NOT AS HELL AS YOU

It was a whole
Day had passed and I
Said so

Many things that might have been
True that my lips
Were chapped, my fingertips

Calloused and white, this evening a song
Says you better come on
In my kitchen and I feel doomed

To absorb disquiet, tiny
Trimmed hairs from my mustache sticking
To the damp bathroom wall, a friend

Calls to tell me he slept
With his boss, another broke
Her leg biking along

The Everglades, when I say I
Refuse I mean trash
As in I trash the idea of a voluptuous

Remoteness and I trash the tyrannical zest
With which our minds injure
And betray us, if consciousness is

A train they’ve uncoupled
The sleeping cars and supposing truth
Is a woman she is

Like Marilyn, stripped
Of all but the most conditional
Meanings, I wish to crowd

This believing, to imperceptibly shift
The spotlights until each
Angle has been teased bare before

The libidinous mob, the man
Under the psychic’s eave is rather
Pacific today, his ear

Crushed against a book-sized radio, no drunks
To taunt him into rage, I fear
I may have misguessed the wallaby’s

Sex having spied it
Grooming a pouch yesterday
As wailing toddlers rode

The carousel for free, I want you
To take me not
As I am, but as I intend

For you to become, this only
Works in poems, the song says I am
A young man that’s inclined

To seek pleasure and I sneeze
On the already grimy
Keys, only the most used letters

Free of it, my love finally
Sleeps, a book of clinical neurology
On her breast rising

And falling like an overturned
Raft, we are determined to sneak
Into a movie, I simply

Have to replace the strings
On my guitar, have to explain the use
Of beliefs bound

To change for a perfect user
Of words uses things and I am so far
From doing either

Subliminally rapt by my
Intoxication for all things bent
On sincerity, on

The hinge that separates a concern for objects
On the lens from the impulse
That traverses an axon and I know

Its silly to think care
Could exist in any sense unsullied
But I also know that it’s bound

To be raining outdoors.

ALLEGRISSIMO

My eyes are no longer cut out
For the likes of midtown, they’ve grown
Accustomed to roofs, stoops, stores

Suffused by an affable
Dinginess and the textures of low
Sound droning

Without tedium, men call
My dad a man
Of decency, an old

World word, would that surprise
Might rupture the hideous
Simplicity of causation, that the tortoise

Might take the hippopotamus
For its charge as perhaps all faithfulness is born
From sloth, "they who have contrived

To retain ignorance" dare
Not tempt the wolf
When wolves they most easily

Become, bombastic architects
Of mediocrity, media’s winking fingers
Upon our knees, yet "no one lies so much

As the indignant" and I weep
Once every five years or so, dent
My knuckles on closed

Storefronts every month, give weekly
Thanks for the absurd
Surpluses of others as my sense

Of direction daily rearranges
Itself in heat, so I take out the fruit
Flies with the garbage

Don my silver shorts and whoosh
Around the park narrowly
Avoiding midday dope smokers’ fishing

Poles to visit the white-tipped
Wallaby recently tagged as Caribbean
Women push towheaded

Boys in overgrown strollers and "I want
To always be on film, to be
Caught in the cut coffee sober," to thrill

Allegrissimo in the perseverating
Predawn dash of birds, I applaud the real
Bodies of women, collapse

Into the tenderness of leisure and all
My bitter recriminations are sloughed in the line
Between void and voice

Between abyss and abundance, shoplifting
Teenagers spiriting lipstick amidst
Half-torn movie tickets, the roots of a once

Stately oak tree sprawled like tentacles
Across the quiet New Jersey
Street, tonight I will play ping

Pong and drink Negro
Modello, eye Elisa’s budding
Belly and anticipate

"Casimir Pulaski Day" at the Bowery
Ballroom, for life continues
To astonish, even as the bomb-laden

Believers of Iraq reek
Their fiery remuneration, a skein
Of cool air descends upon

Brooklyn and the incongruities
Mangle in ways that awe
My ability to reason, which is finally

Unnecessary, as is
My attachment to behavior for
We’ll all of us

Be new here in the end.

A GEOMETRY OF SLEEPLESSNESS

When I was eight
I knew I would never go
To war and so

I knowingly deformed
My knees in an effort to approximate
My father’s, knocked, a little

Awkward, I’ve never been
One to calmly stomach
The mundane violence of being

A man, nor my own
Coursing potential to harm, hands
Thick-knuckled and shaky

Even on my twenty-eighth birthday
As I toured to the Bronx
Zoo and lurked amid The Land

Of Darkness, where umbrella-winged fruit
Bats keep pink-eyed
Deer in fear, I refuse hate as a kind

Of occupation, also kindness
As an excuse for simplicity, now it is
Friday and "blood confuses

The heart," which dithers serenely
One moment only
To be throttled the next, when I was

