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| He's been reading game theory articles about mutually assured destruction, and now it's sometime in the all-night. His dry contacts are osmosing all the moisture through his corneas, and he backs off from the screen and rubs his eyes with the thenar eminences of his hands. His thoughts are these:
"I should change into my glasses."
"Do I think learning about nuclear strategy is interesting just because it keeps me from thinking about how scary it is that we could all die right now, or tomorrow?"
He walks out onto his back porch for a cigarette. No, it isn't the dark of night; the sky is turning blue. He finishes his cigarette. He makes coffee in the kitchen, puts on a flannel jacket, steps back outside, and sips from an old, chipped mug. These are his thoughts:
"How aren't we all feeling thankful for every new day, and every sunrise and early-morning coffee?"
"I'm going to try to smile more today." | | |
| So, soul sparks spill into your eyes, only
while you’re pushing on a jacket, body half off the step, stopping,
then setting up your paintbrushes. So,
so, though you haven’t eaten,
and your hands are shaking, coursing sugar-starved blood,
so this is what there’ll be to see.
So, so, a poet’s notebook is choking on ugly sentences,
misunderstood instances, so,
so, he felt angry and embarrassed and not poetic.
So, it’s okay; he’ll sleep, fuck, shower, and later,
once the blood’s filtered and clean,
he can compose something so,
so popular. | | |
| What if amber and red ruby flares start coloring the cars,
and the tunnels and trains,
(and our body parts)
are shaking really hard?
Will we still have broken muscles in our eyes,
that can’t make contact with each other’s insides? | | |
| I’m finding the only way to know anything is to rename it. The fresh air through the open window is cigarette smoke. The cigarette is the kiss from a faraway lover. A lover is a kind giver of meals to our hungry souls.
And so the only way to know ourselves must also be to rename us. My identity is the taste of a passing breeze. My body is the dirt that sinks in the shape of my footsteps. My heart is an emergency fire sprinkler system. And my soul is the moon always hiding on the other side of the clouds. | | |
| It’s the middle of November, and you’re having a dream day. The alarm on your telephone is a bumblebee bumping around your ear, but ignore it; the upside-down ocean waves of sleep won’t let you go.
Thirty feet tall, you’re hiding in an anthill; that anthill is Manhattan. Manhattan is a silver mine, and you’re drifting through the shafts in your hot air balloon, looking for veins. Then the air is gone, and all that’s left is cold. You drop to the stone sidewalk earth. The skyscrapers start tipping over in circles around you, silently, and the sky turns red. The sky is a volcano cone. You’re the yellow of magma, surfacing, cooling.
All that’s left is one cypress tree in a nowhere cemetery. A black-winged beetle sits on its leaf, and the two of you attach an orange canvas sail, ride the leaf down the Hudson River. The North Pole ice skates over the tundra of your latitudes, and the beetle gets eaten by a polar bear. You fall through the white, white, white snow, and you’re riding down an escalator. Waiting takes forever, and all you see is dark, dark, dark, dark, blue.
You’re on a train station platform, and the earth rattles around you. A door slides open, squeaks, and you step inside with your shoes. All the seats are filled, so you have to stand. The bright, bright, bright lights in the tunnel turn the world every color, and you’re blind for a minute. You have to blink fifty times, and you’ll see the old Mexican women clutching their purses and the black kids listening to their earbuds. Each person has something for you, trying to show you, but you don’t want it, don’t want any of it.
The train crashes, and you’re on a swing over New York City. The chains are ten thousand feet long, and swinging takes forever. Your fingers are numb, and you slip off at the crest. The skin on your arms and shoulders and back and legs all turns to white, white, white feathers and you never need to wear shoes again. You swoop almost to the ruined street, then back up.
Up, you find your hot air balloon. It’s going to the sun, and the beetle and the polar bear are going to live on the moon. You sit down in an open seat and watch the clouds flash through the windows. The moon is actually a maple tree, you notice. The stars are leaves falling, night is just October and November. From inside, everything is warning orange and dark, dark, dark, dark black, plaid school uniforms.
Leaning over too far, you tumble out of the basket and float up the skirt of the lovely firmament. You grow, so, so, so, so, so, until the galaxies can be gathered together with your hands like suds in a bath. You and the girl that was the firmament press against each other on the star clouds; your skin is feathers, her skin is firelight, and while you kiss, the universe is blurring by, backwards.
At the beginning of the universe, after the celestial, carnal desires are exhausted, you get dressed, all alone. Your bare feet slap against the cold tile of unborn space, as you walk toward the tiny spark of Everything in the distance. The spark waits patiently, like a subway train that can’t leave without you. | | |
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