I AM NO PROPRIOCEPTIVIST

Sometimes when nothing
Happens the world
Feels terribly

Sincere, the gloom unsettles
Perforated by dazzling
Banalities, just to stare out the window

Conjures children to go out squealing
Over the half-obscured remains
Of a bird delicately sprouting from a snow

Bank or a man relieving
Himself into a trashcan someone
Has placed in the trash, it

Is altogether too wondrous, though likewise
Disconcerting, to be a thing, to be
A thing that is, that organizes other

Things into its own harmony
Or discord, sitting on a sofa cluttered
With posies, contemplating The West

And her talking horses when out
The corner of your eye something rises against
The crisp blue winter sky

And you assimilate it, a manufacture
Of sorts, all peripheral
Inquiries subject to a coloring

Of the senses, bluebird, bluebell, snug
Bellbottom jeans eliciting
An involuntary blood flow, there are cyborgs

Proliferating endlessly, sobering
Pockets of research and contamination
I lust after a curve and there are advertisers

Clamoring after its import, stereoscopic
Objects looming into our very
Selves, but this is no news

To you, you live
Here ever day, the fish
Swim and your hands

Have touched them, impossible
Notions have come to you as simply
As breathing, you don’t fear

Your own sun, that which
Nurtures and browns
You, or you do, it terrifies you

Every morning, so it is with our minds
They make us these things
That are, and as such we stand apart from them

Ladders interrogating
Half-curtained windows, I have
A trophy from coaching a girl’s basketball

Team and it pleases me, the ocean
Is somewhere relatively close and I think
Of it rarely, as I did

The mountains of my youth, so you can
See I am no proprioceptivist
Giddy at my own interior

Movements, the wet way a finger
Knows its duty among the twittering
Of its counterparts, I carry

On, my legs do, I see no point
In letting them talk
It through, any talk of within-ness

Merely locating a hypothetical
Point along the widening spiral of being, I am
Within a mind, a mind

Within some winsome casing
Just as my body wanders
Around this metropolitan apartment

An apartment within a moment
Of New York City, transiently
Abiding a certain

And meandering consciousness, which really
Resets the game, not to mention the impulses
Firing like snipers, so many

Guns inside us with no hope
Of legislation, I am
Antiwar, antibody, anticulture

And for absolutely everything, I affirm
The radio waves, Otis
Redding, even the stupidity

Of traffic, give me a pane to spy
Through and I will reflect
The world in its dubious elocution

Of forms, I don’t have time
To rub my own eyes or
I have forever, a natural disaster

Strikes and all the animals survive, can’t you
See what I’m saying, nobody is going
To give you permission, planets will go unnamed

Woman will bathe, unprofitable
Beings will suffer terribly and smile
All the same, if God has to

Die, so does jazz, all I’m asking
Is for a comely child to wrap
Its hand around one of my fingers

At the end, it will know what to do.

THE SHADOW ROBOTS CREEP

It’s not their fault, really.
It’s how they were programmed.
Programmed in an epoch that hasn’t yet come to pass.
I mean eons from now.
So they were sent backwards through a time portal.
A journey of major pyrotechnic significance.
Blinding, in fact.
Which is why it was necessary to send robots.
Shadow robots.
They arrived this morning around 5am.
With neutral metal looks on their faces.
Accompanied by tremors.
Dispassionately intent on carrying out the orders of a jealous alien lord.
Which is why I say it’s not their fault.
They were made for this, manufactured.
Made to creep with fantastic proficiency.
By which I mean to say you’ll never see them coming.
A fact that should actually comfort you somewhat.
Because there’s really nothing you can do.
Life’s like that, you know?
So just try and enjoy yourself.