In high school I used
To keep myself
Up at night envisioning strange

Geometric shapes, each expanding to the point
Where it seemed to miraculously fill
My head and transcend it, this uncanny

Mathematics of volume turning
Spiritual as whole
Hours passed untended, unintended

Fatigue suffusing my days as now
There dwells a plenteousness confiding
Itself by honk and whisper

A squalid transient barking
At pigeon chicks
Hidden behind the psychic’s eave

Today’s miscreants hardly want
A mound of clouds to lounge
On, they want Mom and Dad’s job

To mean something
More than a fruitless lull
In the maroon

Between existential jokes, my love
Needs sleep, my knees
Need skin and I am becoming too much

A part of this
World, the callous-thick
Feet of a bearded

Bum swelling and bruised like plums
As the heat index touches one
Hundred degrees, "one should not go to church

If one wants to breathe
Pure air" and I now
Know the sum of learning: love

Terrifies the lover and loved alike.

THE THIRTEEN YEAR-OLD SCREAM

After work you re-park
The car, head
Over to the Russian hairdresser

For a trim, make small
Talk until Night Moves comes
On the radio, then close

Your eyes and tingle
As the razor grazes your now
Pink neck, come home

With the words
Rasping repeatedly, "woke
Last night to the sound

Of thunder," though you woke
Last night to the thrill
Of naked legs, the air conditioner

Clicking metronomic to some
Circadian pulse, what seems
To happen becomes its own happening

As the truths of a new
Millennium dabble and abscond, each
Consequent possibility—comfort

Nothingness, ecstasy, hope
Mutilation, wonder—occupies
Its provisional realm

Only to misplace itself in the relentless
Shuffle, this morning you gave
Sonny Pain thirty-five cents, Jews

For Jesus gave you
A brochure that asked if you were
Interested in "Computerized

Donuts" and you weren’t quite sure
What they were getting
At, the scar on the forearm of

The woman wearing white
Linen pants on
The train was shaped

Like a toy boat on the mottle
Of sewer waves and you proceed to grope
At what can only be approached

By a gape, mouth hot
And dumb, top lip
Thin as the bottom protrudes

In its sensual idiocy and don’t you see
The eyes of splendor
Penetrating the face of travail, the interminable

Act of remembering wrongly as "the night
Takes on a weird electronic
Tingle," for this is the place you return

To through the need
Of living, a cavern translated
By an immaterial

White profusion like
The color you see in the middle
Of clouds beyond airplane

Windows, you were asleep
When the foul world
Changed, your loves revoltingly

Aged, your hands grew
Cumbersome and a whole lifetime
Passed before you

Realized that it hadn’t, you were back
On the train where
The stifling obscenity of being

A thing causes the thirteen
Year-old girls to scream
"I need a dick" in harmonious unison

So that you might
Cringe, so that the transparency
Of grief might blush, so

That the silence might finally fuck off.

THERE IS SOMETHING LOOMING

The humidity surges, a bird
Furtively huddles on
The stoop quivering, the air is still

Composed of translucent arrows
As tenaciously we stand
Vigil at our own diminishing

Prospect, I am not heavy
With reason, have yet to grow
Enamored with the tragedy

Of monochromes, Colin
Drives with his bicep
Half-out the window and loses

Himself in the contemplation
Of bird’s breath, I see the future
Announce itself in

The inexplicable carom
Of ricochets now
Outreaching their dubious reports or

The lingering buzz
On the lips
As a famous older poet

Unexpectedly plants
A kiss on you in San Francisco
Or how the ruby panties

On the woman in the advertisement
For coffee shock
You into a buried remembrance

Abuse is no more
Real than tenderness, the branches
Outside the window group

And sway in their snaky
Amicable way, a groping mass
Of cable cascades in black

Tendrils from the roof and my eye
Is full of promiscuity, the graffiti reads
YOUR PROBLEMS LIE

WITH THE POOR, the dogs
Make their concerted dawn
Howl, an hour is lost in the augury

Of clouds, August
Impends, consciousness
Punishes and if

You think there is something
Looming there is
Something looming, the difference

Engines we portend
Locked in a stutter of forms
As when the blind woman

Recalls the faces of ski
Jumpers or the retired fireman
Eyes the figure

Of a stranger approaching and I am
That stranger, in need
Of a haircut, my arms pendular

With a secret happiness, one large
Foot passing the other, two
Hours playing softball and then down

The avenues to beer
With intelligent and carousing
Friends, a fortune

From the Chinese restaurant
In my pocket, which
Reads YOUR FEAR CONTAINS

ITS OPPOSITE TO BE BROKE OPEN.

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.

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.

