of how things run
That we were broken
That we lingered near a broken factory
That we had broken
We can say that the disappointment
of slicing into a leek
and not finding the requisite layers
but a thick white inedible core
is not the disappointment
of approaching a sleeping animal
only to learn that it is dead
but it does nudge one slightly
further into despair
We said despair
We meant the strings of impossible
instruments that they made
in the factory
That we had seen
That were broken
That there were different paintings
That could be played as songs
We had seen other things
That we had seen
That had come unstrung
And blown between adjacent bridges
Whose river had presented us a city
That was broken
That we had been
That we were broken
That was our city
This was our city
that was a song replaying itself in the dark
Confidence
When a woman comes into the store,
points at me and says to her child,
Tell the man what you want, I turn around
to see where the man is.
Maybe I will visit him someday
in the Home for the Wildly Inarticulate,
for the Destroyed, for the Actual Man
Standing Where I Cannot Reach Him.
Don’t expect I’ve seen the center
of anything, though I have been
privy to enough insane exchanges
to do with hygiene. Henceforth I ban you,
letter-shaped body parts, from
my purview: our last chat left
the taste of buckshot in my mouth.
It’s early again, and late, when the birds
assume a tone neither mocking
nor judgmental, but something about
their exuberance is oppressive
enough to eat holes in the roof.
I just make the occasional collage
that falls apart when it rains,
wield my plaid umbrella like a sword,
and charge, exhausted, into the storm.
In Which the Pathetic Fallacy Wants to Even More
Frankly I don’t follow this
strategy of yours wherein you
tell half the people on the island
you are a barista and the other
half that you are a barrister
and they buy it.
Everyone else
believes and I continue to serve
as your wing-man as we snake
among the aloe spikes.
You keep me so busy,
thwarting my every attempt
to find again a favorite stretch
of beach, when all I wanted
was to show you the pirate bar
with the swings.
What else
has prevented me: relatives, railroad
tracks, paralysis, thickets of killed
umbrellas, cliffs impossible to scale,
a weeping jaguar, the fact
that it was 5:30, squishy brakes,
money, all my bent
and voided sleep.
I wish I had
some idea but to admit I have
any at all is to risk that it is full
of a sad nothing.
Huge lizards the color
of banged-up charcoal are shredding
one another beyond a cluster
of palms, their hisses curling the flat
green leaves and then disbanding
into the waves.
That’s a surfeit
of strategy right there but your faith
is still big enough to fit in a kayak
that could be drifting in or away.
Desire Loves Disaster
I should have spoken clearly / made known
the consequences of not accepting an offer
even though I offered nothing
and there were never any consequences
trick question / minus question
minus trick / minus minus
see how everyone heads for the shore
to greet the unseen vessel
that’s devoured half the horizon
but they find instead the moon’s
portrait sketched on the water
I say this / as though you were not everyone
as though the moon had only a stump
of chalk
and nothing better to sketch
than its bleached and bloated self
the beach is lined with lit-up skulls
every eye a lighthouse / beaming into flotsam
but they won’t save us
my country runs to the edge
and throws itself in
when I said beach I meant cliff
Spring, or, I Don’t Know Everything Is Wrong with Me
Modes of transport deteriorate, scattering
into a list of insults, if a list can be said