When the wind would fill and be gloried like your chastity right before
my voice
couldn't have been there to make paper out you, your
wholeness.
I am eager for these voices to go
from my mouth to yours, to end up somewhere.

When I am with the people who look like me my heart is sudden
warm
the sun before it hits the earth and becomes idea.

Or, Sometimes that **** just hurts.

you can only do so much
(so much is probably beautiful
(so much depends upon))

god, almost.

Remember.
Your eyes.                 When you close them.
Those little things.                      Small lights.
                                   Your smile.
It's like that.
                                   It's kinda like that.

Siesta in darknesss. The sunlight disappears to the clouds.
I could wonder hazily from one step or street to the next
yet feel unfurnished and empty. Walk through me.
A bash to the shoulder and some books fall, I'm sorry.
These magicians flutter past as I blink unthinking
and there is the joy of the thoughts glittering:
But I am tired, so, so tired.

This was once all that we knew.

A world in parts before we knew

     it

as such subdivisions as this, that and

more beneath that still: there was

once good and evil, god and them,

the rest of us, and

Jesus, simply looking upwards after

he flung himself forth from the dust

to the sky and the light was bleached

off and the colours leaked from our

eyes to our canvases. What more

can I say before we take more

of ourselves away from each other? What more

before you implant me into some other's

body, and the prayer completed,

and I am finally a computer? In

the meanwhile my eyes will look and

my neck will strain as the sun sets and

so does my little life: how long have I

wanted to see you again, o lord, since

my first scream of myself all so long

ago when I left my mother's salt

and was flashed into the flood of your

      world?

How long, o lord, will you have me here

to see your work through these ceiling

songs, such sonorous ringings, fleshy

twists and turns of paint as muscle

and what's that behind the cloud?

     Your finger

appareled in such golden rays?

Endless. When your ships brought such

dark skin as mine across these

times and spaces, what?, where you

surprised of my dreams to see it,

     this,

all engulfed in flames?  And

yet here you are and here I am and

here is the quiet my birth your

glory your joy the brushstrokes

the colours and the full fleshy taste

of my non-belief, leaking into my fingers,

sticky, frisk, and always.


    When I leave these, they will fall

and crumble. It will all go. In the hallways,

as I walk away: several big windows:

     Rome, sunset.

    When I leave these, they will go

and disappear. Into salt. Those large windows:

blue-shadowed branches begin some small slow dance.

     When I leave these temples they will dust

and return to dust the soil of our hands.

And the trees remain beautiful.

Granted a spinning wheel     it cannot go on
     for all time     in the world    in coloured fabrics
a girl turns   moth-wind warm to window   in fields of harvest
     to speak of clipped wings of    wax-
hollow
     bones, feathers as airy cages is often     to talk
of her: she, her, hers, heard      a song as airy cage, wax-
hollow    apocalyptic  in major-key turned     with what small shock back into                                        
minor; but to talk of what we heard     of  her
     as these sorts of light-songs     images in wheel
     as print turns to picture through light to video
     through light this life, this life
is gone,     flying        
                      
      (moon-princess, goodbye).

Creamy: beautifully carved hillocks
of mush-- I crack open skulls on the daily yo
in the lab, I scan
     them and need them
to stay very still while the machines blip and bop--
     sculpted
by algorithms
that recombine the pulses of your sentences
     into maps
of meaning: spiked with and voltaged at its peaked lines
and smoothed by noise towards its graphy flattenings.
                                                                             Can you imagine
the treacheries of travelling one can find
                                                                              within oneself
the kinds of climb in mind inside
                                                                               you?

Well, to be honest: no; hence, statistics

What are they re-
constructing
from the brain waves inside you.
They say they
can
from the electric signals singing in you,
translate it
and put it up, and then the hot fuzz
appears on a screen
and it is pretty close.

I do not trust the hot fuzz at all. It is not
an image. It is
not me, it is not
what I am seeing. It is
not.

verses that be like these days
people care more about their phones
than each other sound like
the snap of someone's camera on
someone's phone
there doesn't seem to be much point
besides to let you know, by not
smiling
that this **** be everyday for us, like
"the world is too much with us" but
I'mma look good while I let you know that so,

When singing songs they are a chorus
of me and my shadows together opening
     our mouths (kisses at a distance
     some touchings of the self: love). When bees
buzz by the way that they do I imagine they
buzz by via their own tunes and not the wind:
     which happens to be around their wings. To sing
is something so simple and selfish and sweet
and right—wouldn't you like to know? —and when
you do it everything becomes yourself like a shiver.
     When I am with you: myself: the world
     is so much with us while really it is not,
but to sing it is good and is right and is sweet and is selfish so simple.

