CONSEQUENT REALITIES

My love is studying
Anatomy and I
Am a dilettante resuscitating

The moaning anomie
Of postmillennial drudgework
Into daily veer

As Watts teenagers writhe
And jolt like shapely electricity
Victims and theirs

Is an earnest rage born
Of the absurd, a fit
Response to an irresponsible

Age, each morning’s paper
Soaked in a bloom
Of limbs, each ironing

Wife wrought by the incidentals
Of a life unwittingly
Defended by a spectacle

Of death, I myself often
Pass this
Way with my hands

Over my eyes, hopelessly
Mired by the gross
Mitigation of routine

As the recursion of the
Spreadsheet self
Grows misty, harmonies

Invade, the Voyager
Ages in direct
Proportion to my own ungainly

Orbit and literature wreaks
Its unstoppable
Pageant of obituaries

On the American lunch
Break, my great
Grandfather was adopted

At The Battle of Wounded Knee
And I called him Bernie
And I swear we will not be confined

To pale little moments
Of exuberance or the inexhaustible
Shifting of these consequent

Realities, it is impossible
To measure how
Often the phantom

Limbs of memory return bent
On self-mutilation, nails
That aren’t there firmly dug

Into a palm that no
Longer exists, though it
Does, has, always

Will it seems, aligned
With the body’s bewildering
Pulse, the eye’s fiery

Recapitulation of difference
And who will stand
With us against the relativism

Of sensory input? When
Is it but constantly
That these assumptions threaten

To overtake us? Who deigns
To bring my love
And I something to wear we feel

Like getting out of bed.

FOR

Another March arrives
You wake to the hydraulics
Of the 75 bus

A man you have scarcely
Met dies and you lose
Another indispensable compass

The fluorescent wanderings
Of your eye divorce
From the tolerant measure of his and we

Can’t escape the luggage language
Makes of our thought
Each nerve a courier wholly

Removed from the incalculable sequence
Of detours backwardly
Spelling out whatever finds

Itself wrung from moment’s lurch
There is no reasonableness
Fit, no grand arbiter of sense

To fix the tangle, no way
Of knowing what and who we need
Most alive, as today

My love’s eyes are like little
Animals opening
And closing in order

That I might survive, I feel
To live in them as a page
Must, want nothing

Of the lonesomeness of being
Closed and connected
Only by the taut physicality

Of spines, to shore again against
The smallness of the real
The horror of living forever

Interred within a reasonable universe
Because there is no
Impenetrable line, the months

Pass, dust gathers, a cut
On the bridge of the nose vanishes
And meaning slips in

And out of view, like stars
Surfacing on a night
Sky scalloped by cloud

Cover, your love’s shapely
Thighs tremble and detonate
An irresolution

That’s been terrifying
To bear intangibly for the past
Year or so, here

Are a few of the reasons
To continue: For Love, for The Immoral
Proposition, for All

That is Lovely in Men.

BLOOD ON THE TARMAC

In Brooklyn I contemplate
What curious maladies are borne
By the surprise drip

Of sixth floor air
Conditioners effusively
Placating heat

But here, static, out
The window of seat 6A
I see blood

On the tarmac, its elegant
Maroon arch like
One half of a pelvis

As a voice pervades
Enumerating the emergency
Procedures, I make it

A point to visualize
Such catastrophe in hopes
Of deflating

The cruel whimsy
Of a capricious god
A young child

Vaulting its merciless
Incomprehensibility from the shallow
Of its toothless mouth as we

Begin to roll and soon
We’re aloft, the cemetery
Like a computer

Chip and the impossible
Sky like itself only
Vaster, bluer, two-and-a-half

Hours later we once
Again pierce the shaggy moguls
Of the cloudtop

To reveal green protractor
Ballfields and a myriad
Swimming pools unblinking

Along the dumb, patchwork face
Of the suburbs, I turn
Off my electronic device

Thinking there is
No jet engine where there
Is no mind

There is no love in
The unerring, no embrace
Where the wind is

Absent and what
Is it to explode
But the pencil point

Extension of learning?
To evolve except
A heightened susceptibility

To the brutal modicums
Of furthering control? Thousands
Of glimmering autos

Wait in their anonymous lots
As we fall upon
Minnesota, the last

Place I could be called
Innocent and since then
My ignorance has

Not stopped alarming
Me, not grown
Less than a compounded

Sum of my experience so
You see there is no love in the one
True path just

As there is a canceling sweetness
In the poem’s last
Line, awkward thunder

In the airplane’s furious deceleration
Warm distance in each
Of the loved ones you return

To from so very far away.

ZIEHERSMITH DISPATCHES

The backwards fire seeps
Into its blooming
Woodpile as the poet mispronounces

Masturbatory, pinwheels
Of elk lining
The otherwise white

Walls wink, their fractal
Patterns coalescing
With the languid frenzy of

Birds aligning the unassigned
Capacities of the city
My egoism is a cormorant

Whose neck expands
At will, my heart
Too loud and these lyrics kill

Us, the saturation we
Become tracing
Ourselves into air, a jay

Crowds a turtledove
From the clothesline nobody
Uses, scatology trumps

Tenderness, the ovoid frames
Of a girl’s glasses
Clash with the rectangle

Face she was born
Within and what of
The part of

Me that embraces
What I loathe or how
A glove pierces

Its useless quotient
Of rain, the only meaningless
Catastrophe is the one

So large everybody can suck
It away in pieces, each
Minor fiasco gradually engulfed

By the vacuum it becomes, if I was
Writing the blurb for this
Decade it would read miraculous

In its quack solemnity, I am going
Tubin’ this weekend and that
Propels me, like I said, I like to get stupid

With my friends, to know my enemy’s
Great hero, to stare feline
As the variously colored entrance

Tickets to the Brooklyn Museum spin
On the blades of my ceiling
Fan or to sit enthralled at the mouth

Of the Union Square subway
Noting how our corporal
Parentheses are so fantastically

Different, the song
Says it ain’t natural to cry
In the midnight but I

See the guitar soundless
In its gently imperceptive hum
The way the dew

Removes itself and the poet
Has not yet understood
The consequence of friendship

She asks if she should go on.

