Presiding over some vague domain, I observe as its expansion slows, reverses; which comes first, heat death or total collapse? There is ice on the table before us ice on the table melting slowly on a hot day and the oven is open and running on a cold day / it is a hot day beneath the grape vines at that house i never visit anymore the grapes never grew beyond small hard and sour they were delicious and i feel this immense longing for the hot days eneath the semishade of the too young grapes the sourness of youth not ready yet not ready to nourish the larger beings each being must consume to live and life is inherently immoral as it devours other life to sustain itself devourss itself it tears at its own flesh reinternalizes itself over and over i’d like to eat my eyeballs but i know i’d never grow them back that’s not how bodies work maybe i will replace them with sour grapes
The Thing to Be in Life Is a Master of Revels
They made me a window,
so that when it got dark
they could see themselves
in the rain outside
both against and through me.
Dry and warm, despite the illusion.
-
They made me a promise,
and tried to keep me
until I could no longer
be kept. I paced over
their minds, turning
every stone to find
the half truths, half attempts
beneath, to force their hands,
pulling strings
and open-out doors.
-
They made me understand
that I am inside-out,
that my proper self
is the self which digests;
innocent and cruel, I consume.
-
They made me a neat line of dust
at 3 AM and a vending machine bender
and a GPA worthy of my name they named me almost and I am almost I am not a who but a when a where and a why the fuck not I, I who chased the blackness from the hilltop I who am not I who drives the wistful bus, whose diesel complaints rise to God municipal God and I, I, I who blackens the clouds we I who falls who eats marble steady if only i were steady if only i were only if I am your shadow I rise when you fall
and I hide in your mind when the dark covers all
and I smoke what you smoke and I pay for it too
like the pavement must pay for the sins of the shoe
and I move when you move but I’m always behind
won’t you please as you walk leave me something to find?
someone please make this happen
Knock
Implacated, you
fingered yourself—sorry, you
don’t get all the blame.
Playback
You always used to say;
You always used to be; I was, but today
I am hard-boiled and mercury and Erie
Canal—reflective, host to the sulfur ghosts of industry.
The tannins of leaf-rot and two centuries’ weight
hold my eyes shut,
as the great blue heron
draws in a grey sky’s graceful sleep
this wide arc: a sweep of hair,
a squinted eye in a photograph
after the frame’s invisible plane shattered, was betrayed
on this dormitory floor;
I the water, I the glassy spine,
remember the years when I was called Commerce,
exchange and prosperity, risk and relief,
the leaping fangs of success. Today I am called
Image and Medium,
sleeping, long-necked doppelgänger
to the heron and the sky.
Dynamic and Brief
The gutting self-immolations of the wise
may be traced to a thousand apparent sources,
yet chief among them is that perennial agitator,
the common cold.
Its worst symptom is that of heightening
the sensitivity of my skin, until
clothing, the bed, warm water feel like
steel wool, sandpaper, molten rock
swirling with magnetized elements,
the convection of which polarizes the
sphere of existence, until it grows so
complex, so large, that it must divide or die.
Yet a grouping, an intricate network of spheres
divided and dividing and simplocomplexifying
speaking to each other in minute pulses
can enable a feeling of self to materialize,
and along with it the capacity for empathic thought.
This cannot exist unless each sphere is functioning,
and no one part is responsible for the existence of the
whole—within the concentric grouping of bodies, this is
the center which has no center, the ungoverned governors,
the mind arisen synergetically from its many mindless parts,
the morpheme from meaningless letters, the machine from cogs
and steam.
Therefore, as I slip between to before at around among and
through you all, know that we are each a lonely sphere of spheres
within the greater lonely sphere, and let us vow never to feel
that a one is an only.
The Twenty Four Hour Room
From the 24-hour room in the library,
you can watch the sun rise.
It only takes about 15 minutes
for the black horizon to define itself
through sublimation, as though
dorms and manicured trees are
being sculpted from dry ice
before your eyes.
You can turn and look at the empty library,
the metal grate keeping you from stealing books,
the carpet, a shade of orange
that doesn’t occur in the sunrise,
which you should turn back around to see,
for a few more minutes before you
resume your work.
You can see the campus streetlights
in yellow and blue
meaning less and less
as we all are turned
to face something greater.
