FERTILITY FOR DUMMIES

Reads the book thankfully
Unread on the shelf, the gym through
The window across

The park deserted, the tips
Of three of
My fingers have grown

Waxy, taut, something
Welling between the surface
And the bone, a woman

In an eggshell
Shawl pours over
Her copy of

Southern Accents when she’s not
Leering across the table
At me, increasing

My ever-present paranoia
That strangers are reading
The terrible things I write

About them and will any
Minute be thrusting a sharp
Part of their body

Against mine, as now the snow
Has begun to flutter
And circle tentatively beyond

The panes like some Fellini-esque
Spring wildly jumping
The gun, though my Thursday

Boredom would certainly appreciate
An impromptu bonfire set
Flush against a cartoonish Italian

Bosom, in this way my
Biology attends concomitantly
To the shapes my looking

Constructs, and I am here
To appreciate the manner in which
A smoking woman

Wades through asphalt, how
One building dwarfs
A larger one merely by the effect

Of its character, a boy
Trying to pass
For a Tribecan sentry, combing

The grates with his eyes, his fists
Jammed into his sleeves like potatoes
In a windsock, not often am I

Menaced by darkness for
I find it natural, not
In me, but in the world, in

Imagination’s terrible reach where
Things occur which dwell
Deeply beyond the pale, not things we are

Capable of perhaps, but we see
Them nonetheless, much as Henry
Miller spent three years

Inside a slide
Trombone, I have
Found myself too

Sane, and sullenly I feel just
Like Bonnie Raitt on
The cover of Streetlights

Her mouth unselfconsciously
Open, a little
Question in her

Eyes as if
To say, “I am so
Full of this…

This…what is this?

AMERICAN MUSIC

I don’t plan to address
My understanding
Of death, which, according

To the sometime apothecary, is
A physical impossibility, but when you close
My fingers in your own, bones

Are alive, even as the bald man
Sitting at the table next to ours thumbs
Through a magazine about guns

I can look out the window to where
A blossom of birds issues
From an abandoned skyscraper or traffic

Enacts its unwitting algorithms
Of pulse, it is in
Pulse that such thought

Arrives, in pulse
That it recedes, just as these city
Bodies orbit relative

To the attention they are
Paid, one eye
Ogling another, space

A capacity for the patent
Enumeration of our feelings
About etceteras

About the important ideas: love
Loss, breakfast, noise, terror, I refuse
The counsel of stupidity

Regarding such matters, this equals
That, take it from us, watch
Your back, buy a car, make money only

To spend it establishing
Your identity, and so the disassociations
Of velocity continue unabated

Halving and trebling
Ourselves into metropolitan collage
Involved or unloved, naïve

Devotees of cryptozoological
Findings, the wrack
Of semblance, a chimp

Named Oliver whose lack
Of teeth made for a humanoid
Mug, poor fucker

But not so unlike the experience
Of anyone thick enough to live
Through it, modernity

That is, the chalky abstinence
Of our nowadays fraught
With a stubbornness to dissolve

Into pixels, our greatest
Poets hounded by lavender, the yelp
Of an old catamount plaguing

The suburbs, in Bhutan
It’s said the local Yeti survives
On a diet of frogs, I tend

To these stories carefully, knowing
The public to scoff
At the indulgence of dreams

Unsanctified, my beard
Hedging outward as a rote
Continuance finds

Justification difficult in the face
Of encapsulated truths, my truths
Equal suddenly to any

Small observation of cheer
The weeds reaching
Dutifully toward what gravity

Deems us opposite to, the sopor
Of a steadily impinging commonplace
And for the same reason

Skunks find harbor
Under the floorboards
Of a prison, we

Lay our androgynous howling before
Suns of uninhabitable
Chemistry or ‘the lonely wail

Of that old Cannonball blazing
Through the night,’ it’s American
Music I have come to

Bring you you redoubtable ear.

DOO WOP

Zeno’s arrows have fallen

From the favor of youth

The air is occupied by

Small acts of levitation

The poet has no idea how

To rock, paper, scissors

He eludes self-evidences

Monosyllabically, you

Hear our American music

Through the chalkboard

BEAUTIFUL, JUST

I would not be a poet
Who merely observes

Words. Nevertheless

The beautiful painting
Is not beautiful, just

As a fact can’t
Speak for itself

I am a tallish man
And my feelings

Interfere with levitation.

THE TRUE MEANING OF PICTURES

I never trusted in my ability
To wish for fear
Of misapprehending the implications

Of my desires, much
Less the desires
Themselves, like the sheer

Absurdity of trying
To hit a certain cloud
With a certain color

Balloon, all the while crossing
Your fingers that the winds will hold
It in shape, I do

Hope the rain will stay
Aloft until I reach the zoo
Today, so that

I might see what kind of lonely
Creatures they’ve got locked
Up there, though lonelier is better

Than dead, I can tell
You, from a trip
To the San Francisco Zoo years

Ago, where we momentarily lost
Our Frisbee in the giraffe pen, until
Colin was brave or stupid

Enough to retrieve it, little index
Cards gracing the cages
Everywhere, lamenting the dead by

Their demeaning stage
Names: Bongo, Quiggly, etc.
Also the orangutan

Who watched us with such scorn, only
To turn his back, put on his chiffon
Robe and walk away, and since then I have felt

That way many times, alternatively
Wondering who it is this
Show actually entertains and then realizing

The answer must be myself, it’s sort
Of like moonlighting
As both the actor and director in a film

About the fantastic terror of existence, a comedy
Of course, and you just get so fucking lost
In the production that it’s only when piss is literally running

Down your leg that the set lights come
On and you remember to call cut, wherewithal
Rubbing its paste-caked eyes

Somewhere in the back
Of your neck and the question
Remains as to who exactly

Is shouldering the camera? You? The poem? I
Have seen pictures, only
Yesterday I watched a man’s Bradburyian

Tattoos leap from his torso and fly
Around the woods in search
Of a small girl, a woman in the row before

Mine swiping at the space above
Her head as if it were 1895 and we
Were caught in the path

Of a silent train, as if the earth
Were truly hurtling through
A widening sea of air we cannot breathe

I see pictures every day and by
God there is as much
Truth in them as in any shifting

Collection of thoughts, everywhere
I go people
Point out my wounds

And I can’t contemplate
The fact of having walked
The city these few weeks

Past with a gaping hole
In my leg, it’s abominable
The way we let

Our feelings instruct
Us and yet
It is the only thing

To be done, right? Right?

I AM NOT MYSELF

You are, the way
A man of stone has
Always been

The Gorgon’s
Gaze, look
Again, a sack

Of bones leaks
Nothing, a shaft
Of light all, it is

You riding
The train, you
Writing it down

LETTER TO FEBRUARY 2018

A jogger uses snow
To wipe dirt from
Her calves as the
Trillion sparrows
Filling the thicket
Suddenly hush
It’s noon and a woman
Walks her greyhound
Past, its skeleton
Strangely clunking
To and fro, the birds’
Song slowly builds
Again, I really need
To pee and I notice
The broken water
Fountain behind
Me, but I don’t
Dare, my tennis
Shoes elevated
By one of Christo
And Jeanne-Claude’s
Gates, the temperature
Is supposed to graze
Fifty today and I
Will not mourn the
Returned invisibility
Of my breath, I hope
Winter won’t be
Back too soon, hope
Alex is struggling
As well as I am
When he’s my age