An Earlier America and People Who Revealed It

Treasure fleets homeward, roped in a narrow style.

Only an endless array of mountains seen through.

Seasonal salted waters abounded without foundation,

Which the doughy captain knew. As he did

The country he returned to explore, eye on the same

Celestial observations:  Musk-melons, watermelons, and pump-blazed trees

from Seed to substantial Fire

Travelling from far up the Pamunkey, into the Gulf in time

To be people no longer from the settled fringe

Of some great islands, themselves a noted place

As vastly big as claiming in a loud pageant, Plans

For their Diversion alone, altogether geo-graphical

As well as practical and incognita, a modest simulation in all minds,

A fantasy of the century all across the Gulf

Centered on two men engaged, sure they will have the Goodness to confess


To the mind-travelling Reader, who were a secretive lot 

And so venture blessings for to lure chimerae.

The Reader, finally arrived at the mouth, the daring 

Penetrations were proaching full baronial grandeur

Were believed to disembogue for competitive reasons

The ships that had brought them to its falls, a wooden companion of the regal

expected accretions who represented themselves

As effective as mountains for doubt to spunge: therefore, are any contemporary

Preparations for forays from the the wilderness seem so typical of struggle
When they became essential: the entrepreneur was fired.

I believe the World affords of rumored golden cities and

Stores of unbored attention for a long lesson in the strangeness

For all contenting themselves in search of a parallel myth.

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After the First Movement Seen Above the Sapphire Throne

Your house shrugged off its loose feathers
And dammed the puddles along with blown leaves;

When they bring out the flambè dish a man whispers
In order to assure you that you should scream.

In there is the fish that will not break his stare.
And the crowd goes wild at the motif’s return

In the likeness of the thoughts of the wise,
In the likeness of sapphire strung into string

There was a lot of high fives and shaking of hands
Congratulating one another and looking each other in the eye.

Turn your head about to sul pont, then apart
And tried to see of what sort it is. Then a voice

Bespoke the man arrived all clothed in linen whites.
I saw, as it were, the appearance of the living creatures,
The living creatures with His four faces, each looking up.

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The Day gathers so much

The Day gathers so much into itself,
Into a bindle for wand’ring Night,
Who on a metal harp
Tuts out a bending note as you

Take a bath in the ice where you slip.
See the dirt splash up around each drop
When it rains. Sleep like words you live by,
See style and error in flightless birds;

Feel better, though the moon makes a swipe at the clouds like a flare

We will start walking
Come promise of stopping.

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I Could’ve Sworn You Had Asked Me What Time It Was

Early, with frost like stone against thin soles
and sun through dust that’s mostly people, we
arrived at the restaurant. Everything on the menu
had bee pollen in it. On the field above
you are directed to click. But then you see
nothing and you can’t click anything I do
not know why u do this but I hope it
helps you. In the early morning, when breathing
remains easy, the “bros” install the tables
with a universal name in hand, waiting for my turn
that I may use a beer, may be a computer genius.
I may be an expert--who else will hold these branches
for those behind us? No, I’ll wait. It’s Early morn.
But you’re so well-behaved and hasten out the door.

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HWHERE

The orange light invests your glower
With all the glory of the burning tires
Piled up between us. I stare
As meaningfully as I can; soon the entire orchard
is as if in daylight and the tarry smoke
settles down. I lower our car off the jack
and drive us home. Our wheels unzip
the blacktop, and the woods on either side
fall away like undone teeth. To the gods a vessel,
your sternness makes me smile.

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After Paintings by Emily

We saw everything you could imagine and there were hundreds of them.
My question is: you slept alone last night. So for all this time
I've been Nixon and you've been yourself, sitting by the south window
where rain wooshes down from a cloud somewhere in the gathering
of  lightly tinseled trees, a blue disclosure clear against a lighter blue
wall, background to all of it. So much past you to stare in.
Its a pattern I almost bring up, saying “I did see something, we do relate
to the city struck through the deep river below the drift of snow
which obscures it. We blush like the little bits of red creeping everywhere
sighing backwards like a comet, I am loathe to drop these colors out,
lest there be deliberation. You draw the apple branch towards me.

