Water

The emerald is a public ecstasy
of fat bright dirt
this morning. Music

hardened into furniture. The psyche
is either an animal or a candle. Ostensibly the clang
of broadswords. I guess we'll have to wait

for the windows to clear. Meanwhile I would like to rent
a voluptuous problem. Something like birth
or roller skates. Radar

flung into a portrait of sound
Blue green algae. Open cell chlorella
The forearm of Robert De Niro

pulling a suspender. Maggie Pickles' daylighting strategies
regenerate the sledgehammer
as a logarithm

linked to transcendence. It was good to see
the fountain working again. All those bubbles
rattling nasturtiums of meaning

like beatniks. What is lamentable
is often horizontal. Impartial
as the color red. Music develops

according to its own laws. Water
in Mahler. Catfish
in the Mississippi. Bric-a-brac

in Boca Raton. Consciousness
cries out for a surface. A lake
like a front yard

festooned in Christmas lights. Desire is strange
sometimes we want what we can't have
& it turns out to be free

of meaning. Some sums simmer all summer
while some sums summon Sumatra. All those packets
in racks at the hardware store that claim to be petunias

& chrysanthemums & marigolds
are probably true. But what I like about shadows
are vallies. The unconscious

strikes me as a form of blueprint, most of which correlates
with the open air. But to be really abstract
requires a chimera. A cradle. A crackle. And a camera made of water

Neglect

A mess
is not a thing but a process. What

I like about a mess is its hills
& robustness. Its robustness of hills

& dinosaur eggs hatching
obsolete data. A town like Zillah

Washington, or the fragrance of rain
as the skydivers come down

against a background of thunderstorm purple
& pale gold light between hills. Now that's

a real mess. A brood
of camels in an abyss. Rimbaud

shouting bones & blood on a dromedary
ripsaws! jalapeño! ecstasy!

middle-aged man's receding hairline
a human mess. A pained expression

in the basket
of an Arizona balloon. The gas

needs adjusting. Nevada
is the opposite of the violin, but Arizona

is a piece of Spain
an infant on a woman's lap

Alpaca brought to a boil
& undulating in the hand

like a woman walking past
a glass case full of Eocene

shells. A spray
of water from the tires

on a semi barreling down the freeway
is an idiom

of certitude. But it's wrong
to furnish a room with eclairs. Language, unlike paint

emerges from a pile of laundry

like a frontier of thought, flute statistics
& all the meanings lying around

in the word for 'sleek'