THE LUNG

Aleatory day
breaking open
in flashbulb blur
over the hush
and din one moment
jaggedly ushers out-in
with its collapsing magic fold
Brooklyn is like a lung
we fill with our petty noise
our thuggish orange pockets of noise
which rush each jellyfish pulse
of the great grey lung
as it silently huffs
the trees like cilia
the sun only
another commodious orb
for sale
or what
would it mean
to buy light?
Would it mean dice
don’t tell the future?
The signals are all splintering
here at the breath hole
where air vacuums in-out again
and the pigeons fear being breached
I told a stupid lie
about your stupid ugly face
how it dazzled me
in waves of ignorance
wholly my own
skin color waves
how impossible
it seemed
to understand merely
a single face
your stupid ugly face
that the pigeons know
better than I ever will
buckling at each windy cheek
as it heeds the propinquity
of Brooklyn’s bag-like lung-bellow
under the urban sun’s golden shrug

THE POEM

Coming to
almost less
here for being
actually right here
in a viral fog
magic is never settled
so I make everyone’s fingerprints
count in waves of unhinging
to tour the desideratum like seedpods
floating over our soiled silver pools
I wrote you this book
backwards for staving off logic
which pitiless homes in
almost less here now
that I’m thought
responsible for beauty
writing books
for drummers
whose eyes gasp
with each inky
plastic tree’s perforated collapse
I wanted to intone
something something being here again
without appearing redundant or cold
because there’s only this sordid boil
pulsing sensation into drowsy chords
or pulling back from resentment
I lift my arms
over the unending poem
and shyly quiver
like a beast
not occasioned
to standing
on hind legs
my fingers blurring
at each ugly knuckle
until the music begins
its great white unfolding
like a sea of teeth
slicing the poem into organelles
which seem to function interdependently
if by function you mean burst

THE RIVER

Leaving cities
is easier
when you breathe
stupid yellow flowers
through a hidden orifice
wheezing on a pistil
in them dead Eastern woods
where fever gets passed counterclockwise
and the river is always on
like a Boombox made of water
a long blue electric detour
that blacks out in swirls
I named this highway
Face Crisis Smile
in your honor
a no-brainer
taking forever
to untangle
a fucking highway
where fever spreads
in all directions simultaneously
a stupid yellow fever
that we can’t stop breathing
in our dead Eastern woods
where the river is always changing
from one call sign to another
borrowing all its hard K’s
from the cold western airwaves
past Face Crisis Smile
a curtain of trees
we all love
a total fucking
no-brainer
for all
you heavy breathers
knee-deep again
to greet lights-out