33

These are broad days
now, and full. Though
we remember skinny
uncertainties,
we can choose abatement
of age in this choking
sun spilling over the sill.
Said another way:
We can close our eyes
For singular perfect recollections
of standing in a Zeeland cornfield
at seventeen,
run a tongue along lips
that still feel like our lips
even after all this breathing,
or pour out music, hard and backward,
from our ears into that eternal air.
You are nothing time, and nowhere,
Under the full force of our
Creaking human brains.

The View From The Palace Station Hotel – Casino, Las Vegas Nevada

Las Vegas is spilled
from the face of a casual dead-air
mountain. – rolled up on hillocks
over cast earth, far greyer than my vista of horny sweating
highways, and curt, perfect air-conditioning boxes.

“You may excuse our roots, in the turbulence of your
yearning,” say alien Christmas trees;
holding out hell under the grace of USbank.

By Rote

This dark shocker is hiding
my sleep faster than I can
stack it up. Hoodlum baiting
with wakefulness my deep
distrust of printed signatures

He is a monster in mad fingers
curling. A craft of loosed cells
whose voids are a volume too
far. Call scented oblivion a track
mark, call bad rhymes blues

fuckers. I'm awake and I see you.

Don’t Save

Everyone live in the city a gain
Toget high. Smoke cig are etts an not be sorry

She is a list of bluelights ina photograph
a mess age about art being young and you beingfucked

Tantra is wasted cup lets, and getting it on
film. Sticky fingers where the dry stay clean

Coco, Television

I don’t want to write out my homework,
I want to go play video games with my brother.

Send in the backups. Let the Girl’s team play first.

Growing up, we’d go for walks in the woods for hours
and it would never rain, and we could turn to the left
and head down to the beach if we felt like it.
Drop ants into the sand funnels of antlions and not feel
bad because its nature anyway.

There was always a warm spot, too, on the brown/gold
carpet in my downstairs den by the television that I could lie
on and rest my face. My brain wasn’t rotting but it was
highup and faraway. Stifling to remember what
those first, hard rules felt like.

Everything always got done, but in my time, not in theirs. I
couldn’t be punished because I barely even lived in my body,
being weightless effortless thought,
in candy-wrecked waves and coco circles,
for many lives before I was ten.

Downmarket Drugs For Upmarket Thieves

I open my eyes and unfurl
like a flag against the base-blue skies of middling winter.

Hose, straw, forty dollars, ripped maroon puffy vest,
girl asleep on basement sofa, and 6 stops to make before home.

Don’t stop. Don’t turn off the stereo.
I dream about making amazing conversation and laughing lightly,

but I’m here, pushing the cold force of my massive middle.
Sit in the doorway and listen for people.

I’ll be out in a minute, don’t talk.

In Quietness, Frogmen Make Tender The Deep

We don’t know anything about the oceans.
I can believe in multi-headed things again
and be thankful.

I can trust that the universe of acorns, saturated ruderals, and hurled curses near
the water’s edge sank and have blossomed on the seafloor, sprouted forests
slick spouts of mud-swelled gardens, and lost conversations. You can’t prove I’m wrong.

Like a lot of life, the human component in this is minimal. Water is immortal. Sand and rock are subducted into the earth at ocean-logged cracks, hiding the crimes of the surface. What’s true is less important than what’s believed. Oceans taught us this.

Are there deeply lit joys down there, benthic anglerfish? Are there seeds of hurricanes
and arcs, alien of origin, and all of my old coats,
piled in a stack? Do thermal vents whisper crisply one thousand miles away?

I understand that you have hopes, trench dweller,
and small victories, and fast moving currents to content with. The millionfish playground of my moroseness is swimming.