by what alias does the soul
jump in puddles? i know.
it is the invisible boughs of the
moon. it’s written on a hat.
if infinity is to have legs
(i saw the hat on one of
the baton throwers) that
matter like dandelions
matter, the hems of
loneliness on a shirt
less slogan must ask,
is there space between light?
did eternity invent the hinge?
light shakes the ankles, darkness readies the knees,
darkness is a box of pins, light the ghosts of future stars,
light sounds out words, creates space, darkness kneads the wrists,
darkness is the immanence of distance and the ongoing retrieval of it,
darkness stitches bones into the soul, light is the darkness when you blink
A squadron of indexes
Has come to forcibly file my dilemmas,
Put me away like at the end of a book,
I can hear the steady sure buzz fill the air,
The making of coffins
And birthday cakes,
I swear by calamity,
By the sudden appetite for fire, the perfect smirk
Of winter moon, it is by folly alone we love,
Sometimes it’s better to put too much blue in the bathwater
I am wearing a green sweater,
Summer for armpits and distant birds for a neck,
I have no words, but the rummaging hand of god for a cuff,
Flowers along the road for a head,
What if you surmise the billion billion hopscotch of the brain, count the ounces of a solar flare,
And of death adjust the brim of this hatted life?
In no absolute sense are wild apples green, but also like the red legs of distant clouds,
I never knew my heart could be so young against the finite orchestra of stars
I asked, what’s new?
What’s in a thousand years? What’s not?
I said, blood colored butterflies. Do jokes swim in the sea?
Not only the legs of summer clouds, but the shapes of dusk in rain puddles.
An odd number of stars, an even number of snowflakes.
And the universe, is that a nod? Yes, said the pine cones and lightning.
How I said, how should a tree, both its legs broken, fall to heaven?
How should the asphalt birds, when like fire on the eyelids, blink into branches of wings?
Who will take up this alphabet of dust and cast the old nets for the first time again?
A blank and boisterous holiday, to be here, meaningless, holding cups of rain, smiling,
Here the grass and the summer wind,
To be sure I leaped, made cheer of the infinite sort,
Than swept the floor to shoo away the irony,
Cloud weight on uncertain afternoons, a tornado to tie its shoes, one barber employed to trim the oceans,
Let it be brief in the end like losing sight of an insect in a meadow
1.
I am wearing a green sweater,
Summer for armpits and distant birds for a neck,
It has no words, the green sweater, but the rummaging hand of god for cuffs,
The silence of spokes, trench flowers along the road for endless seams,
It’s somehow even pretty, though not really,
Sublime like old shoe laces you’ve been meaning to throw out,
How leaves fill up a tree like a fastball
2.
This sorrow is ample
And bright as it is blue
This sorrow is simple
Hardly here and hardly true
What a simple anticipation
Without integers decimals or letters in its name
Arriving
Yet it was never there
1.
You said we would proceed, together like apples,
One as proud as the moon, the other alone at sea
2.
Wearing a rain coat,
In hand the unsettled,
For a nest the universe in the swaying trees,
Quiet doors make for funny haircuts,
A tee shirt upended by love
3.
Death is honest clouds,
A kitchen sink of trees, seagulls of daisies,
Between the utensils of metaphor and apocalypse,
Pressing the fairy tale toes into oceans of suns
sorrow is a handful of dust without words, it is simple and plain to a fault,
and what difference a few birds like a few words are all that’s left of blue stars whose laughter is scarlet chopsticks,
blue stars with yellow brains of dust, of the green of dusk, like used car lots in the month of May,
the dizziness of daisies setting fire to gravity,
it is the brighter darkness that does not need the rhetoric of flames
According to how you swallow the universe, birds falling are brief skeletons bitter as daisies on the broad shouldered dusk of dandelions,
How you swallow the universe ascends a ladder, turns into rain and gestures, this can’t be enough April in my socks, not enough to fathom what I would fathom-
Puddles are the subconscious of fire,
This I mean, but do not understand