SURVIVING DESIRE

Coming out
The tunnel from Carroll Street
The graffiti reads CHOKES

HIS CHICKEN EVERY NIGHT and we
The passengers convene
Momentarily, the entire lot

Suspended slant as if
The F were some roomy
And ad-laden

Rollercoaster safely blasting
Through the patently everyday
Landscape of traffic

And ruin, rivet-studded
Girders grumpily trellising
The smog-blue-gray

Sky, May and too
Many mornings have I spent
This week observing

The recumbent figures
Of capital tragedy
Their scaly ankles dangling

From soot-soured Wranglers, it’s cyclical
The way one devours his own
Carefully tended ignorance, a slow

Canceling of accumulated skew
As the mutilations fall
Off and are just as quickly

Replaced by others, the spell
One conveniently
Forgets, the mask one

Tries on and unobservantly
Absorbs, the train’s
Sibilant burble hurrying

Forth as the signal greens
I deny the existence
Of anything barely beneath

This concrete, any lurid node
Pulsing beyond the sky’s stately
Dome, fuck this

Forever grope after
The mysteries of a sphere
Eaten by worms

Regurgitated by birds
Paralyzed by windowpanes
We are all of us

Pulling over to mourn
At anonymous tombstones
Rifling 100%

Cotton clouds as a little girl
In a purple sweater
Chases a brown pigeon

Along the platform’s edge, believing
Is a form of expectation, all
Knowing is actually belief and 'something

Tells me tonight I shall
Dream of newspapers
Wrapped in fish,' dreams always

Having lead my kin
Through the variegated
Thoroughfares

Of skin and smog and sometimes
I tremor at the way
The world seems so vigorous

One second and the next
It’s swimming, each dumb leaf
Resorting to metaphor

As every winking turn traps
You into thinking life
Is a meticulous plot allotted

To you alone, people
Topple, transubstantiation
Fails, the board

Reads KNOWING IS NOT ENOUGH.

IT · WAS · THURS · DAY

It was Thursday. I was in the woods building a strange child. Birds fled from branch to branch like restless salesmen hawking manic and euphonious wares. A sudden, crashing din erupted from the rich man’s house, spewing debris from a third floor window. I set down the child to investigate, but then remembered what Pa had said about other people’s business and eventually sat back down. For days I had been unable to escape the ghostly chime of a coin dropping into the crowded guts of a machine. The denomination was either a nickel or a quarter and I was pretty sure it was being inserted into a payphone. Just as I picked up my tools again, the rich man’s car tore along his driveway, chucking up clouds of dust, a clump of auburn hair protruding from the sunroof. The dust made its eerie, gradual way through the leaves to where the child and I were sitting. I could see tiny motes glinting and swirling as the birds rushed around noisily. I was letting the plink of the echoing coin tumble back and forth in my head when suddenly it was interrupted by a small, fragile cough. I looked down to see the child—the strange, uncanny child I had been building was now gently quaking, as if caught in the oceanic throes of a dream. I took the child into my arms, one hand on its back and the other under its knees. Every five minutes or so another hiccup would emerge. Even after the body had gone basically still, its tremors subsided, the hiccups continued, like a drunk sleeping breathlessly. At some point the sun went down and I myself began to shiver, having only dressed with the expectation of being out for a couple hours. I could barely remember leaving the house, or when was the last time I had eaten. Ever since Ma and Pa died, I had been growing more absentminded, my thoughts stuck in some kind of feedback loop, abandoning practicality for weeks at a time. It was a small wonder I even knew what day of the week it was. It was Thursday, I said to myself, somewhat less sure than before. It was Thursday, I said again, spacing the words out so that the coin’s plink could travel between them. It was Thursday, I said once more, this time waiting for a hiccup to proceed from syllable to syllable to syllable to syllable.

IT

To fix it.
To save it.
To undo it.
To dread it.
To put it off.
To dress it up.
To cover it up.
To pin it down.
To strip it bare.
To see it ruined.
To let it atrophy.
To secret it away.
To tell how it was.
To choose it twice.
To imagine it done.
To whisper in its ear.
To know what it isn’t.
To render it abstractly.
To knowingly ignore it.
To treasure its opposite.
To say it for the last time.
To get to the bottom of it.
To know only its reflection.
To refuse to ever do it again.
To feel it when it’s not there.
To know and to do it anyways.
To act like it’s never happened.
To meet it head-on at full speed.
To say it looks like something else.
To describe it wholly from memory.
To become merely another part of it.
To work through the possibilities of it.
To erase even an unknown quantity of it.

