Changing The Subject
The mad woman grabs herself
and yells for anyone to just try her!
Her face is carved into gleaming planes
by an anger of such magnitude we feel
what we feel is by comparison what creatures feel, 
a pure shock that is all the more unbelievable 
because it is so unbelievable to imagine ourselves so,
our chests split open and steaming before a band of hunters.
Untitled
Compiling the catalogue of essential conditions
we spy on those able to celebrate uncompromised pleasure,
flexing their muscles to the extent that
each successive demonstration of inability
is welcome knowledge in an unprecedented,
measured regimen of accumulating individual strength
that pronounces their health and evokes the wonder
of all who witness their well being,
their being shielded from harm
by virtue of their will and their wealth.

In an age of the most spectacular narcissism
the translation of ethnographic facts of sadness
into mystifying experiences to be regarded with envy
is the tactical agent’s ploy of a lifetime,
but it is only one of a myriad
of parlor dramas,
assembled to the end that
the rich unknowingly release their holdings.

We are gray skinned.
We are nameless.
We are patient
and dutifully seek evidence,
from the realm of speculation
to that of timely ritual,
of the moment we endeavor to discover,
when we would become animated
beyond the dimensions of a frenzied dream
of vast tracts wholly abandoned
to the animals and plants,
and would display no hesitation,
no fear arising from only partial knowledge;
to speak in the infinitive
and perceive everything we have ever learned
as a process of action
that is in no way fantastic.
The Drugs Begin To Take Their Short Lived Effect
We can say
we are not alone,
what we find surrounding us,
the objects included,
is reliably alive
with possibility,

that the truth of things, 
what can happen or be made to happen, 
need not be answered by lifelessness’
awful vacuum.

We dismay ourselves
in a shimmering confusion
and feel no fear,
we laugh as only amateurs can,
eating the fruit we name
the feast of the day.
A Test For The Civil Service
If I choose to be the inspector of flowers 
and all forms of plant life,
it is because of their unrivalled power
to translate between mediums
which only makes the worst denial
all the more the worse.

Though I am not what you would call
a man of the world,
tucked away in the shifting, nether zones of a project
organization of enormous scope,
I am here,
in the world with all the rest of you,
telling you what I know to be a fact,
that our days can be filled like a vase.

Now tell me what is on your mind 
and we shall test what I have learned, 
to render the ridiculous, hopelessness 
of your life for what it is,
to those who deny you your ecstasy.