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By series: Bridge St  In Yr Ear  Ruthless Grip

What Ever Belongs in the Circle
hello the poem says make me a motor
no matter & I'll go all summer
humid just like the movies & you could do
for laundry walks other ways to kill
afternoon shapes like evening shapes
so marsupial or ginger in the fridge artificial
king of the middle rung getting stepped on
& steaming kale isn't such a breakthrough
but consider the supermarket book
gets you out of the house & into an intermittent sense
of what it means if free time dreams
a larger redemptive arena & dancing is just that
though you might break the continuity
just clause clause behind the space
keeps turning & out comes enough
moon flag eastern forest field guide sensibility
to spring up & catch one redundancy
you hold dearest as the phone pulls away
the ladder's pulled away & it's not so high
to climb past the principles a code of conduct
opaque as linen chores aren't their namesake
but to return money turning back
to procedural talk if the poem says
list your goals like goals are tangible & you could
have an emotional reaction as opposed to
one thinking through the writing or writing
through the thinking to call it a motor
running bareback without a horse
& chalking up inevitability obvious
or oblivious an avalanche
then recount the lives of your siblings
say my sister for whom a house is stability
& layering on poker face sole soliloquy
buried how long the carpet'll stay clean
when it's click click there's a ghost in the dust
overly self-aware of collecting from each
sliver a thing to call its own owning a future or not
some shadows look like spiders & there's a face
in the door & a face in the wall & hailing
nonchalance in a rush hour runway taxi time
next to the window ethically it's power
to pull the shade though shallow to narrate panaceas
honing in on the nest of hair in this comb
incubation outhouse near the little airport
next to the cornfields O it's another landing
how does that ghost know it's a ghost
& was the face a memory or did he really say
please open the shade if he's a fiction
& the shade's a stand-in for human innovation
who pulls the mimetic strings says hail to the grammarian
all I wanted was a syllable ghost window ghost walker
I'd rather write through the year of our bedsprings
a dual-consciousness plowing past the intellectual reaction
to a moving arm says can you type out the hum
rev up operative synaesthesia table what's on top is real
ivy in a real clay pot or a scant fiction figuring the distance
between a blurred mind & caustic reconfiguration
says better to water the plant than walk away
a stick stuck on telephone wires & a squirrel
point & say foreigner then harbor some hidden
myopic nerve-short & in a nanosecond
the squirrel knocks down the stick
knocking over the clay pot anticlimactic
airport dumb show pantomiming
the silence of a jet stream then parting the sky
with more runway runoff to an alchemical solution
diluted moon planetarium pulling the apogee
of orbiting insects like a bee ratchets by
& I'm all look out dangerous neon warning sign
the neighbors on the back porch
expect the walls to make a great & noble eater
of he who wants naked death pictorial
when an armored car rolls in & "the people"
wants its plug-me-in poem in the green room
with the tin ceiling the clock reads
geese overhead forging ambition
to be a lazy poster boy for deprogramming
80's sitcom & culturally isolate responders
to group think I thought we'd have more
in common than communal reading
instant message me to a real forest lifejacket ode
made a fine oar then water came up to our waists
triggering some lesser iconography Mike thought
making up your own saints but I could
just mention the actual days & you'd get
the blades of a box fan in the window
Masonic St. brick fa�ade manifesto
O crosswalk high beam us to the highway
pumped with sufficient song lyrics
to pad an ambulance heart whose landing pad
is a lighthouse am I self-conscious
to think my pockets are bulging
hand slapped for leaving the chopsticks upright
in lowbrow calligraphy lacquer a cardboard box
then punch me in the face the ugliest
in Gainesville proto-autobiographic zero hour
says trust the song not arbitrary ethnographic elevation
& the view from this cliff in the dark
like the dullest light ever to grace a candelabra
rent-by-the-hour motel Manhattan & Staten Island ferry
makes a mind pop twenty minutes afterward