HOCKEY NIGHT

Flank half in
Shadow, palomino
Terrified by a

Rich lady’s dog, we all
Stagger in the face
Of ugliness, in the stead

Of truth we find evidences
Not forthcoming, you
Carry a little set of demons through

The world between its words
And what remains
Unsaid, bubbles of thought

Swaying hallucinogenic
In the dusky skyscraper light
Of 3pm, 23rd Street

The fifth day of the fifth
Month of the fifth
Year since the disillusionment

Of the millennium, I stop
Into the Andrea
Rosen Gallery, snag

A handful of Felix
Gonzalez-Torres coffee
Candies, turn

Flush into the monolithic
Dénouement, its feedback
Soundtrack haunting

The alleyways with sparkling
Guitar fuzz, next thing
I know I’m in San Francisco again

Then St. Paul, the Mississippi
Gurgling slackly beneath the cars
Of commuters fleeing

To the suburbs as the ghost
Town recommences, someone
Has left a crate of apples

In the parking lot and despite
Our best efforts to consume
Them they begin to rot, so Sunday

Morning we hungover haul
Them to the tracks and as a train
Passes we deliriously fling

As many as we can, splattering
Almost before they leave
Our hands, mine thrust into slowly

Dissolving pockets as skeleton
Night pervades, the fume-ridden periphery
Of Union Square abuzz

With transient glee, the fiery ritual
Of carousal recapitulating
Itself before my eavesdropping

Eyes, my friends you
Are never far
From mind, we continue

To thrash and smoke, we flare
Through winter atop
Our wiry bones, we barrel

Headlong and we are the ones.

HORSE STORIES

The sun is a headache
I take with me from place
To place, a duck’s

Yammering green skull
Beaded with lake, I wonder
Who turned on

All the birds today? A young Slovenian
Woman reads Kant between bites
Of ice cream sandwich as Kindergarten

Children impersonate a chain
Gang staggering astride
Their flimsy string, no one is sleeping

In the thicket for once, no
Suffering lady stuck
Interrogating the strangeness

Of air, a pinstriped man resolutely
Wades circles through
The cluttered water of the

Fountain, his leather
Shoes shuffling amongst
Abandoned coins

So it is of
Myself I must
Trust this

Massless core, the good
With which it binds
Me to the world and would

That all were possessed
Of such meddlesome
Middle, center, the sentries

Of self crowding out the sting
Of what relative
Ethics inextricably arrive

There, a soul is not
A gauge, no
Thing receding, expanding

So it is if
I crush two mine
Does not treble

Nor divide into thirds, her ice
Cream now melting down
The stick onto her fingers, pasting

The book’s pages, my knees
Thoughtlessly knocking, a pigeon
Narrowly misses the ear

Of a small girl, her mother
Screaming in terror, everybody
Turning terrified and when

Later the man on
The subway train states
'My name

Is Sonny Pain' I know
Exactly what he
Means, names being

Our small admissions of guilt.

SWANSEA

Tonight the moon is multiplying
Newness, caressing
Carcasses lit into alien readymades, an oar

Limbs itself ashore, where our
Eyes dutifully labor over the novel
Creatures cantering

Through the dunes, the moon
Snaps like a luminous flag
On the waves, there is a ghost lady

Looming here perforated
By the strings of her
Harp refusing to impersonate breath

RHINOCEROS

I was born in the middle
Of the end of
A decade in the middle

Of the end of
A century, my fingers
Always slightly

Shaking, holding them
Out to the various people I am
Thinking to love

The people who sit me
Down, explain
How very inside of it

I am, charging, a thought
Bubble blotted
Woodpecker red, the come

Down of our terrifying
Anatomies, our four
Hands thoughtlessly clutching

At the flash an airplane
Casts across the lawn, sky
Cloudless, noise

Sudden as every twelve minutes
Or so the shadow
Passes solemnly, a squabble

Of birds igniting amongst
The flickered blades of the lawn
This is how language

Malingers harmless things, each being
Busy dreaming in their sliced self
Self-portrait skin, the painting reads

PAY FOR SOUP, BUILD
A FORT, SET THAT ON FIRE
The song sings "most

Of my fantasies are of making someone else
Cum," the sweating bum
Sleeps beneath the unbudded arms

Of the cherry tree on the esplanade
Where I too lay, my head on
The stomach of a dark-haired girl

Who says I’ve been coagulating
My whole life it seems only
To dissolve, to "speed

Sleep, dream, and thaw."

APRIL 15TH

The bells of PS 41 fire
Like a jewelry store
Break-in as you turn
Left on Stanton, spying
A mottled concrete wall
Where you can sit, sun
Warming your ears
Which protrude ever so
Slightly from headphones
The Transfiguration
Building with horns
Over guitar, the voices
Singing “lost in a cloud”
As a xylophone tinkles
Broken glass in green
Brown & white arranges
Itself against pavement
Where a woman’s shoes
Clomp, returning laden
With groceries, the Gray
Line tourists whiz past
I am now a member
Of the Brooklyn Botanical
Gardens, having signed up
Yesterday on my way
To the Basquiat show
Which was fucking
Incredible, incredibly
Alive and sad all
At once & afterwards
When I lay down
Among the cherry trees
Of the esplanade, a young
Mother came over to rub
Suntan lotion on my neck
And I felt so full
Of something like love

