Peculiar life pushes into brown bodies
that scrape the tile outside. A brittle leaf
is given action and moves toward the chairs,
but then quiets. Another moment and the leaf
tumbles away from the shade. There is no life
other than what the passing gust allows.
No life there, just the wind’s pulling, and the mind
giving life to the wind.

She lost that light,
the only thing that shone
in Philipsburg, Montana. She’s been away
for fifteen years, still remembers them
begging her to stay, but she left
to make herself into something
great. Now, she isn’t
the star of any place, still waiting
tables until lunch is over.

Or maybe,
she never starved for anything
larger than a lifetime of wondering
about TV shows and of hoping
for a gentle moment–she waits
because she’s never thought
of anything more.

So, there is nothing
that can arise from this
except for the ultimate
leveling: Maya Angelou
and Wallace Stevens: equals,
until opinion renders
their worth.

And the canvas colored
by Magritte’s vision is equal
to a child’s ***** matter
framed in a special place,
until your eye comes
and favors one over the other.

Yes, I’m ready to accept
this fate if it means no one
can ever declare
that my **** stinks
and makes the air faint.

Air slips through the forest
thick with howling.
The heads of trees guard the sky
from my desperate eyes.
Darkness wraps around
my hand.

Now I reflect on the dying
car, the clogged freeway,
not getting my promotion.
And Lena, filled with clinging
images–based on the neglected
text messages–curses me
for running-off with the barista.

I walk alongside my roommate
from college, “life is like a forest,”
the bush rattles him out. I stop
and change direction. I’ve changed
my direction before. Now it’s a poem
that glows before me. You must change
your life. I didn’t need this, I didn’t.
I would have changed.

It took him six tries
to get it up. His *****
was somewhat
defective. His body
was a greasy blob
and after he came,
he vomited on the bed
and kicked me out,
threw a bottle at my head
but missed terribly.

and when he died
I defecated
all over his face. Seriously,
**** that guy.

“The horse is awkward
as it tries to tear itself from the gripping
mud. Spit slung the air, and grace
turned to the ease of slipping.”

The poet relayed this
tale, told me it represented
humanity. He also said
that the artist pierces
the dirt of reality, receives
music from the noise
and chips the impenetrable
block to grab its beauty.
And so the poet tried to pull
the horse from its mud:

“I watch its fading
to the muck—there is the eye that defines
it. Hours fall, I finally head to my room
and try to pull the horse. But the horse’s eye
is only silence. I see it—but no words, except
for the mud and the greatness of its hand.”

A nothingness wrapped
in mediocrity owns this
wall, owns your gaze.
Mere sheets and hints
of printed words pinned
to immensity, slathered
in greater glumps of white,
but the description makes it
less as you learn the painting
somehow represents
the communities fractured
by Eisenhower’s highways.
You look at it, then back
at the description. You step
away and travel to the video-
foot exhibit—a boot decimates
pumpkin pie on a screen,
and all you can do is thank God
that there isn’t a description
for this as well.