People I have not seen for a long time
will recognize me instantly.
What kind of transformation is that?
What kind of life-threatening syndrome?
How many erasures have I rubbed apart
to still be this same smudge?
Someone else has already written this poem
so I’m gonna relax.
The whole mousetrap in the darkness of life thing.
The beautiful circles wrecked to compose all things thing.
The rustproofing the undercarriage ruse.
After a while you have to stop listening
to people telling you you need more insurance.
You live across the street from the fire-station,
even that sort of excitement dies out.
You can sleep through anything
and the whole never waking up thing.
The meadow turned yellow by eternal longing.
Who believes in that sort of shit?
Me apparently.
Apparently that was me writing on the blackboard
the Keats quote about rioting in luxurious imagination.
With enough nitrous oxide I can leave my cavitied body in the chair
and cross to the stationery store
and buy sticker roses from the one-armed cashier.
If magnesium sulfate is brought into contact with a molybium substrate
a most wondrous glow is produced.
Myriad the throttling of sunlight upon this earth.
Which too glows.
Which too is made of glass,
winged beings diaphanous above the summer corpse.
My darlings, all my darlings, is there a song
you have yet to shatter me with?
Golden is the shutter of the sea.
These chains too conspire our salvation.