"drawbacks to self-immolation"

thus I steal

With relaxed muscles
And allow each miniscule parcel
To pierce me with the thrill

Of its transference, still yet
I weary at the way glut becomes
Need, like I said I

Suffer from abundances
And my fingers turn arctic
Under the torching

Scald of intemperate spouts
If I confide my will
To become a being other

Than human I hope
You will not
Call me a science

Fictionist and should it
Dance otherwise
Let’s concede the use

Of loosing this
Impeding sleeve, my friends
I have felt the necessity

For a chorus, for
Choreographies in opposition
To stillness or oneness

Though it is said that
Loneliness is indispensable
I would have it

Dispersed in the manner
Of the old woman
Sitting across from me

On the train, she did nothing
But nod and it dawned
On me that dance might solely

Consist in the affirmation
Of sharing gestures
The man at the diner said I used

To like everything
A little weak and I knew just
What he meant, feeling

Differently all
The time, gorging one
Landscape only

To shoot through
A tear in the veneer, convening
Momentarily, like the voice

Inside you verging
Into a sound
Becoming out, if we are no more

Than silhouettes thank
God we can
Be bigger than poetry, by god

I of course
Mean air
Resorting to wind

And so I am content
To drown loudly in the play
Of sense and event

Each hour
Makes of the street’s
Turbulent world

There are cooers
On your roof this very
Instant, cases

Of transubstantiation verily
Persist, I would like to
Let truth conform to music if it

Only existed, but as it is
I weary of watching
The windows for fear

Of a stray bird thoughtlessly
Murdering itself
In the clarity of my panes

And as for music
Conforming to truth, I offer
Only a disproof launched

In the clandestine nautical
Carnality of vowels, a Tanzanian
Man tells me there

Is death on the shores
Of the lake through the particles
On the face of the screen

And my body moves
Attention, eye
Disappearing into a cavern

Of vacant nerve for tonight
We ponder drawbacks
To self-immolation and my sister

Will write delirious
Tracts about it, if we are not mice
Nor are we cats and even

The cats have ceased
To be more
Than simulacrum

Protecting virtual yarn, an obsessive
Hastening of vital spirits for
We remain transfixed by nodes

Of the unanswerable, we
Likewise ignore
The melancholy constellation

Of objects lacking
Care, the scalded rocking
Chair still beside

The radiator’s impotent
Whistle, not unlike the one promised
Mose in The Searchers and whoever

Thinks we surrendered
The hallucinatory satisfaction
Of our wishes has

No lived into this
Century, not
Believed in the ciphers

Of desire unheeded and the overdetermination
Of the blank page, forgiveness
Is a movement, a becoming transfer

Of ferocious thought for
When the Catfish
Is in Bloom these precious

Phantasms of love desist
And systems of the immediate
Future take over as

Too often we
Resist the admission
Of instantaneity

Cords of winding
Musculature maneuvering
In a way that defies

Narrative, not to
Mention the blood under
That, not to mention

The compositions of that
Blood, the whole
Thing coursing in unforeseen

Torsions of space, mind
Fighting to keep
Up...

"conjoined in the splinter"

a good
Movie stretches endlessly

In every place that it was and walking
Through the halo of one
Room into another involves

Changing your life so
Get over it, vanity
Is an atavism of unloving

Lords and yea
That I would be released
From the heavy triumph

Of reactive forces, let
Me be blunt, I refuse
The suicide that

Is not possessed
By revelry, which is why I
Have asked you here

Beside me, to watch ashes
As they catch on
The leaves of the date

Trees beneath the fire
Escape and thus
Will we terrify the modern

With our calm and truck
No myopia, for we
See how a window can look

Simultaneously into
And onto, how voices transmute
The blank room

Into a cathedral, a cathedral
Which nonetheless opens backwards
When the voices reverse

Into snaps and steam
Fortuitously ascends 54th Street
On the bare stems

Of godforsaken city
Flora, let me say
This plainly, I want you

Not to listen
To what I
Say, but rather

What I’m trying
To say, you
See, it is one thing

To know and another
To love and each thought
Should be like shrapnel

Wanting only
To embed itself, this
Is how the image

Of a pigeon turning
In lascivious circles burns
Into the lid’s

Back, he is on the edge
Of the roof and so
Now are you, when I write

About the dislocations
Of astonishment
I want for us all to be conjoined

In the splinter of it, love
Should not be
Malady, just as a song

Should not throttle
Into harangue by an otherwise
Preoccupied voice, my

Livelihood rests
In the miniatures made
By listening, at night

I turn
My iterations
Into a beast

That haunts unassuming
Sleepers, I used to
Wake in a red cascade

Of screams as the villagers
Fled, but I have since
Learned to control the sound

My dull fur makes
Disintegrating
Into scratches of rain

"a latent choreography"

