Had there been Concord

(as i have mentioned before, i keep this space for revising, allowing poem to morph into different poems, try to break up the preciousness of the "publicized" writing. in my revision, there is a constant rejuvenation of forms--breaking the line in variant ways or shifting from proem to poem--so of course the words keep changing. i like to look at them in these different ways, like a family, I then decide whom to adopt if i may rely on such matronly language)


1.

Practice undoing. Others try to collect the undoing.
One takes heat
for forms spilling into other forms. I separate

our landlady’s pills, placing them in the day or night
container. No deviation. The cat needs to be fed.
I am full and thinking of wolf fish.

In Walden Pond the man caught crawfish, feeding them
to a nearby bass, I thought of casting longer sentences.
To what end? I ask myself. I ask the cat.

2.

You want to feel alongside, and are not convinced.
I change the names since this is not a record. One
wants the feeling, alongside. I am not convinced

anyone is here, with
a lot of practice. My own traps
set.


3.

What is adored is the permeable.
I adore the permeable.
My own desires abstracted

by tracing a headstand on my wall—hundreds of feet high,
toes the onlookers—not the man
on his cell phone who constantly places himself

in public spaces. Placed somewhere to meet someone.
You know, the ones who call themselves. A stranger
skirting the puddingstone or the granite wall,

covered in piss-colored paint, is on the side
I’d normally walk. I need to know
the materials.

4.

Museum-head. The woman
ready to throw her head over the terrace,
since (logical propositions abound)

baby is too large.
You said so yourself.
She looked like me.


5.

The sculpture next to the video
of the sculpture animated.

Stainless Steel. Steel.
Copper. Bronze.

P-a-t-i-n-a.

Worn out, stockpiled
beauty of damage.

6.

Paintings of downloaded images
layered with digital geometrics
gave me the creeps. See a random woman,

random leg, five images in one room
were too much for me.

Permeability.

Do prestigious words
have more legs?

Our progeny
will laugh at words called 50 cents.


6, starting over

Octopus legs regenerate.
He talks of pulling one off, getting lost
in the ink. Keep the spear gun at home.

Sugar at half-mast.
I have no reason.
(Consider weather patterns.)


7.

The can of chirping flipped over
inside the birdcage, and the mechanical parts
floating in oil imparted a jellyfish, an ocean.

The sky
a jellyfish making love to a can
of chirping. Gives the sense of

the point of impact
where Norwegians build
a doomsday repository for seeds.