JOKES FOR STRANGERS

All 21st Century day
Long I write these jokes
For myself and strangers

For the cats also, stuck
As they are in the airshaft
As am I, breath

Meandering through its spatial
Orbits, circling the eyes
That goggle spritely through

These habitual arrangements and I
Am a joke too sometimes
The way a horse burns down

To bridle and the mind lingers
On a cake, we are all plastic
Miniatures trembling through the acoustics

Electrified, my sword bending like
A cactus, the ruthless wind
Upon it, I thought it terribly

Important to bed
A woman of learning
To feel The Sonnets

And fill the empty drawer
A bus stampedes
Down Ninth Street, cauterizing

Certain possibilities of space
I can’t tell you
How much it means to lose even

An unwanted quantity
Of variousness, as perhaps
All my decisions end

With hard looks into the oily distance
Of urban mirage, fuck
Not getting a job, I have kids

To pollute, Palestinian kids, Italian
Kids, kids like myself, wrung whiter each
Genealogical turn, who’s looking

Out for us? The president? Even cars
Crossing the street are doomed
To simple sympathizing over the inglorious

Physics of contact, they are not human
And therefore have no problem
Staving off the delirium of hate, you have not

Died before, you are no
Perverted ghost lifting a skirt
Through the empty pang

Of regret, you are not the resurrection of George
De Chirico, who died the year Denver
Lost its first Super Bowl, the year I was

Weaned and stamps cost an unlucky
Thirteen cents, which doesn’t mean colonnades
Are any less haunted, women

Rolling tremendous wheels of cheese
Along their claustrophobic geometries
I may have lost

My attention for Logic
But I see beautiful
Children circumventing cruelty

Nearly every day, what have you done
For the safety of our feelings? Have you
Offered your seat on a crowded subway car

To a man in perfect physical health
Because he had tears in his eyes? Neither
Have I, not yet, but at least

I considered it in writing.

DEAR BEN,

It’s snowing, and not that inglorious
Small stuff from earlier
This morning, I’m talking large, meandering
Pieces that hunt the pigeons
From sill to sill. The radiators spit
And hiss, all my lights
On, though it’s noon and I know
That’s a waste. There are men
In the street dismantling
Something technical, wailing incomprehensibly. I was
Drinking some tea, my eyes
On the Psychic sign across the street
When I had to take a piss, which is
When I heard you showering
Through the airshaft. I didn’t feel comfortable
Yelling about snow, but I wanted to
Tell you anyways. Plastic bags
Flutter like wings in the branches, winter
Is upon us, I have no lover
Which seems to make the movies
Lonelier, though I can’t stay
Away from them.

DEAR BEN,

It’s snowing
I’m talking
It’s noon
That’s a waste

ONE SENTENCE EVERY FIVE MINUTES (UNTIL AN AMBULANCE PASSES)

1

My new blazer rests coldly on the back of a chair.

The Milk-Eyed Mender casually warbles downstairs.

A family of snakes escapes from his collar.

Ben is at the door.

Be kind to those who might spy on you while you sleep.

This postcard was sent from Belfast on November 23rd.

Precariously the water tower moves nowhere.

The only phone call I got all day was a mistake.

2

Buses, helicopters, cars, but no ambulances.

The boy in the postcard was pouring ink into a model swimming pool.

Dried shoots shake in the wind like flat icicles.

I’ll never get over that word: icicles.

I couldn’t appreciate grapefruit until I was seventeen.

Each time the quick curtain of her eye falls something retracts it.

Steve’s getting married.

The way a tree forks has nothing to do with dividing the air.

COMING, DENYING, KNOWING, SNAPPING, CALLING

Fire empties unto a pulp
Of neutrons, the honky-tonk
Blasts chicken wire, a cord

Of wood disappears into the folds
Of a ruined hand, essentially
What happens doesn’t

Stutter before the mathematics
Of denouement, pineapple
Juice complicated by a suspension

Of ginger and somewhere
An ex-girlfriend rinses soap
From her knees

DEAR BABY,

Isn’t it good to know Winter
Is coming, not denying
The skylark its movement towards

Gradual disintegration? I am
Not like a man who says I am
Not interested in knowing

Who existed before me and yet
There is sometimes a dark
Companion who pulls, a castanet

Snapping talismanic, calling
The air into mass, I think I shall
Call him Procyon B