Drifting sand as appetizer, curling
wave as prolonged planing, proof
of concept in vellum paper, swirling
words etched into soft membrane, remembering
instances of lucid terrors, abrupt
in constant seizing of May, moribund
fantasies spilled in ink across the plane, burn
cattle lost to famine and cholera, aged
gently such as indigenous softwoods, pulsing
light from illiterate sources, wrecks
the blind insistence on burrowing angels, lifts
skyward the misspoken words, uncorrected
and festering while you fret of etiquette, burned
to nothing but fragrant ash in syllables, dreaming
of white nights outlined in nostalgia, bearing
the trauma of several odd fathers, forgotten.

The bird bellows low, thrusts its
chest, dander spitting through hot bark
it calls with innate confidence and questions,
fires rounds of distinct subterfuge at
facile hawks.

I have become the bird, afloat and
survicing on lost amplitude among
braying *****, mute incantations
for rising suns
           how the dew coated meadow sparks
                    how my song splits the maw / exposing distance as illusion
                              how the pungent firs sigh and heave
                                        how I am the light on their needles, disected and reformed in shadow
                                                  how the hawk is the songbird and I am the hawk and the songbird is I

how behind the mask we are all together faceless

Frozen ragweed slipped
into my dream, laid bare
the shadows between
what I say and how I act,
bemoaned my need for superfluous comfort,
though accepted it nodding
because it is and is less and because
long weekends through dark glasses
because as ragweed it has a
sliver of omnipresence because
by virtue of being frozen it has
retained its shape while changing its form
and because it is the ragweed of my
dream it is the ragweed of mid-Atlantic
pathways. because being defined by
its mid-Atlanticness it finds the
same home in my dream because
it lays in the meadow with its
brothers the humidity and insects,
because it is burrobrush because
ragweed invaded Europe from Mexico
because ragweed as reverse-colonialism
is important to any dream I have
because ragweed is ambrosia because
it renders my dreams immortal
because it erases any pretense
of context in favor of the
truths that exist beyond frozen ragweed.

The monkey strives for both abode
Japan devout the flame in road
Iran disburse a name it mutes
The donkey runs his mane computes

We fish and sleep believe a sheep
It's further than we see, the neap
Our mother calls the hen unknown
We sign and dream return to home

Sled fast conceive that in whiplash hues
Feel fat step back the stars confuse
Petite croissant exist embrace
Averse baguette awoke efface.

Upon and lake perchance to dream
It floats in fall convert to steam
Create the inward and twice ash
The ants devour the lonely lash

Fresh dances raze beneath obtain
Stuck double poet breath attain
We fly we love over the cloud
In creeks in dark macaw his shroud

Light frozen there bereft undress
Gone sigel leaps express duress
Deny denote the soft white waves
Inflict inform a child's last days

Broad field lacrosse ferment the oaks
Short hymns baroque taboo and spokes
Flee singing hymnal there withstand
The treated better half yourself demand

This world is dog ****,
this world is dying,
these things are true,
these things are lying

Mornings are a time of brand
recognition, are the affirmations
of our silicone dreams, are the
insipid anchor of our biological
imperative, are an invention of
themselves.

Much like the poem writes
itself, the morning spreads
as part of its self-invention,
how particles of light are self￾fulfilling prophecies similar
to a spontaneous stream of words
filling a vessel in no particular
order.

The morning appears flat, but
at its edges it bends seamlessly,
is a disc of unfettered
centrifugal absolutions,
posits unanswerable
equations until night
overtakes it and makes it mine
again.

We keep morning hidden
under the sink like a
disinfectant, like spools
unwound and repurposed,
faded spectrums of
observable patterns, fixed
in the sense of observation
as industrial strength glue,
inviting God to see if It can
undo what consciousness has
borne.