It’s simple, a life
Of eccentric guessing
You move

To California, one drunk
Night you climb
Every fence in the neighborhood

And no one shoots you
And fog washes
The church steeple

Bare, months
Pass, you sell your car
To a surfer, move

Again, America roils, a man
Walks into a bar and then drives
Into a tree, you move

Again, one love
Recedes and another beckons
Brightly, your roommate

Gets rich and it befits
Her, the sun
Struggles over your eastward

Facing sill and it never
Occurs to you
To wonder how

It’s happening, it’s simple
Yves Klein invents
A color and it kills him

You steal six hundred thousand
Hours from god and fear
Capture constantly, one wriggling

Dactyl amidst the day’s lapidary
Scansion, you carry on
Unreasonably and bloodless

The moon is a rock that salutes
You for it, you forgo
Certain dignities, others

Are thrust upon you, animals
Curve to your touch, a Brooklyn boy
With an unpronounceable name

Writes Fire is tasty
You imbecile, the leaves
In the trees in

The park ignite and you climb
The fire escape to the roof
To chart the buildings’ unwavering

Ballet of windows, bullets
Are cocked nearby, the cops drink
Beer from Styrofoam

Cups on the street below
Ted takes you to Chinatown for turtle
Soup, each piece

Of its floating meat
Wholly disparate, the cherry
Blossoms arrive and then

Dissipate triumphantly
Like the sting
Of winter, cephalopods slowly

Adapt, an anonymous
Russian woman saves you
From falling on

The subway, the rooftop
Reads GODOT, the waitress
At the diner calls

You Professor, it’s simple
The wind hits
Your lips and you’re

Pleased, a deer hits
Your father’s car and you’re
Inconsolable, a family

Of skunks makes purchase
Beneath the floorboards
And the impending decision puzzles

You—the stink or
The killing it
Takes to rid yourself

Of it, of them, who else?

Ever noticed how a flame disappears
In sunlight, even while
Notorious lightning breeds

On the horizon, you
Have an eye
For such things—the reactivation

Of long-malingered volcanoes, the manner
In which a wounded sloth
Creeps lamely from unwieldy trunk

To bending branch, the plaintive
Varieties of unseen matter
Coalescing against our lamentable screen

Of den culture, you are the kind
Of person who puts things in order in
Order that the edgeless

Fog might disband, if only
For an afternoon, and this is why we have
Come to you, repeatedly swearing

That we’re not animals, that
The fact is we would not dream of having them
Sullied by our petty transactions of faith

And discord, we want you
To think about us
Like an eye that has been turned

Hopelessly inward
So all it sees is a miasma
Of tissue, tiny parts

Convulsing involuntarily, absurdly
Divorced from their original functions, one
Cannot love that way, just as

One cannot enter the fold with his nails
Thrashing the air he cannot
Breathe, you know this, your very

Gestures have instructed
Us thusly, the way they dissemble the easy
Grotesque we have become and point

Toward a prospect of grace, only last
Night you made apologizing
Pretty again, perhaps this evening


The dogs will lay supplicant
At our feet and think us masters
When for so

Long it’s been the reverse, tomorrow untold
Colonnades of light might
Descend from the weightless vault

Of heaven, because, you see, that’s a possibility
As all things suddenly
Are, one has only to speak

Your name and a massive flock of dirigibles
Arranges itself into graph
Paper patterns against the amoebic

Sky, I
Would only ask that you take off
Your jacket and sit here

In the chair beside my bed, I must
Shortly leave this only-just-this-very-instant
Brightening world, and I would

Have your perfect
Hand laid heavy atop
The loosening

Furrows of my bead-covered brow.

The light rough
The sunshine unsure

The skin of things
pushes at the hinge
of the eye

as an unin-
terruptedness

wrests disclosure into song

I start to melt without
startle, without tumult

Like Muddy
Waters strangling
the air

I am a man

becoming weather