OF MARCHES

It is an unfamiliar
Itch, the grass
Against your forearms

You sneeze and it
Is Spring again—enter
Birds darting

Through their improvised
Grids, testing out still
Denuded limbs, a young girl

Tumbles clumsily
From her undersized
Stroller, Latina

Teenagers crowd the laps
Of their boyfriends on
Park benches as a horse strides

By looking mightily out
Of place, I mean
There is a woman walking around

Here with an eye patch, broken
Glass cascades across
The paths, a cop just stubbed

Her cigarette into the pitcher’s
Mound and if you think
I’m getting away

With a poem here, take
Another look, the wind has
Blown the vendor’s

Napkins against the backstop
Where a chain
Of motley kids winds

Past, their hands clasped
Furiously, feet jumbled and mouths
Open as sometimes

I can’t stop asking
Myself little questions
About the world and other

Times I stare
Into the blotched pink
Of my own palms

And run as fast as I can.

APRIL 6TH

Subway early, first
Real sun somewhere
Above, so much hair
Mussed like stacks
Of frozen candles
Terror on the decline
Sunglasses on one’s
Head, I am headed
Home to Brooklyn to
“make big decisions”
If I can see my way
To them through the
Congested minutia
Of living as the train
Bursts from tunnel
Into light, graffitied
Roofs, demolishing
Machines stirring
Rubble, a teenager
Sleeping, all of us
Now stalled as a G
Passes ahead, there
Was a time when
I laughed the horror
Of choices off, sat
Around convinced
That the universe
Worked, now that
I know it doesn’t
I’m also pretty sure
It’s the same thing
Scraggly arms reads
Neckface, intercom
Mumbles, the sun
Refuses to abate
Streams of it slice
The car, in my ears
Tyrannosaurus Rex
The landscape jars
As we are in motion
Once again and once
Again I find myself
Suddenly tickled
By the absurdities

THE INNER LIFE for Robert Creeley

It’s no secret
I’m little more
than the congress
of my thoughts

the body mostly
bewilders or else
carries on in
its ambient ways

god has yet to
intrude, the sun
and dirt feel much
closer, as do

friends and family
who are likewise
astounding in their
goodness, while often

there is no real task
at hand, one’s fingers
lightly sweeping
the dingy surface

of the keys, eyes
trained inward
as a thing incapable
of so many things

but pleased within
thought, the inner
life being the only
life according

to Noel, a quiet light
ordering shadows
about the deck
of a caravel, unraveling

lines to make some
headway through
the debris of a vast
and impenetrable

sea, it’s no secret
the heart continues
despite blindness
just as our eyes

only see a fraction
of what the mind
determines, perhaps
led by what people

call the soul, an idea
I revile, feeling
the center of one
to be forever

radiating outward
to tangle and be
wove, which brings
one back to the heart

which has always
seemed an apt if
pleasantly hilarious
metaphor to me

misshapen, muscular
tough as one’s fist

BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH SCULPTURE AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Q) Do you read the bible?

A) I am a part of something pushed
Further and further into the amnesiac
Conclusions of god.

Q) Sounds pretty serious.

A) Not as serious as the something
Pushing. I find it mostly
Preposterous, like a sudden
Clumsy moment stretched
Out for hundreds
Of years, maybe
Thousands, I don’t know, a number.
A thing that far eclipses
The natural
Span of a human being.

Q) So this is about nature, then?

A) You just asked two questions.

Q) So this is about nature?

A) That wouldn’t be terribly untrue, though
Terror is natural enough. And terror
May be true, truth
Often striking
A terrific note. This is
About the failure
Of truth, which masquerades
Cowardly in the guise
Of nature. There is no truth
In fucking, in dying. Truth’s greatest
Failure is that it succeeds.

Q) And for whom does it succeed?

A) I don’t know, women
Advertising pumps? Children
Wailing like tranquilized
Catamounts? If it is succeeding
For you, you
Should dye your hair
And have your fingerprints
Removed. This interview
Is fucking over.

EASTER

As if the old miracle
Had an inherent
Geography, my heart

Is wester than my apartment
Tonight, the cars
In the rain on the streets

Shushing us to bed, the sirens
Doing just the opposite, it’s too
Bad our grandparents

Are dead, I do covet
Their memories, broken
Beer bottles, straight

Jackets, the choir, the folk
Dancing tour, how
We brush and convert

These specificities we’ve been
Told, not actually
Remembering a single

One or remembering merely
A memory, slit
Wrists, three sets

Of twins, a baby mislaid
In Texas and what
Of me will go

Missing that hasn’t already
Dissolved into hair
Dust grates fuzz wax etc.

