PIANY THROAT

for Rae Armantrout



Take each poetic fragility
& crack the whip.

An Inlaying
of a thick map.

Now I am only trying
to impress,

the way I sketch
skepticism on stained

glass. Decorating
the front door,

a greater chance of
peeping toms.

I go on a "hunting trip"
every day in my mind,

reaching into my earth's
magnetic shield.

Consequently, I may
be able to name it

a completely different
name, with(in)/Correct

body alignment.
The compass

builds reaction
more than direction

(polished jasper, sub
-conjunctival hemorrhage)

like the “full-blown”
unification

of Literature; messless
& unrelenting

as if becoming
a wall decoration.

________________________________________________________

Pull out

my larynx

From now on

we will speak

in heart beats

THE B_IND

The b_ind h_ve deaf ey_s.

The b_ind re-inv_nt shape.

________________________________________________________

No one really dreams of a soothing cocoon, we gather
ripest memories loved best & turn the volume high
like radios by poolsides in the prime of summer afternoons.

Underwater depth, your gentle affection is fully-rooted
in mysterious ways—Unknowns, like a sleeping lion—
those depths, deafening me with your majestic coral caves.

I blend into your silken mouth. Alas, we blend together;
perhaps flayed, perhaps a harmony of opposites,
the spinstress of warmth. Go on, hide me, but love me.

Love me before I become bokeh in your background,
& if I do, cut me out of the pixels with your hatchet,
inform me of my predictable mishaps without a sound.

Stand on your tippy-toes while whisking me away.
Climb the sycamore like Zacchaeus the exact way
& remember me when your heart begins to starve.

ADD A HYPHEN FOR CONFUSION

for Non-confusion

I think too often of interrelated metaphors.
I think too often of the despoliation of nature.
I think never enough of bonding & reinvention.
I think never enough of being soft & bodiless,
weightless. I see your glow shining through
(waitless) every chink & keyhole. We hover
in Whole. Contrast can adjust its shape.
Plurazing themes or plagiarizing dreams,
verb-squeamish steams, add a hyphen
for confusion, so it seems. I investigated
the poison of poetry but it was all static.
I view myself in a mirror the way a cat would
like quantum-mechanical Schrödinger's cat.
Newspapers are dying, economy is crying,
my two sisters on the verge of alcoholism?
I ponder it like the credit bubbles displayed
in my psyche; moving text like a "marquee,"
black holes of disassembledness, waves
of the uncanny. Failing body, like an unenriched
alleyway-entrance, rooting for rot in the fruit shop
of the mind, a gassy muffler's neuropathy,
interference of passers-by. The spontaneous
mechanical collapse of the cryodeposit layer
is not the worse of all worlds: epic pet peeves
never fail. The earth is producing nothing but
monsters nowadays. A video of your Secrets
will play over a large screen & will begin in
twenty-six seconds in two segments, one of
which will contain repetitive ads for the race
of mankind. The Monolith will land on the sand
& we will continue to starve like a wax-candle
waiting for a match. I am losing myself in this
high whirrition of pithful contemplation. A doctor
is not needed. He would merely say, "Just bestir
yourself and pick fleas from a carpet. Slip inside
an object. Diminish from the slow peel of light."
Advice is remembering. I take it & go forward,
with or without hogwash; spurs within the eyes.