look away / the instructions are flagging after 30,000 days / the contingency is spent with a familiar whistled tune / all the milestones were dropped off in the desert with no leeway / lessons learned are never repeated / sponsors have fled to more temperate zones / the ice sculpture that heralded the start has returned its form to the puddle on the crosswalk / a new planet drifts into the galaxy intruding upon the sun
skew all data until the top level pops off / its hydra head landing in the pressed laps of the C grade / summaries flash-frozen / chewed to sharpen their molars / do the numbers dance this quarter? / filter air, water, responses, applicants, light / til the projections are as bright as an arcing flare in the backyard
not all dead, die / some snap crackers near your head / as sleep begins its nightly littering / some strip birch bark from your contemplative tree / some lie in the road playing deader / rattling the rust on your daily suspension / not all the dead forget there is air
show the half that hammers the nail into rough cut lumber / leave the smaller half who coined the term “blessed” / who have someone count for them in 1 pt numbers / visible only to the well-afforded eye / meanwhile the former half are contracted to build crosses out of reclaimed wood / catalogued as perfect for any large getogether
for all the suns / a blunted retina as offering to hold your places in rule / sunny repeated mistakes regardless of the world / except for cells refusing to merge / stubbornly stalled in the first stage towards a commonwealth unlit / blink long and dream again suns
this is where I am born / not the near asymmetrical division of cells / allowed through the front door as “us” / but the squirming pattern of blood light through eyelids closed / the erratic numbering of perpendiculars walking over the sidewalk / the notion at sunset spiraling lines to the core of another earth / the word of word dividing larger blinding lunch hour
there’s a box on the step / icicles tear above / and, of course, the new mind with a first day’s layer of dust / worth the wait in seconds to sugar / spoonfuls just before bed / sleeping with customer service / in a water bed filled with sea / and, yes, the mind / surviving the close box cutter above
like an is like an is seems like better like seems is almost seems is is appears as is likely kinda is apparent to is let like be is hold forth
find the oldest eye to roll across the lawn, to distract canines with, to throw three stories up for a plot advance, to scan the water’s horizon peering all the previous bodies shed at the ocean’s ledge, the tide pulls others, even in this office
so goes the I, moving road construction pylons to increase traffic accident data, bleaching penguin classic book spines with SAD lamps, eating only antacids for a positive stomach perspective, painting ladybug spots grey to confuse the natural argument, pausing in the day and dropping a toe into the long, erasing current that accepts all heavy gifts and a fleshy price