they are drowsily incessant,
this braided bedsheet ring of torn fabric:
a cone of protection/berlin wall sprouting in the smile lines of cracked earth,
stepping pallidwatery slow back from my corneas.
offhanded venom extracted
through a peeling brown christmas swordfight with lensed end,
burning canadian tire money ants with underwater eye cups
and boxed ivy boots like bloodâs the disease,
never the sequined curtain upholstered mouth father figure
(polluted oasis)
rolling broken crackers downstream into the bowl
readonly playlist with indignant bearshark taxpayer numbers
acrid smoke hammered to passing grey light and coffee chain windows
that scorch the tinted throats of passengers;
spitting in wounds and flowing silver lobes
faceless with sudden suburban ferocity.
iâve never been afraid outside,
but they congregate with clubs under support beams
neighbouring film grain clouds drawn in grids;
a single shallow spotless plate handful of metal cubes
for an ordered chaos i stir like juice crystals
(drink powdered gold)
that crests to rest in preparation to shave fractals
disturbed by bent space, compiled picture-in-picture as our tball exhibition
to shade the compiled clarity amassing on the frozen lake.
i find clarity in vacant ceilings, crouched in turrets
instead of vased wide over countertops, throwing arms
these are days through penguin scars, feedback feet,
amplified ink as soft taunting from a toppled eightâs dugout
these are parcels sorted as secondthursday false starts,
bookends, a sled in a field pillowed to survey the sky,
omission slides with dandruff, marble air storage
and the following surrender: (line, incremented fourdigit date)
become a rain seether running newborns through streets and dyed celery
all my friends are death sticks; so there wonât be a block party
because in the zeroes we donât share tables or see the bones
i wish i were shivering on idaho asphalt,
ejecting unfilled red circles and indents
if not for silk webs and tapped knees...
but i return to that suspension with strained internal sinew
in dentonâs disabled hand blind at seatac, twisted around metal arms
and to the divine fibreoptics (from frozen handsâ unconscious fleece,
our crude flooded rainbows and sunrisen rust and charstreaked
hall to a dotâs dose of pointillism)
so iâve finally signed my green construction paper cutout in the shoeboxâs heel
because iâm camped in the loading dock,
and in two years i could be pushing pulse
to selected dime balloon sweatshop shoes
like steve martin backstroking in the sewer he once lampooned.
pause in the faded corner of the room to lose what you were fighting
while caret to is typed below but not yet sent.
congruent, and yet my hand doesnât disperse under
the flickering overturned pale golden bowl dimly revealing an unrelenting opus
frameless and fractalic. this stick figure carpet (orange or otherwise) is
lifeless as the vacuumed burnt grass description it was photocopied from
i canât tape this window, paused, next to prices and remade ink beds -
it passed under the doorframe for only an instant
before fading to exit from entry, like life.
thereâs no room to breathe.
i bit down.
lifting your shirt to the train
doesnât stop the railroad
slow down.
God waits in the absence,
i hope that iâm a failure