I refuse
To discriminate

Between different modes
Of knowing plainly knowing
As I do knowledge’s

Inadequacy, night in its lucidity
Floats unnoticed and
Sunlight returns to shout

Through the leaves, if I
Suffer I suffer only
From the abundances and find

That it is necessary
To disperse
The universe, for

Instance this morning
There was a mouse’s heart
Pulled anchor-like

From its belly to stretch
Across two cigarette butts trimming
The curb and I heard

A man singing down
The street just like he was
Singing down

The moon, I can’t separate
What sounds
Unreal from that

Which becomes that
Way through the
Telling of it, life always

Struggles with another kind of
Life and I am no longer
Interested in denying what I

Am not as every
Throw of the dice is finally
A winner, the afternoon

Drags saturnine in
Its blue, the guitar is interrogating
New love in its cheap black

Coffin and I perceive
The salutatory tones of the poet
Saying Welcome

Overboard dear
Friend for
Today the cemetery

Will unveil its public
Art and today
The silent plurality

Of senses event themselves
Unkempt within
The lining of winter’s

Unexpected quarter
And today I will walk frankly
Bestride the stoop-strewn

Brick with each chance
Furthering my enchantment
At life like

The woman on
The subway who looked exactly
Like a woman and yet

Also very much like
A cat, a fact
Which I found attractive

And worrisome simultaneously
As a man in cargo
Pants beckoned Zion arise and trim

Your beards, you see disequilibrium
Does not merely implicate
Systems, but mines into the fiction of all

Sullenly orbitless selves for
Even together two stomachs are not too
Much for thinking, you make tea

And it enters
Parts of you you never
Touch, a center

Is only a wish in the same
Way belief is only a placeholder
Amidst the poorer

Ideas, these idiot
Winds whirling
Without cease as I am living

A classically prenuptial
Life, I hope, lacking
Envy, the song says God

Bless those pretty women I wish
They were mine and it is
Not possible to pay too

Much homage
To space, the form of the
Body being a latent

Choreography of everything
A body does, a good
Movie stretches endlessly

In every place that it was and I think
There is no little connection

The Last Post was #100

Any suckers out there want to publish a ms?

"the anger of wanting less"

The hum of the desktop or

The thought that if I was
A character on
A sitcom I’d want to

Be named Chris, would gleefully secret
Your name into the second
Season unknown, because as soon

As one arrives at the idea
Of God, everything
Changes, the docent confessed

She couldn’t speak
Finland, Richard Tuttle
Embraced purposeful

Failure, the stripper
At the titty bar said I didn’t look
Like a poet and I made it

To the airport without
Throwing up, it was then that
I realized I would never die

Simply to come back
New, to know
The ugliness of wishing all

The same things in different
Ways, we must all
Make up the necessary

Will to insist on grace from time
To time, to shirk
The furrowed instructions

Of the calendar and blow
Noisily through the anger of wanting
Less, I see the way we

Wane without
Impertinence, grow slight
In our retiring, today

I saw every blood
Vessel inside
A dead human and was

Wrenched by the beauty
Of it, a constellation
Of tremulous antlers crowded

By economy, one
Can confirm
An ideal correspondence

Or ponder the slew
Of schoolchildren pawing one
Another into squeals as

The 6
Approaches, I refuse
To discriminate

Between different modes
Of knowing, knowing as I
Do the breadth

Of such inadequacy

"we are not meant to be parers"

You are in between
The cars, on
The other platform from

Where I momentarily
Stall, you collapse my field
Of perception, do

That to my anatomy and I seethe
With affection, I see the compulsory
Phantasms of logic

Pass numbly and retreat
To the galaxy named Fangs, Yves
Klein manned a blowtorch

To portray the presence
Of absence, I betray
The damnation of a brain

Made barren by its necessity, today
I thought about all
The objects unperceived

And went slurring over the resemblances
A transom jittered with pins
Of light like the little injections

