Simile on the Morning

Osaka, 2019

cherry wave moves fast
consumes gas spark oxy
gen ignites momentary true

tears
apart
asphalt

gives it all away for pennies on the dollar

corpse
of oak

wave of pattern-making
gone now so maybe
aerated biomass
bound to steel
screws i once loved

as a lecture
well cared for
white curator
of white curators

my hands in my filial head

translation
concrete

as total aesthetic loss
as movement

Great Emotional Distress

from drink
her wife
laughs

she breathes
hard and
throat cracks

in her sleeping
layers of
green magma

rise up
through her body her
old girlfriend math

the poem
can take a punch
through green ice

scream for
attention
like a snake

with
wings squeezing her neck why laugh now? the
trauma

behind her back
did she remember
to brush her teeth

with a knife
she’s a small man
and she assumes

she will strike
her skull
with a mallet

force a hose into
her mouth
and fill her belly

with water
this makes it
easier

for the blade
to separate
the skin

from
her body
still hard

to understand
why her
wife is laughing

the
neck a threshold between body and
world

leaches
build cities on her tongue
she’s allowed

their need
for power
and profit

to supplant
her need
for kindness

and contentment
now
suddenly

she’s unconstitutional
the problem
is her

insistence
everything be
histrionic, but orderly

from celebrity
marriages
to concentration

camps
doctor help her please
dream

abstractly
the door
left

unlocked
around her teeth
plink

through the night
twenty eight
gorgeous porcelain

necks
she remembers
the dreams of others

before
her own
the selenite grotesquerie

of her exposed
femur
cause

the viewer
great emotional
distress