Smelting Things Out

I don’t know what to say about the world I thought I understood it but now the brain hurts to ponder the darkness of it all process its mysteries the mysteries of steel mysteries of power and jaguar rainforest and elephant the decay of civilizations the impulse to create writing isn’t a profession it’s a calling a musical note long as a petition so I can relax in my own grass and feel the armchair with eyes and fingers define that crinkly plastic-y sound getting paper towels and toilet paper out of the closet. Carrion is a riddle a giant insect population eating the sky with a slice of life and a glass of sunlight I’m asleep in the arena bouncing on the neck of a horse. Dear biographer I’m a rag of lost algebra a rhinoceros rendered pink in needlepoint the desolate plumbing of a fluorescent despair it’s very difficult to find simple laws that apply in all situations I remember staring at Proust in the Musée d’Orsay imagining a blue fire in a yellow cloth the lantern behind the face lighting up a rocket flaming into outer space John Lennon singing in a German bar a blackberry vine spiraling into summer with its thorns and juicy dispersions I need a courtesy firecracker for the molecules of a sneeze. The loom perambulates back and forth space is the outlaw of the universe gravity is the sheriff soon we’ll be sweating on trails bullets of poetry shot from a paper gun if words can persuade they can also disclose I remember Allen Ginsberg addressing a group of people in a tent on the Naropa campus during a lightning storm winds abutting the Rockies lightning shooting out of his mouth. Sensations are marvelous the difference between interior and exterior often misleading a bottle of Tums resting on a clipboard turns into a porch the quadrilateral electromagnetic pork of your neon bride is lovely I wish you the velocity of a jewel seven inches of snow in Denver in April all I ever wanted to do is write a sentence as pure and mercurial as Chuck Berry messy gunfights an afternoon decent as a canoe even the portulaca has majesty the quiet hum of a washer clothes tumbling around in a kaleidoscope of suds meaning endures its shadows the salty liqueur in the shell of an oyster can mean so many things to different people different circumstances nothing in this universe is static not even static electricity is static the state of Washington is contingent on garlic can I touch you with a sentiment the middle bear is a faucet. The driving gets sad when the sun goes down and omnivorous as guilt Wyatt Earp slumped in a Hollywood chair glum and arthritic I’m inaugurating a mutiny with a blowtorch and a snowflake backpack rummaged for an arctic map the movie in my head is offering you a role as a stagecoach driver a broad western range ratcheted by realism into palpable form the soft arm of the afternoon is annoying the scorpions a man standing pensive in the rain by the boxcars on the siding argues for benediction in writing you want to unclog the unconscious Clayton Eshleman in an ice age cave the eyes of the owl are a lunar prophecy there are no surviving examples of Norse bellows but I can assure you if you add the bones of your ancestors to the bloomery iron the iron will turn to steel.