Clouds float by
like the distracted minds
of underpaid lab
technicians.
Their hypothesis is
thoroughbred
enlightenments
breed rough lichens.
Meanwhile, the faces of
Myrmidons
appear in the rear view
mirror, grotesque
like half-formed similes.
We mean what we say
when we say we say
what we mean
they say
without really having to—
ACCORDING TO THE ART OF POWER
Your resubmitted treatise on class warfare
has supplanted my feelings
which once tried to spell the word
“hunger” in blood-tipped toothpicks
on the paper plate of the moon.
An evening breeze spins around your
oyster mushroom hairstyle.
If they were real, your cheeks might
boast a puce filigree of veins.
From this place, Jupiter appears
multiplied in the compound eyes of
office towers
before it rolls across your naked forearm
and snags
on a razor-wire tattoo. It’s still
summer.
Another plinth gets vandalized
by billowing sail-shaped shadows, but
then
it’s too late. Liberty Island turns
blue.
ANOTHER POEM THAT WANTS SOMETHING TO DO WITH HISTORY BUT NOTHING TO DO WITH
ME, THANK GOD
Beneath
a blue afternoon of evergreens
vernacular
shadows and cerebral-colored mosses
once
dappled and draped themselves in slow-motion-time across
acres
of the exposed sandstone’s flesh.
Behind
a dust-spangled screen
of
regrets, I once heaved and scattered myself into being like this—
with
the charm of a pointillist, drunk on schnapps.
Today,
the sky slantwise thrusts the net of its will
upon
you, and me, and everyone who’s ever been
quarantined
with seven-billion hues, post-factual
grooves,
and pornographic options.
I
slaughter from afar, as always.
You
text, twerk, invent new pronouns
sail
away with Musk to Mars.
Pastiche,
pandering, and politics
instead
of poetry. Clout.
I
cross my heart, hope not to die.
Your
mind’s sun-shot
like
a hummingbird’s wing beneath
sledgehammers
of disinformation.
Together,
we once gnawed the mineral-rich air
spat
vapid hashtags back at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—
both
of which, today, let’s both agree
taste
like rust.
You’d
think vanilla swimwear would be
the
envy of chocolate statuary.
You’d
think psychedelic lichens would mean more
interest
in four-player chess as a metaphor
for metaphoricity.
But
as you — who on a cold bench facing the river valley
feeds
an albino skunk crumbs of stale coffee cake —
as
you might say — you meaty man of valor, you lover
of
the word “moreover” —
Look
on my works, ye mighty
and
disambiguate!
And
the truth is never not anywhere.
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