Rolling From a Bed, Preparing For a Day
This is the situation: getting to get outside
When mouths close there’s something—
some morsel to be desired. Mouths close
like trap doors open. Alive like vaulted
ceilings. And mouths house tongues to love
the bits that hands find for them. Hands
close over, and over strung in other’s
fingers. But still it’s mouths that sing.
Pistol-whip: meanwhile
Stirring generosity, mixing manners
so that the kindest gesture is equivalent
to a downward metal grip to the head.
We’ll see our meanest postures. These figure.
But we’ll move. These pass into all other
like bruises where the healing is sometimes stuck
beneath that other impossibility. A tender gum.
A stroke of genius. A gift of being just struck.
Dead meat: hot water
She tilts the skinny gun in her palm.
Skinny cuz it’s follicled, cuz it’s sheer
and nervous dust. Reticence. And lifted
sheet to sheet. She’s handling this matter.
He’s a mere man. He likes to sit. It’s the chair
that gets me. Of what course brought it to this.
Little passage. Smaller sleep. Step. Blink.
Double time: there are still a few good
There are times when idiom fails to gather,
when cliché falls and we’re left to looking.
Licking our sores with uncomfortable tongues.
I like to think that this is even cherishable, that
crippling the means makes wonderful asses of us—
sets us on our own ends directly. Yes, I think it does.
And so ongoes the melonhead: his finicky touch beckons
Only such that vanity stirs. Her juxtaposition
in troubling tenors, her cracking sideways
and summer colds. She’s something on his inside.
Must be deep behind that slick front hairdo and boiling
head-sick skin. She’s into more variety these days.
Moving as a warbling band of clouds, through which
his airplanes are clearing, warming to lift, and simply
as an inverted ghost, as cold sweat, he passes
right through her, on up. This is vapor indulged.
Ain’t no words for what I am: an uneasy saddling
Between looking and being—that constant
knot of only seeing who you are. You’ll find it
impossible to love the things you know. There
is no irony to this. You’ll love what you haven’t
seen until you’re loving what’s not there. The poet
today is the wolf. And where wolves are concerned,
even the leader waits for his pack. Among them, things
are much less mean. But more often than not, the poet
today walks around with the bird in his mouth.
But yo: I could really begin to be
If only I knew someone was watching. She seems
like the kind of girl whose really starved for a sudden change
of appearance. A disappearance. A reappearance. Get over
her dog. Hunger is the best part of valor and whatnot.
So why do I write so big. Flood of conscience. Colossal appetite.
Well then, bombs away: by all means.
The dictionary—striking. There’s dust and things
in everything. Even matches. This is why I shave.
Crouched, collected forms—they are with meaning,
which means they are dangerous. It’s like they hit the water
from too far up. They never made it passed sizzle and impact,
but they’re still moving. And I’m on a boat and it’s smooth.
Fooling: the eye
The most terrifying realization is that when
you die, all that is left of you—all your
friends and your family can dwell on—is your
stuff. This is why the artist makes, but really
this is why we shouldn’t have any stuff. Just breath
and some humming. And the cruelest truth is that
if you get caught up saying too much, it’s gonna sound
like nonsense. Whole truth is a lot like mud in this way.
Limit the palette: maybe I spoke too soon
Maybe it’s actually healthy to plateau at attachment
to our things. Buy for life. Play for keeps. But shit,
it’s really hard having so much. We’ve gotta shed
sometimes. We’ve gotta lighten, if only to really feel
the weight when we pick it back up. We’ve gotta repose
and repose. We’ve gotta stuff and stretch our toxic faces.
Smell that fresh plastic and pull out a new pair of socks.
What’s it mean: I like girls with bad backs
I like the effort of soothing her nerves with my hands
in her spine. I like getting to know her. And hearing
her dictation. Just listening and letting my fingers spell the sounds.
Unsufferable masses that they are, we collect them and find them
some space to comfort and roll in dirt and then wash and lay back with wet hair.
These specks inflect: a purring drum
An absolute and perfectly anxious crash. And then
they spread and we give away. Those are our nights
which we sleep through. These are our prayer. And to speak
to this matter, we need to survive it. A poem is a promise—
or a half promise, so much as what it does in promising also voids
its indicated end. It dries up, evaporates and only in so doing succeeds.
Salt in the basin. When is it that your hand regains consciousness? Eyes
stutter and then bang shut and then open. But I need solid movement
when I prove. It is just this. The sting of a hammer swing.
