There is a shape
When nothing’s there.
Open it
Or close it.
It’s just as round.
Leave it
Or carry it with you.
You cannot spend
What it does not lack.
There is a shape
When everything is done.
And you will know that.
You will know.
What the wind uses for thread
And needle.
The last of the moon’s scribbled light
In the bowl
Like a broken guitar,
A mini golf course for
A syllogism.
Why are beginnings so important?
Why is a broken guitar a disaster?
Is the grave coming up short.
And though I think all of this is folly
I am glad of its sometimes kindness.
A poem
Is a belly flop
In handwriting
By an angel doing a handstand
While going backward in time
In a simple sweater, a jawline like a lyric, is the ambition of dusk.
Against the aquarium of stars.
A simple ghost, like a pair of bashful feet in the corner.
The high wires of power lines, the moon like a spool with no thread.
Words in a notebook, coil bound, from the drugstore, do angels tattoo humans on their arms?
A jawline like a stampede, an aquarium of ghosts.
The geometry
Of calling off
From work:
Proletarian pillowcases,
The waistline of angels,
The two unequal sides
Of the human heart.
The geometry
Of staying home
From home:
The summer night is bigger than you
If done properly,
Eyes dream in graffiti moons,
Heart breathes griffin stars.
The flowers
On Mars
Are heart shaped applause, wolves of
Silence, bankrupt fractals
On their last poems,
Asteroid belts, summer nights, lava, rocks, stones, leaves, solitary. They ask,
What are the numbers in the fourth dimension? What are the quadrants of solitary meanderings?
This dawn of the stones.
I walk alone.
The job of a fool
Is to ride the bus
Till the heart becomes a circumference
Suffices the world
The job of the poet
Is to put earnings
In burning buildings
Look look a macho moon in reverse
Parks in the eyes of city gulls
Go ahead and honk for doomsday
I’ve the summer grass
Tattooed on the shoe strings of my brain
Between the toes of my heart
The world is a shell. But now what?
The sun is a quintet. But the drummer was robbed.
You are invisible and move like the moon. On three legs of falling leaves.
This is the way to lose.
By the seams of our nativities.
I walked to the city limit
And played volleyball
With some seagulls.
It was a no nonsense game
With plenty of intermissions.
I headed west
Up to the river.
In my coat
I stood at the water.
The posture of dusk
Ransacked of belongings
Looking over its shoulder. What if it could
Be squared?
And though the stars
Come looking for alms I have only the cents
Of infinity.
If I knew how to spell lasso
Or pumpernickel. But I don’t.
It is a reluctant light
The hardware of the self.
Same smeared face
Of the moon faints
Toward Earth
Into the rain that pools in the broken cups.
The kids in the street
Bang their hands against the old
Can lids
Imitating stars.
They rattle with a fierce
Cunning
For transcendence.
It is as simple as that.
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