on national holidays especially, shun stadia
and other zones of efficient kill ratio,
since there is no safety anymore in numbers.
I wear the dull colors of nesting birds,
invest modestly in diverse futures,
views and moods undiscovered by tourists,
buy nothing I can’t carry or would need to sell,
and since I must rest, maintain at several addresses
hardened electronics and three months of water.
And it is thus I favor this unspecific café,
choose the bitterest roast, and only the first sip
of your story, sweet but so long, and poignantly limited
by appointments neither can be late for, and why now
I will swim through the crowd to the place it is flowing away from,
my concerned look and Excuse me excuse me suggesting
I am hurrying back for my umbrella or glasses
or some thrilling truth they have all completely missed.
Metallurgy for Dummies
Faint bronze of the air,
a bell I can’t quite hear.
The sky they call gunmetal
over gunmetal reservoir,
the launch, aluminum,
cutting to the center,
waters bittered with the whisk
of aluminum propellers
(your gold drink stirred
with a gold forefinger).
*
Faint tinnitus,
where is it?
Air silver with a trillion
wireless calls,
stop-quick stop-quick
of sweep hands,
crickets and downed lines,
their sing of tension,
that out-of-earshot
too-bright CD sun,
the heads of presidents
sleet sleet in your jacket.
*
They were right,
those alchemists.
Anything—
tin-cold
eye of salamander,
a fly’s
green shield and styli
on your wrist,
distinctly six—
anything might—
mutterings in the wet,
two-packs-a-day
brass of sax, bright
tears pestled,
or your hair’s backlit
(same as the rain’s)
slender metals—
anything might flash out…
*
Surely one sip,
mused Midas,
gin and silver,
surely her fine engine tuned
to a dial tone,
surely her famous sway,
gone Gold, gone Double Platinum,
Rare Earth, gone Transuranic…
*
Anything slow,
slash-black and copper
monarch settling,
the shy key’s glint and turn,
sunny-cloudy
brass-and-tarnish fruit
paused at your lips, reflecting.
Any velocity,
water under the bridge
my leap
like dropped change rings on,
or seen from a train
chicory’s blue
extrusion to a wire of blur,
the train itself
(of thought)
on its track and track and track,
your soft, incredible metals.
*
…surely these vast reserves
(Midas, that treasurer, surmised)
I must address
with a safecracker’s
listening touch.
I’ll be the anti-thief
slipping certificates of silver,
the slim faux-platinum
yen of credit,
palms flat,
over and over into her skintight
