That these objects act allows field schemes
a cat walloping outwards the center it paws.
“…and this is Mezentius, as fashioned by
my hands,” the field schemes and friends
and I reduce in terror, become distant
prosceniums. I see Farhad is happy in
two places at once–Boston and Oakland.
I’ll never move to those places again.
Arches are protection; no one sings peace
except in harmony and counterpoint action hardens
perception and makes projection intimate. For instance,
“I spend my days convincing my friends
of my unhappiness and love of commercial
music from the 1960s, when the radio
learned color from the young people, finally.”
We bounded time. Mud-black things speak again,
covered in something like smoke or living
pelts. We bounded time. The slight echo
of a border foregrounds its carious love-sound:
part green, part lotion, part biography. Oh,
I am not a person, I am
a shield, structured and decorated by god,
a god of fire. I am inlaid,
I am movement, I am impenetrable folk,
small towns of people who speak with
no irony and argue over things and
how they are made. Oh, these objects
act and my body arbitrates to allow
them bounded space in the deep wood,
I am of the deep wood, I
am a shield, structured and decorated by
god, a god of fire. I am
an object made and we are bounded
together. Oh, I am so flush with
skin that I offer it to speak.
Location! Hysterical living! I am a shield!

 

 

Now we play to feed palms, viral reeds,
horn corsets; all points are large
when marble breathes. Let loose playfulness, skin
to quarrel with the systems quarter felled
and paths that bring down heavy feet
that are not and never will be.
For I am sheep, cow, horse focused,
insistent, damp and winsome and I guess
magazines wood calculates: gardens, food, living, interiors,
preservation, republic, parabola. We who too often
confuse horror with sympathy.

 

 

I will lead
a procession to this library of Providence.
What wasn’t bees was myth
describing how to grow bees
out of rotting hide.
Entrance
into hot room by tangled
meat my son, in blue,
turquoise and wallet chain and
the girl reading the hours,
one of the books saved
from the fire of 1758.
Who hears this object leveled
like a plate, frequent, white?
My son, that slow bruiser of temporality,
uses abstraction to dismiss his social beginnings.
He would like to talk about intelligence
softy–not as doomed matter or something
to be violent towards, not as emotion
and not necessarily something to be intimate
with or prideful of.
–How,
he asks, Do I see
this inborn house in others?
–What else, he asks, I
the self but a library
impossible to navigate and yet
built, sturdy? I am
terrible liar. I am concrete.
Who’s hearing this book, the object leveled
like a plate, stunning, frequent, white?
Obsession with the frame of the steeple.
Characters are residual–the dim light, the
cool wood that means motion backwards into
the vortex, to be, as a to
be, as an us. One’s
innards as the hint o
recorded sound.
A library impossibly
navigated.

 

 

Brief, mild, and lacking serif
the entryway is a hacking,
nominal thing, a view between
courage and homeopathy — a sinister
touch that grimes the throat.
We are not displeased but
open more than the sweatered
loomings/looniness on the hill.
There is a piano here,
and a place to listen
to music. Stairs and geometries.
It’s a state that traps
unknot ties by highlighter squeaking –
not sure whose lesson is
closer to data perceived and
laminated by a rattling A/C.
There is no newspaper in
this room, only tomorrow squinting.
What melts in the 70s?
How strong is this brick?
The Sybill led me through
openings to the shadows, I
wanted walls, I wanted matter.
Her arms instead light static
and our movement is fast
through the dark the young
man in the next room
hears everything in his voice
played back. Diffusion is suburban,
a moustache drawn on a
burrito. What thoughts I had,
my eyes closed, being led
into hell. Pictures rotating, embodied
in beating, what objects see.
Two are brought together and
forefront histories are brought together.
Approach noise as a green people
strung into collections of sitting.
Cray indents: war drawn, war
spoken. Who will receive intimacy
from this book? I remember
my fingers tasting like fog.
Someone is playing music, there
is smoke and people move.
We pass him again thinking,
“What if I double my
voice and harmonize with myself?
How long after I began
singing would I look out
to see columns built by
men dressed as lizards who
lick earth to make mud-dirt
into clay into bricks? What
happens when information is no
longer sensual, my arms wrapped
around you and what it
means to enfold. Our tattoos
label us as citizens. Leading
is a form a remembrance
that turns your body into
ironic distance. One is not
Caesar, one loves Caesar, one
will never be Caesar, one
must birth the new Caesar,
one hates Caesar, I write,
“I was educated in Milan
and then Rome.  The thorny
lioness loops sequins around the
wolf, his loops seek the
children of Pan, the flowering
cytisus is sought by this
lascivious child, and Corydon, you
Alexis.”

 

 

Between being and instrument, given
from and given to reading
done breaks action. I remember
my fingers tasting like fog.
What isn’t right is leaving
town for a better town.
What if we just described
the town?
Among us this statue distorts.
Fire escapes her eyes and she sweats
and glitches of her lived in form flicker
three times loosely waving a sword.

 

 

“Only don’t
you look
for bodies
in figures,”

“all members
shining equally
with nothing
missing.”

 

 

“There’s no
lack of
vacuum ceasing
light.”

The universe
could not
suffer so
much fire”
“if its
starry members
filled all
with fire.”

“However many
nature subtracted from
the fire”

“nature spared
the burden,
content to distinguish form”

“simply showing
constellations
with certain stars.”

“Outlines designate
form and fire
answers fire.”

“The middle is believed
from the end
and the end”

“is known highest:
Nature is satisfied
if all is not hidden.”

“The god of
vegetation myths
is dead.”

&

“These days,
I gotta
little fortune.”

“Nature kins our
labels but spread
open arms hold
formal.”

&

“Dependance by definition;
firmament held for
so long”

“by ether lit
from above by
ochre root.”

&

“The sun comes
out again and
a squid disappears
into a tree.”

 

 

“The moon,”
on the
knock by
a radius
drawn to
the center
of the
earth, directed
to the
earth, describes
areas proportional
to the
times. It
is an
inherent force
of matter,
it is
the power
of resisting
which every
body perseveres.
It is
unmoving planes,
proportional to
the times
in which
the motion
of the
pendulum is
in a
circle.
I have
tested this
with gold,
silver, lead,
glass, sand,
common salt,
wood, water,
and wheat.
I got
two wooden
boxes, round
and equal.
I filled
one of
them with
wood, I
suspended the
same weight
for gold
in the
center of
oscillation of
the other.
Then, when
placed close
to each
other and
set into
vibration, they
kept swinging
back and
forth together
with equal
oscillations for
a very
long time
…And it
was so
for the
rest of
the materials.”