Mourning Doves IV
I am the endless
line of birds like black pepper—
dust over water.
Fragment #8
Revised version of earlier poem.
You’re a universe, a twisting ribbon of smoke,
and my visions after inhalation may be forgotten by
the time the morning spreads itself, filling every
crevice in my marbled rye. You’re
colored panes through which sunlight filters
onto dusty pews and retinae; rods
and cones—bright orange, reflective,
maintaining safety by standing in the way,
set in our path like slalom gates,
like instructions: fold along the dotted line.
Unfold, breathe deeply, perforated and punctuated
by dewdrops like commas and periods,
dewdrops like the phases of the moon and
each with a tidal rise and fall as
the night conjures them out of the frogs’ throats
and as the dawn burns them off your waxy fingers,
vines stretched luxuriously across the forest floor
and feeling their way along the inner thigh
of what is now a noontime sigh; laugh because our
spheres are overlapped, coevolved,
each within the other in a parasitic mutualism.
After dinner the sky turns a funny sort of purple
and only the crowns of the trees remain
green framed in gold.
After night falls we find ourselves in the aphotic zone,
and I know that we’re riding some
wild deep-ocean currents which we’ll never
comprehend, but our bioluminescence,
the jokes we tell in dot and dash,
we translucent miracles
of evolution, the blinkings of our lights
are lighting the way—I’m learning new ways to
shine down here in the nutrient-rich waters,
down here where it’s dark.
Stimulant Poetry
My new name is
the moment at the top of the arc,
and I think I spent ten months
high, really high, high on
your one-shoulder dress,
and my new name is
your favorite chord progression
and I think I’m the kind of
person that can fit our
ten months of naked self-education
in my mouth at once; remember
the book of Celtic myths? I didn’t
finish it but my new name is
a child of the river
and our water babies that
we created, the lives to which
we gave new layers,
their new names are
firsthand witnesses to
a supernova but the
light-years of near-emptiness
and the redshift
mean that none of us
know this yet,
and my new name is
burning in
the deep field,
dying over th
ese millions
of years.
The Window
I’ve been sleeping with a girl lately
who has a lot of names. She feels
like white synthetic stuffing and smells
like clean cotton, and she waits at home
for me all day.
We’ve been sleeping, yes, but
sleeping peculiarly, letting
our coldness, our dampness
seep through our skin
until, after a few nights,
she starts to smell.
It’s getting cooler, now, and
the night-mist outside watches
us sleeping and scratches at
the window and tries to get in
so it can include us in the ritual
of the sky coming inside the earth’s
fertile flesh. The vapor runs its
fingers down my spine each
morning, and up the inside of
my girl’s legs. We can’t shake
it off; one of these nights
it’s going to fuck us.
It’s going to split us down
our middles, into four people.
The fog, the dew is going to
soak my girl until the sweaty loneliness
she’s absorbed from me these weeks rises
to the surface to be skimmed off
and spread on the bagels at Commons.
12:24 AM, January 22, 2012 - “The Elements of Style”
Let me savagely seek
A bit of air unoccupied
And run, holding your
Laughing,
So softly puzzled hand,
Into that clear space
Among the overgrown,
And then let me watch
As the laughing water
Unwraps us, until,
“Girl, I wanna
Learn every element of your style”
Sounds just like I think It can, because in you,
There’s a timid little Lumberjack, and I’m r
Eally unaware of I, um, what? Wha—oh, right. Carry
Me somewhere you’ve
Been before but some
Where to which you
Never once brought
Anyone with you, or
Somewhere warm and
Dim where we can find
Ourselves asleep to get her ly
Isnduw2vbexdyw2 ha ha ha
And did those moments happen?
Those kajillion blinks and twitches,
Or were we born just now or will we
Open our eyes in the delivery room and
Fist bump in 5, 4, 3… I want us to say tonight
(Well, first it would be
Better if you were here)
Tonight that we believe
Wholly and we give the
Right to analyze and co
Mment, because I’ve b
Een inspecting every
Element of your style,
Girl, and I find myself
Wanting to dive into y
Our chest and I’m like
“Fuck everyone but you.”
Mourning Doves III
Loons sing darkly their
Chilling tales of space and time;
I can’t feel the earth.
