In what silver streak lives the other life,
the other killing ghost left traces like usual. The other
life left killing. The other boredom on screen, left
ghostly leavings, blur stagnant mid-room, heat imprint
left what future gutted in the parking lot. Fox alive,
peach alive but declining, skin like damp paper but cold
and hot alternately. Fox friendly and a soggy fire to blot
out the soggy woods stitched by colonial stone walls,
collapsed occasionally. Self, as Self cracked through
the late fall underbrush, and Self listened for woodpeckers,
which Self considered the harbingers of small, great things
in Self’s personal trajectory, the forest floor still spotlit
here and there though those bright spots always on
the move. Like Self, heading to the meadow where you
and you pulled up surveying flags every weekend.
Some poor one re-eyeing, re-reconnoitering after
every revolutionary jaunt. All fall’s flat. All pools obscure
their own depths, and those that don’t are lousy pools, too
hyped up on reflection to realize that the one blur
just behind you is still there, still.
We’re All the Same Here, Were All Right, as
Were Rain or as Still as, as Dim, We’re All the Same
Every Place as, All the Time & Told, We Are Antsy
& Forever Forgetful, Were Stunning When Stunned,
Me in This Is That Mirror for Then Was, Stare & Refresh
Self’s Pixel’d Window Always to Yes, Yes Always or Come
In You & You & You & You & You & for Forever’s Long,
Popping Stuck Pleas-
Antly Starts New Destruction, Decon- or
Recon Unhangs Pictures With Reflective Surfaces,
Space Rips From Here to the Edge of Keep Counting
& Disordered Now, Since Borders Pop, Tiara Cocked,
Disorders Mind or We Are, Were Cocked or
Promised to Keep Shitty Time. Blocked, We Hate
-Love the CityParty & Glamour Presently Our Company,
&c. Our Halcyon Pac-Man Memory & Now. Now
There Is Clever & There Is Fear
Of Space, of Fear’s Clever Dismissal & There
Is EveryExoplanet at Once in Firey Maples Caught With Poly-
Ester Spiderwebs Stretched From Branch to Bedroom,
From Bedpost to Summit & Summit to Sky. Every
-Time Is the Asteroid’s Near Miss. All My Days Is.
Nowhere near. No more notes. Soap residue in the hair smells chemical but safe. Exactly that buffer required; tales of cruise ships from the wider world, no night, just lit so. Floating pool circles the seas, traverses the seas above the seas. Quaint and yes. Your cat is watching you, progressively. Your drift, caught in the filter. No summer of easy amber fields of. The air here pushes in once an hour, circulates, exits again through a porthole that shuts up after itself. At sea there be no dead ends, but still sometimes, always, one must stop. Being. Relentless green of. Foam, right? Dreams boring to spite one’s ambitions. Safer borders drawn by and back. You can’t see past your screen, love, but I hope you see I’m watching you, relentlessly, like tracking the horizon from the boat’s bobbing deck like a lifeline, nausea buffer. They’ll say, he smokes freely, cannot whistle. Now, there. You know how I’m already feeling, don’t you already? Sure you could watch the begonias grow and grow, but I could also keep taking these pills. Chemical, but safe. It’ll be a riot tonight, they’ll say, a riot, and you’ll just miss it.
