___________________________________________

I hover
natively

without
being deleted.

Time
is a busy

little reverie
that lifts you,

despite divisions. 
The invasion

of an etcetera
bruises

the texts
that aches

for a better
Good Riddance. 

I duck
when fate

flies towards
my head,

that attempts
to transform

an old desire
into

a new
reality. 

___________________________________________

I walked outside
this morning

& a bird
said my name.

It had
your voice,

& apparently
your eyes--

what will I do
now

but let it
repeat

like a heartbeat
in my mind.

I see
your eyes

as distorted
caricature prints--

all ridicule
& strain

bending scarce
proportions

of your
physiognomy.

___________________________________________

She had
butterflies’ wings

woven
into her hair—

this is the
barrette of the future.

She had become
calx

in my hands,
my patient legs
still aching
to run
to & fro,
back to her

arms, back
to her arms
again &
again,
for a desperate
resolution

had entered
my mind,
endorned

by all
that cannot
be undone.

___________________________________________

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.

___________________________________________

I thought

of our dead

relationship,

how it was

once

a sensible thing,

bright,

gleaming

like heaven’s gate,

but then

becoming

like a

venomous

snake,

or a death

like Caesar

on the floor

in a pool

of his own blood.

___________________________________________

If the moon’s

pupil

opened a bit wider,

the sun

would gasp

with rapt attention

& reverse

every memory,

every photo,

so that all light

& life

would become

an absolute

anfractuous shadow

sunken

into the infinite mire

upon the pressed lips

of the universe.