EACH DAY IS A PROMISE WAITING TO BE BROKEN

or a million,

like a river, drab
and white, of slips

broken free of
knotted cookies,

crumbs, no truth that
ever passed a tooth,

not made of words,
at least, and these

unworded truths
that rumble past

palates and gummy
lipstick just become

all that is unfaceable.

THE VIII

he’ll take an:
elephant heart,

perfect to pedestal
in place of his own;

to be gone when:
they come to take it,

alone somewhere
on the imitation marble;

next to a sweating and
unopened beer.

UNTOWARD

whatever other

mask I have, I

always have

yours to wear:

cardboard bag,

proof of scissoring,

the once pungent

permanency of

indelible ink.

ANY OTHER NOW

an unused mouth,
toothpebbles, dry,
papery whispers—

a midnight forgiveness,
a low hanging moon,
a less black night.

EVERYDAY MUST BE THE END OF THE WORLD (PART EIGHT)

unslouch your none-
too-gentle gyre, slough

off any of your burdensome
yestermorns, the broken lead

of an undesked pencil, chasms
gnawed into a disposable pen—

:;:

there is always another heavenly
façade under construction, obscured

behind all those sunfaded signs
promising the imminent arrival of

the “coming soon”, the faster food,
the I-am or the iamb or at least

convenience.

FRAGMENT (R&R)

even her ghost has fled her,
turning demurely from every
camera, unwilling to be merely
another memory again.

SWELL

a wrack dream,

constellations
too misremembered

to be navigable—

tossed here,
an almost sleep

an almost sea,
in either case

waves covering.

MONDAY (WEEKDAY AND BRING OUT / THE CLARINET!)

rung out,

more blown about
that falling,

a yesterday’s defeat
gone grumbling
towards noon.

;:;

tip tip tip tip—

a break room
gone fishy,

let the bulb die,
the dim suits
the strain of eyes.

Y (R&R)

that sometimes mistaken Thorn;
questionary pronouns awaiting an eschaton,

as the night weaves itself into ribbons of tail lights,
the always-following unless they have gone out,

all the sleepers watch, through the veins of their
closed eyelids, the doublefortnighted striptease of the moon.

you turn you and you and why back onto me;
I only have four things, if you give them to me.

THE TEETH OUTSIDE THEIR BODIES (R&R)

when breath be
comes dispensable,

then the Sun spreads her
legs; the false stars spy

on that white dusting
of fine hairs that wait

for the slow song of
turbine and saxophone.