bogey

~ i. ~ i see sly comedy — jade hues; sin, shun, trust undress us the heat join duly my secession (o; n) thunder us ashes “yes yes” juts in melodic (h) i closed my eyes just as the sun rushed in ~ ii. ~ suns and dollars of faded fortune your marginal prophets ended in nothing more than a bucket of buttered cop porn god bless a marigold ~ iii.~ fingers to skin space between forearm bones smooth warmth liver pushed lungs growing air through nose tilt of shoulder strain tendon dull knowing ~ iv. ~ i separate myselves pulling from corners two hanging bedsheets still damp and clinging having been in the breeze blown together their weave with scrutiny pull-plucked pursuant these so tactile sensations of selfness

i'm sitting inside a domed thicket, picking mulberries from the ceiling and eating them i'm hosting a wake in a classroom where i went to a series of lectures about magnets i'm looking at my fresh new mullet in the mirror i'm driving through the perpetual I-290 construction outside o'hare and there's a piece of plywood with 'HI PAUL' spray painted in big pink letters i'm rolling a giant, peeled, soft-boiled egg up a big dirt hill, and when i roll it down the other side i end up at a grocery store that i can only shop at if i join their religious cult i'm crying into a bowl of soup in a vietnamese restaurant i'm driving someone to laguardia but the google maps directions take us through the open doors of a concert hall and the conductor has been waiting for me to start the rehearsal i'm sitting at a picnic table with funko pop harry potter i'm walking a very long way down the highway before stopping to take a bath i'm smoking a pack of marlboro reds

what's left to do the undone and the undoing left to say was unsaid is and unsaying left against to being are and how is it in your new apartment it'll be a while until i can visit and you never gave me the address left to hold unthinking and was left to will unleaving and they're gonna bury me in this body i just know it but the box won't fit the both of us the frame can’t bear the weight you might tire of the nearness but how could they speak of us either without the other? left to wonder how is it all really decided the concrete and copper the flour and lemon peel i walked past a vigil last night unnamed by candles many unnaming and i cried not for her but for that great failure of imagination through which we find ourselves separated by such distances

remember when we drove together from maine to san antonio? when we found lovers for a night in greece? i had no respect for you i don’t need to respect the sky for it to be as it is and neither for me insultándome por todos lados así fue entiendes? i have memories of the future that we’ll never hold when we drove down to texas and danced in patras

. l e u wfh a t 'ns t s t h e u n dao nbe a n d t i e o d i n d l e f t i t g o ws a y w a s o s a , a s h a r n o n e ' w d t l e f tt a g aii n s t t o u o m s h o w i s ni t teh a t i t s a i a n t y d i t w ais n ' t n g ,

it wasn't so much in the telling as the forgetting neither so much in the said as the didn’t-wasn’t all red velvet and softness of bruised flesh whose neither seams might some bursting forth contain with my lack lies no luster of further sweetness was für ein großartiger Chor sie jetzt sind that's all to say and

i borrowed the book i don't remember from who but preparing for a second reading i found it with torn spine pages in scattered rearrangement into words ripped each rent for symbols pressed t' pulp and poured anew into a great grey page.

and what about lazarus' second time around? es gibt viele laute, less wist and longing hay muchas imágenes, die ich nie gelernt habe now whose vices y tampoco no puedo aprenderlas todas left verses?

i took the train to the end of the line. i forgot it was easter so everything in town was closed. paschal megachurch how can zacchaeus come down to repent at the cross from the balcony seating and with all these fog machines? strip mall resurrection all urgency without spectacle i jumped off a pier into a still, cool lake. i walked through the cloud of pigeons eddie was feeding and he greeted me with his usual “hey, my brother”. i lost my wallet. a train ticket beverwijk to amsterdam the two dollar bill marc gave me at portillos before we walked to the top of arrowhead hill and looked at the sky half a ticket to the castro theater a pen sketch portrait on the back of a bakery receipt i was given a pair of fishnet thigh highs by a stranger at a party. i think i broke my foot. i made a print from a photograph that i first saw in chicago probably six years ago. i found my wallet. it was under the cushion of oma's chair. i accepted an airdropped photo riding the M train over the bridge. i think it was taken in M&M’s World New York on 48th and broadway. i stood neck deep in the prairie and watched the fireworks.

