U.S.

Chile, 1834

1

John-O was given a key to the apartment. The deal
was this: if Phil died suddenly, and John-O heard,
he would rush on over, enter the apartment, leave
unseen with Phil’ s brown suitcase, and secretly pitch it
into the mounded deeps of the city dump.
Simply, there were things that Phil didn’ t want
to hurt his family with. Do you have yours?

So in Pieria, from the wedded bliss
Of Time and Memory, the Muses came
To be the means of rich oblivion,
And rest from cares. And when the Thunderer
Took heaven, then the Titans warred on him
For pity of mankind. But the great law,
Which is the law of music, not of bread,
Set Atlas for a pillar, manacled
His brother to the rocks of the Scythia,
And under Aetna fixed the furious Typhon.
So should thought rule, not force. And Amphion,
Pursuing justice, entered Thebes and slew

Two guys sucking each other in the steam room
didn’ t want anything
to do with me, evidently —
I left them to their comedy.

*

Legato longings:
wish for walnuts, wish for water,
wish to exorcise this morning’ s debauch —
two Fauré nocturnes.

*

In slow motion
Steve tussled with a motorcycle
trying to run me over
on the boulevard of moon smut

— Hoooooooo
Lay in an array of pixels
Fat, simulated proteins
Looks just like nutrition!
Acts just like an avatar!
I just wanted to give my body to
A net of guarine
Gingko-balboa azatine melamine
Camphobacter phylacter nicotine
Which hung like neuron-nectar in a cell, net of
Vatic coughdropped hairball tells the future of
Neural center where the straight lines hopped
Like a hairline fracture on a bender jumps a
Mulholland retaining wall and crashes the crinkled Vale of
Food-for-thought

The puppy must be learned of all this material.
No map of the hospital. First, the war effort.
Then, the war itself. The water makes and remakes
its walls. No persons or boats are allowed in them.

I.

Let me speak with expressive

hesitation & a feeling for

interment why even

lineate what isn’ t broken by

music let me speak with

inextricable reluctance.

I want to tear the heart

from refused convalescence

& feed it those long fronds

of river bed grass. I want to

tear the heart out of style

& put it between

utter thrall & the infancy

of all things impure.

Torn out, a flame thickens

between us as if

not right now we’ ll be

ripped from this life

His Exterior