When I Was The Subject
How we or anything exists
Is cranky extravagance
Forthright New Year's hibiscus chaos
O note card on the floor
I can't speak to you
Like someone at the end
Of a nine foot wall
But if you have a birthday
I will sing to you
Flashing christmas lights
Is it your yes that's many-colored
Or like the tree in silhouette
Is it no
I am the love of a pullet
For the hoseman
Which shines whiter
Than a new refrigerator
I am the color
Of the sweater the woman
For whom I have many
Little feelings wears
My eyes are that color
Candle squiggle on ceiling
Copper connects its way
Across the room
As a woman whose
Neckline is cut to show
A stone necklace
Lifts the shotglass
Candle to light
Her smoke
Look deep into the street
A glass of glass
The cat you have
To let come to you
The arc of the moral
Universe bends toward
Who plainly say
Recline on pillows
Warm day I'm surrounded
By what beauty wants
Catfish in restaurants
Followed by old meanings
The song of plaid paper
And plastic around roses
Is step all the way in
Kid screams her head
Can't take my eyes off of you
Trumpet solo in Times Square
She isn't anyone I know
Bystander camera crew
Looking for the mole of the week
Governance all afternoon
And context in the evening
Set their tuning forks
On a sleeping head
Graffiti on shoulder strap
Imagine being that far gone
They could actually tag you
For a dollar I'll
Tell you a poem:
Bad career move
Coconut oil out of control
O no! Symmetry
Sleepy woman at a payphone
My love never mind my love
It's your love that means
She going to make it? Reeling
Counting her change
New poem
Come up from
The earth
The south
The minors
O it performs functions
Like a pocket knife
What are the questions
Anything asks
Education or sex?
Laundry or painting?
Sadness or weight gain?
Computers or square feet?
Laughter or knowing looks?
Quasars or piñatas?
Carbon-dating or bichon frises?
Restocking the wilds or hovering
overhead?
Companion volume or appellate court?
Deep or homely?
Quiet or common?
Reply or sonogram?
Wanton abandonment or annuities?
Justice or victory?
Tragedy or periplum?
Arabic or cellular?
What funny thing
Has the caffeine
Persuaded you
I need to see?
Can't keep it in your wallet
Can't hide it in your shoe
Beauty is asleep
Star Trek is Burger King
If I had forty youths to give this art
Each of them youngly angry and
amused
I'd relegate the sidewalk sidelong crush
To one or two and with the balance
make
Plays, movies, ways that words move
people, light
Word to word grant us
Match-sulfur
Then tears in the eyes
In constant danger of eye-contact
Not that anything you want is a rockstar
Small stuff or clue?
Remember liking the word
constellation
In a poem? And I was a stranger to you
The keys receipts candy wrappers in
The unwashed clothes of the dead
Whose poem was that?
Those people
Locked in game
Would I could need
What I was thinking
Like I need a thing
O so-what, do you ease
An anxious smile into its case
So-what zipper on a tight lace boot
So-what blue jeans on old people
The crowds massed
For the celebration
Of the year of so-what
To so-what I send my resume
I show up for the interview
In my interview suit
Am casual but poised
And so-what and I
Get along I get
The job!
O so-what
We go walking
Where the oxygen flows
And nothing knows
Either of us
You think I smile
Because anybody
Notices but
Laughter as insulation
Is all this life
Sparkles
To the order of
We like you
I am in love
Does not function as
An emotional declarative
The way
So I was getting ready
For my father to die
Does
This doesn't have to do
With truth value or even
Meaningful probability
Whether true or false
So I was getting ready
Is unarguable
Anxiety like love a state
Of looking for an object
I'm so far from the border
Of being in love and not
Being in love
Lightning is my cello of
The person-place continuum
The ice sheet standing near
My head is noticed
The things I notice when
I want to write are
Not the things I think about
Or feel they are what
Gets sucked through the
Hole I punch in time
When I see a man sitting
On a stool in front of bricks
I know I am the firing squad
The tough guy voice
I parodied to get it
To take me over
Doorways
Grinning as stupidly as me
And when the energy has
Almost finished going
Through I can work
Out a few sentences
Without the sharp
Points sticking out