Exhaustion is a theatrical word, but I am tired. A fantasy where my eye lids meet absorbs me. I want inspiration, but find it neither in dreams nor alertness. Let the lids' next romance be eternal, let them love forever.

If you want to be nihilist,
then do not dip
your pinky finger
into its battery
acid pool. Dive
in and be one
with your goal.

Look at words that evoke slime
and your revulsion
mirrors fault --

a wave has no color
yet you apply violet
festers to font,

you turn white
paper into semen
and lather it behind
your eyelids
until it drips
from your nose,
and you loath
another letter.

But you color
your temperament,
and you disgust me.

sensations
burn and then
like a half-
smoked cigarette
that drops
on pavement

glow in memory
of the flare
but fades
as nobody
really wants
it to catch

so it dies
or some passerby
steps it out

and the city
is built this way

so that no flash
fire combusts
dead bark
and no greener
things grow.

Irritation over social expectations while on a riverside trail

To tread a path
that an hewn
clear breaks
my inattention,
and the toads
that croak satyr laughter
beckon me off.

A step from the path
steeps my boot
in bottle shards,

and there is no life here. I dip
closer to find the hooves
that hover out of sight,
snag my clothes and skin and hope
for return in the denser thicket,

and gasp at the ankle
scruff. Lichen
loops around and attaches
the beasts to limbs
that leak. The half-goats prance
and the limp
quarter-pieces grasp
sneakers or a liter
of Aquafina as they skid.

I ask that they plant ash
roots in my crown
and give me a goat hind
so that I too may laugh
at the flaccid life.

Now, I deal with matters
of meat, and drag
detritus through
the trees. It tires
to ridicule parts, so I squat
at a creek and spot a toad
that croaks, and I ask
to become like him.

I am now unable
to drag. Instead,.
my throat extends
and exhales
noise. Here I am closest
to that aspiration
and furthest from
home.

On a terrace with an elderly man

However far sight
stretches, it does
not snap--

Through a dime-operated sight glass
the sails of still yachts bulge,

children scale a tree
limbs as twigs tear
their eyelids,

and a man kicks
his squatting dog's leg--

and I like to stand
here and watch
and mock their
infatuation with small
things,

yet when these liver-
spotted cheeks puff dry
air I hear, "You are a fool
to have died so young."

Thoughts between a couple on a curb and a patio with plum pie

Few things are inert
in the sun, until
he stops and sees flannel
patchwork that leaves
visible a bulge that rolls
around dirt like a pit's
wrinkles. It smells

so loudly that some lift
their heads and bare
stained teeth

before they bend
to eat, and lick
the scabs of juice
from their chin.

These thoughts
clot the calmer passages
through which attention
flows. His fingers
are numb, but he will mind
less when a cheek droops.