 11 o’clock
At night, its pulsing nebula

Congregating in veins the way
The body’s discarded
Hair gathers in airy balls

Beside the radiator, the subway
Warns if you see
Something say something

And that’s exactly what I intend to do.

THE ASYMPTOTIC APPROACHES

I woke to the laughter of a friend from
A dream that life
Was ultimately a balance

Between teleology
And the moment, suddenly I knew
Buildings were just sideways

Horizons, that the sky
Was an infinite
Moment looming

Above our heads, that sexuality
Is not a reflex, just
As the intentions of a cloud

Are coupled to the eye, which in
Touching the newspaper relates to me
Partial things, my friend

Ben tends to shake
Superfluous things from the tips
Of his fingers, this car

Things like an immaculate
Animal at the far
End of 16th Street, for

My ear has its own crass
Manner of making phantoms
Of beauty into

Familiar symbols, I say the earth
Is not unfriendly, the end is not always
Deadly, when the desert

Closes one in
Its alien
Throat and discloses

Its whispery valence, the sun
Leaves his perfect
Shadows strewn like capes

Upon the dazzling
Promiscuities of America, I read
That on the side of bus

Bisecting Park Avenue as the song
Sang men make sense
When they prevail, I make

The bed, turn on
The light over the turtle’s
Head, just catch the 6

Uptown, tonight I will register
The pornographic
Constellating of smog-woozy

Stars, but here the man
Daydreams with his fading tattoos
Peeking from beneath white

Sleeves and a previous
Occupant has left a crossword
For me to complete, pen

Jabbing my thigh, my thought
Distracted by its asymptotic
Approach to reality, we are never

Quiet, never quite
Free from the hallucinations
Of meaning, the feather

In the hat of the woman is not even
The limit of her
Body and as it stirs within

The passersby, I say to myself I
Have made your body
Hurt, the weather says hope

I get the wind right
This time, Hiroyuki Doi says suppose
Every creature is a circle that exists

In this world, how many of them can I draw?

RECOMMENCE EVERYTHING

If I am to be committed
To transcendence, to merely say that
There is a body is not

Yet to deal with it, if my looks go
Everywhere they are
Selfsame slaughtered by the manner

In which they snag, a car
Illuminates in panic every thirteen
Minutes or so and it’s driving

The neighbors nuts as the socioeconomic
History of golf pollutes
The branch in the hand of the kid

Swinging at an imaginary
Ball, the handshakes
Here are reversible, we touch

Touching the way these fall dragonflies
Flee the invisible weft
They sew into the air that unites

Above our heads, today’s weather
Report calls for abundant
Sunshine as a man with a limp

Plods past the girl
Asleep in her tiny camouflage
Bikini and if she dreams

Of the secret blackness
Of milk, it’s only these pinks
Lazily invading

Her back as a sigh
Descends over the scene while the girls
Put on their shirts and we must

Recommence everything just
Moments after it’s begun, the sun
Shines abundantly down

Upon the clouds, or briefly
Breaks on the totality
Of a dog, or our impression

Of the totality of
A dog and there’s something
About lived life that leaves

Itself in intractable
Tufts upon the heart, it’s tough
Being a thing

Which understands enough
Of what it means to be
Seen to see others in the nightmare

Of consciousness, which is nonetheless
A dream, which is nonetheless
A choice without choice, spiraling

Like the intertwined black
And white on the disc
Of the hypnotist, whose colors

Remain fixed, we remain
Unconvinced by the spectacular
Passing of modes, want

Our ears near the frequencies
Of I hear myself
With my throat and what the throat

Thinks we drink, let
The very next idea that enters
Your head represent all

Words that never made it to the page.