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As if to bracket thoughts;
words diminish to red,
then to a cobalt sky;

clouds work off of limitations,
full of affordable verbs,
adjectives, thin are my thoughts;

thin as Frank O’Hara, thin
as a Persian jacket, or a tiny
Asian woman holding flowers

on a pier, foggy is her mind: 
an earthquake underneath
canvases of her love,

a dancing star through
her heart. Today, I inject
inspiration into what the

overall picture cannot give,
where it has died, &
the overall picture is

a search, a funny joke
to shock oneself into a
nauseated, baroque surface,

massive; authentic as
one’s mother, as authentic
as the grass is as white

as snow during summer
droughts; a paradox?
Inevitably, I adore the flame

of one’s eyes, like a
jack-o-lantern, except that
those flames must splash

through the pupils
with kindness, like
the brush strokes of Matisse,

the “end” meaning to be
free-moral agents—
no excuse not to believe in God:

nature confirms it.
I paint what you dislike.
I paint with the mystery

of a monster within a
beautiful human body.
How dangerous is popular culture?:

every “lower east side”
dirty as a sewer,
a very serious thing to observe,

or to ignore, like a bridal shop:
that kind of cliche’,
that gown of interest,

a little doggy in the window,
a specific person giving you
“the eye”!—to restrain as if it were

dictatorial; to aid the homeless
& to be given awards sevenfold,
spoiling the evil of things,

like instinct in the gut of a lion,
rhythmic as wave-like obscurity
hanging on to analyze my every

structure, & what occurs next
is already occurring before
it’s ever thought of.