FALLEN ANGELS
1
Beauty is overrated. It's better to be sublime,
like pain. To pain we are subservient. But who wants
to hear a high-pitched bat frequency the entire movie?
Better to say, That girl is mostly threshold.
What panes. What doors. If there were an intelligent
God, she'd be dead. Look, asshole. All forms
of intelligence are patterns
where men say patterns don't exist.
2
In my day, an avatar was an image you
grabbed, not a consumable identity.
Men introduced themselves
on messageboards and in private messages
asked: what do you love about me?
Like a sleepwalker, I couldn't see
but perceived and accepted everything.
My unconscious
created my first screen name.
My password
was the angle at which I reposed.
3
And now the cloud
with a billion security problems uploads
sick music and deleted content from a man who taught me
poems must compete for prizes. On a table, an artichoke
heart contaminates his extra virgin olive
oil like cruelty without constraint and when
the temperature drops into the blue
the crickets go mute like martyred saints
(His loss - My profile pic
was a still from a Wong Kar-Wai film.)
4
What I surround myself with, I desire
I accomplish what I endeavor
innocently or not
It's a beautiful day
and I work
Around me, lauded people
promote and celebrate
and cut their work
If a thing is described
it becomes real
If a thing is real
we take it for granted
Like air over fiberglass shells of cars
and liquids in tubes
running above and below the city
It's possible for distance to be annihilated
It's possible for neighbors
to become
impossibly remote
TYPO
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