Of voice that overwhelm
My own, then again I am no
Surface, I am a node

Bleeding with oddities, half-tongue
Half-gut to strangle this reticular mess
Of wants and you

Are nothing
Else, this is what I
Mean when I see

The drawing say the eyes
Have it all
Wrong, it may

Be right, wrought blue
By an ink headlight
And if you think in pictures

It’s easy to imagine
How animals
Think, it’s easy to be a dying

Thing thinking of
Life, the world is simultaneous
And we are not meant

To be parers of
It, stripping the densities
Bare, we are not meant

To be anything other
Than transducers of a multifarious
Noise, ecstatic

With occurrence, timpanis
Tippled with chimes
Of accident as the unsteady hand

Of time tocks its way
To here-there
Hoping for a mysterious

Intervention

"being attenuated"

I will breathe
My torrent once

More and read and read
And get lost
In the feeling of being

A part of the feeling
Of being there and knowing it
Here, I have had too much

Free coffee and the paper
Cut on my finger stings like a divining
Stick from back when

I was a boy in Colorado
Which I liked tremendously
And in a different

Manner than I like being
A man, the Romans
Were bored, the Americans are

Bored, I move to bare
My little splitting
Inside as it reds between

The pink on the end
Of my pointer
Finger and there is happiness

In its exhibition, a belief
In the world as a place to go on
Living as foul men

Go on tanking
In tranquility, something
I misread and I would

Have them like Ted
Talking in it, perhaps building
A harmless mobile of air

Which could carry forth in a spinning
Wince as I run into
Jeff on the F, then off at 7th Ave.

To meet Ben for some Sunday
Beers and a little ping
Pong at the underground Mexican

Billiards hall, where Hilda
Gives us Hornitos gratis
And we play seriously as little children

Do, I’m never not in
The picture, my sneezes are borne
By the wave and then returned

To me in a draft, I wake
In a catastrophe and move about
The city in a tiny

Raft of glee, my gaze is always
Already yellow because I’m not severe
Like a dancer, nor perverse

Like Balthus, though that does not stop
Me from falling into my own
Leers, reeling like a knockout and I

Have struggled tremendously with people
Who would not be loved, a cuckolded
Prince sung his child to death, today I thought

About how beneath
My beard I am
Growing old and in a dream

It was gone, my dream
An ink composed of fine
Bone particles

From the foreleg
Of a horse, Chico tags love
Stinks, I’m not crazy

Just enthusiastic, breaking
Into stagger like Thelonious tiptoeing
At the plateau, moons

Are not silent, there is nothing
Written on your fingernails
The gratification of graffiti lingers

Within the greater ensemble
Of nostalgias, Lunatic
Fringe comes on the radio

In the ice cream shop
Where I stop
In for coffee every Tuesday

And share my affinity
For Al Green with the ice cream
Lady as outside

The snow’s fleeting white
Wastes into gray, just as the sun’s icy
Beams bleed through the haze

Of Third Avenue, if I am as real
As a hamburger I am not harnessing
Myself, nor harassing

The world with the promiscuities
Of my eye, your body
Is oscillating and I want

To bed in between
The waves of
That becoming, this body

Is a thoroughfare that enables
Various energies
To transact and curve and to lose

Love is to feel
As if a significant piece
Of oneself is being

Attenuated, so I go
Out to walk the streets freezing
And overheated, blank

As a plank of
Wood, the leaves left
Skeleton by ice

And grafted to the grates, I heave
Winter by its latest
Air, ears gone slate as the train

Billows into its burrow
Of tile and I am on
My way back to Brooklyn

"the love of a doctor"

Each piece duly piercing
Its own consequent
Glint, each fragrant fragment

Exclamatory of its berth
In the whole and not merely another
Aspect of the whale

To be turned, that’s right
Yesterday I watched Fellini astride
A blackly garbed curve

And today a strange
Italian stranger engages
Me on the train

There are dreams and then there
Is running late
Again up Lexington, a copy

Of American Music shuffling
Mute in your bag
The startling collision

Of two men in howls
As the light finally
Changes, the sun balanced on

The pin of noon for only
Its non-moment as we both know
The limits traipse

Away in lame constructions
Of air, Giulietta is left
Fumbling after the spirits have left

Her in the same way we wear our hearts
Down to symbolism to
Symmetry to be worn to be blind

