Here the top of a tower
where we assume lie so many dead
the beautiful shadow hooks
over a cobblestone street wet & conspiring
paler constellations & now a city loves me not
needles balance on our pedestals through a blowing smoke
the house standing in scratches & dust motes
the water parts from itself lays down before the silver cord
brimming at the window we see dice fall from an artificial hand
my life subject to your laws & yet translucent
a woman’s naked body or armor surface
white & inert by the axe
all hands dirt smudged as
the time of the bitter wave passes over the opposite floor
now ringleted coquettes throw flowers
one traveler like a silvered mirror
touches her neck & touches our mother
we crawl forward as serpents personae non gratis
lovely women melding into a target a pistol a wedding ring
how the body dis integrates how we find ourselves in a car
men & shovels swarming like insects
as she exits his ceiling carrying a light the morning just falls into
a pistol where her head should be
wires fringe the tree behind her
diagonal banks of soil face the color of the sky resolving
down the ladder from the infinite curtains & panic we dry the sides of buildings
with bunches of false flowers
let’s write unsure & abstract nipples in the morning’s mandibles
flirtatious movements of the sentient tree
smoke from her nostrils & how we move through the night
& lurk behind the decorated man
rising into the air over the moonlit Seine
o our curiosity in the pit of filmed actions
is why the snake answers the man’s bare arms
the pretty one releases a stream of dark blood
by a metal fence falling affronts the mouth of town
Where are we going?
a hand on her thigh not the first one but waiting
& there as the clock ticks itself apart
how to be a person on a park bench to look at the arching
darkening sky flocking as the tower opens &
a row of movie screens flicker through a forest
a city of sorts contained by the room
as though in high wind the leaves refract & the deflated
withers of a horse shift just a little against the edge
as he tries again she holds this cup aloft water
moving back into the old part of town
dancers disrobing phantoms in a field of square boulders
approach wet-footed & so French stroking her fur throat
walking to the giant steps backward how the scratched film echoes
so much light exhausted on the right half of her face
As though another country
The city so outlined, so small & humorless. The bits of refraction so serene & white in the sun.
In the middle of the country, faceless women pass with dogs made of retracting shrubbery. The sky beating the riverfront as streetcars zoom by.
At a certain point in the street, I think of wanting a ferry made of light. Unclear where the bottom is; the street so far below.
Before we move again down the tunnel blackened with unuse, the name appears upon the roof. & a hand pointing like an onion dome.
Where are we
we walk to the barren beach in a forgotten corner of the theatre
small crystals spinning to the music triumphant
a silver sometimes detected just below
the falseness of water in the street
with the tipping trees like a sculpture garden
seeking the shadow upon the table
the sleeping man facing away
the door closes & they dance & again
we see a giant shivering girl at the beach on the bed
her haunted eyes so recognizable so mine
blink & the time we take to pose as wrestlers upon the roof
forms the yards of 100 streetcars
this is how the young men suspect she has chosen to leave
A bead forest within the river
& here comes the sky so bright over the locomotives. So high & pinching away at a wall of bricks. So many floating cathedrals coughing steam. An arch, a window, and up on the edge is the boy who must run with the speeding cars. The sleeping body of the old man on the shore and the sun over it all. The sun nervous as an 8th Avenue elevated train.
Who kicks the prickly chairs? Graves lie beside the piano, the wide space of the floorboard showing like a hole in the order of things. The way darkness slouched with a fur wrap between the eyes of the old man. The man stooped & turned so slowly from you. Another light gleaming off his writing desk.