SEVEN MORE MISTAKES

XXXI.

Dumb moon
still talking
through green
sea foam
tonight


XXXII.

And yet, as one sometimes says, this is the strange part. “The People” were out in heavy coats and prattled in the hushed tones of precarious intimacy. Their children either shot ahead or lagged behind, but never quite fell into step. I crossed the seams in the sidewalk like a starling harvesting song. “The People” were feeling free, laden as they were with merchandise of various sorts, having finally transfigured all their drab hours into tag-bearing loads. And yet, I was surely one of “The People,” was I not? I was. And song rushed through the lobes of my brain like tinsel through a bough. Even the purposeful steps of “The People” were torn apart and stored in haphazard chunks for future use as dance. I was harvesting “The People.” And even that word, People, became utterly strange. A traffic of recycled limbs. Pe. Op. Le. Pp. Ol. Ee. Because this was the strange part: I was not a starling at all; I was rapt. And the fiendish luxury of that rapture did not separate me from “The People.” It was the trap. The trap that kept me in step.


A Variation

Sometimes the lack of
the forearms of
the hyena trainer is
the act


the circus a locus
of phantom labor
or a table from
which we gorge

the hyperbolic then
the ambiguous, which
in the end is all
that holds us together


XXXIV.

wake
make love
make coffee
shake the birds

out
sprout new thought
shout dreadful things
quote a cinematographer

“You’ve got light. You needn’t feel alone.”

Sven Nykvist, Light Keeps Me Company


XXXV.

I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a joke burns down
or the jelly horse forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a horse blacks form
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic burns
I’m a form too like a fish burns black
Or the jelly down bags of joke plastic horse
I’m a horse bag like a joke burns black
Or the jelly form downs of fish plastic too
I’m a fish horse like a burn forms too
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic black
I’m a black joke like a fish burns form
Or the jelly horse down of too plastic bags
I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
Or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags


XXXVI.

In the voice
of the face

is the crease
of the soul

unfolding


XXXVII.

Part of today is
taking the bus
facing the face
that is yours
behind those curious
and key-scarred
frames, dumb, totally
rapt or detached
the advertising that
persists like a fog
made of skin
evacuated into
razory planes
your very own face
pushed over the streets
happy to arrive
decades late
to the perfect song
voiced by ghost
today the snow
that is our hearts
flutters and love
will truly tear us apart

INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR

September

There is a star in the sky.
Look at the star.
Don’t take your eyes off the star.
Set.


October

Shining. An aptitude
for spook-noting. Though
nothing may be in
the room, that should not lead
one to believe
that nothing is vacant.
Let your spook
sense shine. Cooperate
with whatever lingers within
the nothing that
isn’t.


November

Leave your coven silently.
Do not explain love
to a cloud of atoms. Recover
only what proves lost.
Write a novel whose protagonist
is named President Stove.
He reclines in a dilapidated grove of oranges.
Your ship is hove-to and needs
your attendance. If no shovel is handy
an arm will do. Never hover
over the “truth”
of anything. See the plover’s brittle
grace? A dove will
never improve your life. Never leave your head
in the oven and never let the devil
remove your shoes.


December

Take an hour
to walk across
the bedroom
of a stranger.

Watch the massive
garment of the river
unravel itself bare.

Erase the letters
of your name
from the Book
of Revelation.

Now know how slowly
one must love you.

INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR

May

Keep one eye engrossed
in the rapid landscape

these city sidewalks make.
Count keys, dried drops

of blood, solitary buttons
soiled gloves, and pennies

with tails facing skyward.
Every time you see tails

look up for a full minute.


June

Find African American teenagers.
Put their pants on backwards.
Make millions of dollars.

Or, alternatively:

Find a good-looking white teenager.
Make sure his pants fall down.
Make millions of dollars.

Coda:

The instructions of this month
are only feasible if you live
in the early 1990’s.


July

Visit Brooklyn.
Drive counterclockwise
around Grand Army Plaza
on your way to the Brooklyn Museum.
Pay exactly fifty-six cents for your admission.
Ascend to the fifth floor.
Walk clockwise
around the American Identities exhibit
on your way to Larry Rivers’ painting July.
Notice the large woman repeating
herself in the scene.
Her name was Berdie and she was his
mother-in-law. I once knew
a woman named Birdie
who was ninety-something years old.
Her teeth would fall out
while we talked. She was a ballet dancer.
July is a kind of backward
choreography. It traces the heat
and gesture that constitute the intimate
traffic of our bodies.
Do something twice, altering it
slightly the second time.
Leave Brooklyn.





August

There is a beautiful wind animating
your organs tonight, the squish
and slip of valves
pulsing anew in the dusk of its elastic
architecture. There is
finally some way to understand
the body from inside. Consider how
much has until
now gone unaccounted for, the machines
of interiority aspasm night
after endless night. Open yourself
to yourself. Write
a self-portrait that is not
a metaphor.

INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR

January

Get a really long extension cord.
Connect it to a hair dryer.
Melt a hole in the snow the size of your body.
Lay down in the hole for several hours.
Think about what it feels like
to be old snow.


February

There are several protuberances

on the male body: twenty
digits, four limbs, two ears

one nose and one penis.

The female body has twenty-nine.
Jump, jump, jump, jump.

And while you’re jumping
consider that you contain

within you the possibility for either body.


March

You are inevitably passing
from one fraction
of your life to another. For instance
I am just now
leaving…well, I guess
I don’t know, but I think
my point is still valid?
Anyways, while entering each
new fraction you should allow
its strange, angular dimensions
to suffuse you with
a hiccupping yellow light.
It’s okay to laugh
if that’s how it feels.


April

Throw chair through
window. Sit on it.

Give abbreviated reading
of poems by the current

Poet Laureate. Run.