Trains and electrical towers buzzed in his head. The locomotive is a moth that drinks only from puddles that harbor the reflection of the moon.
And the moth, now a locomotive again, falls into the reflection of the moon.
Later that night, neither the rain nor the rain against the windowpane make a sound. It is the tree roots drinking, it is the roots of stars drinking. That resonate.
Abstract sandwiches
Are baloney.
The ping pong playing peonies
Of electric yesterdays.
Distance is simple.
It smells feral and wears the sky on its head.
Rayguns and eyebrows
Volcanoes and arrows.
Apple unicycle bird
Barbarian heyday song.
A silly sleep of fire
Turning over like a dream.
The sun is a handkerchief
And badly in need of some tattoos.
This isn’t funny
But almost hilarious.
Writing love themes
For the galaxy.
The afternoon smells like a waltz. With hints of a
Mosh pit.
Tuesdays are for études. And classic rock
Tee shirts.
Let’s meet at the bodega and buy cans of beer and a bag of peanuts.
Feed the crows and make a day of it at the park.
Your eyebrows are infinite. Don’t laugh. I’m serious.
I want to open a gas station for UFOs.
Atonal butterflies
Like crackers breaking in half
In midair
Harmonious as a leak
Legible as a cold draft
Atonal daffodils
Are allergic to nihilism
And gardens
Use pointless random parades as currency
Robins are the first proletarians of spring
A genius for the margins, like a stray shopping cart rolled up and jutting from a snowbank, or in spring an abandoned yellow umbrella tumbling along the gray railroad lines in a light rain,
The reflection of the reddening sky in the west facing panes, or the first crocuses in the city lot shooting up between beer can and soda can,
The chain-link with the corner pulled up through which the kids trespass into the abandoned grain mill to paintball and graffiti, or like the pedestrian bridge over the expressway garnished with fence on top,
Late at night the streetlights filling the rainy streets, taking root in the potholes and sewer grates, as our elbows share a window ledge looking out at thunderstorm,
A cricket lives less than the summer months, a star for billions of years, though a monarch butterfly flies south for the winter, and the robins return in spring.
The moon is a drought
Like a harpsichord in a vacuum
Overflowing with rivers
That are dreams
The dusk is scarlet like autumn
Even in the spring
Can a river ever find footing
Asked the lighted match
Ice is bottomless
Said the crows
From the bare winter boughs
But never absolute
I make a nest.
I buy a hang glider.
I bring home a pulsar.
I borrow a sweater.
Lean against the strain
An ingenious ladder of stars
For an alphabet.
Its own stillness terrifies
The moon.
It’s true, imaginatively tested,
Autumn’s red leaves
Are capable of falling in and out of black holes.
Preferably the dreams
Arriving from the blue sea
To the pentameters of oars
What it means
To have instead of coins
These spirited verses
Ashore the ghosts set fire
To their own ships
To bar the way back
Here they trace the portents
On the incoming tide
And make their final stand
An abstract verse brings out the eyes, said the florist.
How one cradles a thunderstorm is philosophy. As is counting your lover’s footsteps on the untuned floor as the footsteps turn into motes in the afternoon light.
Every dream is a superstition that has a lot to say about you.
Do you hear, as well, the climbing notes in the setting sun? The bird-like departure of psychology into the horizon?
A psychology that has the structure of an invisible violin and an imaginary amulet. That with the changing of the seasons will find its way back to you.
Fairy tales are true. The birds transform into us, and we transform into birds.
But that’s not completely true. Neither is any of this. True enough mostly works. And the remainder? There’s always a remainder. How true. Even black holes leak radiation.
Complexity long ago outgrew the two-dimensional world. How many dimensions are there really? The solar system is a crop circle of gravity. Unbeknownst to you, your dreams keep a calendar. Wouldn’t you like to know the dates?
What does the cosmos wear? Some sort of driftwood hat? The storms of Jupiter for a buttonhole? All the highways for a fingerprint?
I like to follow along, tag along the railroad on rainy afternoon with waterproof boots and a simple blue jacket. Could this be biography?
It’s also meaningful to just sit and do nothing. And probably wise. I’m writing this in a bathrobe and a few days removed from a shave and wondering if this tooth ache will go away on its own. A garden is lots of work. But I’m glad of it. Meandering is a branch of philosophy. Take is seriously. Eating together is civilization.
Later on, as night sets in, I look out the window. The cold rain is indifferent. Maybe I need a little of this indifference.
naïve haircuts 