I am the trusted family spatula,
the curve in a Slinky,
the light refracted from antique shoppe crystal,
the distrust that sits at the back of the mind while reading a movie review,
the subtle humidity of the end of spring that goes without remark.

Also, I'm a flamingo.
Never forget that.

In the span of an hour

I fall asleep.
I have a dream about Barbara Stanwyck.
I wake up.
I look at my phone with blank eyes.

I am hot
I am bold.
I am not
I am cold.

I can compose but cannot think.
I must never.
I shake out my crick and wince in a panic.
I persevere.

I am hot
I am bold.
I am not
I am cold,

In the space of a minute or two.

He closes his eyes as usual. That starts it.
Gallon blackness against thin skin but split,

Suffused with a million rushed and serene
Shades of purple and sickly, retinal green.

Squares and curves, utterly vertical rounds
Imprinted obsidian spheres, half-sounds.

A vague intimation of abyssal, milk white:
Horizontal paradigms on the coast of sight.

Yes, indeed the whiteness on the horizon
Flutters scop-musical like a lark’s blazon.

How it snatches up the blackness, losing
Clarity of its edge like madmen’s choosing.

It ceases growing yet consumes all within
The poor man’s eyes, traversing the din.

A pure, blank line that is born in the mind
Fills the soul nacreous, leaves him behind.

Goes it beyond him and stretches open.
Straight wide. Too wide. Much too wide!

The teeth he hadn’t noticed crush him dog-brightly

And pull him fast inside.

He opens his eyes as usual. That ends it.

If I had a dime

For every time

That question was asked of me,

I would spend all those cents

On the Chippendale's gents,

And Oh! how happy I'd be.

Up from the deep
Water breaks in diagonal sheets.

The skies careen off and away
Red arrays.

Universe of musculature
A foot in a sandy detour.

Indirect to purpose
Skin and flow.

Dries on the gilded bank
Wild hair set flat.

A thousand atmospheres taken
Into a single ozone breath.

After a time, stoops
By the multiform to look.

Stones heavy-
Light enough to carry.

To the mouth wide
And bitten dry.

The water wears everything
So the teeth can split.

A fortnight of spite
And the treacherous bite.
He returns to the sea
With a headful of light.

Those kids flash around me like mad planets;
days scream into vapor like a universe of mercury.

Nigh deep in the Woods near the Waterfall Tree
Sleeps a House that was built from the Fruit of the Sea,
And the Man and the Woman that lived in it once
Ate the Forest and Sky indiscriminately.

Through the Winter and Rain they would **** at the Sun,
Drank the Land, chew the Oceans and spared not a One.
‘Till the Day when their Neighbors the Stars saw their Work:
So they speared the Pair wholly and called their Job done.