Reindeer
     scuttling through snow:

these
were presented to us
kids
     scuttling through sand

in lands where rain is scarce.

Do you have da funk?
    It's a kung-fu shuffle with hip-hop hustle
it tussles in nerve tissue and glows copper sulfate--
    when you string up so many ****** of course their eyes
    bob and ba-ba-dump da-dump  jump and roll out the sky like

                                blue,

I mean the colour blue. That's da funk colour.

                               Take a lone winter morning

in which you refuse to wake: this too
is da funk. And it sticks to you like gum on a shoe.

                               So you dance

in your head and you think of the purple fizzing
nights like Lil Wayne on lean he jumps, jumps
and ******* maybe it might make me feel good again, too.

I cannot speak
with you.

And yet words;
I still sing.

It is a strange song,
even to you;

but you hand back some coins
after I give you some coins
and then you give me some coins
back again and I feel the coins

and this time the coins: I can't count
with you; the coins make sense.

And I stumble towards the other space
to the right, give the affirmation
(in the form of a: coin
(plastic))

and there then the drink. Another stumble after.

Language.

In the experiment, we put the chicks in the box
and make them love the little toy ball, then
show them many *****, then hide them and see
if the chicks can count them: and they can. In the city
the people rush around and the stray people with skin
like mine
remind me of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers (mine)
   sometimes even you (once)
but I lose count while God watches, wondering.

I kept thinking of bombs: Slowly in my mouth
my teeth decay towards a snapping sound
of a broken bite
where age greets itself with such a yellow smile; creaking
towards our new meeting are such flashes of voice
spoken from the dusty wardrobes of my brain; Narnia
frosting forth wind and witches, a sometimes gasp of fun;
but I would never open any door nor thing that wide enough. The city
is big is absurd is grey and I play the songs I am supposed to
upon entering,
and look: the bricks scrape the sky when they come together:
what have we built here? with our messages? Twin planes crashed
here years ago and the sounds of those collapses echo,
hence now, with my headphones.

I was scrubbing toilets for
money, then
a rhythm came upon my head
"da-da duh-da-duh da-duh duh" then
the smell of *****, yellow brine.
Later, when I think to send you
the poem it came from, I think of the discovery of it
"From a magician's midnight sleeve"
                     and the way that we read. And
I think of the toilets I scrubbed, and the words
hidden there lost in all the little flushes, like
everything happening outside my window now: I ran
and ran in the thunder. I am still soaked; home is so far.

Finals season.
        Open fortune cookie.

"Do not fear failure",
        it reads.

You are dead and you made us in that hospital.
     That lump of flesh in the pit of you: clay.
          With your hands you grasped it, pulled into yourself: mouth:
umbilical. Like a snake consuming itself. This is what they mean
when they say that circles are perfect. The water
     was warm. It snowed outside for days. I visited
my sister
and wondered about brains. She speaks of her therapist
as a friend.
                       I speak as if I don't know I am
a person
                  and imagine
the rush of light in each of our heads. The heady fire
revealed in MRIs. The showerhead can barely contain the steam
and nothing cools me off. Back to our younger years
                                             in the libraries
when we were still constructing ourselves. You said
                                                            ­                such lovely things
that when you died it felt like deaf. I can no longer

     hear

you singing. Except now, I grasp
at the hard body of a psychology textbook, reading,
some exam tomorrow-- listen, you could've come to Harvard, too,
if that is what you wanted, if your body would let you-- and your quiet
suggests the problem is that I am stuck in the frame of my

nakedness   cross-legged      bottomed

laughing     souped  into the bottom

of the shower curtains: and they open: the steam: the still

images of sliced brains in my textbooks: coffee-cups

emptied by the lips I have taken from you: quiet,

yes, no wonder why. When your hands

did their last thing,  when they reached into your own mouth
to spool yourself into you and the books we sent you
that you couldn't read because you were dissolving
                          
                           ­                When your hands

did that: did you think: could you: and if
                                          you could: do you
                               think
that was what made you: you the whole time?
Or was it: the departing of the air: as if to sigh:
when it gets so cold outside that every whisper:
feels monumental because: you can see: the clouds:
you speaking before you: before: your own eyes.        And then you blink

for a very long time in a single still flutter, stuck.

Art is the great hope,
                   the creaking at dawn, the anti-
cognition of frightening sounds--
                   the churning, thinking machine-like,
                   of all our libraries, strained of fluid
until
dry, chapped turning, the rows and rows
of solitary whispers-- a certain kind of madness
                   that offends my heart like no other. Where
else would peace be but not here? Somewhere
inside us was once a light that was not
in a bulb and it flew like a moth towards
                   itself
but beat itself apart into its own sun, fell,
its wings little mirrors descending while our
father
                  screamed for us, a howling like birth
itself,
                  and there was the tower anew,
no longer a prison no longer a library
no longer a school or even a thought.

