as i witnessed the spot of the lowering-down
barreling-on forward into the years myself,
as slowly as i could barrel

i adjusted my cuffs
and
mumbled a few words near the white flowers

we drove a few miles all 40 or so of us
and had a late lunch at an inn
with faded parking spots
and if you ask me about the menu in a few months
i will probably still recall the potatoes

still there will be a hole filled with dirt
nearby

and over the years i’ll start to remember
the curves in the highway

i will recall
the white flowers
which will greet me sooner or later

there is an itch
a red splotch on the left arm one day,
and a scratch because of the
ten seconds sex organ-like
pleasure that is seeping,
thoughts literally ecstatic
weeping
an hour or two
and solemn mad
a week or two
soon enough

your silence is a desert you turn back on and
in which you see your own footprints spanning miles
the red sand is like mars
there are craters

thoughts literally ecstatic
purifying sneezes
the warm blood slicks drying on legs
to write like this skin
to

write

like
this
skin

is to constantly forget
while always
remember-
ing.

like all
i am in search of a savior guilty
of all the mistakes i have made

to absolve me of my idle search—
i wait for forgiveness in the form of
bundled bills slipped casually into my sock

someone who will forgive me my copyright infringement


to move a centimeter in this world
is to outrace the continents, who are in turn
laughed at by the stars

there is a stillness so sincere

that in my brightest moments,
in the full rapture of its fullness
i have found my eyes too dull
and my heart too naive to penetrate it.

there is a joy that throbs

so that in my purest comfort,
with the newness of young branches and leaves
i have discovered my words too dumb
and my smile so incomplete
as to confound me.

there is a peace so bewildering

that, upon blanketing staccatoed moments,
whether between metal and glass,
entangled in vines
or between the cirrus wisps,
imbued with a solemn saltiness, crushes
me like the atmosphere of jupiter

whatever brings us our second wind
in the midst of
dirty cars and bedrooms
and dirty politicians,

when some would make blanket statements
and some would hide under blankets

not the feeling of waking up or of electricity
nor the tiredness that precedes it

but

the actual mechanism
through which we flow
styx-style
to different states

is what those who would philosophize
and poeticize
would aim to be

but

sadly

once the breath has been been breathed
it is no longer
yours;

it is irreversibly universal,
unclaimable
and
undecipherable

beauty!

if you can’t do it shirtless in front of a window
then you’re still not even close

consider the lilies
consider the women

they’ve all had long days too
and there will be more

but

sympathy

they’ve all had days where
they wished
their windows faced south
and their stomachs and chests were a little bit different.

i am
lying sideways on a couch
smoking
and holding out the cigarette so that
it looks like the smoke is coming out the top of a coke can

so helpless god couldn’t save me

traffic noises come in
through the
open
kitchen window

toe nail
clippings

we aim to live in a movie
and to soften death which threatens us

i removed the
screen
from the
window

this
is how
the days
mumble.

be the medium.

your calloused hands say nothing;
nor
do
your
eyes, more deadened by the day;
nor your
cracked skin; nor your
atrophying joints and cells
and ideals.

the much that they have spent
is worthless;
the depth of what they have acquired
is nothing.

but fall not into
nihilism,
wistful and wasteful as the world understands it.

do not write with your blood,
like a fool;
write upon seas of your blood,
which
while, like everything,
will evaporate,
will still shape lands lasting
after its steam launches
into listful space.