BOX
Think of me as a plant stand turned animal.
Something to hold, or be held.
Think of a pandan matte black and white.
It’s easy. Or at least not too terribly hard.
Think about the danger of night
as the lid of tomorrow tacked to a wall.
THE ELASTIC MOMENT
Ice in a glass at the height of a heat wave.
Then a sleep lull that sends you
to the airless inside of a Halloween hat.
Goodnight.
Then a sled, two mittens, and a film
with two women—one black in black satin,
one white wearing pearls—watched
in a paneled room brought in from an era
that’s over. Good-bye. Outside,
a dust-covered dog’s grave. You, your back
tacked to the seat, basket-weave plastic
on plastic, drive by—your mind
tuned to the news, a glut of miasmic static.
You, a light-bulb filament substitute
for the flame that stands for the awful truth:
the dead of war will now be unknown.
We don’t know, the fire says.
At home, the bird’s last cuttlebone
is a stripe of white in an empty cage.
Human failings are human failings.
Forgive me.
The streetlamps above emit a halogen haze.
The light makes it easy to think
everything here is reversible.
STUDIES IN NEUROSCIENCE: THE PERPETUAL MOMENT
The mirror is a formula for when the open door
closes on a clock and starts countless wires firing
in rapid succession. The self can’t be made visible
outside the brain. Define resuscitative: heart beat
brain bed occupied. Discernable action: the way a,
or the, transparent top of water
in a glass or on a lake sends back light at an angle.
Optics are not always involved
in how others see that face you call your elastic face.
A ROOM IN CLEOPATRA’S PALACE
1.
Flies and a fan and a pillar
in this or that arch of the empire.
Space is such a pain: cars shooting by like bullets,
palm trees pinned against a wall,
a helicopter wasting away the above.
This is the world at one on a street
where the angles of architecture meet
and point west where the end of a tunnel,
unseen but assumed, is draped
with a blanket of crêpe
that it’s easy to mistake for night—
[ a woman’s mouth-made swearing ]
CLEOPATRA: And I’m entangled with it.
And now: what to do with the fact
of the once-blue above, the mind cloud
tinted pink with particulate matter—
a pollution that looks like a postcard.
CLEOPATRA: I’m saying yes
to whatever you’re saying: an asp in a basket,
betrayal and horror, a room that tilts inward,
natural vice, the smell of sweat, wasted lamps,
petty lives born to murder and war.
The delicate undid disaster of all good things.
2.
The smug see me as nothing but negatives:
pout-mouth petulance, underwear lust,
a city of mystery in which pathos and greed
stand empty as high-rent apartments
with coffin-shaped plate glass vents.
Inside, the dead are resting
on expensive brocade sofas.
I have stun-gun marks on one arm; there’s a fig
at the edge of the myrtle-leaf rug.
The snake is acting like he likes me.
The dimpled boys are practicing their onion-eyed dirge.
I don’t like it when time ticks back
to where it’s just been. It takes stamina to do what I do,
day after day on my barge.
3.
During performances, I was devoted
to miming the plans of others: the room,
the walls, the people listening,
the drowning from time to time, whatever.
Watching invariably begins with a glimpse
of awareness, followed by not knowing
what will come after.
I sat in a straight-back chair, lead beneath
my feet. There was a wide arch to the right.
Do you ever think? Yes. No. I don’t not
for an instant. I open my eyes,
it’s still the present.
Enter a Messenger
Was this done well?
Who’s to say?
Make me up like a manikin
with a cosmetic palette. Tired now?
I know I am. Add a bed, and a sea overtaking
a city. Now draw something
that looks like a blown vent of blood
and a pinching sense of regret
over some wrong done.
COMPULSION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: PRINCIPLES AND
Think of me as a plant stand turned animal.
Something to hold, or be held.
Think of a pandan matte black and white.
It’s easy. Or at least not too terribly hard.
Think about the danger of night
as the lid of tomorrow tacked to a wall.
THE ELASTIC MOMENT
Ice in a glass at the height of a heat wave.
Then a sleep lull that sends you
to the airless inside of a Halloween hat.
Goodnight.
Then a sled, two mittens, and a film
with two women—one black in black satin,
one white wearing pearls—watched
in a paneled room brought in from an era
that’s over. Good-bye. Outside,
a dust-covered dog’s grave. You, your back
tacked to the seat, basket-weave plastic
on plastic, drive by—your mind
tuned to the news, a glut of miasmic static.
You, a light-bulb filament substitute
for the flame that stands for the awful truth:
the dead of war will now be unknown.
We don’t know, the fire says.
At home, the bird’s last cuttlebone
is a stripe of white in an empty cage.
Human failings are human failings.
Forgive me.
The streetlamps above emit a halogen haze.
The light makes it easy to think
everything here is reversible.
STUDIES IN NEUROSCIENCE: THE PERPETUAL MOMENT
The mirror is a formula for when the open door
closes on a clock and starts countless wires firing
in rapid succession. The self can’t be made visible
outside the brain. Define resuscitative: heart beat
brain bed occupied. Discernable action: the way a,
or the, transparent top of water
in a glass or on a lake sends back light at an angle.
Optics are not always involved
in how others see that face you call your elastic face.
A ROOM IN CLEOPATRA’S PALACE
1.
Flies and a fan and a pillar
in this or that arch of the empire.
Space is such a pain: cars shooting by like bullets,
palm trees pinned against a wall,
a helicopter wasting away the above.
This is the world at one on a street
where the angles of architecture meet
and point west where the end of a tunnel,
unseen but assumed, is draped
with a blanket of crêpe
that it’s easy to mistake for night—
[ a woman’s mouth-made swearing ]
CLEOPATRA: And I’m entangled with it.
And now: what to do with the fact
of the once-blue above, the mind cloud
tinted pink with particulate matter—
a pollution that looks like a postcard.
CLEOPATRA: I’m saying yes
to whatever you’re saying: an asp in a basket,
betrayal and horror, a room that tilts inward,
natural vice, the smell of sweat, wasted lamps,
petty lives born to murder and war.
The delicate undid disaster of all good things.
2.
The smug see me as nothing but negatives:
pout-mouth petulance, underwear lust,
a city of mystery in which pathos and greed
stand empty as high-rent apartments
with coffin-shaped plate glass vents.
Inside, the dead are resting
on expensive brocade sofas.
I have stun-gun marks on one arm; there’s a fig
at the edge of the myrtle-leaf rug.
The snake is acting like he likes me.
The dimpled boys are practicing their onion-eyed dirge.
I don’t like it when time ticks back
to where it’s just been. It takes stamina to do what I do,
day after day on my barge.
3.
During performances, I was devoted
to miming the plans of others: the room,
the walls, the people listening,
the drowning from time to time, whatever.
Watching invariably begins with a glimpse
of awareness, followed by not knowing
what will come after.
I sat in a straight-back chair, lead beneath
my feet. There was a wide arch to the right.
Do you ever think? Yes. No. I don’t not
for an instant. I open my eyes,
it’s still the present.
Enter a Messenger
Was this done well?
Who’s to say?
Make me up like a manikin
with a cosmetic palette. Tired now?
I know I am. Add a bed, and a sea overtaking
a city. Now draw something
that looks like a blown vent of blood
and a pinching sense of regret
over some wrong done.
COMPULSION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: PRINCIPLES AND
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