I READ NEWSPAPER IN THE GYM

I coughed that last time, remember?
And went non-stick in the gym – I
hated the place first time I laid eyes
on it; built a self-teaching machine
from all the barbells –

went manual in the medicine ball corset
because I couldn’t trust it handing my
head and shoulders back after submerging
in the wet newspaper of shed cells.

Because a cough is a sea mine
with corks skewered by the spines.
Roll it across a wad of bubblegum –
it rolls unimpeded, like a ghost’s breath
steamrolled through bread crumbs.

Fever’s automation was disabled.
Suddenly it became a plume; like, suddenly
there was a plume walking my glands
like roadkill on a fucking leash.
Blocked on electronic spinal cord;
grappling with piercings in the blood.

HOW WE SEE BEASTS THAT AREN’T THERE

In river towns, they balance sludge.
Then there’s this other innovation: scissors
subdividing floods, a kind of folksy miner’s trick
imitated by seamstresses working on gold tables
and snipping cloth all the way till they strike
gold, and all the kids swap necklaces, and the odd
number hears it: the relevant boo.

Always some poor little sucker loses out...

All the snickers drowned after dark.
I understood that chimeras are designed
to keep beasts retinal, to keep them 
plausibly undulating below the water’s skin,
though some biologist will always try
to wake the data again.

A SHIELD THAT DOUBLES AS A CAR

wrapping bad apples in surgical drapes
they won’t stop knocking the retro reflector

in which my head and gait and comportment
and all my riches furiously scuttle about

to catch that chirpy voiced aesthetic
to jump into the stationary woman

dissolving bone marrow standing near the
friskiest prognosis, synchronizing debris

to rest their toothpaste

get hit by your street smarts – your wall-sniffing canister

‘thanks doctor-society-loves-you-its-in-their-graffiti-ribs
‘quack-quack’

the importance of using blanket craft:
ambivalence is my ninja star
fuzz in teeth my collision

you should see when mudscreen blocks time!

curious about your shooting eating recycling nancy

curry runs straight through the light-concentration
i was going to go as a plastic band
now i’m going as diarrhea

working this time!
it
is
working this time!
the little bug on the geared rotor!

dropped friends off
where the yoga position crashed
and felt calm and black and white driving home

when that – i.e. zero decision-making acumen –
and the thrrp thrrp
of flames on the celebration of corduroy pants
usually add to the bunion’s woes

GREATER THAN GATSBY

Beauty travel involves troubled pathways.
I caught its innovator, who said to me:
‘Meet my desperation.’ 

On the overpass of overweight,
in the wind of the fan of reckless appendages,
under the shower of lolling pores,
just lounging around in organized clotting.

I enjoyed playing the cut off leg, and getting
pwned by my dream job – holding out for misery,
I guess, my prank on the genius who came up with
the model of that perfect laudable delectable
bedside table which IN FACT may surpass Gatsby –
master of old sneakers, deliverer of fans
to their handsomer richer flirtier selves,

architect of their declining interest in
him, screwer of the banana smoothie.

THE ARK, I THINK POROUSLY

The ark is not a credible vessel, but it
was spotted, a paradoxical stratospheric
dungeon boat. Though it rocked microbes better
than livestock, it was also the last carousel,
sandwiched between the role of fun fabricant
and particle streamer.

Who knows how employee training was meant
to go down, or how the thing lost its sight so that
road markings could exist unimpeded?

It was onboard this vessel that Kellogg’s
made bears safer, where indiscretions
played in a fountain leaking from the
dry-cleaning – what some people say about it

rivals gull gore others see from their hotel
beds, saw it returning to an oral Paris
and disgorging experimental sounds in death.
They climbed aboard the mere thought of

the apartment complex’s beetroot rugs.
He owes a stuntman an explanation, and meat –
he could give it in a tisket, in a building-sized basket –
but what happened to the great towering waves
definitely contained irony, and cheapened the bathtub
in which he got cynically drunk.

And news about his layoff for asserting morgue brain
for entertainment and for making frivolous
komodo dragons and monkey skateboards
survived hyperbole and entered a fugue
state with the ocean level. 

An experience of a lifetime passes by – gets
off with obsolescence-happy meat and straw
and smelly pesticides and looking forward, drawn,
non-existent oars working harder than guerilla gardening.

TRON

parody of
blank canvass

plotting of
aromatic
flood

drum up
deviation

birthday acorns
or
expansive
death device?

model pose
tourist

typically far less
fish
ghostly trash bags

describe
asshole disconnect

tavern
aurora borealis

scarecrow
parfait

asleep while
thumb-wrestling

fallout
goes up and down
like large atom
crotchet

geek jersey
except for 1st law
and ziggurat wool

which they’ll obey, they’ll
remind being:
mutinying kombucha

organic plotting
boots
to plug rainy cabin-
spying

train station
remote
drew near with a bang

dating icebergs
in destroyer jacket OR
fishnet around dogs

espresso border IS
a harp’s g-string serenading
low cloud rest

energy commercial
snot about emotions

designing less
freshmen girls

eyepatch
surfing

for the parents they
had tontos
grin-conceal

kiosk aftercare
with jelly babies
in the other hand

singed
medical experiment

hypocrisy is
commitment to phototonics

the payback:
TRON carpetburn

PUNCH DRUNK

the dank, funny music that resonates down your spine
when you walk drunkenly, at night, through a clothesline,
the ketchup behind your eyes when thumbed
by a glenn danzig hitchhiker,

despite the backyard’s inner strength, a square,
pulls-no-punches view attempts passage through
the exoskeletons of patio furniture and bird feeders,

paintball castration, your squishy vision synthesizing
a highway of quantum backflips, numbed axe cells
chopping the air, forming a fake pixel pavement

the snoring the next morning on
your back in the grass eliciting whiskered whimpers
and yips and saber drool

‘don’t be afraid’
says either the dog’s head or the sun behind
the dog’s head, or the collective inconvenience
you try to dose with wild aimless slaps