one whisper network

Uncomfy with the prospects

Of lines and leakage

And perhaps exercise

The failed dissenters pop and lock to the rhythm of a wild frontier

Not of the subtle body

They go on making deals with lead feet

Untoward signs

Like Barthes in the bay stacks

Stocking up on limericks

Or little trappings, whisking away the feather heft

Shaving what may off an omnipresence
I steel myself against the sound of

Fingers clapping, mapping on my door

Once upon a time, happenstance accorded faithfully

The rise-up of these blinds

While over in the next window, it’s Valentine’s Day

In one fell sentence was Cupid made to depart

For the love of Psyche

It was only the mystery about it that so perturbed me

A physics of consequences, sure

But it bore a salacious holographic shimmer

Akin to Terry Gilliam’s signature lipstick shade

Purple, then bored, then manic

Then back to green

If only he wrote better parts for women

Yes, longing

Why can’t I yearn like I used to?

I would hope to be lovely, like a thing too untroubled

To find any more

Of a level, a bevel, a one-two-four

But that’s no more than Saran wrap in the scheme of wishes

And all the while little white paper clips persist with their existence

And why, for instance, haven’t the beauties been disbarred?

Their verve mislaid, they mistook how to plan it

And so the globe was not set right

Or was it the plight of the atlas

To troll through the miseries of days and lives?

Oh well, there goes Kiribati!

And the sitting lamb

All woolly white

Loafing beneath the downward-destined swords

Taking inventory

Of your Adam’s apple

A view so apprehended it seemed heaven-sent

A term I throw about knowing nothing of heaven

Except my first world problems

Are those enough?

At thirty-four I’m still new to myself

Corporeal and macabre

Accepting equal distributions after all this time

The cadence sways toward Spanish sketches

White ink on black Post-It notes

Adhesion worn the fuck out

With levels up and in, sour and umami

Narratives decay in the time it takes

For U.S. civil infrastructure to crumble

Thence to conform to the lowest common

Denominator of dreams

A kidnapping of the fore

Exhort us, preach

Tell us what you really think!

Witness the crooked struts

Through a world which traipses most elegantly

With teleological glee

And a twinge of bioluminescence

Toward a world without us

Save Narcissus and Goldmund

Who keep on keepin’ on

Cultivating those feeling-tones

All karmically bright and such

Samsara unfolds with an idler drama

Than Netflix would ever option

But that’s okay

I cultivate different amusements

For instance

My rubberband ball is the man I long for

Helping me dull-bounce against the gravel floor

The Buddha head dimglistens its porcelainarity

As paper flowers drop their pistils

One by one, weighted down by dust

The candle takes the tune in a tizzy

A doll head rusts in spots and smiles

And all these books look about to bow out

To the ‘gentle descent of a lead melody’

The card awaits a write:

“Look closely”

I might say

“I am crowded

I am encumbered to the bone”

My hygrometer exposes a steamy state

While the air plant’s had a dry spell

Awaiting the beck and call to jump in

To the puddle outside

Above which telephone lines shudder

And knotted boughs nearby nod jauntily

Gust per gust

Awesome pendulums beneath the streetlight

Conveniently, my eyes weaken to bring in

Candescence, the soft ecru orbs that play upon my corpus shade

I beg so for balance applied o’er the balustrade

Parting at the seam is a list of flickers

All bearing monikers seeming for an instant to spell out

No, nothing

One might pour them down the drain

Whatever happens

Will have happened

Or whatever

Or, rather, “what-have-you,” which has a finer tone

Than whatever, forever and ever, amen

Such a host of winsome weights

As tether me to lucidity

Yes, I can see out

I can see

Eclecticizing mantras hither and there

I come into sight of

A line that invites me, incising repeatedly

Repeatable, into infinity:

ride it on, baby