the imp of tenacity puts a candle on his forehand
says the motor sounds off nervous system dispersal
she pats the heart pulse retro-day glow handprint
on an old t-shirt the worst way
to ask ex-stunt double for the afterlife
some aggressive blue jay wants to truth or dare us
to the white plains in a plain white shirt
butchering rhododendrons & I couldn't tell
an insect the size of a human
laying down vanity ascending birth canal
says everything on this mantle piece is a piece
of everything meaningfully ascribed
or momentarily stalled if I'd rather listen to Dead Prez
than get your hair did & alienate me alienate me
it's too comfortable in the country
to traffic in idyllic understatement dread costume
I won't comply with the blank wall admit the dream
where Peter brought the painting over in pieces
so soak me in some other solution
the camera eye wants a complementary mint
leaves the restaurant before crumbling
into inhospitable vacuum & he wants
all the shells I've collected & a sparrow
terrified by the tragedy of pita bread
call it duty so I can call in sick
return the questions asked
of a great tragedy upon Latin trees
moving bodies a vindicated radio
outside the garden turbulent phenomena
the sky terrible in wingspan arching over
an ideal ocean idiotically dented all night the waves
say marry me to a muscle make of me a prime mover
I'm proud of the lobsters
have seen Puerto Rico through the reeds
dressed in rust brick armor amassed
on the rooftops redolent firing squad mystique
slave to a copy machine syndrome
I'll succumb to the broken glass behind the hospital
an afternoon gloriously lost in new street crossing signals
mesh with the hydrogenated mind
high fructose corn syrup catalyst
for the perfect human being wastes the most money
I make a pretty mime sound O free ticket
to a tour of this town's best alleyways
ollie to an upper atmosphere breastfed dystopia
or a simple line of ants in their windup orders
he wanted me to come over & unlock something
without basic principles in check
tracing the shape of the sand in the sand
& reading by clock radio light
makes impossible beauty I'll build her a new head
to hang all the extra necklaces on
next sharpshooter condemnation
next paint by numbers a lemon poem
if the outside world's a distraction
why not invent a new alphabet
animals do animal things in the dark
misanthropic tell-all tiny treasure inside a summer horse
the bells ring for no reason & we too
find an exercise in airing nothing of importance
impatiently tuning the alternate current
& we too advocate for bird things & rock things
tree things & things which are shallow clear
insatiable turbine vibration no root things
no masked things only things that rev vowels
no boards wedges levers picks
nothing in a nail nor that which floats
a stalemate landing pad insect fatigue
nothing edged or ambiguous
the bells ring for no reason & we too
refuse the sound of the slamming door
threshold things or trembling
already ruined crushed radioactive hotel
sonnet adjective more oil more road
the age of the undiminished human
either drone patio toothbrush buzz
barbed sound in bastard noise
& we too worship the choking air
around the circle the rectangle mounds of squares
& the mounting sense of geometric erosion
of global incongruity of monied things
the little frog stares an ignoble tacit entity
acrid absence of conceptual significance
the bells the bells bird things & rock things
O harpsichord upon the playground
things fit in my mouth pretty-like
kerosene musician infinitely doubled
I've picked the two of hearts & the ten of hearts
wheeling invisibility bees bees & teeth
I've picked an orange amplifier
the mosquitoes the horizon the casket
the harmonious skins blue hope blue valley
peck peck of tranquilized submission
so the octopus continues in its mystery
& the seasons half-heartedly continue
& the red motorcycles make us taller
& they want to take something else off
so we let them take something else off
& they want to tell us how they've taken it off
& we let them tell us how they've taken it off
& we call it structured
like your face is a shape I thought of
then couldn't stop the thought
but I want to show you how they danced
in the neighborhoods made birds a shrine
they have bells on their feet & mongoose gardens
pulled me out with forceps ask & I'll show the scar
a bleached thing is a dimmer light
O small o of disorder
move me along like we graze here