Every day is a senseless response
We don’t hold a train
Responsible for the killing

Of a man late
Saturday night, we know enough
To peer behind the bloody

Body at the Body
Politic and what appears
Carelessly lodged in

Its teeth, it is said
A man lives by his tooth and I
Feel compulsively too

Engorged by the signals
Of our age, Chinese
Men stand on my foot on

The way to Manhattan, I bear
A cancer of sense
To drown in the freezing

Poison, I hear
They’ve got Bison in Golden
Gate Park and I have

The love of a doctor who
Herself is learning to love a premise
Of mine, somewhere the maize

Is flattened beneath
My car and my car is the promise
Of emptiness, of a treachery

Forgone as I still rail
Against an empty
Twitching coda, so if you will

Gently tip the assemblage
I will breathe
My torrent once

More

"I indolently excerpt"

we live amid

The immediacies
As the temperature lowers my lids
Seem to also, I see less

The world contracts
And ideas slide like dress
Shoes across

The frictionless
Ice, making one almost
Nostalgic for sweat

A distorted buckling in the Path
Train plastic windows
Becomes almost prophetic

As lady and I slink
To New Jersey
For sushi and a glass of Spanish

Champagne, my head feels
Like bourbon, my nose
Like a pomegranate, in this density

I indolently excerpt
Portions of the skyline
To forcibly imbue

With sense and sometimes
I find the inhuman eye that lets
Things be, being being

Such a concussive set of castoff
Suffrages, much raging
Never punctures the skin or does

So only as a means
To treat threat
Like a balloon, I wake in

A strange bed beside the hum
Of electronics, my hand
On a feverish leg, the suburbs busy

With food and we’re already
Unabashed as for each tremulous
Step there exists

A pivoting fan of vectors
To refract and continue, last week
I found myself without irony

Helping an old lady cross
Third Avenue, she feared she
Would be blown

Over by the wind and why
Not, even should
The beauty of the world shine

Forth like a mountain
Of snow I would
See it famed into crystals

Each piece duly piercing
Its own consequent
Glint

"body is where the knowledge comes from"

Of synesthesia as certain small
Mysteries continue
To animate the instant and you are

As much thrown
Into it as you can be
Said to own

Any contingency in its improbable
Production, this morning I dreamt I
Was looting the house

Of a former reality
Television runner-up only
To be squealed

On by the rich kids, my books
Are yawing atop
The green nightstand

The flow of thought does not
Follow a fallow
Plain, the plan of the day

Is to let desire more or less trump
The mere pleasures
Of fact as the squat woman

On the train garbles
Obscenities of gender and the car
Precipitously buoys as she

Makes to leave before
Abruptly returning through the pursed
Black lips of the door, yellow

Is calling out
To brown, warbling trapezoids
Stalk the stoop-ridden

Periphery for warmth, the stubble
Of winter razors
Foward and I feel more

Comfortable amongst the indefinite
Articles, I feel no
Relief in the parentheses

Dictated by men, when I was a child
I wrote body is where
The knowledge comes from and now it has come

Time for me to choose
A different body, one that intercorporeates
The world as one

Would hold the pattern
Of words unresolved, each a plane
Which normal consciousness

Does not reach, intervals
Where the absolutely new revives
Its excitation and yet I can’t

Get the image of the man on the bike
Smashing into the cab
Door I had just opened out

Of my mind, or is it my mind out
Of the image as the sun
Has left us in a prematurity

Of night

"that's not poetry"

But I must do laundry
And get a haircut, make coffee
And obtain an active sort

Of boredom, for it is abhorrent
To me to know
Beforehand what a thing is

To become, the unconscious
Is not incautious, the
Forms of farms are far from

Exhausted and this boy
Is never so, though
This man regularly solicits

The energies
Of others in inhabiting
The accidental garb

Of space, if you
Recognize the flower’s use
As a Geiger counter

You no longer look
Down upon its uncomplicated
Eye, I no longer

Look forward to longing for
Words that disguise
Me, as even now I resort

To assume because knowledge isn’t
Possible, I perceive
Because I am less than

A part of the world and am thus
Excluded from its still
And unitary embrace, when I embrace

You it’s because you
Are possible, I feel a feeling
That elaborates those

I bear, I hear
Here through all the moments
Of there, these verbs only

Denote the impossibility
Of not acting, the song says be not so
Fearful, be not so

