LUGGING FLOWERS INTO THE FUTURE

Sleep is a story / we tell to ourselves / the streets yellow

with swollen leaves, your face / somewhere in mine, orange

gone suddenly / sensual / Thank god you

were there to rescue intelligence / to revel in the inequality

of silences / and now I’m bursting / naps

itching joy / Eno at the bar, birthday / girls lugging

flowers into the future / without a map / I’m suddenly so New

Wave looking / at you from the bar buying us / drinks

as you grin that / scared intelligence, that could it / be we

are already / kissing grin / Just yesterday I was so

sure silence / didn’t exist / now it’s bursting

TURNING AVIAN

One posits a containment / mania / this little decoy we / tug

inside the shatters / of us fringing the world / I guess

it is sexual, a low drag / with unperceived frequencies

The green lobes / of the out-the-window / tree steeped

with yellow jellyfish flowers—we are / enmeshed in nuisances

Where is all that incommensurable / hope? You forgot it

in people / and found it there again, again / turning avian

Her tongue in my mouth / our faces pressed by the rush

of air pushed forward by the D train / we were busy

not taking / I wanted someone menacing / to approach me so

I could perplex / them with rhyme / I remembered words

of mine from the mouth / of a madman—come

home: this is / the loveliest rhyme