Hold the breaths of many

A strange unevenness inhabits
the usual landscape today.
As if someone had tried to trace
the lines where things stop
and other things begin
with a shaky hand.

The gravestones are glowing
like twilights on their blood-green hill,
but something there has been scribbled out
with a heavy chisel.

The living walk the streets speechless,
unable to greet each other,
unable to stop walking.
Their reflections pause in shop windows
and fidget nervously with their pants.
Their bodies keep right on moving.

And I, I who once had thoughts
and ambitions, have become a container
for a nineteen-yr-old girl's beauty,
and I do nothing but sketch her form on
every available surface, as every surface
becomes less and less available.

Tires are approaching on the highway--
their sound has blended with the air
until the air rolls on terrible wheels
and trucks the silence into a further silence

while each moment wails like a woman
being raped backwards in time,
coming closer to the moment before invasion.
If we can all hold our breath long enough--
if someone with lungs like sails
can hold it for us--her body, our city, will be rebuilt
on an unending column of crayon-white air

A new experience for unbeginners

someday there will be an ocean surrounding you
air transformed instantaneously into water
your body will be floating upwards
you'll be looking at it
it'll bounce lightly off the taller buildings
like a fish hook
dragging along a coral reef
getting caught in a few places, then pulling loose
the colors flowing through the water
will make your body cast a shadow--
the shadow will be you,

asking:
what did I do with that old pair of shoes?
had they worn out already?

Post-apocalypse daydream party

The porch is made of human bone, and humans
walk upon it, drinking beer. Their insides are made of beer.
The party is ascending toward the pines. The brisk smell
thickens and aches. Several couples join hands, others refuse.
Monkeys with computer monitor heads climb in the branches,
their bodies freshly imported, their heads replaced by circuitry.

The backyard, impacted by a friendly meteor,
is being filled with slimy, healthy swampland.
Translucent eggs mutter silently in the water,
thinking of swimming. The muck thickens.
The heart of the black pond glows with a golden echo.

After a long day at work

I feel that most people, when they speak to me,
are daring me with their eyes
to scream out loud
and punch myself in the face.

When I am about to be spiritually smashed
into leafy pieces
by an orange & white restaurant,
colored like a sick wasp, that falls
on me from the lowest part of the sky,
its structure intact--

then I know it's time to fake a seizure,
to roll a marble off the tip of my tongue & wait
for several of my one true loves
to slip on it one after the other, passing it
painfully from foot to foot;
to save the raw material of my heart
in my left lung, beating hard--

You create me, I create you, we create nothing

And what if I learn to enjoy everything, including the bombs?
What if prison rape is my pop music?
If I take pleasure in watching my best friend stoned to death?
If I help the crowd stone him to death?
What if I relish seeing the paintings of, say,
Marc Chagall, burned in piles?
What if I throw that girl who I've been eyeing
(the one I'm developing a huge crush on,
the one who touches water fountains tenderly,
who touches everything tenderly)
into those flaming, colorful piles of oil and paper?
What if I prefer the endless and diseased
breeding of everybody? What if I applaud you
for starving your own children
and gutting those who distribute condoms
with bayonets?
What will you do then,
Vice Secretary Ultrasecret Police Comissioner Shitfuck,
to amuse yourself at my expense?
Will you swallow your own head by turning it halfway
inside-out and jamming it into your mouth, covered in jelly,
like a dog's favorite tennis ball?

First time in the backseat

this parking lot is a UFO, these streetlights are
what drives it on through space, humming

melodies that only egg-shaped heads
can understand, melting through their own chests

as breasts become eyes and eyes become breasts
staring from a sweet little nowhere we have planned--

your hair seems happy to be
on the head of such a beautiful woman--

the parted apple-halves of your ass seem to be

saying: now we're going to have some fun
in what remains of the world.

Gentle to me

Gentle to me, dear Stefanie, gentle to me.
Your eyes open like twin violets in the terrible morning.
Your bed is a mild maroon and the sunlight streaks it
like a man whipped half-transparent before his crucifixion.
You brought me eggs and cheese all night to eat
in my red wine stupor. Now my body is foul
with the smell of cheese and you don't complain.
Drag me to the showers. We're all in the wrong century.
Our lovemaking is quite a new thing, we think.
Time is a magazine. Your body is only as violent
as an ocean wave that never crashes. I like
the cleansing salt of its backward embrace.
I find only three ways into you, none through
your wrinkleless but concerned smooth
half-Italian forehead. You can't
find your way into me. I can't find
my way out of your bed.