Pale, the guitar strings give
Way to trumpets as
A man in a kilt casts murderous

Expletives at a figure encompassed
By cardboard beneath
The Psychic’s eave across

The street, so much in my life happens
That’s not poetry
These days and yet it persists

That way, the black-eyed
Old woman who in the middle of her
Rant quieted to whisper God

Bless you to the pinstriped
Man on the train, the drugged-out
Glare of the boy

Embarrassed by
His grasp of fractions and yet
His laughter is impressive

To hear, the screaming of the black
Transient is carelessly
Remarkable and it feels suddenly

As if one has a choice, all the suitcases
Bobbing like hens, all sense
Conflating in a dim whirlwind

Of synesthesia

"constantly astonished anew"

Because they’re there and we’re
Skipping the marathon
To make love, marathons always

Make me cry anyway, applause drowning
Out the fourth cover of Foxy
Lady, a fat man named Klaus veering

Toward the median and I was
Reminded of the end of Cobra Verde
When Kinski eventually

Abandons his body to
The tide and the terrifically deformed
Man quits his pursuit to gaze

Upon it, we do not appear
To prepare to appear, yet I am not
Without myself, let us

Hold to the appearances and in
Our holding release
The burdens of these bodies made

Thick with unconscious
Care, the tic-tic
Of the birds goes out, my head

Dissolves into the Babbling
Flower, a panoply of hues is resolving
As constantly I am

Astonished anew, a man
For whom the divers tones
Of a mental life meld

At once, though I am still
Too man to know how, to no use
Is it that I wrench

These meanings as it is our fate to live
In the bulging zones
Of indetermination, each hastily

Snagged difference alighting
Within the necessity
Of trapping the next, it is thus that

Our being free diminishes
The existence of all
Other, that our choosing makes

Objects in its sweep
From here to there to here
Again, our needs

Not only consume us
But tear at the very world we deem
Available, a dancing figure

From China leans to
Gesture with her fired breadstick
Arms, one circle converges

On the next as Hiroyuki Doi replentifies
The present, Berdie slumps
In a chair and is bronzed into choppy

Waves reaching nowhere, living
Matter is from birth
Irritable and the office of the image that I call

My body is emptily retaining
Its retinal store, though
Not with less longing, not with less

Blood to go carousing
At the periphery, I think of your teeth
And am smiling, I think you

Are in surgery and dutifully
Amazed over the opening cavities
Of motionless men

"I will know my song well..."

I can only begin this once
I know enough not
To begin again, a bus engine

Revs outside, keeping the masculine
Time of streets intact, I seem
To lack something sufficiently

Violent for this world, these windows
Shut against the literal doom
Of birds for the first moment since

March perhaps, what alerts
Alters, what separates us from all other
Living matter is the intentionality

Of our aping, the rest
Are content to ghost, we must be legendary
Psychasteniacs, commanding

Stillness from bone though
None is to be found, one encapsulated
Day makes possible

The next as a nexus of moment
Ripples within each
Thin leaving we unwittingly

Enact, the sparrows congregate
On a clothesline, the sun
Mocks us with its patient trajectory

Though not without warmth, our arms
Grasp each other’s backs
And our stomachs bulge to touch

One another at the point
Of their turning inward, the songs says what
Good is the vision of a world without

The will to despise it, the limb
On the tree between the teeming apartments
Remains unburdened by the black

Plastic bag shuddering from
Its branch and we likewise shoulder
Remnants of lives compulsively

Lived, I want my friends not to feel
Slain by the slickness
Of art but the incommensurable

Crowning of flesh, the crowing
Of blatant mouths
Whose cheeks flush most

Shamelessly in the challenging
Of weathers, I make bad
Coffee, flout the proprieties

Of dress and carve a boogie
Of vectors from room to room, my hair
Curling at the neck, my neck gone

Tingly at the acknowledgement
Of a landscape by Tanguy, its silly distance
Coursed by melts

In wondrous penumbra, for you
See I know that desert, the one that holds
Everyone in their own

Inconceivable lateness and I’ve thought Yves
A name unfamiliar in its elbow
Like pose, the mugs in the cupboard

Wobble in response to the underground
Train’s relative glide and I’d like
To put something difficult together

Together, as often we are in an un-
Certain confrontation
With the things, the play

