THE
CITY
We're impatient
to set out
for the tri-state
area. We blink
at correspondences,
set our watches
to the wrong light.
I was wrong
when I said that
bones grow from dirt
in an insurrection
of flowers. A Marxist
critiques our
posture, the little shit.
I feel we've entered
a courtyard
in the twelfth
century, and I feel very old,
the landscape's
that dehumanizing.
I've grown ancient.
How can this be?
How lonesome it
feels to pull
one's wallet out
in the moonlight.
It's a kind of
prayer, the only kind
that makes sense
in a garden.
At the center
of a garden
is a courtyard,
where our children
set vaseline on
fire, and we hold hands,
yes, and speak
words to one another,
yes, and decide
to take off together.
I can't help feeling
posthumous
as I walk through
the city, thinking
of the last time
I was here, of what's
disappeared in
the interim. Looking
at the holes where
stars should be.
Looking at trees
and describing them.
The drinks cost
less here. Housing
costs almost nothing
at all here.
Art is expensive.
I want to get fucked
by the continental
ice sheet as it
drifts into the
northernmost lake.
When I get stopped
by the cops
I pull out a notebook,
and suddenly
I'm sixteen again,
making bad art
on extravagant
stationary, driving around
with leaves in
my hands,
pushing my face
against the earth.
|