looked at clockwise through the tall grass, hallowing grains at cattails’ sederunt. speak simply, whether i remain in bending surface hidden or am more clearly in the still water seeing.

a o’ tac’ pin e’er id ’n’ let been s’ ar’ s’s h’ve g‘gst b’n gu’lt in aid o’ pact ‘een gullet ’n’ be’ng ar’ s’ th’s b’ verse’ g‘st born this pace t’ be instead ‘e’ slug’s late g’vern’ngs thistle or else stand but paces’ graven begin’ngs but still there's space and stone begs engraving

cuando llegue a casa i'll sew another button onto that checkered shirt roughness over left cheekbone moist outer corner of right eyelid söhne gehen weg aber töchter bleiben but what would have become of the second daughter?

i spoke last night and uttered unscrupulous a father’s voice. now more observant words are by the moment's friction or hapless stricture held; and you, fomenting phonics, have my uncle’s chin.

excepting some essence, no censor excels; but take measure and care to make as a true retreat, you, boy ushered in so by unfinishedness. there at frame's corner, faces or near names to parity blink impressions of action's blind presence.

lost the spinning fervor of images, even motion concedes that it at bottom is stillness too. brought a ticking halt, each arc revealing the skip and stutter. give me transformation on that scale, no more sweeping momentums.

i only wanted to look in the well but ended up deeper than expected the pinhole camera hiding a widening panorama. i only waded in to expel the holy pretext of windows and cellophane.

~ i. ~ you gave me a wooden puzzle you made as a boy, but in my hands it forgot its charade, and the pieces from a distance look like nothing in particular. if only objects could be their simple selves, not these avoidant encyclicals borne half the conviction, bound up none of the coherence. yet left myself to unforget, a circle is the least of my worries. by and by, lord, by and by. ~ ii. ~ i'm trying to write something about dirt and gravity and how when a lot of dirt moves a certain way it gets a name from an old god despite being just dirt and that i get a name too despite being myself only a loose collection. what a very vague taxonomy. something about Adam and the dust of the earth. it's not very good yet. ~ iii. ~ i heard an echo scatter dense from the white corner where the foyer wall meets the ceiling, but i couldn’t recognize its maker.

i bit into the lime because it seemed the right thing to do and found inside piecemeal images in place of sour flesh. the moonlit side of a nose, a hand reluctant on the staircase railing. how many seasons careful nurture gave rise to this hollow cultivar?

i biked in the park on just the right day when the leaves were changing and the air was light. i played music i wrote on opa’s organ loud in his living room in the way he used to hate. i climbed to the top of a very tall hill and ate a cannoli. god i love cannolis. i heard the church bell tower toll nine and wondered why i was still in bed. it played a hymn i recognized so i listened and looked at the ceiling. i found half a pair of dentures in the ocean. i cried hard in front of my dad for the first time since i can remember. i ate a sandwich outside of a venue i was about to go to alone. i did this many times. the show was always good, not so for the sandwich. i drew a picture of my toes and recognized them. i took nana back to a room that wasn’t hers and told her i knew what it was like to feel crazy. she asked if it was because i felt i disappointed my parents. i stood under a fire escape in the rain and listened to my neighbor play the same honky tonk piano riff over and over again. i drank too much with people i love and freed some of my dwindling collection of secrets into public knowledge. i woke up in a tent with no rainfly, wrapped in a slow, clear wind from the lake. that was a good morning. i looked at myself upside down in a very clean spoon.

you used my name as your own in the blank unmotion of morning so by the time i was awake it was lost to swail or swallow

have you heard the one about soap on the cathedral steps? of a body’s rise to burgeoning dusk? i still wear the ring, to say nothing of Marangoni or his fingers. or maybe you’ve heard the one about that selfsame substance? of mothers and communion? if only the old man had anticipated a counter offer i would have quietly unbestowed a few things, the ring not least among them. even yet it lacks its old impression.

i have a letter to send but the mailbox rusted shut last tuesday after the rain. so i buried it in the yard hoping another storm might pull it from the dirt and carry it to its rightful recipient.