I,ve unclosed
                      (and
                             ­   i
                                  will speak
                                                      slowl­y
                                                               ­    trees

steeply uncrooked breathing 'gainst
the racing moon over the valley bending
swiftly thoughts of ungiant sprigs puckish
in the frailing summers wings

a wig of tender incandescent drops cavort
in silent wetness on petals the)

a cadence of caving murdered light
seamless fluid winsome dusting upon
the unserious lips of night flexing effortlessly
by their touch, and flaccid, upon mine
i am drugged
   of lilywhite tubes; crumbs of hushed love
a draught of limpid steam.    i

laced and foamy the jaw distends

I was a creature of spring and autumn; I made no bones about being temperate
even-tempered, even temporary, alive only as many hours daily as the daylight
sinking when the sun sank, sleeping early like a child, sleeping till the dark passed
staying warm under the down until the dawn, where I woke if there was color out the window
but there wasn't always, and on those days I slept.

There was a time that spanned awhile when I thought "alive" to be synonymous with
to not-be-dead, that to die was to stop breathing; to stop living was no different.
I was only alive between the hours that the graveyard gates were open, and even less,
as the grayer days and I never made our acquaintance, as I had made my acquiescence
and my peace with the perpetual proverbial graveyard shift.

I misjudged the patterns of the wind one morning and arose with the milky light
and, tricked by the mild breeze, was caught in a flurry on my long walk. It was cold on my skin
a shock to the system, to my lilywhite hands and my overwarm blood. But my god
it was the most beautiful thing my oft-closed eyes had ever had the pleasure to take in.
And the not-quite sun went down as I watched, and the snowflakes turned to stars, and hung there
weightless, like me, and I was all-at-once electrified and new and I thought childishly
to perhaps stay here for the night, and forever, and watch the seasons change extremely
because it seemed a shame to resist extremity now that I knew the meaning of, and was,
wholly, inextinguishably alive.

If eight years we labored
in canals and valleys and
on girders and then
for four years we spilled **** blood and
the Depression is lifted or
the depression is lifted
or not really.

America, your deep vein thrombosis
the size of a
lilywhite Toyota Highlander
You don’t make things anymore.
Your Marxists winter in the empty museums.
Your union halls belong to the company.
You ought to be Haymarket men,
bloodcleaned and ready for anything
but instead you workshop one-liners.

America you are afraid to love.
America you are afraid of medicine
and the medicine you do take,
bankrupts you.
America reset your passwords
and the twenty-year-olds will help you find a mate
we promise.

Do you feel how distant you are becoming from yourself?
Do you feel how words must
towards the things they stand in for
  like a silhouette
  like an ironic silhouette
  like a sketch
  like a mere shape?

I cannot be certain any longer. No,
really, I am losing that skill. I lose myself
in coffee cups dreaming of painted lips. My bedtime
stories are of Robespierre and Louis Ex-Vee-I; they
put me to sleep instantly. I can read this poem eighteen times
and never feel a thing. If nothing makes sense,
it’s because we decided we didn’t need it.

America do you hate
but not really?
America do you listen
but not really?

America,
  you’re trying to eat better
  but the poor and ruined in Missouri
  still chew on plyboard and drink flat Mountain Dew
  you want engineers but ******* to starlets

America,
  not one thing will satisfy you
  not any screen or voting lever
  your children wander supermarkets
  putting everything they find in a basket

America,
  give Louisiana to the French
  cede the Black Hills to the Sioux
  retreat into your telephones
  and remember Tippecanoe

America a voice
is singing from the past
and you would do well to listen.

// Ce monde me réduit à rien. Cela me porte jusqu'au bout. Sans colère, il nie que j'existe. Et, acceptant ma défaite, je me dirige vers une sagesse où tout a déjà été conquis - sauf que les larmes me viennent aux yeux, et ce grand sanglot de poésie qui me gonfle le cœur me fait oublier la vérité du monde //

we exist in a black & white world
where they burn your flag & your pride
if you stray outside the confining outlines

loose cannon jazz leads to blue looks
for swimming upstream to birth cool
in a pace which rips through rule books

black sheep are shot for grazing at night
in a fight against driftwood wearing hoods
instead of uniform peaks, woven in lilywhite

snowflakes aim to form a synchronized shape
& euthanize, medicate & lobotomize
Houdini’s who break or partake in a chain escape

led by lego brick leaders
stacked thick in piles of dimes a dozen
fed stacks to build a kingdom for the one

throw your TV’s through the window of possibilities
& step outside the jars of clay
spinning in the hands of potters plotting a payday by foul-play

follow brave men down the road not taken
where the grass is greener & the air is cleaner
for the paved path ends at a kool-aid drinking fountain.