Of lost objects, the shifting
Limit of equilibrium we ceaselessly
Lurch toward, our instinct for

Renunciation burning
Coldly within a coda of disappearances
As if the world were a solution

Of magnets, though higher
Than actuality is possibility and I
Find these movements

Temper themselves, in my dream I
Became purchased
By a large, wealthy Italian

Family to “fix” their youngest
Daughter, who spoke
Only in tongues, I woke to the hydraulics

Of the 75 bus, which was picking
Up strangers at Bartel
Pritchard Square, as perhaps

I am also, these lines
So solicitous, gently intertwining
The desires of company

With the commerce
Of possible gossip, the street so
Acoustic in its precarious

Lanes of performance, Courtney
Wants coffee and bagels, Serena wants
Apples and coffee, I want

Coffee and the anti-tranquilization
Of Holland, 1945, fuzz
Blistering like the nervous

System tapped by microphones, delirious
Cells amplified as they carom
Through a dying spell and I likewise

Want to keep white
Roses in her
Eyes, so I go

To the park to be pelted
By leaves as an Italian greyhound
Named Bologna begs

For my food, I once knew
The smallest dog in Brooklyn and I sang
To her on our short walks, Millie

Dog, Millie dog, small enough
To be a slop for a hog, small enough
To be a little watch’s cog

But she moved to Minnesota, where I once
Shook a hologram
Of the president’s hand and held

The skeleton of a two-headed calf
Named Spider, I want
To name this poem something

Long and people it
To crowding
With fevered visitations

For you see I see
What I mean and these beguiling
Visions are inseparable

From me, I’m not afraid
To admit it, the clouds are heavily hued
With infantile pinks, the spinning

Blades of the fan have lured
My skin into volume, the paronomasias
Of advertising exhaust

Me in my hapless groping
After sense, I am
Not content to peck

At the surface of an inexhaustible
Depth, I want these
Scripts to be less of who

We become, just as the dead
Bulb shivers into a bloom
Of eccentric shards, I’m asking you

To accompany me
Through the deformations
And into ourselves for

When you have no
One no one can hurt you and I
Refuse to go blind

Amidst the threatening
Of affects, there are people on
The brink of a green

Ocean, their eyes green, their arms
Crossed and they are roping
The tide for you, your green ocean pulsing

Because they’re there

DISEQUILIBRIUM

I don't know how long, but for the next section of ill-defined time, I will be posting selections from a long poem I've tentatively entitled Disequilibrium. My understanding of that term is initially related to Piaget's concept of it, disequilibrium being that disconcerting space where you face novel information and must find a way to make it useful to you. It was his conviction that it was only by maneuvering through this space that we truly learned anything. I also feel the world to be a complex of systems striving for an equilibrium that may, in the end, be a specious concept. As you may have noticed, not much writing is happening for me in the way of poetry these days, but with this new work spinning into the darkness, I have hope there will be more.

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.

TOWARD PERCEPTUAL ENSEMBLES

The cat does not avert
Its gaze, it is in
The room whereas I cannot help

But be of, often
Stuck between my wanting
To observe objects

And my responsibility to the objecthood
Of my own watching, so it
Is that my eyes escape me, fleeing

Into the pulse of a summoning
World where there is no
Silence, a night where there is no pitch

Black and I remain
Engaged in the endless
Task of expressing

What exists, if my life does not
Explain this
Sentence, I think

To let the sentence attempt
To exclaim my life, much as a vulture
Flicked the young Da

Vinci’s tongue with its tail, I ate inch
Worms for money and smacked
Stale crimson peppers for Miller moths

During the occupation of ’85, our attic
Transformed into an insect
Mausoleum, even today there

Was a squirrel in Washington
Square Park which brazenly
Did trounce the toes of a studious

Girl in sandals, her pen top
Tossed in terror among
The half-smoked butts, so is it

Any wonder to be subsumed
By the operations, to exist as one
Life crossing 16th Street

To overlap the others in tremendous
Inward and oblivious
Leaps, powering the air

With intractable charges, or
Part of the parade of phantasms
Bottlenecking at First

Avenue and Houston, where salamis
Solicit distant gunmen and the retirees
Converge to leer cross-legged

At the exigencies of cinema, even at this
Intersection if I
Tremble my trembling divides

The sleeplessness of others and still
I would not be a wound in
The landscape, even had I found quarter from

My engagement with the codes, if people
Like to put things in
The ground, I like to fumble

Amidst the noise our
Handsome collisions commend
To being, the hopefulness in

Our movement from sleep
To the world when so
Often there is only yourself looking out

As the actor climbs down
From the proscenium to stand
Beside you and glare

In near silence as the near darkness falls.

