AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MECHANICS OF DEFORMABLE BODIES

When Erica says
I am feeling myself and jovial
I think of the orange

Tipped trees between
The buildings out
My window, their penknife

Leaves grazing like air-bound anemones
Haunted by the jellyfish
Forms of black plastic bags, today

My love turns another
Year older, youth
Though she is, her kind, fooling blue

Eyes kindle wonder and I find
Myself wishing for her
Happiness more often even

Than my own, a picture
Of the crest of her
Back in my mind, her sheepish

Smile tremoring the air
Into joyous throbs, the song
Says 'all the bleeding

Drums, celebration guns' and somewhere
She is drinking guaro, dark
Plaits of hair striating her already

Reddened face, I search
The pages of a Medical Encyclopedia
For images, place a diabetic

Within the coils of a Child-Headed
Blengin, her hand missing
A finger, the afternoon free

From employment, 'every breath
Death defying', so I go
Nowhere, make too much

Coffee, read a biography of Warhol
Call my dad, mull over
Health insurance, stretch out

On the couch and thrill
At the idea of my love’s impending
Touch, the plain

Of my chest pale beneath
Its T-shaped turf
Of curly hair, would that bodies

Could rearrange themselves
Like thought, that these gangly
Arms were telescoping

To where you are, the way
My eyes run over
The geography of where you were

And will be come Monday.

SOBRIQUETS

I was never able to help
Myself as a child
From rifling through other

People’s drawers, my sister was
Afraid of the kidnapper, but I knew
I could knock him out

With a lamp, in college I used
To rap my way out
Of fights, after college I could not help

Pointing out the absurdity
Of violence to any aggressor and thus
Absorbed many fists

I punched a hole
Through my boyhood
Door and my

Parents installed a punching
Bag in the basement, I bludgeoned
A young, flightless bird

To death with a fencepost
With a friend, we were five and neither
Understood previous

To that what death was, it’s still
The worst thing
I’ve ever done, my stomach

Sickens in contemplation
Of its backyard grave, the one
I visited regularly

As I grew, Ted dreams
His hearty glass
Shoulder is tapped by a procession

Of two-headed nails and a pregnant
Sea turtle kicks sand
In my love’s face as all actions

Are consequent to the extemporal
Implosion of choice—what is not possible
Is not to choose, so we close

Our windows or dash
Into the cacophony, submit
Ourselves to the sadism

Of timing or acknowledge 'god
Is what we make
Of him', I wanted to flower

Spontaneously in the nightgown
Of rust, to vivisect
A dragonfly mid-flight

And trace the minuscule
Scatter of its organs, in County Clare
Sits Bunratty

Castle and there I left the casing of my index
Finger under a canon after my first
Sampling of snuff, I revel in the iconic

Boredom of my name, secret
Myself in the panopticon’s rotating
Eye, if a phantom trudges

Elephantine from room
To room—that’s life and far
Be it from me to

Burden a figment with sobriquets.

HYPERGRAFIA AND THE CONJUNCTION OF DRONES

I will not condemn our 'esoteric
Embellishments of personality', those that forge
Intractable wefts in the translucent

Bubbles our thoughts waft
From, each inane
Jaunt to the Laundromat is a dance

Within the unsuspecting
Dance of another’s cigarette
Run, the guesswork

Of perception dutifully fills
In behind, the apparent world falling
Into a chirp-heavy

Accord, or does it conspire to
Slay us, these urban shades
Always skulking with their jagged

Grins, you see it
Depends upon the pedestrian’s
Gait, the one long fingernail

On the woman across
From me or if
I am picturing how it opens

Skin, which is how I know
I’ve been on the train
Too much this otherwise fine

Tuesday, the tinsel
Nightlight of Brooklyn
Cascading over

The dull, thick, chemical canal
As I have plans to
Convene with my sister

In our living room
For a beer, where the thin
Cardboard dogs howl in

Black marker off
The edge and a child’s red
Accordion languishes

Untouched, there are two Blind
Willies: one crossing
Jordan and the other taking

His burden to the Lord, Lord
How I sense a trouble
Come to perplex the good

People that do bend
Before dogma, that do cauterize
Doubt in the hope of rooting

A lame leg before giving way
To the inexorable
Aesthetics of empire

Which in readiness debilitates
Its angular chill for the musty pleasures
Of inefficiency, these are the songs

Of ourselves we sing
For others, simultaneously
Indulging an altogether

More elusive melody, the one
Within the head, though I see no
Need to dissolve

The crutch of selfhood, to shun
Culture for nature
Minutia for perpetuity

Intuition for the deliverance of air.