EXCERPT

Before I knew it I was back in San Francisco, living in the Sunset, my hand curled around one of the brass bedposts. I often spent nights like that, alone, in my daughter’s bedroom, listening to the quiet hum of the stereo as it merged with the static of the rain. I was sitting there again, near the foot of the bed, eyeing the many stacks of books I had given her, all unread, their covers gradually discoloring from the pots of dying plants she insisted on placing atop them. It wasn’t spite exactly, but a kind of dreamy inconsideration she dragged alongside her like a mist. I inched myself slowly to the other edge of the bed, near the pillows, and positioned my ear within millimeters of the window’s foggy pane. If I remained that way for ten minutes or so, listening intently, I could almost make out something moving through the neighborhood outside. This sound, or more accurately this almost-sound, was as near to real as my ear was to the chill of the glass. It was just beyond me, crisscrossing its slippery way up and down the hill, steadily moving closer to where the avenues meet the ocean. The listening had something to do with my daughter. She was out who-knows-where with friends doing who-knows-what. I had come to accept that. And if she knew I spent my time this way it didn’t bother her, just as it didn’t bother me if she didn’t. I too had grown weary of how a tall man lingers.

REALIZING 1982

John_____, a flamboyant vehicle
Of dissolution, died last
Night of undisclosed videotapes
After grappling for years
With a muscle car. Teenage
Starlet troubles had long siphoned
His interest in the San Diego
Chargers, a dream he first
Bean-counted as the third wife
Of a super, super lucky response
To dress code. Mr.______
Was always revered for his concern
With wristwatch irregularities
At the managerial level, often
Shedding large parts
Of the country’s largest working-class
Sideburns. Subsequent
To an unorthodox, 9 million
Dollar jazz saxophone, Mr._____
Remained open to quietly self-promoting
His own cocaine showroom. “John’s
Attitude was always jet
Black. He said he wanted people’s eyes
To stainlessly violate a golf course
In Bedminster.” These are the words
Of his brother Chuck-Jim, who
Added, “You can’t dismiss his unwritten
Opposition to the ‘Back to the Future’
Movies.” It was this flair for
Refurbishing British industrialism
That Johnny Carson cited as inspiring
His unbuttoned-to-the-navel look.
John_____ is survived by a jury
In Los Angeles overheard declaring
50 pounds of a supermodel
To help recognize the contributions
He made to realizing 1982.

THERE WILL BE A VERY MEANINGFUL PICTURE HERE

In the recurring caveman
Dream I wear my meat vest
And I love you, the whites

Of our eyes gleaming
Like cleanly-picked bones, we sit
Beside our fire, which allows us

To think outside
Predation and weather
And I wonder

If I would have the time
To love you otherwise, this thought
Unsteadies me horribly, like

Yesterday, in the hands
Of the pear-shaped Russian
Hairdresser, the way

Her sylphlike colleague steadily
Peered at me in the mirror
Over her steaming

Cup of tea, I felt like sleeping
In her eyes, the want to bed
Down in the space between her lips

And the mug, this is what haircuts
Mean to me, I am as a beast
Dressed in the guise of a boy, I wish

For a small, ardent thing
And am throttled by
It, by the lung-crushing collapse

Of my own desire as it comes
Into fruition, which
Is why I prefer my hallucinatory

Neanderthal life, days
Spent inching
Boulders from the ridge

Where below a pitching pack
Of mastodons tread trumpeting and nights
Where my dream

Within my dream is of riding
The mountainous
Eremotherium, a being

Whose yawning bellow fills
Forests where birds once ruled
The earth, luckily

We have no such ambition, our fire
Crumbling down to embers, your hand
Probing for morsels in my stiff

Knotted hair, I remove
My meat vest and I love
You, your bulbous

Nose warm against mine in the ash-filled night.

I AM NOT A CINEMATOGRAPHER

Winter has grown
Late, intrepid
Profiles momently

Gracing the construction
Barrier with weightless charm, a nearly
Chinless woman flashes me

Her smile, then quickly withdraws it, seeing
That I too am headed
West, I feel as if I stare at women

All day long, which I guess is a product of my being
Alone all night, so down
24th Street I go, casually flitting

From gallery to gallery, Cicely Brown
Surprisingly mute while further
Along I am greeted with a pleasantly ribald

Exhibition of buxom lady pirates, all
The while anticipating the purloined sandwich
In my bag, a thing

Which pleases
Me greatly, as does the birthmark
On the bridge of the nose

Of the girl in the deli
Buying a Diet Pepsi, like I said
I don’t want to die

A sad pervert, but I’m not yet ready
To apologize for the undirected
Throbbing of my peptides, as my annoyance

Grows at the protracted twitter
Of Japanese teenagers making their way
To Madison to shop

And make phone calls and soon
I am mired in the intricacies
Of public space, knee to hand, eye

Taking in a mouth as it talks almost
Disembodied, a woman’s narrow Currinesque
Nose bifurcating the slope

Of her chest, you do not make sense
Of it, of it you make conversation, even
Alone, little interjections

