They or I said
It was “the rapture
Of endless
Approximation”
—Tan Lin
It was 96 stifling NY degrees maybe
Or it was a million degrees exactly
& whenever I walked I sank down in the pavement
A man had tweeted me the wrong goofy coordinates
& nothing occurring in present tense was made of steel
Wasn’t at least a little bit his fault or mine
Our fate was in the stars like everything he told me
I was bending each moment/the people inexactly
To the crimson mechanical tiger of my will
& so I thought the obvious was a metaphor for the obvious
& no one knows why
In a gash of broad daylight I let my phone ring
Or why the impossible man stood there like Mao
The 20th C picking my brain in a room at the Marriott
Sometimes I desired something just minimalist
But the road kept on going like a boy reading Faust
& so we took all of our mind games & played
Yr-death-makes-me-sad in the human zoo of our skin
& nothing we deemed the particulars was ever
Of consequence—a million degrees exactly
& so I felt a bomb go off in our teeth
I hadn’t spoken I realized in 5 or 6 days& Other Passages from Paradise Lost
Despite a hint of diseased feet
Dante entered her womb
In cobalt winter—
I thought it was crass
But I still think it was art—
A weed half tulip half Hershey’s bar
Was holding its own in soft new beautiful shoes
It was like a disco ball swirling in a sea of pink light
A thousand facets pregnant with the pauses
Of a thousand more
& someone at Cactus Car Wash
Was sending word on ahead
That everything looked good
& we’d better act ASAP—
Our poems are in vogue, sd Kunst Kick
Simply because there’s
no such thing!