for me, how do I get anything
done when as late as last night
someone started yelling CARDINAL
at the sight of blood soaking my sleeve.
In the Corner of a Room Where You Would Never Look
Warhol was right, he said athletes are fat
in the right places
and they’re young
in the right places. Apparently
the next Godzilla movie has Godzilla
just running around eating everyone’s
money and it’s the scariest thing ever.
We can rub bug powder on the national
anthem and run that over the closing credits
as long as the singer manages to sing
I’m in love with everyone but you, almost
convincingly. A production team undoing
one another’s pants
is How We Get Naked Now but tomorrow
morning all the cut-off parts of us are coming
back so get ready. Europe: you swear it exists
because you once had sex in it, and ideas.
Prepositions: that’s where we all get sucked
under. Prepositions: the San Andreas
fault of meaning. Prepositions:
what came dislodged when our parents
hired operatives to kidnap us from cults
and deprogram us in the backs of vans.
Warhol was talking about the ass,
right, which we have come to understand
is the vessel of histories. That effect.
We put everything through
a translation engine
because we wanted to see the world.
Terminal
—tonight no one should be caught
fondling on stoops
when they can climb up on
the fire escapes and screw—
—what is all this fog
in the unedited air—
—I can’t bite through
it to you—
—prudence is
a no-headed fish
in a three-headed town—
—sickness draws a salary / a boarding pass
on human paper—
—duress / duress / duress—
—horrors tucked into corners
of countries
I can’t give directions to—
—the night my friend stopped cracking
jokes / we understood he would die—
—I had a vision of him being better than new
and then he was gone—
—decades hence I kick
an inflatable globe
to him across the sidewalk—
—come up for some light
my hidden baby pigeon—
—cajole / cajole / kaboom—
Factory
He can say it was a painting
He can say we were the painting
Or that the painting wasn’t painting
And we only happen to ourselves
We can say we kept things running
by creating distractions
from the hideous truth
of how things run
That we were broken
That we lingered near a broken factory
That we had broken
We can say that the disappointment
of slicing into a leek
and not finding the requisite layers
but a thick white inedible core
is not the disappointment
of approaching a sleeping animal
only to learn that it is dead
but it does nudge one slightly
further into despair
We said despair
We meant the strings of impossible
instruments that they made
in the factory
That we had seen
That were broken
That there were different paintings
That could be played as songs
We had seen other things
That we had seen
That had come unstrung
And
