The Superstitious Prayer

Walking eyes, the painting hangs silent and still. My

imagination moves it. The milk pours. The dragon dies.

The king coughs. The sunflower looses its color and

dries. Ran over a nail in the snow, now the tire is flat.

I photograph a famous bench. I would have take your

picture, but you could not lift your veil. I understand.

Children march bare-kneed to the sound of a tin drum.

In the background you can hear paper being shredded.

We know how to learn. Any dufus can change a tire

and/or feed the chickens. Only gods can play the tuba.

Great-grandfather Rice taught us to Sake, so what’s

it to you? I’ve seen champagne bubble in the sunset.

The Iron-Wheeled Tractor

What a beautiful icon. Is it of you? I think it could be.

I know you’ve been worshipped. Holy-Moly, woman.

A million little virus can kill an ox. Cold wet feet

make my nose stop up. If you loved me you’d rub

them. As for the ox, he’s lying in state. Your icon

cries tears of real blood. I double-cross myself,

once for each thief. We’ll party like communist,

another five year plan. Plow under the bottom line.

The Agra-chemical company designs biotech

plants and marvelously proportioned minarets.

There’ll be trouble in the stubble after the boss

finds out who got his goat. I love you, little girl.

33. Simple Vowels

Selfish reasons, when something, like a flight of steps,
injures you, it is for selfish reasons. Things want attention.

Strange though, for them to be real you cannot think
about them. Except insofar as thought is an experience.

Thought is not innocence. They tell us angels dance on
the head of a pin, but do they ever get to the point!

I've embarassed myself. I make cinnamon toast in the
toaster oven. I take off my socks and turn the TV on.

I cleaned house and ironed shirts, even a linen table
cloth. The boss called and I told her about snow devils.

I cooked red rice and black beans. The person in the
back bedroom has been quiet for over a month.

32. Molecules

There are two things that we have in common. We are both
full of something, and we think that the color blue is a sky.

Does this bus have far to go? Ants and gnats plan a picnic.
We are invited, and that is why I have this mayonnaise.

Help me with this, will you? Instructions, directions, parts
lists, a simple tool, loss in translation and enlightenment.

Thank you. I want to talk some. I think there are mountains.
There bath is ready. The lecture goes on without me.

Knowledge lives in a ghosts. Birds fly over the snow.
Drummers sit quietly in their vans and wiggle their eyelids.

Tomorrow may be more real than we want it to be
judging by the sound of automatic gunfire. Communicate.

31. Metaphor Is Different

The idea comes like a bus, always a little late. You wait.
You finger the fare. You warm coins and sheild your eyes.

You want to talk some more. Everyone is between class.
Everywhere is unwalkable grass. Perfumes waft like a girl.

The sun speaks, the wind gestures to the trees. The clues
come unglued. Seems I hear French, a boy's converstation.

This composition takes on the characteristic of a striped
awning under which we find ourselves standing yawning.

I feel alien in this history. You should be more comfortable
having time to think about as you do. Guess I just hung up.

Man, if I could understand how your lips work, how your
hands make signs when you pause, I could fingure it out.

Notes to a Textbook of Poetry

30. What Thing Is

My memories are used. You chewed pixels and spat them out
like a kind of code, not the orange chair but the word for it.

Here we sit in divine love. A smoke screen divides the meaning
from the ending. That really sounds to me. That really sounds too.

Me, simply a reflection, incipient intermittency reificated in static.
This icecube melts. This drink dilutes. Yes, you are really you.

That's the end. If you didn't have time to finish/vanish worry.
Don't worry. Eyes in the woods follow you down the path.

You come to the source. It looks like a boulder, a large stone.
It must have been here a long time by the growth of moss.

Take a picture if you think you can pay for it. Fake an image
if you have the memory for it. I can smell the rock. Hear it.