dear oblivion
i hear you gold
tooth shreds tin bone
in the other
room
salivating
somewhere
unknowable
a man
grills
meat
a child
screams
what i mean to say
is this, dear oblivion:
i must remember
the littoral darkness
of the rising afternoon
the light
never
having
been
enough
dear oblivion
i hear you
crawling away
I want to call
specific attention
to the mating
and cuddle
settings,
because
they result in
a nearly
perfect
breeding
situation.
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
my panting heart
my heavy void
capturing leaf smoke
curls the room
while i prepare
crystal lapped boys
to value a buck
everyone i know
is dead
i’m dead too
but that never bothered me none
handsome sergio
knows the hoary hour
every day antoni sneaks off
before lunch
to fuck
his girlfriend
violet
he presumes
i can’t
smell the rose
in his long black hair
sergio’s allowance twirled on
montelliana
panerai
brioni
then alone
in darkness
arranges
black chrysanthemums
nothing moves in the universe
a few cars and trucks
on main street
something lights
through the grass
a hare i thought
or a robin
but i am high
and the grass is tall
and a car alarm shouts
over the green paint
of the lawn
where the neighbors play
he drives a nice new chevrolet
because
he does nothing
but work
two small women
in black cardigans
peaceful blue masks
matching wet brown buns
and fists full
of snow white
target shopping bags
walk past
walk past
clark is here
again
with the chimney
he ran home
to get
so he can
grill meat.
“The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.” Francis Bacon
a preponderance of glimmer
flutters from north to south
diamonds sewn into family photos
as though around the collarbone
anything goes in time five cut pears
scintillate sword to sword with shopworn verbs
a sea battle takes place
may i describe the room? cactus
flower haphazards beside something unripe
a bowl of collapsing gravity for example the ship
is our second home the minimalist masterpiece
crawls in the mirror with her small
white daughters gorgeous hardware well
paid ten great american painters
forgotten their brilliant nonces
advertise the always profitable
transgressive breasts in ibiza
no one could prevent
house beat mingles
with big capital one vibes and donald
judd atelier a table of logical laws on
a chair of metaphysical necessities
in chalk harbors sandy
short shorts granite hardware i said existence
and the nature of god the superflower
causal for profit and pleasure
in a foxhole high above chelsea
as it rushes through an elongated
coruscate electrified discharge field
blitzed with images of the italian
sense of beauty this exists: a short list
of things a poet names lost
therefore it is futile to consult a doctor
or an arms dealer
A little piece of the ape’s nostril had fallen off; and then we noticed one of its ears was chipped. On closer examination we saw that one of its fingernails was missing.
By this time, of course, we had grown to love the ape, but still we wondered if it shouldn’t be sent back for an undamaged one.
The guarantee slip was still attached to one of its ears: This ape is guaranteed in perfect working order on the day of the purchase.
But then we noticed something else written on the slip: Floor model, demonstration ape, reduced for quick sale.
Ah, so we did get a bargain without even knowing it.
The ape shyly smiles and presents its cheek for a kiss …
But later on in the evening a large hole develops in the ape’s stomach from what had seemed earlier only a tiny tear. And all evening we watched the ape’s insides slowly coming out all over the rug …
Source: Edson, Russell. The Tunnel: Selected Poems. Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College Press, 1994. Print.
correlation
of dizzy
dive light and
images fade
at the end
of divine
capital —
like a life
preserver
enamoured
concrete
vile fawn
at the
bottom
of file
architecture like
rainbows
demand it’s okay
not to pose
here among
posy
cardinals
never stop
look in the mirror
it’s time
to talk
politics
i’ve lived long enough to see phaeolus schweinitzii
chewing the lap of this jersey pine on a walk
with my family during our first pandemic
to call us moist and poorly protected
would be rude but true nevermind
what i haven’t got is dirty hands and god
damnit if i know how to be selfless
among all these bottle caps and tarot cards
the bravado emptiness embitters inflames thickens
the grey launch of memory plunges seven
thousand feet into the lap of an idol
hard at work in the dry grass
the irony of course remains
we are alone leaning back in chinese
textiled seats without understanding
without compassion without hideous
perspective until we are alone photograph
-ing ourselves some distance from another drink.
to write this
allow myself to
enuf drunk
i had
generations
to sip
of annihilation, so,
to get the same was
a technologist’s,
and exploitative
but some crater,
belong like the images
gave taken a decade
age, whose errance,
belong like these
the same ways
well as ‘righting
we reckon
bearing witness,