LO

My first wire
Job was a fortune
Of violets

And I dismantled them
To flee my own
Flaxen locks in a pot

Of coffee, it was my destiny
To spend the summer on the porch
Lifting a dumbbell

And now here
I am programming daffodils
In the guise of leisure

The girls of Windsor
Terrace propped against Sabella
Pizza’s glass doors, I never

Made claims to portraiture
Am merely a sketch
Artist, a draftsman gracelessly

Devising devices to further
A kind of compassionate absurdity
Like the words in the bathroom

Of the Buttermilk
Bar, which read 20,000
LEAGUES UNDER

MY NUT SACK
But also like the Nobel Prize
Winning novelist who

Writes 'Because I own this
Rifle my arms and legs
And blood and bones are superior to yours'

For man treads perverse
Amongst the mute
Consciousnesses, he is a she

And we are all of us
Stunning in the magnetic
Fields we toil

Over, the saliva of our tongues flung
Before us as they dart
This way and that, panderers

To the throne of the Frog
King, who eyes us suspiciously
And ribbits with the full

Timbre of his royal blood
For he too has seen the girls
Outside the pizza

Joint, their plaid skirts
Stained with the yellow grease
Of garlic knots, he guesses

At the rude waves
Of heat which sluggishly billow
From an idle downtown

Bus and he fears the bodega
Cat napping near a bag
Of quarter chips as the palpitations

Continue, we dwell in a constant
State of self-immolating
Gasps and yet there is something elegant

In it, the way we glance
The commiserations
Of biology, join the psychic

Potlatch of inimitable minds, verily
Drift on the abstract
Sexuality of time as it contours

Bleaker existences, there are so many
Pregnant women in July
And as I watch the incandescence

Of bodies abut
On the gum-covered walks
I am content to peer

Through the humiliating impasse.

SUBCUTANEOUS CONCERNS

Ambling down the summer
Midnight streets of New York
One gets the distinct

Impression of drifting between the walls
Of a clammy cave, the lamps
Like masses of bioluminescent

Worms casting orange
Light into the grumbling depths
Beyond the subway

Grates, I know a man
Who quit his job at the greeting card
Factory in St. Paul, a woman

Who saw little animated
Tennis shoes every time she closed
Her eyes, I close

My hand around a fork
And eat saffron rice and black
Beans with jalapeño

Pickled carrots from a Tupperware bowl
While watching the horse
Breaking scene from The Misfits

That purportedly killed
Clark Gable, his stubborn heels
Dug into Nevada’s

Desolate earth, it’s so late
In the history of literature, so shot
Through with older raptures

Which chime dustily
Upon the shrinking bell
Of the West, once

I drove 4,000 miles to realize all
My ideas were still in Ohio
All my kindhearted abominations fed

Into a tiny voltage
Of axons and yet nothing
Compares to the melt

I feel in observation of humanity
Watching NECKFACE’s glory fritter
Away on the roofs

Of the Gowanus Canal, this stunning
Industrial “eyesore” where I used
To walk hand-in-hand with a lady of German

Descent, I know a man
Who was mistaken
For a bear, a town where all

The hamburgers are
Named after chess moves, a depository
In the employee parking

Lot where we’ve buried three Christmas
Trees, tomorrow I shall flash
My thighs upon the river and wed

My friend to a keg but tonight
The subcutaneous
Concerns dawdle unmet

By the dizziness of glee, stray
Cats call out their lust
Or terror or both and it's impossible

To fall asleep.

NEUROLOGICAL THEORIES OF DENIAL

Heat seeps to sprinkle
My forehead with sweat just as every
Morning we return to the cold

Liberty of distance, droves
Of the enchanted exchanging
Lives, I will build

A strange child to reckon
With such horror and cause
It to seek absences

To stare at truth like a gleaming
Toxicity translated by
Breezes and it will glean

Also the private conspiracy
One makes with
Oneself, for if we are

One with explosion
It is combinatorial, the ice
Cream man’s melodic

Transience merging with the human
Traffic as bodies perpetuate
Their chemical escapade, ardently reveling

In the catalog of soft
Abstractions, when you are gone I listen
To The Transfiguration and am lost

In the cloud your body
Becomes, I mean
The one you possess

That which possesses me
In the eerie stereo darkness
And if grammar

Is the direct result of how
Humans feel in the world, perhaps
The obverse is also

True, adverbs make me who
It is I can be said
To have been, I can practically

Hear all those words out
There amassing to make the journey
Inward, blistering

Pings and haunted whooshes
Triangulating at the self’s too
Permeable periphery

As if it were no
Surprise to suddenly dissolve
Into a tome-like tomb

Of syllabic feedback, the poems
That these days
Have become more

Real than the indentations
On my mattress or
An unwashed cutting

Board, this cigarette in the empty
Beer can atmospherically
Sizzling to its obscure close

On the streetside sill, so
It is that a man
Marvels at the tumult

Or ease he’s
Become, balancing the neurological
Theories of denial

With the fact that the heart is
Beautiful as a seismograph
That if I dare to look a stranger

In the eye his palms
Will swell, that it is suicide to live
Conscientiously among

The compromising throng.

