[Life]

I
A man with no shoes
walks by with a limp.

His arms -
covered
in tattoos
and scars -
are lethargic
by choice.

The biting
winter sun
delivers respite
from late December
northerlies.

He reeks of Franzia.
Redolent, it shadows
him, haunts
him like what he drinks
to forget.

His unkempt white beard
is stained yellow
around the mouth
from years of cigarettes
and no-shave Novembers.

He dons a jacket
- faded glory -
that is two sizes too small
and his pants stay together
like a couple for their kids.

Too proud to join
the Salvation Army
on Christmas Eve,
he finds his bench,
lies down

and survives
one
more
night.

II
A man in a suit
drives home in an Audi.

His collar
is stained
with cheap lipstick
and Chateau Lagrange
from last night's
late night meetings.

Angie, his wife,
waits anxiously
at the door
of their four bedroom,
three and a half bath
Victorian.

Her eyes -
still puffy
and red -
fixated up Swann St.
She is not blinking
and barely breathing.

The kids
have been sent to Grandma's
for the night.

They watch TV -
SpongeBob SquarePants.

The Audi
drives by a man on a bench
He looks asleep -
possibly dead.

The suit inside thinks to himself:
“That poor man.”

I'm really sweaty.
I'm really sorry
I read you such a heteronormative poem.
I thought it was beautiful and short.
I forgot
if I was a lesbian.

If it is trendy for me to like my same ***
I don't want to do it.
Some of us argued, on Lagrange, in Polish Village,
about whether I wasn't shaving because of ideology or
because it was annoying.
I said it was annoying, but I meant that the whole thing about it is annoying. Everything is annoying. I'm annoyed and cold but still sweating.

Sometimes I feel the same as when I am transplanting
fragile cucumbers into the ground with clumsy rubber
gloves, very graceless. I feel tenderness toward you
and disdain toward myself that I subtly impressed upon you.
I am sorry about that. I don't want to do that,
to her. I don't want to do that again.

I felt good when her and I watched raindrops drop into a pond.
Both our natural tendencies were to lie down in the grass,
maybe she was thinking about our muddy bodies,
but I wasn't thinking much. My thoughts were warm.

Today we're going to ride in my ticking time bomb car,
fifty-five miles per hour for a couple of hours,
forty-four degrees is the high and *******, we are going to feel that high. Embrace the peaks of the weather and the pits of our lonely, young, emphasis on the young, but still rather manic feelings.
I feel better doing that with you,
but I don't know if I want to touch you
all the time.

The greatest are at Eddyville, the lesser at LaGrange
six hundred of no one at the jail on the hill
no windows, no bars, no name to do up to five nowhere
for nothing, or that's what they say.
Institutional white tones of gray
sealed concrete floors under light look like rivers at night
all so clean except the time, except the title
of the crime sounds so insipid.
Better robbery or ****** better yet
lining up on concrete rivers for a shave.
What is the essence of it?
No one's going to die.
Everyone will eat baloney on his food card and lie on his back.
Freedom begs the question of degree.
What is the essence of it?
Visiting baby mamma by TV?
The inability to conjugate the verbs of touch?
Freedom begs the question of degree.
What is the essence of it?
Never having lived a single day
beyond the shadow of the jail that has no name?

A life without love
Is a life without ends
Not a road
Just a stationary point

Maybe a life with one single end—
the one without love
Only one cause to strive for
And truly just one without more

Maybe a life with not one end at all
A life as a permanent “x”
One point in history
And no true value at all

A life without love
Why life at all?
Still we breathly*strive
All without tone

How can life exist without tension?
How can harmony continue to be,
Or anything without boundaries?
No limits because the limit is itself

Not even French man, Lagrange  
Could solve this one life
The one without love
The one that sets itself as none

So I do my best impression of the sun
Extending its ten thousand rays through the whole
The many ends and ways I let Love create
All out me and the itch inside my soul

And I do my best impression to revolve
Become the revolution that I must long for

So I do my best impression of all that crosses my path
Wildly roaming as the wallowing water road
A river that can’t be just one permanent sea

And so I ask and plea
To excuse myself from my wish
“Dear Sky, today I want be me,
A river that obeys no one”

And I ask my spheric, life-long ceiling
“Do you have limits at all?
No corners or endings
You yourself have become one”

And today I ask for forgiveness
I do not want to mirror a limit
I want to run across the sphere
And become, until love extinguish

Not allowed, read a book.

