Poetry
four
I had a dream with the poet willie perdomo
it was a full-on hangout with you last night in a dream we were on the corner of Second and 49th
watching a cartoon show on my laptop set down on the sidewalk a compilation of 2D Bugs Bunny in
Pixar-land with commercials between each
the rest of the people in our crowd had gone inside one of the buildings leaving us after dinner in the
building was a lobby with a bowl of paste-on three-headed eyeballs an apartment door left open where a
party was no music maybe we were taking a break
from the party or maybe we stumbled upon it the night was clear with us standing on the street over the
laptop not bending to get a better view to see what we could without effort was the hangout many bags of
fast food at our feet don’t know how many hours
we’d been there but there were more unopened ones waiting while the cartoons played on the laptop the
commercials were all highly produced animations of apartments with glossy highlights and bright
interiors it seemed that the commercials
were meant to provide a home for the viewer who didn’t have one who may have been watching the
commercials on a street and wished there were walls and picture frames and dogs and surfaces they could
clean and claim as their own
I came to this awakening and thought I should tell you but then the commercial was over and I said I just
thought of something but I’ll tell you later you were focused on the screen there on Lexington and said
like whatever but I was on Second and said whatever back
this episode had characters we’d never seen on a flat dimension no CGI which threw us off when finished
I closed the laptop your head was shrouded in a goggle-hoodie of yellow with black shoulder-shrug I said
I think commercials are for lonely people
whose night is just starting now and want some sense of home and order you said well I have more
confidence than that and exposed your bald head to the street lamps and passing headlights making the
city a revolving galaxy bouncing off your head
suddenly defending my own insight I explained how smoothed-out Pixar had made conflict and how we
were in a world without edges reflecting our slow emotional descent you said you started writing poetry
to calibrate people on street corners I said I bought
Mad magazines my computer somehow surviving the debris of a moonless night you know how to string
rhymes together I dared three students came out of the building with the party followed by a classless
teacher they all pointed at us I quickly
tidy up the junk food at our feet into one convenient bag in that same motion you swooped into the lobby
and came out with many three headed eyeballs pasted on your shaved head the street we were on had
become a slight hill they all gathered speed
as they walked by us quickly or maybe we had always been downhill you on Lexi me on Second my
laptop folded you told me the first words you ever rhymed that’s when I knew it was time to go and
thought about a cab but where would I drop you off
you said either no or you’d walk or nothing as we hug slapped five said love things and I wondered about
someone else a long time ago on that same corner who I dropped off and tagged graffiti underground
never seeing light again
I thought of you again and how endings to poems are nothing like life and thought of him again how
endings to life are nothing like poems
: yer'clipse :
dont lose so much of yurself yu know
yur life is precious dont give so much of yurself
yu know yur life is precious dont lose
a light on yurself yu know yur time is precious
dont hold a light on yurself yu know
that shine is vicious
dont leave it all on a shelf yu know
yur soul is precious dont take it all on yurself
yu know yur so delicious dont let
yur fissures erode yu know yur mountain mission
dont ever loosen yur hold yu know
yur fallen edges
dont sylla-battle yur roam yur words
are such a treasure dont savage-jabber yur po'm
yur will yur why yur measure dont be
the one to believe yur life’s a crystal lesson
dont feed yur flutter yur flow to sing
yur fallen feather
dont elevate yur crawl just lower
yur inhibitions dont be the one to believe
yur mission is only position dont leave
it all in a dream yur rise is what yur wishin’
dont take it all on yurself yur mornin’s
in yur vision
dont leave a listen alone the light
yu steal is precious dont luminesce yur howl
yur soma summons heaven yur suffer
a savior savante a seller’s seven seconds
yur simile severs a saint a soul
in need of heaven
dont be so hard on yurself yur sorrow
sounds ambitious dont say yur less'n yurself
yur feelin’ so malicious dont lose
so much of yurself can yu see yur solo precious
the rhythm a rapid refrain can yu see
a solo presence
yu know yur life is precious yu know yur
so delicious yu know yur life is precious
yu know yur so delicious yu know yur life
is precious yu know yur so delicious yu know
yur life is precious yu know yur so delicious
skry is a delicate ocean
my ear — weeps
for a time gone by
or is that what sound does
to the angled tonic
where the origin you
what you
you choose — speaks
of unseen you
a difficult shun
to speak — of the unseen
is to love
unbearably linguistic
our compression of distance: vii
people want to own what they aspire to be
to refract through immersion
what it takes — to be owned
I am placing myself on a cover of a book I wrote
to become what I imagine
by reading through it
I am placing myself on the pages
of the thing I hold
to be sure — that someone will hold me
in return
to confirm the one
in the hand of another
how I think my mind — into words
what it is I have thought and been and dropped
how these movements — through time
have identified a space I have owned
how my page is who I am
when you hold me
no confusion no doubt
what is being held — is not
the story of the person
holding the page
but the story of another — in the hand
of another
there is clarity in the mission
of both hands
a clear image — of who has the ideas
in these pages
to be clear — in the hand of the not-writer
the image of the person who is the writer
will be clear —
the perception of the crystallized horse
underneath the person
is not
to mobilize refraction
— but to read through it