Of desire tippling at the eye’s wet
Scan, I am not like an actor who ends
Up resembling

The characters he’s played, I am not even
A cinematographer wrenching
Beauty from an otherwise

Dumb panorama, I am that dumb
Panorama, the trees, windows
The very avenues themselves and you

Are the camera, both of us
Caught in the dizzying interchange
Of “culture” as

It zooms like an electron
Between our shells, bouncing
Jaggedly, so that

One might run
One’s mouth forever, lips
Flapping like a moth

Full of blood and never pin
It down, if that
Was, indeed, our

Intention in the first
Place, which I think plainly
Mine is not, intention

Being equally dubious in my book, wishing
For things in a vague sort
Of way so as not to be misconstrued

By a capricious god, tearing
Out my hair over the arbitrariness
Of it all, the fact

That you could get everything you ever
Wanted and discover it
To be wrong, or find that you

Aren’t that you anymore, which of
Course you never are, or were, the idea
Of fixing a self somewhat

Like being buried alive, thoughts
Suspended in the stale
Breath of a nail-fashioned space, there’s naught

To do except find something
Difficult and submit
Yourself to it, it’s willful

Suffering you need, preemptive
Blood drawn
From one’s own bulging

Veins, we are constantly on
Trial, our bodies break, our needs
Consume us, I can’t believe

How strange it is to be anything at all.

HOROSCOPIC BRUSHSTROKES IN THE MARGIN OF DEATH

Ever noticed how a flame disappears
In sunlight, even whilst
Notorious lightning breeds

On the horizon, you
Have an eye
For such things: the reactivation

Of long-malingered volcanos, human
Or otherwise, how a wounded
Sloth creeps lamely from unwieldy trunk

To bending branch, the plaintive varieties
Of unseen matter
Coalescing against our lamentable

Screen of den culture, you are a person
Who puts things in
Order in order that the edgeless

Fog might disband, if only
For an afternoon, and this is why we’ve come
To you, repeatedly swearing

That we’re not animals, that
The fact is we would not dream of having them
Sullied by the petty transactions of faith

And discord, we want you
To think about us
Like an eye that has been turned

Hopelessly inward
So all it sees is a miasma
Of tissue, tiny parts

Convulsing involuntarily, absurdly
Divorced from their original functions, one
Cannot love that way, just as

One cannot enter the fold with his nails
Thrashing the air he cannot
Breathe, you know this, your very

Gestures have instructed
Us thusly, the way they dissemble the easy
Grotesque we’ve become and point

Toward a prospect of grace, only last
Night you made apologizing
Pretty again, perhaps this afternoon

The dogs will lie supplicant
At our feet and think us masters
When for so

Long it’s been the obverse, tomorrow untold
Colonnades of light might
Descend from the weightless vault

Of heaven, because, you see, that’s a possibility
As all things suddenly
Are, one has only to speak

Your name and a massive flock of dirigibles
Arranges itself into graph
Paper patterns against the amoebic

Sky, I
Would only ask that you take off
Your jacket and sit here

In the chair beside my bed, I must
Shortly leave this only-just-this-very-instant
Brightening world, and I would

Have your hand
Laid heavy atop the beads
Of my loosening brow.

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

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

INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR for kari edwards

January

Take a year in your
hand—it’s smallness

rumbles like an antique
boxcar in a shoebox

diorama. Dare to
squeeze it. Drum

your fingers in the pleasing
way that fingers do.

Let go of the year. Let
your eyes go after it.


February

Take a murderer
drinking at a Tiki

Lounge. Shower
her with a box

of fingers. Ram
the year of fingers

into a dram of rum.
Add rubble. Say

yes to the advent
of their lord, please,

go easy into that
Good Friday.


March

Rotate your arms
around the eyes

of a giant. Again
time will tell.

Please the yes
box, depress no

levers on the way
there. There

is someone rubbing
on the horizon’s diode.


April

Ever is the ease
of a skybox

at the wet foot
of a rumbling

fjord. Consider death
at the Fish Fry for what

it has to be. Thresh
your marred toenails

into the earth
here. Hear the

sound of its reply.


May

Lace a slim ode
to antique marriage

within the heal
of a red shoe. Rest

under the wetly wreathed
hearth of a lapsing lord.

Ply there the forged
diadem of the mayfly.


June

Pour an arch
of voice over

a triad of heaving
words to ward

off the plight
of high art.


July

There is a light
from which to avert

your eyes. Do
not. You cannot

afford a house among
the eaves during

the trial of the thigh.


August

Replay the daring
waltz of cannons

for the almond-fed
horses. Let each

mongrel pluck
a leaf of evening

with its knotted eye.


September

Lack not a loaf
to repay the elm

for its nutty gruel.
Watch the dance

of the pink
salmon, it alone

knows how to
die without

the nonsense
of intervention.


