My Beautiful Lassitude

Here is a bearing which combines laceration
With amusement. As a keepsake it has been
Turned into a parable. A large Antarctic plug
Chafed with cellophane while humming
And percolating algebra. Sleep is more
Like an engraving than a conversation
With a wire and a pair of calipers. Knots
Are hectic with teak when they are shoveled
From the land. Nails jingle in a toolbox
And cellos turn to silver, their music dribbling
Guts and curry. When all is said the waterfront
Is nothing but mist and gloom and history
Dancing in a nightclub. Shall we dare
To soak ourselves in antifreeze? The candy
Is a nasty fire. And no, I am not opposed
To cyclones. I just don’t like fussing
With an old tube of glue. The thin logic
Of the tailgate is far more ecstatic. The map
Is a naked bud. A wedge of sound from the radio
Incites watermelon to arc into romance
With a nexus of hacksaws. The window
Is unassuming. The azaleas heave
Themselves into nirvana and we count
All the castles of the landfills until
The gasoline coughs. The laceration
Continues as a paragraph. The rest of us
Go to jail, which is just noodles after all
Is said and done. Noodles and bars and
Birds and armadas of wonderful poetry
That releases everyone into crickets.
The invertebrate drugs have a wall
In their scenery so be careful. There
Is just enough syntax available to make
Snacks and chew our memories into benediction.
In this realm we deposit our shoes in the bank
And withdraw into an obdurate obscurity
That is worthy of poets. Even the parakeets
Are delirious. Our shoulders are distilled
Into puddles. The scars form bundles of skin
That we can fold into slices of water.
This is how we have come to dawdle in mirrors.
There are more veins than wisps of aviation.
More shoulders than wainscoting. More suitcases
Than horizons of summer. Beautiful summer
Which I have folded into a shirt. My glands are opals
And the glue is an apparition, a flip of adhesion
Like an octopus tap-dancing on a jetty. A new
Anthology of poetry full of penguins and lassitude
Drifts under the boardwalk and yaws into blackberries.
The world is not a mechanical salad. No it is not. The world
Is a churning aluminum wallet stuffed with lips
Running amok among the credit cards and equations.
There are more than molecules in the house of olives.
There are verbs and hoes and watts that smell of life.
Life as it is lived in the drip of biography. Life as it is lived
In the cleavage of a yak at a nightclub in London. Yes
And a river long after it becomes a gate and lets us in
To better understand infinity, and get silly in the waterfall.