Poised like this in hot rooms
Posture abstracts the engineer’s folded fever
Scaffolds corroded by smoke

The ashes pepper and heat my desk
Days that dervish with reddened penumbra
Through every door you shed your soul

You’re scarring everybody’s face
for some small flicker of the truth
You’re ransacking your house
to relieve the heat of chaos
in your head–You’re eating all the
quiet you’ve gathered
for some small enduring pause
in the chatter that kills you
You’re beating like a feral thunderstorm
You’re beating like weather on fire
You’re cutting precious slits
into the walls
hoping that out there you can
catch your breath–

And I’m walking down a snow-dazed street
empty but not innocent

I’m sorry you dissolved like that
Those bastard equations sabotage objects
prying them from their contexts
There’s so much sadness in the world

when you want the light to be plush like a lover
You don’t think I’ve thought this all through but
I have–It’s a world of draggable edges
and malleable boundaries–It’s a word

sucked from a burned tooth
and the whole time there you are humming like
a puddle–No longer meaning anything
to your clothes–These lawless horses and
their riders turn your lemonade to teddybear

and there you are clutching to your chest
the rain and the snow

Dude where the inboxes empty into the ocean
is where the ocean empties into our language
is where language empties into the elasticity of light
and that’s where I eat my lunch

I tell you this dude in the true spirit of comradery
If I don’t look you in the eyes it’s because I don’t like
invasions–I’ve been practicing stillness like a light
flurry after midnight walking Broadway in

a ghost town–Coated in deepest soot dude
covered over in deepest soot–Why does it feel like
you’re drowning in social marketing dude
and everything you say empties you out on the street

All the voices have crowded into a corner of the sky
They fall like ash