Parched

When I wake in the back seat to a dim teal
on the leatherette, my legs seem to swell
like Grow-in-Water sponge pills. They wet the boat's guard-rail

with their SPF 80 glaze, and their toes touch the kelp ends
that lay flat on the surface. The chafes
from the flashlight rods that leaked last night
into the spots not calked by the blackout curtains
are dry. The seats are rooted to the floor, are pillars
that loom in the morning sheen.


(the kelp ends peak from the surface in youth, but as I age they surround me. I seem to have submerged and drowned, but in dryness, who would have thought death would have been so dry)

damp for

the root

of sweat, we wait for an

intersect of thought like

a cosmic sea-monkey cyst

for hyperbolic brine, settle on

vacuum dust, amniotic juice

has yet to fill the gap between

us and the chaps

pinch the nerves each

time lips splay

to show that

we are

Surface tension

The romance that two
plump boy scouts push
and inhale through harmonica
reeds is well worth noticing,

lines are gaps
into unease when
on a Duchamp,

and it is well worth noticing
such a droplet in that split
moment of surface tension

when it balances
atop

Glazing an urn

This urn holds
air, is wiped clean, is not glazed but crisp
yellow like an old meerschaum. There is a hole
at its forehead for air to fold around and press into
air, suave entrance as if with a waxed
air   while the hole whistles like some after-
vibration of a bell gong glad
to see the air through, but to look
seems, look   as the grain still dips
beneath the gloss   it is underhanded
to observe her features by the image
in the bus window, to coat when the always-
child gaze had the texture but the grasp
is followed by what, really
what sheen. This urn holds
air, has a smooth oil finish.

no-speak

no-speak, the space
between open lips before columnar lifts
and dips in air vibration. In no-
speak tires roll up-
hill before hill turns
to gravity hill to slope, downward
to a point, speech. no-speak:
so long a tongue curled
around potential snaps
into speech when no-
body uses the whole
bin but only what some five
fingers grasp. speak,
but with no-speak, prolong

I

Perfect disk, with an alloy

of mist so thick as to weigh

on the aperture until the pressure

differential became standard, until the grass

blades, grass blades.

Proselytize

The Red Hatted Vagabonds pluck blues

chords near the yellow

tape at the street fair, not quite among

passerby. You can graph

the ripple of a drop in a glass

but the chorus sings from the torrent,

relatives or dreadlocked
Valkyries in matching
tie-dye skirts, where

the vocalist amid
loose gravel in-jokes
as if tied to the mic-
stand reaches

out and cries
proselytize me baby.