The World Seems Merely Lived-in


Then it becomes apparent to you
that sleep is waiting behind your eyes,

soft and somehow seductive,
while the tired voice you recognize

intimately as your own grows faint
amongst the mist around you

until the questions that once drew you
curiously from the trees

have disappeared within them.
The sky is swallowed by pavement.

The ocean sinks into its shore.
The ones you love are marching

to the syncopated chattering of teeth.
But the moment of change escapes you.

The warning signs and symptoms
are inseparable from the sickness.

In you, the presence of a sadness
overtakes the memory of its absence

as the photograph of the sunrise
in your heart is lost to the surrounding

gloom.  A poem falls to your feet
in the form of a burning leaf.

You are shaken and astounded.
You are joyous and afraid.

When the voice of the poem speaks
the familiar luster on the surface

of all things falls inward on itself
and you watch as an absurd strangeness

washes toward you in the wake
of the consumption.  The sky is

belching new monstrosities, while
you walk from afternoon to evening;

the sun rests sweetly in your eyes.
You wake breathing an awareness

more rich than memory, as the morning
light imagines the entire bathroom blue.



Grattage


You’re on your bicycle
coasting ever smoothly
down this heavy-slanted street,
collecting and applying
so many ridiculous things:

Sisyphus kicking a pebble
to the top of an interstate on-ramp
as pay for a night-sea journey

a nightingale singing
from the surface of an urn

a broken staff
and hundreds of books un-drown,
the madman in the storm

an elephant in the reeds
and in decay, hello

the torso of Apollo brilliant
and archaic as a star

the sleeper in the valley
breathing bullets and breeze

the quiet city covered
completely by balloon
 
this family of field mice

that wheelchair
frozen mid-flight

the pianist humming
over endless variations

In the sky the sun,
still yellow in the East,
distracts you for a second
from the street,
so now you’re tumbling
head over handle bars,
the street again requesting
your attention, please:

your mouth is full of feathers

you’re smiling piano keys

eyes made of statue
and strong wind

a pebble embedded
in your cheek

your elbows are ivory
and pressed with wet, thick grasses
blown beneath the lights of cities
by the stony breeze
with which you see

Leaving you
a kind of residue,
half what you’ve collected
half what’s always been.