Two years ago I was in Connecticut in a used book shop. I found very small rare books published as a series of poetry. Red leather- bound, yellowing pages. They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much. I purchase a few. One of them, "Sonnets from the Portuguese", Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It seemed like the the sort of thing I would buy.

I came back home and I met you and I instantly figured that when you too would leave I would give them to you. I did the worst to you on some day. The other day, you said something to me and I burned for a very long time inside. I might have said something rude in response, but instead I smiled at you. I laughed. You must have burned inside every time I did. I do not care. You might have thought. I laugh at you. You might have thought. I was like that because I thought that They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much.  

I did not give you the book. Two years later, I have a class and I'm writing an essay about the first poem from it. I have been in bed for three days and the sinking feeling returns, I watch videos about how everything in America will crumble. The audience in the videos laugh. My sounds echo and return to me from my room's walls. Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home I last saw you in. Not yours though. It was thoroughly unlivable for you though sometimes you think Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home you last saw me in. It is yours though.

On the moments I do step into the essay-- or rather, I step into the poem for the essay-- I hear her speak. And I would read about her husband. He wrote too. They loved for many years. When they lived, her words were far more loved than his. We send each other emails sometimes. You sometimes call me when you're drunk. You burn. My voice. When I call you through my laptop screen I stare at you. I burn. Your hair. What sun, what air. She says

"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death", I said. But there,
The silver answer rang ... "Not Death, but Love."

She says before she met him her life:

You probably look good in the summer. In a dress,
clear and brown-eyed, as plain as you think you are, glimmering
softly and torn towards my arms' perfect oblivions. I'd like to,
more, I mean, we can wait to do the other things until one
of us is ready-- probably me, it'll have to be me, I think I'll be,
the thing that is, that is ready-- but I warm my hands up
your shirt, burn upon your skirt, or the hem of your
jeans. I'd like to imagine your pale erotica as young,
as something that says nothing about me. We can pretend
a manic dream, you can pretend that I am a real person, I can
hope that I'm not so minor as I hoped you'd think me, enlargened
like that part of me soon in your hand, in your mouth. Simple
magic like a hand-holding and strange mutterings and the things
you don't know how to say. How old are you. Are you
aware of you yet. How much do I care. I like your face. Your face.

My eyes your body
I want no hunger
When I venture
But here we are
The dance
And my hands your waist
May I take you home
Where I would rather
Have stayed

The cold air is so good and honest.

Turns inwards, and light.
     My chest withdraws towards
itself, and my eyes are mirrors;
      I don't like what I see. I walk
outside and fear and hate
      everything. I rasp, loudly
in mouth-breathing and I don't know why
      I don't know why anymore-- and the sun.
      Didn't it just snow yesterday and the sun.

My heart leaps for joy.
     The river running dry
     The cream of a volcano
     The sun exploding
     The foam of the hot air
How does it taste:
     the oil, the polar bear claw
     the salve of the ice, sweet
     and gloried like you: your
head is the sweetest thing I have ever seen: I like you
and the little things you do before you die. Before
the photo snapshot prints, flutters away, and you shoot
again. And the flash of my eyes is greedy
and would eat you everyday before my own pictures,
they go. They go. And.

Sometimes I think about my choices

Sometimes I think about my hair
Sometimes I think about Plath's
her bright red her hair; and how she would eat me

     like air. Why

am I in all the other places with pictures on walls
of people who wouldn't have thought of me
     for how long
the way I think of them.

     Oh. A mirror.

I.

I am surprised at how simple it is.

When I first met the girl we were staring at each other across five metres of party space, ***** and blue light. It felt good.

Her number; I somehow managed it.

A week later I clear the trash and toss the unshelved books into my wardrobe and stumble off far away to buy some new bedsheets, they smell clear and clean. My desk is empty and few and neat and is everything my own head never feels like-- she arrives from her elsewhere about five minutes after this thought and we’re here, she puts her bag down, we go to the art museum, we go to the other art museum too but it’s closed, we look at each other the whole time and I don’t really register the paintings, we come back to my room and then stumble across each other’s bodies on my bed and she gives little butterfly moans and kisses in short puckery bursts. It is nice. It is simple.

II.