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Only Polity Can Save Us Now

You can’t help but strangle your wineglass.
I would like to propose a toast:

Though they certainly are a bit too…old,
I find no need to malign the monkeys and goats
That have, really, quite touchingly eloped.
I know you feel we’ve been left in the cold

For too long. But I forget my keys so rarely
I can’t even begin to get used to this.
Did you say it was me you missed?
That was way back before I was wary

When I would have sworn on anything you wanted.
There’s no bridge for this moat
But I’m a gentleman—please use my coat.
The time is right; I’ve just begun
the lengthy process of clearing my throat.

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An Eke to a Day in France

There is the structure, up ahead,
The deft I-miss-you-more-than-I-can-say arrangement
In classical form, forced into marbles
I see Psyche and Love ravishing
Her, and You, and Soft Venuses, and a satyr.
Mercury, also, carrying Psyche away, a sniff
And the immediate allergen is pretty much you
Not being here. I wish I knew why itches hurt

When I summoned you out of my current surroundings:
the Sacre Coeur, bent-out-of-shape windowbox holders,
the bagged statuary at Versailles and everything else we brought
Just take the note and hit it. Hold it whole if possible.

Try to make that look while
Skype staggers with your beloved’s pixels.
You’d like to seem more
but I don’t want you to worry about keeping the faith:
breathe in in the manner proper to one.
Soon it will all be nouns
And I a concrete angel’s son

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Made Again As I Recall

A line of people wave at the fog-packed window.
I write to you lines at a time, as I
Dress, between each article of clothing:

I am on my way past a view

We can’t understand as your jingling similes
That like your shirt we keep from touching
Your damp back; no one needs to know
You sweat while dancing but the truth is

tugging like a kite. Or if it is real

It has been effaced-- ruined by the hasty hand
Of a servant toppling a large cup of coffee.
What seemed so stable will be made again
As I recall most everything as You,

as I ask you to keep close,

Then say you love me more than you can say
You will not buy out of the system we
Are all busy thinking about how to-
gether we’ve gotten. It’s the biggest deal in history.

Now people live for decades

Like bridges get fixed, fall out of memory on
One side of which we drop distinctive twigs
To follow floating to the other, visible below the low mist.

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No fence separates

No fence separates the grounds
From the road, none can ponder    “Taps”
Without the passing traffic for
Accompaniment. Take the flag,
the passing of cars, and we poke around
For names and there aren’t any trees.
I pray to be contemporary.

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Twist a Little Closer, Now

Only the surest convulsions
Can register as pulse.

Hold me as you would a grape
Jointed in a socket
On an arborescent vine
Hanging past the eaves
Where the wind beats
Its distal edge along the glass that rings

And we look up into the cold
Without removing our chins from our scarves

Next to us the window displays
Snowflakes that outbrave my patience
Shaking to the engine in my left ear
Whose resonance softens them to
Droplets and here I thought
That finding all the questions was the point

Like so many cones, floating under the bus
We shook ourselves apart.

We managed to pan out the yellow generation.

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Quick before it

Everyone’s face in the bar is blue
Everyone is looking down wide-eyed
Everyone is talking

When you wake up that night
a clown is standing over you.
You go back to sleep
and everyone is fine.

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Confluence of Great Relevance

We were not ready for this recent spate of tears.
The buffet was stocked, an expanse of late styles
and the line grew clear: it it was loudly noted.
Six persimmons drawn in a row of out of fear
around the overpass: I know it’s not safe
to buy drugs from your car so far
so far from credit-friendly gas stations.
But I do love to see you, who garners day by
day the good of life. After the hurricane
on Monday, at what time will the courts re-open?
I wove a briar arch, and for twenty minutes I thought,
nay, I accepted fully that I would vomit
in my backpack while riding the bus to my first day of work.
I would describe myself as having read,
having sat patiently by with two fingers
held to your temple; so I am there when you awake.
But I can’t tell white girls apart.

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