Shorts in July

Two Evening Encounters

The rarely-seen underside of the window-frame
A refrigerator opens in another room
An arrow pricking out of a posy
hurts the posy
The compressor turns on
The lintel gapes

*

Petals out the window sent
meant the charity of exile
She was outward bound towards a hostile tautology
The tall girls dressed as beanpoles
the short ones, flower pots, fell
to break the ice. They photographed their separation
and called it "A Liberation Album"

Coughs in darkness, icerbergs smoke
returning up to the window
A squeezebox stutters for a choir
I mimic a tick, I dream of Mimico
and a hungry picnic

Indulgences scramble
with sin and ugliness

but what for breakfast?

I go out for something to get



The Sleepwalker

Sleep was a singing bird
It was redundant as a theodicy, redundant
as two heroes with the same name
or one with many. It was the ebb and flow
of bathtubs, the jib and jab of armies,
the occupation & insurgent traffic stalled
& blown up.

When the god wakes he'll make the future
there is no doubt I could desire to gracefully
or safely express
The sirens jog in shorts
and the sailboats skitter
A black garbage bag spills its fragrant entailments
over the inland sea.



The Fragrant Cloud

The bold were the first to swill it
it's always that way
the host ghost propagates between the parasites

I eat the produce of the Polish Economy
rose & plum donuts
3 for my dollar

We'll avoid combat & accrual of awards, titles, names
(K is for Kestrel, beaked murderer of the paraclete)

But the dough's speared in the side with a real syringe!
Ouch! & the roses
    truly boiled!




Forte York

A piano once played is never the same
piano

from the cellophaned cellphone to the
           mechanical pencil wrapped in a bamboo mat

it is possible that this is true, or at least alive, an issue

(we are still in consultation
       & invite your submissions)

we do not act or ask rashly, do not act or ask

we numbly request
       a theme a term a new anthem
(thank you)

we plug our ears & think we can hear it
          as our fingers under the table unsteadily slip

to
ec
static

the hammers bang on the tense & discordant guts



Article 1: Heaven & Hell

" … no great art in that … only the censor knows what is art" - H.M. Enzensberger

The instant perception of weightlessness means only
no resistance to the centre's pull.
And "no great art in that" evades the censor
in the heart, the mind, and their prostheses.
The perception of a particle plunges as it pumps.
The bruising blowback of the pen
Newton's second kickback helps us wash our hard-to-reach parts.
Some unpleasantness, true, but laws are
what they are.
The friars will spew in satire
out the devil's asshole & the flies
like angels scrawl over the parched scraped skin.




This Thing

This dis-
orientation
Being the best
wet
man in the rain
The brain
of the tinkerer
waves
Blinks     sinks
At least he
knows
he won't change
anything




Also too young

But has it always been this way?
Under doubt grows milkweed. These
bored pines, this spayed orchard.
This obscurity in the city. Off-kilter
like a Narwhal in our sex. Her
breasts enlarging in expectation
glut the apartment — August light
stopped at the portals. Our faces close
our eyes close as a last resort.