Two

velvet real time

In a pedigree of wildflowers
I reach down to pick up
my magenta piece of gum.
This is the opening thought
to the rest of my life.
Like a transparent diary
the narrator says, “You are like
other people in some ways,”
“Yet you may not like
the same foods as other people.”
Here is Amling witnessing
the evolution of the snack chip.
Here is Amling witnessing
commercials with burger zooms.
The reflection of a couple
making love in the glass coffee table,
a wardrobe of Santa Fe distortion
in an otherwise powder blue rec room.
In the empty ashtray I haphazardly
place my semen as I minored in Art
and great amounts of energy
consumed in the production of mental life
had me scared if zero relevance
looked in a mirror
it would see relevance
stepping out of Siamese horizons
to ensure my vacancy
reducing time to a garnished ingredient.

ill estates

At the death gates
have you friends
that’d gone
to community college
Friends with bouts
of diabetes
Taken the identifiable odor
from the unidentifiable source
Taken the dry cleaning
turning in the window
The food silent some time
after the microwave
A burning building beautiful
in the palms
The sand bags
around the doors
of salons
I remember Fila
The pseudo-real
The age appropriate descriptions
of cycles
of life expectancy
Two orphans
becoming blood-
brothers in front of a courthouse
The taxi to the magistrate
Gifts of anthropomorphic
sex toys
The fireworks that can
not be seen from where
we are standing
At the buffet I’m ladled
the famed gravy
In parlors of nostrils
the cocaine
The marble tush
of a fountain statue
A noose of pubes
I’m not the whitest person
here