TRAJECTORY OF A THIEF

It’s simple, a life
Of eccentric guessing
You move

To California, one night
Drunk you climb
Every fence in the neighborhood

And no one shoots you
And fog washes
The church steeple

Clean, months
Pass, you sell your car
To a surfer, move

Again, America roils, a man
Walks into a bar and then drives
Into a tree, you move

Again, one love
Recedes and another beckons
Smiling, your roommate

Gets rich and it befits
Her, the sun
Struggles over your eastward

Facing sill and it never
Occurs to you
To wonder how

It’s happening, it’s simple
Yves Klein invents
A color and it kills him

You steal six hundred thousand
Hours from god and fear
Capture constantly, one wriggling

Dactyl amidst the day’s lapidary
Scansion, you carry on
Unreasonably and bloodless

The moon is a rock that salutes
You for it, you forgo
Certain dignities, others

Are thrust upon you, animals
Curve to your touch, a schoolboy
Named Nimer Abderrahman

Writes 'Fire is tasty
You imbecile,' the leaves
In the trees in

The park ignite and you climb
The fire escape to the roof
To chart the buildings’ unwavering

Ballet of windows, a bullet is
Cocked nearby, the cops drink
Beer from Styrofoam

Cups on the street below
Ted takes you out for turtle
Soup, each piece

Of its floating meat
Wholly disparate, the cherry
Blossoms arrive then

Dissipate triumphantly
As does the sting
Of winter, the cephalopods

Adapt, an anonymous
Chinese woman catches
You when you trip

On the subway, the rooftop
Reads GODOT, the waitress
At New Wave Diner calls

You Professor, it’s simple
The wind hits
Your lips and you’re

Pleased, a deer hits
Your father's car and you’re
Inconsolable, a

Family of skunks makes purchase
Beneath the floorboards
And the impending decision puzzles

You—the stink or
The killing it
Takes to rid yourself

Of it, of them, who else?

GRANDPA WAS A SALESMAN

It’s the day the day
Everyone else is vacationing
At Fire Island, none

Of them trembling with the significance
Of foreboding nostalgia
But I tell them to mind the beach

Lights, my most virulent memories merely
Tantamount to the gleam
Of the glasses of the thin man

Peddling Duracell AA’s
From car to car, the inevitable
Thrill I feel being

Surrounded by anonymous
Creatures insolently
Daring someone to fuck

With them on their
Commute, the dreary sonic
Lassitude of burned-out

Churches skewering
The horizon or a wall map
Gone secretly glue

Under the damp blue
Corpse-light of an airplane
Bathroom, the defunct

Psychic persists, a distant foal
Stammers and stamps, what
Were you thinking crowding

The world with such a cowardly delirium
Of thoughts, the soft focus
Of death rifling each tacky eye

Of the passersby, I am not interested
In the pithy forensics
To which this contagious

Dream gravitates, I like
To get stupid with my friends
To get nostalgic for

Futures that never were
In the dusky resettlement
Of chances, Ben

Wrote a poem at age
Seven about a robot made entirely
Of panthers, yesterday I

Squeezed my bicycle past
A sleeping man meticulously
Wrapped in Mylar

Balloons, this is a study
For a larger ancestral
Portrait, this poem was actually

Purchased in Beijing in 1890
For a handful of silver
Fillings, I used to sneeze

Constantly until I had my braces
Removed, my dad
Tore his off through

The horrors of poverty, grandpa
Was a salesman who drank
Half-a-dozen Coca-Colas per

Afternoon, his mother had twenty-two
Children, three sets
Of twins, many died, as did

She, before she was fifty, before
I was born and it strikes
Me that every person in every passenger

Seat in every car in
Every town in every country
Is having some goddamn

Thought, this is mine.

THE SCIENCE FICTION OF COLOR

The Throat of Winter, Evenings
In Demask, King
Of the Rumbling Spires

That’s life in the twenty-second
Commercial of childhood, only today
I discovered John McEnroe

Owns Gerhard Richter’s Girl
On a Donkey, the nature of perversion
Perpetually shifting as one’s dream

Dwindles in the lens
Or is lost adrift
The swifts’ delirious plunge

As gentle earthquakes pervade
As the little tear gland
Says tic-tac and petty octogenarians

Crowd the Lexington
Storefronts where teenage girls
Spill their blank

Guts between pages in the cloud
Book, waiting for Max
Ernst’s Science Fiction of Color

Summer correspondence
Course to begin, each
Benign conscience quietly plagued

By the interregnum, it is not trivial
This death we die not
Dying, the blur of sexuality

Metastasizing in blinks, I never
Imagined I’d marry
An aristocrat nor quote

Sections of broken Austrian
English, some stupidity
Is heroic, some heroes assume

The village children
Are blind, I can’t
Count the number of times

I’ve thought the world
Different only to find my fingers
Twittering in their familiar

Way, the reflective scallops
My nails make shaking
Like gusts furrowing a sail

I am too fraught
With this calligraphic
Landscape I speed

Too sure these unsteady words
Are like a frowning woman who wants
Desperately not to sleep

With me, if reality
Is temporal why not write
Poems the size

Of cathedrals, that’s life
In the ten-second
Opening of train doors don’t

Be afraid to give everything away.