Built on Seismic Ranges

Your levity counterbalanced by the irregular ballast of currency, you nod through the district in search of Better Targets.

The cathedral invites with its asymptotes and creatures perpetually alighting.

Within the gates, the sound of verbal debris, settling above the physical dust, forms a second, more dynamic blanket over the apse.

Slipping beneath, you find compatriates. Or, rather, fellow exiles.

Cold to Your Remainder

the place unfit to rate

gives odd roses and paste
to supplicate, to reign.

a silence shaped like batteries fills the area in question,
waiting for bail in the Mark IV Hotel.

complicated with liars,
an otherwise radiant panel

is separating steams.

From Evidential Caries, Apprehension

Your regular glasses come off and fold,
or did she rise
to the third floor balcony?
watching

the Gallicanism of muts seeking scraps
lift a pensioner into reverie,

alongside the Trainer,
his lenses reflective
when he wants to make
you change.

Dd

soft tissue,
the lance of reason,
parked for decades in humid
shizuka-

the melisma of a falling branch,
hitting successively lower notes through an elongated
syllable of damage.

A Hit Before Your Mother Was Born

Dust, noise, vibration, ambiguity

landing soft – lift denied      a statement on the flaws of comfort      carla in a noodleshop

garlic skin   <->   stitches      fragile and incompatible with union        dressed up like koi

paragraphs <- itchy wight     taming awareness with dull sublimation   married to money

Celebrated Lantern

Except for Marty, we were all headed to the Kam. The singing lines were down until five, so we put on pins and walked. We loved a good romp in the street, where haloed cherries called you down, whispered, “Simsim,” canceled your headache with material and chalk. Dan wasn’t set for all the quarters, so we had to skirt Jay’s district and a few other heavy kingdoms. Perimeter markers seem so friendly tonight. I think I’ve developed an affinity for bygones.

Wishing to assert it as this, genuine, perhaps not prudently, certainly with evidences, not the least of which, should they be recounted, is a pinpoint- 1mm diameter- opening to the chamber, narrow enough to accept transcription sequences without being prone to more voluminous writs, thus prompting the reasonable inference of ordinary shame, extending regularly as an infinite colonnade into the horizon of doubt, not the dreadful saltatory strafes of self-justification, a person in my meekness and calamity distributes the standard diagrams and captions, inverted combs, living moraines among decaying caps, stones tossed off into perennial rotation.

Why I lie near the towers. With belly sounds around. Record an opening or closing. Play it. In this combination and that. Because they don’t play safe. Swing arms. Take your pin and shake it just for punctuation. Why I kick with kids. Laying nets I’ll catch myself. Giving hard thoughts to Jenny that likes it. When I should let the tapes do that. And on with a carapace. And over towns fighting. New patches wineskin old.

Four of them turned away upon grasping the new parameters. “It wasn’t made for that clip,” consolingly. It was made for every clip. Something has gotten into circulation, passing for material the Peasant planned so well. Compensated so well. So remarked upon in other markets. So dear in its unexpurgated format. The Peasant filled quarries where rain had dominion, and they would catch red in this ambient glare, bypassing channels, needless upward ways, all bound in a one-figure pass.

Debutante Breakfast Rehearsal

Imagine the worst way to die in a rainstorm in your uncle’s country home. Step back from that until the corners of the image are visible: the rat-a-tat helmet on the tall wardrobe’s head, the fingertips creeping over the lens. Spin it 270 degrees. Cut out the green swathes of cloth on your attacker, replacing them with houndstooth wool. Make a few copies with subtle variations. Give a tiny pout because flip book animation is dull.

Climb out of your pajamas and into a fresh complement of feathers. Tell the tea service to stay away until noon. Divide your allegiance into piles on the balcony. Look at Romulus, his swaggering eyes. Can you deliver him of broken villages in his wake, a zig-zag trail pointing back to Canaveral?

Slip under the door before waking too far. Cast about for arrows on plates. A little cursor baked in glutinous rice, served without wit or timing. Coincide with the advent of reason. Occur at the exact same moment as a global rise in consciousness and spirit. Carry slips of paper in your sleeves to hand out in congratulatory haste, saying, “Job well done,” and, “You’ve earned some peace.”

We understand the conundrum of translation. A peeve that even Lantins would shake off. It makes you miss the bells of your city wall. They would only swing when the breeze was fair, and then constantly. It reminds you of your father, who is at the gate and laying down arms.

2-300

It partly has something to do with me.

Dancing at the drive-thru.
Kicking pastilles and theater majors, answering phone calls in the dentist’s office.
A lifestyle that fits in take-out boxes.

The time he swiped out was five minutes too late. He entered the theater by knocking on the exit until a patron went to see. The orchestra settled like dust. I cantered over.

The first scene took place in the chair. The assistant argued for a natural treatment. The sediment of a koi pond. Metabolites of cedar. He insisted on some tincture of profanity in beauty.

Mr. Koss wasn’t listening. His mind was preoccupied with the client’s brazen entrance. Walking into a room without speaking, sneering in disgust at every reasonable inquiry- it made it difficult to deliver any services.

Then a few items were taken. Drama displayed itself as a hound with wounded haunches.

Exchange over Water

Spotted in favor of riffing,
A challenge to the macro set,
Bombastic in the sharp relief of vulpine lighting:

I set my feet where the texture of wood is mixed
with moss, sand, stray leaves.
An unmixed tone might set my teeth on edge

(We are wishing in the background
For this very thing,
Or a variation based on better incomes).

You could carry over me,
Posing metered riddles on wave capture,
Like a starlet shorn and beaming
Trades for sapphire, rust for combustion.