Something New
Thinning as I believe
I've not yet hit my prime.
Show me a Man who thinks this way;
we are alone at ease and alone in mind.
***
Lihghgt
Art should be made in a hurry
Out of the World
one layer of de Kooning
References atop references
unconcerned if they are met
Simply tools
to emote
***
The World
My waffling is not indifference,
but a sign of my love for the world
***
With Myself
Only alone is our love or indifference for the world clear.
Stuck in our heads,
we are baffled
when others cannot understand what we feel.
***
The sidewalk
Eye contact
is coercive
A city of downlookers
is the only locale
truly free of despots
***
Untitled
Why do you
turn your cheek?
Is it shame?
Adversarial?
I suspect
my own animation
did not help,
but I said something true.
And it could be
that polite society would
implicate me,
which makes
your cold shoulder
an even greater betrayal.
***
Alone again
I work to wallow and muse.
Fears from last night stream
into my head now:
the lone stone needs company.
***
Ars Erotica
When I was little
I thought they placed two ends of a glass bottle
around an already complete ship.
No no,
you need that smaller piece
to rig the ship in place.
Do you think,
when castaways send messages in a bottle,
they send a thousand, and only one is found?
Or do you really just believe
that one attempt was lucky enough to find a recipient?
I'd say just one,
I'm a pessimist, though.
***
The Man Machine
I achieved what I set out to
and I have nothing left to say.
The machine of life
keeps whirling, though.
Can I justify myself
without art?
Analysis?
Producing?
Is my experience of the world enough?
Is experience alone enough?
The question must follow:
could you consider love an art?
***
Oxytocin
Why hike the mountain?
An equal number of French Canadians
and dried fruit Americans
passed us by as we clamored up rocks, falls,
and into a great white cloud.
The Quebecois passed a hunk of cheese between them
as they rested on the first summit,
becoming silhouettes when we had finished
our sandwiches and moved into the next stretch of white abyss.
Why hike? Why pursue sex?
For the strange New Hampshire diner after packing the tents;
the sprawled conversation between sleepy lovers.
My companions did not particularly like the comparison.
Miles of shale-like not-shale, green hills, purple flowers, lookouts
are beautiful and difficult for the passersby on foot
the reason we tell ourselves we hike and indeed the most important
but not why we go, in the end.
All I could think of was the wheat hair at home
speaking to me from tomorrow.
***
Alonefruit
Are we computational at our core?
Vaguerythought and leaves,
flattened to understand one another,
question whether there is truth underneath.
Birding with another,
the complexities attracting her
are lost on me.
But walking alone the morning after,
indistinct avians speak to me in chorus;
I smile then and now.
***
Dolma
Dilapidated grape leaves
strung out from the fence
leave us in suspence,
each year forgetting if they're perennial.
***
Globefruit
A yellowing slip with which
one can imagine seeds,
light, soft dark impressions
for cross-pollination
hidden by its still-green shell.
I hear you were sweeter
when my parents would eat you.
A 9th grade project,
a classmate fed us some tea
alongside you.
Kenya,
they said,
they spoke as we ate,
not listening, teenagers,
wishing for something sweeter.
***
The museum
We enjoy the company of old things
never asking to be seen.
Instead, they lie waiting for our presence,
somehow uninterested in us,
testaments to themselves.
What happened, happened,
and our discovery of the past
can really only make it worse.
***
Untitled
To say as much would miss the point.
Isn't it clear in my eyes?
Isn't it clear in my hands?
Even how the trees bloom
outside my window?
She doesn't change how I see the world,
she changes the world itself.
***
Fruit
And our flesh was made one
two becomes one
begins as it's one
between us as one,
the poem is done.