and then dumps down, so here is an IV antibiotic.”
Sat in the ER, cried, but called no one,
emotions intensified like a Sabbath.
The handsome nurse talked
about surfing in Costa Rica while
my blood disinfected and outside
the hospital a Ouija board of plants
made a foreign language out of the night.
Man in neon coat walks uphill through the crows.
Reddish glow of the hurricane horizon
creeping toward the heart. Oldest woman
at the meeting talks about 1960 and ’61.
“We were organized, we had an action.
They told us what to do and we did it,
then we’d go to jail and it was on to the next
action.” Woke up—eyes puffy as windmills.
Thought of Rotterdam. That fucking poet
who didn’t ask if he could hold my hand,
just grabbed it on the teeth chattering bridge
and then yelled, “We are poets! We are here!”
right into the river. And we walked into the spaceship
I mean hotel and in my room, I ordered
a panini and ate it on the white sheets, crumbs
on the white sheets. Mirrors everywhere.
Rotterdam, the last place I ever felt sexy.
I rise before everyone, kids at their dad’s.
No commotion, rivers of clearing
eucalyptus mist in the aura factory
like pictures of Norway, her glaciated
remove languishes in a think tank
of food security, to want that kind of coldness,
to be surrounded by a swarm of bears
or love affair so north of here, but the winds
were shoved into the stone mouths of lions,
their rhymes tourniquets of counterfeit ideas.
And Rotterdam standing like an inquisition
of ships sloshing the metallic waters.
See, the thing is, Poet, you’re failing.
You’re failing at capitalism.
You’re failing at “self-care.”
You’re failing at feminism.
You’re failing at activism.
You’ve fallen deep into your addiction.
Your despair spreads everywhere.
None of this is your fault
but it’s still happening.
The failure is the fracture is the opening
like that infection that started in your elbow
and moved to the depths of your being.
So maybe you should jump into it.
You spend the night reading about a god
cleaved in two so the dream demons come true.
Capitalism is shrinking and the rich
have gotten more violent. Capitalism could fail
and win at the same time.
Poet, this is called “crisis.”
The swans and the trees and the birds are buzzing.
They don’t care.
They hum.
Capitalism won.
I went on a run.
I am dumb I hum on my long run.
A series of demons dressed as birches
tripping on the waterline of the riot.
The leaves and birds of the riot.
The twigs of the riot
dispersed as demons disbanded
to the center of the horned wreath.
A quickening like dust or lost resources.
Some red dirt cries for Ra.
The resilient ones rise and fall
as categories of storm light,
as instruments of the godhead
spoken in a spiked language.
Crowds flee their emblems at dusk.
Away with her
Away with him
In the morning you see someone
stretching against the Gulf of Mexico.
The graves are the faces of striated flowers.
The musculature of the urban landscape
ribbons like some vague concept of gasoline.
In the morning, you are in love.
The material and its shadows unify
to doves. Everything you doubted falls softly
into an aubade of rainwater collected
by strange and singular animals
that roam the toxic dump.
You sing into a grave because it is there and apparent.
Maybe it is a window or the wooden frame
of time crisscrossing the seas.
There are still purple ships and people still board them.
You pick up a green comb
and comb through your long, wicked hair.
The coffee is good here. It is good here.
To scroll past the body of the dead baby,
the baby that looks like a form of dust,
the baby of the desert is the baby of the sea
and the atrocities are piling up like hyperventilation.
They will build cities for themselves
and contain portraits of themselves
in the gemstones of their terrible philosophies.
They will be whimsical about genocide
and the pride they will feel in this volition
is like a brand of coffee or cereal
(nothing more or less).
I ran so far into the greenery that I saw
the purple rose that once grew in