------------------
Yes, people do read books,
but many do not really read
as when a summer boredom

takes a kid to Grandpa's book shelf,
aha, look a book my grandfather read,

now, this kid is reading Magnificent Obsession,

and I sow the counter punch, with Jesse Duplantis
secret sowing prosperity message arisen from that.
Bilk, tilt, ah, Tilton and Alamo, too, obsessed
with the shine, serpent on a pole,
not the wise one tippy tail on this very point. You know?

Advertised wisdom for the attention paid,
watch the candle flicker, these are holy candles,
all the work of actual pollinators, raised on clover,

which we also feed our red heifers which we breed,
just in case, some day the businesses of mass
religion agree to stop selling fear of totally

insane influencers of thousands, in the days
of billions believing time ends, right after

News from yesterday,
while lythium ion carry ons

are brought to public attention, then an ad,

then there is healthier handsomer than in a while
Biden being physically older than NATO, really not
which he takes credit for, make note, just in case,
it turns out not to have been
so good a deal, we sell bombs, that we buy
to create jobs, we play cop, and currency
goes global, well, who's left to pay
for all these unused bombs?
-------------
Credit from Mali,
when
Shield our augmented eyes, to look into ever before,
gold held holds worth in ways we never imagined,
look out there, a million miles away a long now,

conception of LaGrange points and Roche limits

how come the earth to be, right here,
we ask but only liars venture a valid wager,

we may know now more than ever,
should we ever dare, one entire day,

in a time when a grandfather involved
in our information intended to reform,
the duty of Jubilee to the story,
after fifty years of never reconsidering
the need an almighty entity might have,

as an addiction, praise and honor and glory,
amen, it always spills onto the anointed message,

yes, His holy word,
as prophets hear spoken in lost angel tongues,
no lie can be told, bold as hell, is professed to be,
"Prove me now, if the authority… allows"

tell me, child,
do you really know what believing does?

Slight smile in the zone of thinking either real
or answered prayer, on earth as my perfected will

well may imagine

utilizing… using for the paid attention,
way long time ago, your granny prayed, god give
this boy the good sense you give green apples,

and I'd be ****** if I said he didn't.
Far as I can tell, mustard knows a little more.

I
A man with no shoes
walks by with a limp.

His arms -
covered
in tattoos
and scars -
are lethargic
by choice.

The biting
winter sun
delivers respite
from late December
northerlies.

He reeks of Franzia.
Redolent, it shadows
him, haunts
him like what he drinks
to forget.

His unkempt white beard
is stained yellow
around the mouth
from years of cigarettes
and no-shave Novembers.

He dons a jacket
- faded glory -
that is two sizes too small
and his pants stay together
like a couple for their kids.

Too proud to join
the Salvation Army
on Christmas Eve,
he finds his bench,
lies down

and survives
one
more
night.

II**
A man in a suit
drives home in an Audi.

His collar
is stained
with cheap lipstick
and Chateau Lagrange
from last night's
late night meetings.

Angie, his wife,
waits anxiously
at the door
of their four bedroom,
three and a half bath
Victorian.

Her eyes -
still puffy
and red -
fixated up Swann St.
She is not blinking
and barely breathing.

The kids
have been sent to Grandma's
for the night.

They watch TV -
SpongeBob SquarePants.

The Audi
drives by a man on a bench
He looks asleep -
possibly dead.

The suit inside thinks to himself:
“That poor man.”