"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