The Opposite of Peaceful is Atlantic
where the oceans flooding yin yang,
the monkeys whose compass-tongues always point to salt,
those who never learned to piss down:
when i let go I don’t fall
but so many leaves holding our image in their atomized jaws butcher sunlight
and use everything but the cosmic debris, the old wrappers,
songs from sit coms we cant conceive—
down one spiral arm and aerosoled into a thirsty umbrella
whose seed pods become the missing ears of cats & guineas,
evolved limpets convincing us to attach them to our eyes and necks
receiving 400 channels of air, premium atmospheres, the same breath
pressed and flavored into so many menus,
from hands to leafs to slices of bread
grown into cottages yeasting a galaxy of fermentation and breakdown.
from my pants I make half a sailboat; with 3 fish I spur cadres of urban street swimmers
furrowing into raised beds, inexplicable suspensions
as the rain stays on the ocean,
as many hands and feet become fish launching into freedom
launch into freedom as fish
Dog Days Romania (for doru)
I let the dog out of the bottle
I picked the bottle before it was dry
the bush wasn’t a net yet
spiders over the horizon
dog bed rising, glass bell leaks
bushy-tailed tree-rats random dance of forestry
3 years later I remembered where I parked it
despite monthly mowings
I opened the bottle and went inside
are those epaulets or wading pools
my phone barks, my door-dog howls,
smoked meat smell moves around invisible
the wind is a hissing loop
I have to fondle to know how to cook it
cracking the refrigerator like a safe
like an egg for a gear shift
I scratch to make fire
full bottles are instant karma
as if each car in the mile long train was another story
when the moon makes shadows sing
Noon Fireplace Downstairs
even on the hottest day the hotels fireplace keeps burning, gas.
slowing for the midnight ghosts, unseen flares stepping into half asleep skin
strike another match, draw a square of paper on dark air
when trees stop giving milk we let them run
gliding on their own shadows like wings the wind avoids
I spread my 20 fingers beneath the relentless sun
but get neither sweeter or more energized
takes the first cold night to remind me of fire not in the sky,
sky that would rasp my fingers clean, fingernails gathering their future
with dreams of a spring no ones yet savored
what do we do with the heat we keep exiling from our comfort,
getting the oven up to 600 degrees to bake a pizza in 7 minutes
the oven so hungry & premature
every so often the first shovel into earth brings water pungent with festering silence
more silence than we can handle with our clothes & skin removed
the moss of our souls keeps us together, our mycellial momentum carrying us
from ice to steam escaping the soil in a 30 year elevator
opening into everything
The thicker the meat
if i could tell the thicker meat whose essence i inhale,
lungs like caves sparkling with the dreams of bats
whose bodies are too large to get out into the alleged night
they’ve never seen but smell in the messages their intentions transmit
like food from the radio empowering my polarities
i skip like two jump ropes braiding the air between all four limbs
as i cartwheel in a concrete hoop teaching me several languages
one character at a time, where i press to spring and spin through
an undulating meadow of grasses and flowers fallen from the winds pockets,
flushed from trains passing with their eyes closed
between large cities threatening to cover the meadow
like a blanket as big as the sea, rolling in itchy, smothering waves
on my bare summer skin as i try to sleep in a crate
whose windows are expensive tvs i see my changing face
with narrative adventures elapsing behind me like colorful milkshakes
of ingredients i cant spell—like an orange but square,
like cinnamon but caustic-- when the two women embrace
i smell thunder and sense a change in my internal demographics
as my right arm is a complex survey, teasing me
with the power of pictographs im from the wrong culture to grok—
i don’t draw i doodle, connecting the lines, jumping the shadow of
white paper as if a lampshade it take five days to get around,
standing where the sun is on a string,
throwing off heat and music as it asks all the air it passes through
to help it stop or at least linger someplace long enough
to mend its lifelong suit too bright for us to discern
the splendid tapestry coating my throat
to influence my voice dampered by the weight of the lungs
so full of eager expressions unable to form a line
thin enough to escape this narrow opening
