The Dipshit

That I have been what the sages deemed a dipshit

is not at this point up for debate. For I have dipshat

via many exploits, many modalities, many choices,

too many to unpack here in the splendid courtroom.

I’ve come to bring Her Excellency’s awareness unto 

the futility of her exercise. For though I am honored

by Her generous attention, I regret I must refer Her

to the annals of my dipshiterry so as to give Her fair

warning should She continue to pursue Her course.

What She has heard about my make-out strategies,

while true & flattering, paint an incomplete picture.

The gardening, as well, was temporary, but enough

in its intimations of humility & devotion to become

folded into the other identities that combined create,

especially considering their fraudulence, the dipshit

kneeling here before Her, begging Her to reconsider

what the dipshit considers a romantic but ultimately

misguided philanthropism. For the dipshit deserves

no such thing. For the dipshit is best left to his own

devices: the lonely dipping, shitting, as the sages, in

their mysterious design, intended. Her time is far too 

valuable—& mine, though I hoard it like the dipshit

that I am, is not (as I am its) mine.

Oh My God I Miss You

In lieu of a text message here is a mourning dove

I looked at for a long time while repeating

your name in my head. My hope is that the dove

will find its way to you & you will hear 

my voice in some capacity, even just 

a memory of it asking when was the last time you ate.

Oh my god I miss you. Oh my god.

Boundaries, my own, can put their mouth on my asshole

& inhale with vigor. What are you looking at right now? 

Is someone dancing? Is there a honeydew?

What if I’m too old to wait for you?

What if when you’re done I’m already gone?

Every day I put off forgetting your voice & think 

about your voice filling the room like a fucking solar flare

pulling me into your impossible golden distance.

Let me sleep a little longer in your guitar.

I would like to make a room in there with lamps 

& a stove & a garden under the skylight.

Has the dove arrived? Listen to me.

Every day I fall higher into a life that is not ours.

An Ogre in the River Yearning

Now I have to go inside.

Now, when it is not yet morning.

In a dream the snake walks by

with doll heads tied to its body. I must 

return. I am not finished. 

Something still requires me,

loneliness, my comfort

armor, my established faith.

I was an ogre in the river 

yearning, each hand 

knew a violence unknown

to the other, each heartbeat

another shovelful of dirt 

dumped upon a secret harm.

I hid from my body inside

my body, hid from God

inside the passive voice.

I ruined my life by living it

without me.

Now the light is 

hungry, & I must go in.

Sitting in the Park at Dusk

I am not the love of the love of

my life’s life. Sometimes that’s just

how it goes. The moon slides 

into a cloud like a coin into a laundry machine

& out comes the clean snow. 

From here, I can see all the way 

to there. A tower of refuse,

a possum on the roof. Oh, & the lamps 

have come on. Lord, I am the lamp

illuminating as much

of my life as I can. The life of

my life, the love I give away.

Alexandra Leaving with Her Lord

“You who had the honor of her evening / and by that honor had your own restored / now say goodbye to Alexandra leaving / Alexandra leaving with her lord”

—Leonard Cohen

No, it’s not enough. I want your mornings

& I want your elbows. I want your guitar

in my bed. I want your mercury, your nose,

your vaulting astonishing hungry mind—

your anger. I want your anger, the ensemble

of your anger. I want to hold your memory,

your histamine. The 2am pharmacy journey

I want. & the time on the other side of that

door, I want that time. & a waltz around

the breakfast table. Your hair in the drain,

those purple question marks. Your seven-

hour skincare monologue. Your perfect 

pellucid snot hanging out of your celestial

nostrils in the street—my one, your snot!

For such snot the alchemists would offer

up their firstborns. & your leviathan alto.