With the other girl we drink. There’s a secret society that I’m a member of somehow-- would you like to go with me to some party? Yes.-- and we drink. The floor is wood and aged with the fact and feet of so many dead men who didn’t look like me and wouldn’t have me here--and her too, her hair took a great deal of fuss even if it didn’t look that way-- but we drink. She wants to dance, she says, but I can’t dance so I drink. There’s something calling so she drinks. I am scared of being boring so I drink. She is scared of something else, probably work, she drinks and I’m scared for her work too, I drink, but what about me, I drink, she drinks, we drink, we kiss. I waited before it. I looked at her before sometimes but nothing, it couldn’t be simple, it isn’t allowed. We’re both so busy. You have nice eyes. Sometimes we work together. Yes, I’m funny. I’m glad you think I’m funny, too. Stop that. No. I can’t. Okay. I can. Can this be simple? We drink and kiss in the secret society and the wood creaks under us and our bodies and the other guys think I’m cool now, I guess. When it comes to snow I’ll walk her back to her work and we’ll mildly do this again. And again. Another time, too, we drink. And then we won’t, because it’s not simple. I want to have fun.

III.

When the morning comes someday I’ll wake up then make-up my bed after leaving it like I’m supposed to and it won’t matter if a girl shows up again. Okay. I don’t feel like going to class, again. Okay. I go to class this time and it’s such a bore compared to the other things that seem to me to be worth doing. Everyone in front of me and around me doesn’t seem to care, too; but they type up their notes and the lecture hall is filled with clicks and clicking and their faces are brighter because of their screens and their expressions are cold and mute. Something feels wrong. Something feels quiet even though the professor keeps talking. It’s really only been, like, ten minutes and my legs start doing the thing, my mind starts doing the thing. I think of how clean and clear my desk is.

Snow: the gentle magisteria
that we crumble by, fighting
and flinging and fluffing about before
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing
gathering about in the utmost
dust of things that were. Water
is in between us all the time, but
we couldn't possibly notice until we do it,
the touch-- of ice, of each other-- the same
thing,
y'know? Y'know what I'm saying? We talk
about it constantly. Flinging and fluffing
about before that
thing,
the touch. There you are. Hello,
how are you?

A cascade into dark, sheer dark.
          To fall without misery into you like this,

like this; like this
          within art is all of it-- the string of keys

black and white, gallops sometimes; sometimes whispers
          like words glide-- but discontinuous falling. Rise

again

          like this; like this
and it is with you, again and again as your reach for your pen.

The socks are wet. Cheap. It is winter, why sweat.
So I flutter through the cold undry-- the snow gone by
long ago. It will return. It always does. Days
go by and by as they should and I grow like wood.
I don't. Harvest me I might ash another and her
lips might oblige. I am of live, virile impotence:
a man who cannot finish
his days without a cup of words. Sometimes
I swim and seep
        under a waterfall
(a library, I mean: a library)
and finally I am dry.  Why.

To bite into yourself and not bleed, that is hope, "my son,
you will be the beacon of hope in the solitary sky, fly",
and so, I become a Superman fan and tie the towel
around my neck and swoosh, swoosh. When
everything will inevitably come crashing down and all
but my childhood remains, will you too remain
my tongue?

                        Yes, yes. Always, my love. Speak.

Okay, conciousness, will you watch me here alone within these four corners?
No, not the world-- surely we've settled the question of that flatness.

I feel as if we are biding our time.
We yearn for the world as a man still ***** from a woman's breast
(so many years after birth, and still our mouths:)
Eventually we will graduate and, perhaps, say something.
The professors seem to speak often enough
(it cannot be just the pay, surely, throw me
band after band of green streams and my mouth:)
She says: I'm interested in the ways
women will themselves into the world,
I study this, look, I'll mean something someday
and the other she says: I'll put it all into a machine
and let the code sort it out and I say: my mouth,
what would you think if my mouth:

"Racism is over", announced America
and we, like, called it a day and the boys let it all hang,
and hang it did for a bit before they were, too, again
and we said, "I'm so sorry, I forgot about that, too".

The young one's are maddening. I must watch them come
and go as if they never know anything, but their teeth are libraries.
We could make out sometime and maybe I'd gain your industriousness, and you
my clean heat (which would otherwise make a mess of your face). Space
is limited, I am intended to say by my role as their elder, instead I
ask if it is cold outside. Would you like to come in. There
is a fireplace in the corner if you like. But only if you like.

Don't panic: the moon
would've watched you in your sleep if
you were still here wandering, tilted
and jilted being you were. Lasting as long
as song as grace as to sing, sometimes
I love you is the greatest inefffable you could
voice and you kinda do. I do, I do, I blue
myself to the edge of skies once my eyes
close-- one more chapter before bed wherein
my thoughts,
they'll be more vivid and deeper (and bluer)
than ever, and all time and everytime some
of your love will be with me, free.