BEING-IN-THE-BEING

If I contain a likeliness
There is no dead
Of night, my immensities gather

Breath around them like bulky nuclei
Harvesting paths, the sun nearly
Always recognizes my hair, the cat

That arises from beneath
The bed is no longer
Ambivalent and wrongdoing does

Instruct as each particle arrives struck
By an intuition of wholeness, I
Interfere until I can span as enthusiastic

The day as dark, I desire to indulge
My feelings unto matter, perhaps to loose
The folds of this waking

Into film as the eye
Cameras through a complex
Act of awareness, you

Don’t have to wait
Until you die to reconcile the variegated
Guesswork of experience or question

The possibility of the question, so
I listen as an unknown
Source of animation kicks a soup

Can down the avenue wondering
If it appreciates
The interruptions of clunk

How they penetrate
An otherwise
Dull continuity or work

Their way into dreams, I dream
Of brand names, suspend
Myself in the protracted plummet

From sky to sky, lay
With tigers and sometimes I sing
To keep from cursing, braced

By the tedious pangs
Of incarnation, but it wasn’t always
This way, I once secreted

My name within the idea
My name became, allowed the magic
Of talk to ricochet

Like a bullet into the entire
Future before folding
Itself through its own beginning

As flesh alone dissolves
Any thoughtful stab
At purity, there is no manner

I wish to absorb
Nor a shape this veering attempts
To conclude, I have dust

To remind me of myself, a cacophony
Of dishonored steps to take
No notice of, there is a church

In California that I hold
In my head and its thick-tongued
Towers toll without

My being there as my being
Ebbs only to erupt
In directionless code, I was born

Into The West and the joy
Of unintelligibility or I was born
Into fluorescence

And the hands of a stranger, I will inhabit
Abstraction or inhibit it, as
The vanishing point of my mouth

Explodes, proffering
The air with tiny quarrels
Of self, I either writhe

In the baptism of ether or
Soberly find myself
Happening ceaselessly, these

Are the uncertain occupations
Of an object in the act
Of appearing, it is now

Time to consider your own.

DISLOCATIONS OF ASTONISHMENT

Landed in Albuquerque, drove
To Santa Fe, doves
Scattering in the driveway, my sister

Was reading about Mormons, my mother
About mystery in the Virgin
Islands, I slept on a bed composed

Of air, chased it
Each morning with a cup
Of coffee, a storm

Hit and the ponderosas dutifully
Bowed, a skunk rooted
Beneath the hot tub, near the night

Spider whose body resembled
A bird’s egg and was ornamented
By a single diamond, all

Week I chucked rocks against the monotonous
Adobe, my shoulders turning
Pink, the clouds turning charcoal as so

Often morality dwells in the driving
Out of fear, so that what
The centrifuge flings malingers unseen

And this wall remains nothing
More than a loose flag
Of fingers draped idiotically

Across the eyes, we need not be
Let alone, we seek the acknowledgments
Of company amidst

This cycling of refuted systems, the shocking
Green eyes of a young girl
Named Kori widen as she tells me of an elevator

The size of a living
Room and I watch as hummingbirds
Spar in abrupt fits over

A dish of sugar water, I myself
Worry over a world grown
Pathologically soft in its revulsion

Of horror, in its acceptance of error
In the late summer breeze
My forearm hair feels particularly

Inarticulate, receiving so much deciphering
So little, too often I invigorate
A line of discourse only to have it

Stump when the telephone
Rings, I dreamt I was a comedian
And the audience was

Laughing so hard I never
Was able to tell
A single joke, so here

It is—the work that I do does
Nothing to things, I leave home to imbibe
The dislocations of astonishment, to lose

My way and find another, tricking
The moments into line
Before defecting into rearrangements

And if I write as if language
Were a series of decrepit apartments
Harboring squatters

I am apart, the sun
Penetrates where the air
May not pass as

Each experience happens twice, even
The panic you feel returning
Home to a strange figure in the dark, even

If it turns
Out to be the innocuous
Shadow of a Buddha

Planted among the flowers in the garden.