& your jokes that make me laugh because

they are good & funny jokes, coupled as

they are with your wild clownist gestures,

gestures lost in your too-big jackets, clown

of God, nothing princess of my heart, you,

spinning in your shining circus. The mark

above the corner of your mouth—o soft o

sensational corner of your mouth! which

makes its geometric musics that bewilder

the minds of angels. Ah, & your telephone, 

somehow, inside the freezer, but how did it

get there? such questions are the questions 

I want. A life afoam with such questions—

oh, for that life! It’s not enough, I’m sorry,

to watch you leap into someone else’s arms

& place your hand on the back of their neck

in a darkened theater—I’m sorry, whatever 

it makes me, I am that thing. It’s not enough

to dance away the ghost with you then watch 

the starlight fall upon your shoulder as it turns 

toward another’s mouth. I want your shoulder 

to turn, forgive me, toward my mouth. So go 

become who you must become. I will be here, 

kneeling in the infinite corner, offering you my 

silly little life as if it hasn’t always been yours.

The Big Slug

The slug I thought

was The Big Slug

it turns out is not

The Big Slug because

The Big Slug 

has just arrived

American Idol

It has become clear that I will be auditioning for American Idol, & that I will be accepted—not because I’m a man who can sing; because I’m a man who must. After the initial audition Katy Perry will take with great reverence my hand in hers & say something about desire being like a teleporting whale. The song I sing will be of my own composition, the only song I will ever compose, & I will sing it in each round. The song will be about going away, & will include references to a specific insect eaten by a more beautiful insect. Katy Perry will weep each time, though I perform the song in a detached manner, as though singing to someone standing on my grave. Lionel Richie will shake his head & say, It’s different every time you sing it, it it really just those three notes? Luke Bryan will stare in great befuddlement & say, I heard trumpets. Were there trumpets? & I will say, No, Luke Bryan, there were no trumpets. I sang without accompaniment, just as I have this entire competition, just as I must sing through my life.

A Power Greater Than Oneself

First there is a yak. This is not an origin story; nothing comes after the yak; there is only the yak. The yak turns around & walks & turns around & walks, back & forth through the nothing else, & in what might be called circles were there circles, but only there is the yak. There is not the snow dusting the yak’s shoulders & horns. There is not the buttery moon melting over the pumpernickel night. The yak looks: nothing. The yak listens: nothing. But the yak is not lonely. Loneliness is a comparison & there is nothing with which to compare. There was the yak & now there is the yak, each as the other was & is. There will not be a small bird introduced, a small green bird who sits on the yak’s horns & eats the bugs that gather to drink from the yak’s lake-y eyes, for there are no bugs at the yak’s lake-y eyes, & the yak’s eyes are not lake-y, as no lakes. There is only the yak who though traveling great distances appears to be moving in place. & when the yak sleeps, it dreams of the yak. & when the dream-yak dreams, it dreams of the yak who dreams it. Everything begins & ends in the yak, even the yak, who cannot remember beginning, but if the yak did begin, it would have been on account of the yak, & should the yak end, it will be on account of the yak, of some whim of the yak—but for now, there is no such yak-whim. There is only the certainty of yak in what must be space in what must be time, but have here no names, have here only the operation of providing a distinction between yak & not-yak. For the not-yak is endless & frightening. For the not-yak is beyond comprehension. & so the yak does not attempt to comprehend the not-yak. & the not-yak does not attempt to comprehend the yak. They are simply together, held in place by something else, the only other thing that is, which is not the yak & not the not-yak, but a not that can’t be named, because it’s not nothing, & it’s not not nothing, & it loves the yak very much, as evidenced by this fact: the yak will never wonder if it is or is not there.

Liebesleid

It’s true to say

I’ve loved

& been made 

by loving barren

Love me with 

Your strings

O God around 

my throat

Assemble piece 

by stubborn piece 

the body 

I’m to enter 

Your loneliness 

through

The Song of Songs of Songs of Songs

& your eyes are like a sisterhood

& your lungs are like a pear tree split in a storm

& your ankle is like a hospital

& your shoulder is like the negation of a grave

& your shadow is like being held inside a cello as it is played

& your wrist is like the Moses of wrists

& your voice is like someone giving someone the sea

& your hand is like a lamp that is whispering

& your knee is like a snow leopard’s face in the snow

& your ears are like a pair of golden radios

& your nose is like a planet fallen in a forest

& your legs are like the edges of sleep

& your laugh is like a wedding of dragonflies

& your tongue is like the Sabbath inside of the Sabbath

& your neck is like a secret month

& your hair is like the sound of someone learning