It's okay. I'm sorry.

The people are humourless; their scrotums' tighter
than a clenched fist gripping whip- a lash
on the back will make you laugh on the back
of a history not yours no matter how much hip-hop?
What a question
this country is--
no one can even answer it!

My mother is growing old, and beautiful.
My father once tried to grow a beard, it was grey.
My sister has just started standing up for herself.
And I... well... I miss you, I guess.

"There’s a beautiful Buddhist temple in West Lake, which is an entire fresco of greens. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m trying to write quiet colourless poems or thick, heavy raps so sometimes I sit still, say nothing and write a few sweet nonsensicals, and sometimes I tap my feet, bop my head up and down, and convert my whispers into scratchy line breaks. This is a false dichotomy. I know. I can do both. Somehow. We wander into a room filled with hundreds of heavy-bellied figures, stony-faced, in a criss-cross maze. Another room has warriors towering thick as trees-- some are dark-skinned, fearsome; I look at my hands to see if the colours match-- and they snarl and smile with swords and spears in hand. And then there’s an entire wall carved and filled with hundreds of dancing bodies that I cannot name, coloured in endless golds and browns stacked up in a massive Creation. I try not to think of the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting, which I have not seen, but for once the West cannot compare, and in this room, finally, I don’t even bother looking to see if my fingers match the statues’ colours."

White gleam. Sometimes we cross another biscuit-box
of people tossled opposite towards us. It is much cleaner
than the T in Boston. There is nothing like this in Botswana.

I'm pretty sure that none of us can think, thought,
in fact, is a trap, made entirely of language games;
and then some experiments in William James Hall-- reminder:
no one ever knows what thought is! What are you thinking.
                                                       ­          What are you thinking.
                                                       ­          (thinking you are what)

My poetic force is violence, a mile in my shoes
is way more than eight, it's a lightyear in the least,
                                                          ­                               sheesh!
My  distinction in incision when I'm cutting tapes--
to paint the frame I shame the games of all the other lames, yeah.

I always look for wholes.
     Seeing things for another first time.
          It is practically a gleam, dream, dream-machine:
when I'm plugged in, everything goes fizzy:
     white noise could never pierce me with its pitchfork tip.
           You can't string me up on a tree if I arson the forest.
I'm pretty sure I arson the forest.

--> if the primary purpose of art is to reflect beauty and moral truth

--> and if beauty and truth are associated with one another

--> but violence, as ugliness, implying its antithesis, and the consumption of violent art as therefore a yearning towards beauty and righteousness via its opposite

--> then violence, in art, can only be meaningful precisely because we think it is wrong to hurt

--> therefore it is perfectly concordant with moral aspiration to consume violent art

--> we should consume violent art

My throat croaks on the slow days, which is to say
often, I am coughing, heavy, oxygen greened in mucous.
I wonder about all of my lost reds, but I try to fall
again and again nowadays, but, you see, the way my life
is set up is such that the croaking encloses my tongue.
You really would not be able to deal with how sticky I am.

The sunny yum-yum of eating you out,
I imagined this sometime, when I was eating your
lips. I would defend this kind of poetry.
It meant something, I hope.

I often bite into myself when talking.

I like breakfast.

"When one of my students asked me why rap and hip-hop developed among black people, I speculated that rhythm is threaded within African ancestry in a strangely existential way. Where Western music seems to be far more reliant on chord progression and tonal development, in black and African music, the focus isn't so much on how the music sounds as notes go higher and lower, but with how long or short a note is, and with how you can manipulate those lengths into patterns. With rap, you’re hitting all those short beats and long beats and letting the words hit you in a way that feels more primal, more linguistic than either song or casual speech. The student seemed more or less satisfied with this answer. I went on to confess how I often feel useless at rhythm. Hip-hop and rap demand you to be in the moment of the rhythm itself and want to stay there; often there’s no melodic movement. But I always feel like I want to go somewhere. And all these longs and shorts confuse me and my mouth gets filled with things I can't understand, cannot taste properly."

If nothing else,
we are propelled,
by this sense of wonder,
to seek always,
the next weight in the sky,
and watch how it drags us,
and watch how we drag it,
former easily latter barely,
to the next eclipse,
the next end of light,
the next collapse of things,
into deep pits of nothings,
shudderings of spacetime,
blips in experiments,
like little heartbeats,
ultraviolet on Mama's stomach,
before she was Mama, things,
like this: which drag and are,
dragged, counter point melody,
a repeat sign at the end of score,
without end.