from WANT FOR NOTHING
guy on scaffold again guy on
bridge again guy on parking structure
again guy’s same momentary frozen silent
silhouette up on water tower again
guy on communication tower again guy
on overpass again guy on ladder
on platform on barn roof guy
on mushrooms on scissor lift guy
on parapet guy on buttress guy
on gargoyle again guy back on
his bullshit again guy on a
tear again guy once again on
some inexplicable jag guy up on
ceiling again guy out on wing
again guy up on balcony railing
and when you write it again
let its answers drum the fingers
of its questions play the same
opening moves again that same rhythm
you keep learning to play at
the direct address that one time
you walked off the parking garage
right in front of a train
that one time you’ll never live
it down the memory’s the wrong
key for the remembering which makes
the compulsion to press the play
button again all the more vexing
and to tap your fingers along
all the unexpected spinal processes effortlessly
a wind-up whale surfaced alongside me
it had stairs for a tongue
a recorded voice said “you’re trespassing
I can swim you back to
the visitors’ area here climb inside
the onboard entertainment is a band
of mechanical mackerel inside an aquarium
the band plays the popular Peter
Gabriel song ‘Sledgehammer’ you have to
stick your head inside the aquarium
if you want to hear them
you have to feed them each
a token or they won’t play
tokens can be purchased from the
clockwork pelican up on the mezzanine”
the bus schedule’s wrong the vending
machine bill accepter doesn’t accept bills
occasionally a bone escapes the skin
or an organ turns inside out
there’s a prolonged war of attrition
with the insurance company about who’s
going to pay for it and
when they win they plant a
hilarious asparagus underneath the pelvis which
pushes up impossibly majestic intercepting the
sun the sundial shadow sweeps days
over the growing and withering daffodils
and daylilies and dahlias that surround
the skull spine femur humerus years
spilling into aeons of fresh flowers
upside down spider full of babies
abdomen bulging sad smile “they’re not
mine they’re the wasp’s I’m not
a musician either any longer I’m
a musical instrument I’m a sampler”
I walk one circle stepping stones
laid knowing exactly once begun where
they are to end a melody
of baby steps plantigrade baby feet
so the parasite’s in the semen
which is flung into the air
the wasp flies through that and
stings the spider the spider’s in
the dream reconciling the music stepwise
to the semen and so on