Poetry
Four
Vessel [Vassal]
All ceiling and no floor The terrors of
infinity are taking over In between
rounds In between trysts And
who can hope for better and want
(In)spectors turning on some side of self
Heave in one’s own space A pretty
good never guess The biographical
deity at the end of a life-imposed
sabbatical The all-consuming light
works of late capital Divorce from
one of the self Same stock Not
“like me” as attached to gravitational self
More a matter of accepting error in shared
space where we generated a similarity
Near matched wavelength
Concomitant transformations
Unsurprising crash as tripping tracks
accumulate static and collapse Debt as
heavy inky filter over the scene
Agency circumscribed by machinations of
the state Velcro strips on the soul
Sometimes we take large bites to choke on
capacity Spit remainder onto formica
Tuck undigested mass in napkin
Before our compatriots notice But
they always do And carry that sog for
the remainder Like space invaders
Like a brain stormer Moaning storm
in the brain Non-site with Syrian
rubble A peripheral experience to the
one written down To chase and
retreat interpersonal seasons Pitching
off ravine into terrific pixel crack up
But anyway Dragging down the
stretch Post dusk bulb halos An
arrow storm meting out Stranded in a
snow land The release valve of even if
only
Vessel [SpaceMane, for Matt Bradley]
It’s like OK, space is super empty
You basically don’t exist Then
“Hello!” as Voyager streaks by
Thousands of whims a minute This is
the condition of not thinking Video
game Logos It’s up here The
ordinary red balloon Protecting one’s
others No one is going to sit this close
to the stage
on your face An excited crowd you’re
not in A new reason to fall into out of
love with the festival circuitry
Before he dropped off Became
hamburger A mint before orange soda
Just carrying a beer helmet around
The way a breakup is sometimes more
dramatic for the families Furious save
chances in the dark Before dead of
erstwhile ambition The pulpy center
heats up Pointing the way to some
creator’s half lair Moving slowly
backward in time Tracing path of
Mercury in retrograde And just as
much so
Vessel [Legend Can Have It]
Facts and counterfacts and counter
counterfacts In fragmentia An
ambulance circling the block with lights
on Another ward of conceptual
poverty Leaving ink on the rollers to
gain sentience in drying An homage
that completely misses the particulars
Which recalls not the original but some
itchy facsimile Which decays into so
many bed bugs Decays into
engagement with the arts as though
situated in the middle of finance’s
collapsed universe Which lets no one
escape its event horizon Which, as in
the film of the same name is hell in its
own space On the run from a force of
eternal torment Which is to say
student debt Which is whatever
Which is a summer camp for private
school kids with a hunter-gatherer theme
Which is dirty rice with duck livers and
duck hearts An odd debt to owe this
twirling mote of consumerism Thirty
seconds to go in the Vancouver power
play Except thirty to forty years
before its time and removed from it
completely
Vessel [Unhappy Campers]
Then three wishes from the Game Genie
Post coital in a pre fab The
charm of bar populated by those just this
side of crippling disease Popping pro
teen TV chef reaches into globe and
pulls out geeked flag Throw-back
every day In outer head space In
the Tournament of Champions For
lack of options Getting rid of the ball
Having ball skills Eating a gingerbread
man from between the legs Getting
more out of your waste products
Black felting behind blue wool Off to
a bigger program Leave your contents
at the door And remain still be still
here This stutter in marginal
generosity In porous climates
Burrito search after thunderclap It’s
not only the cosmos that are indifferent
To Hamburger Helper In abstract
Under repentant philanderers But you
are what you eat And I got in the
pizza line every day of high school
Even if routinely denying the unfairness of
past selves on our present salvage The
pointed past With a friend with
benefits without benefit