October

If your hawk dies
on a Monday, wrap

its talon within
a grief-withered

orchid and inter
it where anon

you may repast.
Acknowledge

it with a smile,
but not a laugh.


November

Either paste
a button of cork

onto an awkward
torch-lit ledge

or teach a herd
of stallions

to ride for
a mile behind

a simile. Both
portend luck.


December

A smiling patsy
pretends to idle

near an empty
beehive above

the duck pond.
His treachery

is utterly unknown
to him. When his

gaze turns to
consider the azure

of the sky, steal
his medallion

and bury it
in the orchard.

Many visions shall
spring from apples

eaten from the tree
that sprouts from

this particular spot.

A MONTH OF NOISE

The entire globe surrounded
By quotes, a waitress’
Bronze bangs

Teased into a bouquet
Of trembling waves, cancel
Person, insert

Information demonstrating set
Of person’s reducible
Lures, inside the bakery

There was an elderly man awkwardly
Holding a cake emblazoned
With his granddaughter’s face

A DIAGRAM OF POSSIBLE BELIEFS

At dawn I am still barreling
Through sleep with a luminous piece
Of fruit, as if one

Could peel an infinity
Of questions from a single
Statement, not that

I believe in fruit, but there is something
To be said for the resigned
Way a seed enacts this random

Politics of scatter, but it’s no
Matter, fruit
Doesn’t believe in me either

ANOTHER SELECTION FROM THE INNER MONOLOGUE OF JEFF KOONS

Look, I never asked to be remarkable or singular or even particularly attractive. I never asked to be recognizable or loaded or that guy who every man shields the eyes of his girlfriend from. I once wished to be better, that’s it. Not better than you, not better than everybody else, just better than I was. Perhaps I underestimated how good I was to begin with. Sometimes it’s difficult to assess one’s own greatness. It’s the whole Quantum Mechanics dilemma: when I look into a mirror, my looking necessarily distorts what I see. And apparently it makes me think a great deal less of myself than I actually should. So it was virtually impossible for me know, prior to having entered the world at large, how great I was. And I made a wish. And that wish was to be better than I was, which evidently was pretty darn fantastic. I hope you won’t hold me accountable for how things have turned out—the fame, the regard, my face in all the magazines. It was truly unintentional. And I can understand if you think a balance must be struck. I am prepared to make a new wish; to be less great, to be worse. I will wish to be a little less than what I presently am. Will that suffice? Will that make you happy? Will that finally cancel out all your envy and rage, you petty, insignificant little fuck?

A COLONY OF SEPARATE ORGANISMS

In the sea, a dandelion
Self-disperses, while
Here on asphalt, a womanly

Hobo strikes at a damp matchbook
Sparks fizzling, I saw myself
Breathing and imagined

A tiny tin finger rapping
At my ribs, today
We saw a mangy parrot voicelessly

Traipse a limb, it’s freezing
In Brooklyn and we fear the parrot
Will not survive the night

IGGY

Liquefied tennis ball dog
Piss irrigating the sidewalks
Of the Upper East

Side, or Herzog’s Peruvian
Steed lapping champagne
At the opera steps, uniformly

Do these animal dribblings
Confound me, as when
Through the diaphanous wall

Of the aquarium, a frog
Forges his immaculate hover
And the water barely moves

BECAUSE I OWN THIS RIFLE after William Faulkner

Because I own this rifle
Because I own blood
Because I own my arms and legs
Because I own bones superior to yours
Because I own this blood in my arms
Because I own superior legs
Because I own the bones of this rifle
Because they are superior
I have arms befitting a superior rifle of bones
I have blood because it is superior to yours
I have your legs and arms and bones
And blood because I own them
My blood befits a man who owns a superior rifle
My blood is superior because of the way it owns you
My blood is a series of gleaming white bones
My blood runs thick in its owning
My legs run superior in the fields that they own
My arms dangle from the hammock because they are superior
My feet are superior because they do not wear shoes
My blood does not need shoes because it is superior
My gleaming white bones run thick with blood
My blood will not enter the fields because it is superior
The fields I own because I need not move from the hammock
The hammock is superior because it holds my bones
The rifle is a hammock that desires blood
The arms that hang from this hammock were born to hold superior rifles
Born to own what they shoot
My dangling arms are a way of desiring blood
My blood is desirable because it owns the bones of others
My afternoon is desirable because it does not need shoes
I am fighting you with my desire not to wear shoes
I am fighting the blood and bones of the field with my hammock
I am superior because I fight with a hammock that holds bones
I am superior to you because I can fight without shoes
I am superior to you because I do not move all afternoon
I am superior because others desire my blood
You desire my blood
You desire my gleaming bones because they are superior
You desire to run in my shoes with my superior legs
To run like blood through the fields I own
Because I own this rifle
My arms and legs and blood and bones are superior to yours