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.

WORDS ARE THINGS UNLIKE THEMSELVES (R&R)

mouthred: the sound
flutters, unsure of how
to fill an empty Coke
can, much less a room—

take a square and pull
it up around the black
grid of this chair, exhale,
this is how I work.

these days are waiting,
impatient for the nights,
for haunting scents that
cling, like lovers, to the

pillows.

“FORGIVE ME IF I WANDER A LITTLE THIS EVENING,” (R&R)

my vassal hands
quiver against the
steering wheel to be

not journeying to you,
to have no token or glove,
of—, of favor in

this day & etc…
how I would die
for one hour—for

it didn’t and I
am weak again, with
weeks, with sunsets

I would give you my
eyes for, the falling
reds, oranges embrac-

ing the earth, before
Black absence hides
upon the past / I

quite forget thy face.

FAIR ESCAPE (R&R)

sometimes there is a weight
to waiting, heavy as a rock
resting, wavewet, in your
palm, that is, until you take
your three steps, your small
alloted action and let the wait
begin to build again;

another heartbeat pumps by
and everything becomes boiled
down to folder paper in a pocket,
raffle tickets without any waiting
prizes lurking behind them,
near notarized note cards, that
strange economy built for just the
minutes and minutia of evenings.

at last—scissors seem always
to come last, shearing fates cast
by fingers until you slip out, again,
into a starless night, any heaven
drowned by the Cities, except,
perhaps a spectral moon, tissue thin
and barely bright, under which you
can leave behind, as is sometimes
best, the one you were pretending

to be.

I’D LIKE THE WORLD TO BE LESS BEAUTIFUL, PLEASE (R&R)

can it be as almost white as newsprint?
or the flecked toothpaste spatters white
dotting the bathroom mirror? as near to
gray as cracked pavement, as close to
black as unsparkling cloudy unstarred
nights or as close to warm as your pursed
unsmiling lips?