Word Perfect
i am outside in the oven
chin ups and dips
and laps[e] in the grass
around the poured concrete
and picnic tables bolted down
with music in factory
ear buds playing loud
enough to drown
the chatter of fat, angry men
i shake off the swelter in
the negative pressure vestibule
between outer doors
blowing hard to keep the virus
in or out or something
about the epistles i read
with my cereal
about love between men
and basketball had a poet's ear
and rhythm to it
i have a new brother who
teaches me poems and
riddles my ego-yearn
for 'perfect' words
with coy query and heart
warming focus on my
desire for perfect verse to
find its way out of me
into the world
i have not seen him since
the before-fore time when
class happened every
wed nes day night
after night i compile my
work into something that
smells more like art than
smoldering garbage
i find the throwaway work
his writing exercises
his warm ups
have the better bones to
build from, to add flesh
and breathe life
and make whole
and knit together with
ramshackle purpose
belief in the something just
below the surface
i see upon the jailers' desk
the resistance who live
in the 'education' department
have left me a dictionary
(from which i mine my 'perfect' words)
plus one envelope with two books
poetry collections – from my older
younger teacher brother –
one of which is by the man
who wrote the basketball letters
in the magazine from breakfast
i am cooling by the fan
in a poured concrete room
in a steel bunk bolted down
with music in factory
ear buds playing soft
enough to allow
my morning to inhere
funny how the threads find
their way through fences
and lockdowns and quarantine
and make moments perfect
and words.
and sometimes: a poem about incarceration quarantine
and sometimes I gaze into the blue eyes of a pretty girl
stirrings and memory of a life lived blissful and over
blue eyes labyrinth inscrutable vacuum
how marvelous would you feel knowing there was no bottom but me
and sometimes the horizon stays distant for a reason
roads less travelled than indifferent
voice lilting amid percussion and production
samples in real time lift by bare breath
and sometimes I welcome the sensation of your hand slipping away
a way to feel remembered precarious
without water my face dries
without water my skin dies
and sometimes it is enough to pretend I am sick in an other way
there is no difference in the death touching me
it is the death that was always coming
it is the death by any other name and no less sweet
Volta
Township towers of no more than four stories loom from
broken window skeleton after broken window skeleton.
If the city had teeth they would be black pulpy stumps with shards
of enamel poking out of swollen and distended gum.
Chalky talc tasteless billows plumes in a wheeze
every time the wind blows through.
I would kick in each door desperate for any sign
of life but silence like a dead dog warns of what I might find.
Run ragged down the main drag to give the clammy
smallness of my back a cause for the sweat I already feel.
At the end of the block I blink back to the start where I start over
like it won't let me leave except to die.
Reset each straight line lap opposite the end where I end up
clutching through vomitous collapse.
Madness strikes in flashes, visible light warps, a reminder like
a fun house mirror, bent to distort my wandering I.
There are no closing bars to whistle amid headstones
or shallows full with drain water I could drink or drown.
I will not wake away bitter quandary or nightmare
augmented reality toward awareness bloom.
Mourning glory flicker yellow grey, casting shadows over
bodies at rest on the forty years asphalt sea gone calm.