The careful moon maunders through the glass ceiling
on these long nights

when I try to alchemize my visions into ships.
I imagine the mist moping among the larches—

the dewy bark that wakes,
looking for shadows of loggers in the grey.

On cold nights like this I sleep beneath a sheet, sweating,
dreaming of China’s violet sky exploding with hues

of a butterfly’s paper wings.
The summer air crackles above the pale girl’s tent—

a counterfeit ankh hangs between
her naked, sagging *******—

and she sees the future in the reflection of her eye
on an Opinel’s blade—her iris wheezing into shapes.

She tells me there are gales ahead
like ones in schoolbook etchings of Poseidon.

Boys will choke on salt, she says,
or the ice will kiss the little princes to sleep.

But she coos how they look like dancers at a ball.
How many boys will be lost? I ask the girl.

All of them, she says with ***** on her breath,
but this won’t stop you, will it?

In my favorite dream yolk sizzles on a cast iron as mother sings.
My older sister laughs, cheeks full of sourdough and jam,

and father’s wet hair drips onto his paper—
the ink of little letters smearing into bare branches.

The dream helps me forget that rain never ends where I wake,
where guilt’s proboscis feeds on hardened veins.

To whomever’s my son, please don’t put me in an elegy
where the memory of me will rot like wet wood.

i

Love is like a foreign language
once you hear it, you want to hear it more
speak it without it sounding alien
though she will behave here

as in a schoolbook for a foreign language
where we are all beginners
all sometimes say ***** words

ii

Without meaning to, she reaps
She sleeps, she washes, she softens
to its touch because it was made for her
like attachment, and for him like pleasure

love has no vowels, no translations, no silence
only a universal physicality and spirituality
that makes you have no defenses, you

iii

Trying not to love doesn’t bring you anywhere
it’s creative to let her use you
she is the last refugee and the first politics
she comes back in the evening when

your world is torn upside down with bills
it’s love that cooks for you darling
she whispers to you, “I’m taking you home”.

In Times New Roman, I font
to hitch wagon to a star.

Alias Adobe Jenson Albertus Aldus here
wed Alexandria (Algerian, an all around
American Typewriter gal) scattershot
with Antiqua ancestry, she told me
after I Aster while Aurora Borealis

shimmered overhead, while temporarily
embarking on long day's
journey into night
("yule Jean," I uttered
for no particular reason,
while taking a knee).

Upon spontaneous spur of moment
(not prematurely *******)
whim we pledged our troth
courtesy local Justice of the peace

at a pitstop named Baskerville
renown for landmark Bell
designed by Georg Belwe
in collaboration with inscription
by poet and cleric Pietro Bembo.

Whatsapp parent tis obvious influence
upon Berkeley Old Style,
plus subtle nuances difficult to discern,
nonetheless affecting one
Bernhard Modern as well

incorporating bankrupt trumpeting
apprentice Giambattista Bodoni
envisioning aspiring career as Bookman
titling initial publication;
The art of the deal.

Linkedin to aforementioned
aliens perhaps...maybe...
lost tribes of Israel long since
swept into dustbin of history,

a puzzling hyperlinked conjunction,
but with nebulous, mysterious,
gaseous, ambiguous
personage, and/or place
merely identified as Bulmer.

As iterated, we decamped
in proximity to Caledonia known to me,
a transplanted Californian FB,
who spent countless blocks of time
shuttling to and fro Calisto MT,
where pennies pitched into
fountainhead with Atlas shrugged.

Thee above ayn nee auld
rand (dom) blurb
invites intimations, yes...
viz pre Cambria yen
humanity awoke, where

sophisticated indigenous peoples
sparsely outnumbered,
they nonetheless compensated
minuscule population size
vis a vis did intriguingly fashion
(bug a boo)

underground elaborate Capitals
two identified as Cartier,
and Caslon Wyld
housing many a "FAKE" Antique,
circa Fifteenth Century
purported predecessors of Catull farmers

easily mistaken for garden variety
prehistoric Asian Tsen
Centaur re: yen creature,
what with Century Old Style,
Century Schoolbook,
New Century Schoolbook,

Century Schoolbook Infant
teenage ninja mutant turtle vestige
aligning their (ain't fib)
be yen cool visionaries,
donning tortoise shell bifocals,
otherwise affixed i.e. born that way

with poker faced purblind outlook,
and whose shockproof
shell acted carapace
tricked out to unseen observer
as an eye opening spectacle.

I miss licking strawberry-flavored suckers on the school bus
Gossiping who John kissed and wishing it was us
Passing notes in class-we didn't give a ****
The location of Africa or Amsterdam
The only sponge worried about was SpongeBOB
Wasn't our responsibility to clean, cook, or get a job
"Stinky **** Head" was the most insulting name
Mario unanimously was the best video game
As kids we frolicked fast, funloving, and free
Uncaring if our homemade tire swings were rickety
Doodling margins of each battered schoolbook
A time where if caught in a fight you got let off the hook
Being happy for no reason is what i miss about childhood the most
Awakening to my favorite breakfast made by Dad-french toast
I would jump out of bed looking forward to school
Bringing lunch packed in a brown paper bag was cool
Now I hate opening my tired eyes
This planet transformed into one I despise
Once upon a time I felt whole and strong though so small
Today I'm much bigger but feel nothing at all

a red moon crusts on a right

hand--pulled from blankets

that shift into folds.

spread cleaner than the Face

of these.

all the matter kept, a

tutelage of flocking

black birds closing their

schoolbook.

a soundless penmanship

of two withheld bodies.

words are very difficult

when they come alive in

proximity.

serpents trade bedsides

in deep sleep.

their waking eight coincides with

the slowest fathom--dousing the

legend of a heart.

it's so strange when it follows you

around.