SUNDAY MORNING

I love my life. You repeat this to yourself in writing and by you
I mean of course me. I do this—let's not speak of it again—
the self-disclosure of a man in the grips of a beloved tradition
and a grueling apprehension awoken by a dog vomiting his bed.

The simple trick to a spirit retrieval is asking the thing if it wants
to return, at least for now, if you can locate the poor ghost
in its meandering habitus and rightly order the right words
but one must be open to being put off, again and again, in that

you have to talk to the parts within yourself as if they were real
people: which they are. At some point the droll wayward pull
of intransigent significance cozies up to the unrealized particulars
and bam: some may call it healing but the truth is (I'm not

afraid to be the one to break it to you) one only notices growth
when it's already too late. My old man's old man would stroll back
from his job as a grinder mid-afternoon, across the bridge along
the tracks and come in slamming the back door, with dinner

often waiting. I cannot account for the architectural accuracy
but in my dream of my father's parent's house its Sunday, too,
and I'm seeking a way out even though I know it's bulldozed
now and all that remains is my wonder at how small the lot is.

Even an atomic clock is likely to run out one day but will anyone
be around to see what that kind of real extension looks like
now that Ashbery is dead; will anyone ever again keep not stop
going on in quite the same way? Note to myself: get the Ouija

next time you go to the office but really would be fine if never
again turns out to be the right answer. This is the problem
with a death-desiring part, and why no one without one gets it.
The pleasure-sensation in the prospect of a vacated sentence.

The affirming are as full of gangly & ungainly meaninglessness.
They do better manage their divine daily choices be it whim or will,
optimized to act when the calendar says it's time for execution,
they carry on with little fuss and with the minimal viable certainty

necessary for basic task completion. This disorder of the amygdala,
which presents work email as a hostile power that could render
me if not kill me, informs my interpretation of the old woman's
sweat stains, the snarling dogs locked behind the bedroom door,

the empty spot where the landscape with Jesus at Gethsemane
should be hung. The stack of Louis L'amours by the recliner,
though, were where they can be reached. Had this been Kentucky
and not Indiana, had it been the 21st century and not the last—

the wash still would have swung out on the line to dry in a wind,
and the random-link generator, like all transcendent ideals, still
would be considered by history as incidental, a collateral invention
along an inevitable march toward a moving target, rhythmic as

the whir of the plug-in mantel clock, stale as the filthy upholstery
in the grey-gold Chevy parked beside the curb. Any Sunday,
with the right sort of gaze, is glory-sparked as the instant you get
that first text with a flash of a woman-friend's tit, a gut rush

that pools into a fresh emptiness, a new kind of synaptic longing
you commit to never going without, a conflagration in the cortex
that easily rewires your nervous take on matters of life and death
and reroutes phenomenological ontology through your crotch.

The puke-stained dog-bed cover marks the EOL for the washing
machine; the drum tub fails to engage while the spun-up motor
smokes until I stop it. When your woman takes off for the desert
without you, all dreams and signs point to expensive repairs ahead.

The temptation, from the start, is to set one's bead on the end.
I love my life, the writer writes. I am an ensouled being of light.
In the dream I am driven to get back to my bike and go home.
From the start, the fundamental action of the cosmos is to crank.

__

ONE LESS THURSDAY

most days I can't be bothered so won't
if I die and no one knows what I think or thought
we are in rich company with you included
the present tense let's be honest is undersold
most of my effort gets directed toward
keeping up and other diversions
toward getting ready or holding at bay and still
maximal guilt reserved for what I don't do
every revolution is a full-time job
what they once called wisdom seems
at least the parts independent from wit
to arise from the labor of arresting
refusing and abiding without being too troubled
how a river becomes an engineering problem
banks sloped and armored up with rip rap
deterritorialized & reterritorialized
reform as a revelation of decontenting
for example letting the porch go unpainted
staying put as advanced form of risk-seeking
how experience makes us no better
at dreaming or seeing ourselves gone to seed
whole libraries burn and it's way too much
the West exists but not in spite of
the desire Socrates had for young boys
a philosophical process for spurring wonder
a workaday discipline of exacting delight
Eddie Van Halen's Van Halen lick on "Beat It"
all of Stoppard distilled to a throwaway line
plenty of blood that's the only writing
said by a kid in a script he did as a side gig
in accordance with the spirit of the rule
to bury the dead and as an instrument of good
works I called the city to scrape up
the mutilated cat scattered on the road
disturbing as it was to see its enlightenment
hastened with flair and fiery demise
I rest in peace having slotted into their slogging
cosmic drama with this latest demonstration
a bit-part spear carrier passing through
as our feral neighborhood cats churn and recycle
just the other day my ex sent me a pic
of a couple colonizers fucking in the street
a blue & white tom mounting a blue & white queen
cue the requisite mewling caterwaul
the spit and vigor of every kitten's conception
thus in the classical tragedy playing out
this Thursday it's inaccurate to speak of victims
though a runaway is thought to be in the area
though I am vexed by trivial matters
a broken dishwasher and fleeting insignificance
speaking of present tense is it anything
to me if students want to write but won't read
a lazy age of zero-trust and stack-ranked
serial nouns it will be no surprise if
someday soon your doctor believes in microvita
it was Rilke who first heard in Trakl echoes
of the Chinese poets specifically Li Po
who current pinyin convention insists I call Li Bai
who legend has it drowned falling out of a boat
the poor sot trying to embrace the moon
soon ends the year of the wood snake
a fortuitous year for metal dogs was prophesied
but to whom my fortune in love and money
flowed instead I wish you well
soon the year of the fire horse arrives
and for me more health & wealth in half the time
your life in weeks is an interactive graphic
you can find it online and play along
hold on while I count tiny boxes down the page
today on my 2853rd Thursday the moon too wanes
with the moon comes wine and winter
the unschooled banished immortals wander
where and how they will in the spirit of tzu-jan
okay Jesus fine I'll write ziran
the principle of self-so being-such-and-so-forth
which even a drunken Thor might endorse
no surprise the only thing we know
for sure about Li Po's poems is he lost them
I've read more Trakl than Rilke did and likely
more Li Po than Li Bai himself
and I wish I could say for sure it matters
the hardest task possible to keep not knowing
one grows up to realize nothing in itself
need be true in order to be lovely
is it enough to exist with the reflex for saying
it lovely: falling is a pretext for inexorable ascension

__

X