Pasttimes

it’s diversion time out in the world again
and someone gets mauled by a pilates reformer

you and me in the garden and it’s the end of downiness
it’s not, generally, something you’d
do if you had something else to do

we’re in a dry sauna
your arm hairs stand on end
long and white
caught up in the unpresent drama
of a soft and temperate breeze

some hobbies aren’t machines
some are a couple nights ago’s dreams
more familiar with more days
or clinging to a limb
that belongs to someone else

but this is a golden opportunity to advocate for yourself!
today is for the body!
the tower is for the mind!

we can’t say we have “nervous disorders” anymore
there’s not much room for the natural curve
of spine slumps these days

or smoking yourself
sucking in your instincts
and releasing steam

Gratification

suspect she stole the hibiscus flowers
suspect she wanted them bad enough

doesn’t she require the endless waters of distance?
doesn’t loving fake infinitude? a honey lemon
cough drop sits on your tongue unsucked

if you want a good time you can have it
if you want it soured then suck a little
harder so your buds swell and sore

pick one:

the drop can rest in your dumb mouth
big tongue passivity you let your body be outside

pursed, you make it small
seeking soothing you’re so insipid

choked, it slides down you whole
you withdraw into your throat you
are the flesh cave inside you and
you are the drop

Creature World

I

Halyomorpha
a vengeful bug
invasive fossil
an object of study
or child’s object of choice
for practice of to kill
for practice of to learn to let live by to kill

His instincts are wrong and necessary
accidentally introduced to Allentown, Pennsylvania

Phylum clade and kingdom
come one come all descend

Insect wings teach me things
if it falters don’t touch it
if he meets a worm
and he raises his rubber boot—

On barefoot hot sand
I was eight years old
a dying bee is the only bee
that ever stung me

II

Hallucigenia
mind melters in dry air
at night her shiver is lucid
his mind akimboed
topless in the polyester heat of morning

This is the worst song I’ve ever heard
my friend says about karoaked Truckin
by the grateful dead
on all their spinning feet
no one can hear her

It’s background butane and the methamphethamine mostly it’s booze poos in a porta potty
and bare breasted bad attitude

On these faraway tracks
in some close up preservation society
in unnatural terms we’re men in a museum
the world is so safe behind glass

Some generations have no use for truth
someone said about some truthfulness
decades ago

The propaganda of nature
is when grass makes you itch
and stains your khakis
when babies eat the dirt
and make houses out of mud

the yucca against the purple sky
and all the nothing we have to do with it