FLOUTING DETERMINISM

We eat afternoon
To bones in
A metropolis where ghosts

Are always hungry, their vivisected
Steam-plume quotations
Coddled by racket or carved

Into disappearing paper
Snowflakes against the charcoal
Doors, all these

Memories passing
The way veins
Collapse, little bruises

Surfacing like twice
Exposed film, I do not wish
To wash the fingerprints

From my thought nor burnish
An age made rough
By understanding, I imagine the cat

Dreams of a fluttering
Hand in a lush
Leafy darkness, when I was

Twelve there was nothing
More pleasant than the startling
Ping of crab

Apples hitting hoods and here
I am disheartened
By the flat, arid music

Of Western Imperialism, its accord
Looming, the epiphanies
Gutted, but all parts are not

Pieces, the eyes close most
Often to open
Upon the diminishing

Grandeur of amputated scenes
Those that ebb only
To bare the imperative

Quality contained therein, one has
But to walk the deserted
Halls of a museum to know

How much life these portraits
Need gathered about, how much trouble
Resides in the definite

Mind when our best defense
Against terrorist attacks is to be late
To work, my love

Loves me enormous and the coincidence
Of these emotions dispels
Dogma in the same way it spells

Out a burdensome absurdity, my sister
Fears the introduction
To her book will cast a wraithlike

Pall over the remainder but
I appraise her
Of certain things:

1) all well-intentioned beginnings
2) wander in the hope
3) of flouting determinism

The wolfman weeps
Unconscious in the unfinished
Suburban development

As here in the botanical gardens
The turtles stick their necks
Out for sun and if the turtles stick

Their necks out why not we?

THE HARMONY OF OVERWHELMING

Perhaps I exist to ruin
Objectivity, to dull
The shears that this insular

Art becomes, our proclivities
Mingling in the mangling
Street, since I moved to New York

I have not stopped
Sneezing, though I did pause
In writing this poem

To hunt down a frightening
Silverfish who undulatingly flew
Across the keys, even

If it never sleeps
It does awaken and one peculiar
Moment you find yourself

In the unfriendly grip
Of the octopus so
Is it in vain that I hope

To be less of a stranger
To you while at the same time trying
To avoid the disgrace of being

Well known, the city is
Harmonious mass, an Amazon
Of commerce, even

If it is the harmony of overwhelming
And collective murder, I had expected to lose
My virginity to my babysitter

At the age of twelve, Breton
Wished to keep the book
Ajar, the song says I can’t be held

Accountable for the things
That I’ve seen, but I refuse to
Deny the refuse

Of our lives the warmth
Of witness, I will not submit
Myself to loopholes

In recursion, the only phone
Call I got all
Day was a wrong

Number, yet that also
Has not stopped
Me from feeling a consequent

Note amongst many, kind
Words are no less
Instructive and I’m off

To the zoo for salutations
To the wallaby I call
Bushwick Bill, also to look in

On a deteriorating letter
I’ve stuck between the wires
Of a fence running

Along the ravine, all my
Life I’ve dreamt
I was able to see translucent

Arrows making up the air and thought
It feasible to spend
An afternoon not breathing

But when I stop
To remind myself of the way you
Smell when we’re lying

In bed I know it
Would be a terrible waste
Not unlike the beauty

Of insects, this apparitional
Night, this soft, silly
Music that has become more

Meaningful than I could imagine.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

I was trying to land
A plane in the Andes only
To wake to

The squealing brakes of garbage
Trucks once again, the soft
Focus of death reflected in a pigeon’s

Rooftop warble, this is
What it means
For me to be in love

To swallow grief
In wondrous subvocal
Gulps, I think

Of all the fingers
Wriggling in their crepuscular
Pocketlight and wish

The cloistered sublimities
Of touch to open
When the singer says feeling

He says it seven
Times and the rain that wasn’t
Due until evening falls

In tiny drops against
The ketchup of your hotdog
As you prepare

To watch America
Swim, Long Beach lifeguards
Drowned out by the shrill

Calamity of spangled
July, this is a film
About the ankles of a man

Cornered in the alleyway
By a sudden vortex
Of refuse, a song about a woman

Trembling in relief
At the absence
Of god, her windshield

Speckled with the elliptical
Distortion of lenses
In daylight, It was I who

Dubbed the cat Thirsty and I
Who staked claim
To Dirt Bottle Island

Where spokes of illumination came
Crashing through its canopy
To fill its meticulous scatter of glass

With glints, your shins
Ornamented by scars, one
Hand around my

Waist, the other flat
Against your lips and you
Have said nothing

Of me until you take into
Account my most personal views
About chicken salad

And the weekly catharsis
Of montage, I
Who left Colorado

To revel in the obscene
Pageant of tender idiots we call
Art, to fail in

Habituating the scotomas
Of class, to listen
As the baby downstairs cries

Out to the world its astonishment.