“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.”
“The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.”
The herd of buffalo
form a square
in the corner of the field
they like to reproduce
themselves in. I am a bridge
that extends from me to you
in abstract space,
beyond which nothing but the purely symbolic lives
its parade life. The skater with the Mohawk
is cutest. The emphasis on the object
within my inter-subjective space
reminds me that one thing must always lead to another
or else. I have felt
stares at the back
of my head, but never felt
brave enough to confront them.
I always wear expensive sunglasses
when I hail a cab home,
which suggests both power
and attitude, I think.
Who doesn’t hope to enter
the field of buffalo
when no one but the buffalo
are present to greet you.
With every word I wrote,
the universe grew
more confusing.
I started to sort my life
into little piles:
“awful peculiar,” “awful beautiful” and “awful.”
Decisions were difficult,
and before long,
I was buried under one enormous pile,
the darkness beautiful,
the view peculiar,
the weight of it awful.
“I may not have been the greatest president, but I’ve had the most fun eight years.”
“I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself, and my paintings. (Because style is violence, and I am not violent.)”
It’s hard to know when to break
the seal of morning, fill
the toilet bowl with sunshine
and stand naked at the window
of my study, a glass in one hand
and the Brita pitcher in the other.
They still make the day out of day.
The mirror knows. It guards
its famous seam. A barking dog
frays and frets the light.
To put coins back into circulation.
To nudge a decimal point a place.
If in the walls the copper pipes woke
knowing their value, they’d shudder.
Adopt, but only in your mind,
a mile of highway somewhere,
its berm grown three-dimensional
in the dawn. Brush your thoughts
against the grain of a spiky lawn.
The raindrops, digital on the screen,
remain analog on the pane.
The east charges hard upon us—
eats weather, shits night.
