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.