and baboon,
to all animals mashed
and quiet, disastered
and interred, en-
tered in stasis, in
stillness
it would be better if you tasted rain
It would be better if you tasted rain
than this spiced asphalt,
leavened brown horizon and flapjack
blacktop
—
Pollution gets in the skin, spices it
red brown red yellow red brown,
so we
—
Take a swim beyond the dusty chambers of summer,
out where coasts decant coolness and fins rising
from heat slicks reveal cooler depths
—
If time’s a chance to stand outside romance
with the immediacies of never-ending foliage
and mark mark mark yes! our pastures for our own
and forthcoming disasters—
—
Here is a bust that rolls down a hill and breaks the water,
fat with coolness
—
I wanted to know a name; I played sports; I
wore shorts; I had a mother and a father (they did too); I
challenged every bone, went south for the winter; I
ate duck, roasted; I said “quail” (it buoyed in me); I
wanted and I wanted, and I
—
Remained. O Icy water, spilled
like a blade across the neck, I ask
that you do your work, I
am tired and it is hot
and today I
have the energy for almost nothing
we adorn
I ask for the broken ladder to fill my head
for sunstroke, red horns of wheat
for dailiness, let me know particulars
O red horn brightened in my chest,
the hairs are countless, I ask
for lozenges like islands, and the color—
red yellow blue—staining the dark
I ask for daylight, forms noticed, held, cut
down from shadow and trembling, held
for the moon’s horn filled with red honey
and for the chance of day, a gamble with red chips
The time is taken, culled, like
fruit the time has darkened, blue,
seven panes of glass crushed into the roots
the time is deadly, a coral snake
and we adorn, we adorn
if i offend you with my leniency
If I offend you with my leniency,
I am like a bird with smoked tendons
roughening the hues, fanning my eyes;
my love is a red die rolling in the void
—
And who whistles the empty
pot that burns in your kitchen?
Everything screams
pointless and damage
damage d-a-m-a-g-e, I
see a kite stuck in a tree
I see a hand thinning and
portents dissolving like fat
—
I cultivate a certain dying I find it
rare, that is my way; I comb it
with exceeding carefulness from
my nerves, delicately as a kite
—
I am the brown bittered
fig skinned with tomb
leeks in brown sauce
and a winking eye
like a suede curtain
—
and am soles of the feet
gold that clicks
its tongue against the roof
of the mouth rafraf rafraf
the dauphin
Sometimes
you have to break him
before he’ll ride,
—
Sometimes you have to
braid him
before he’ll rye
—
Sometimes a smile sits
in the center of the table
like a rare roast beef
—
