Touch

Curled up by the fire.

Paws touch hands. One last blink. The

sound of flapping wings.

 

 

Human Thoughts Before Departure

Fluorescent lights reflecting off the floor

Painted with jet-black but faded arrows 

That point

Not at the jasmine-scented night

Leaning against the giant glass

But soothing lies beyond guarded doors

Flyers overhead asleep in the sky

Flyers afloat with nothing—naught—to flap

Going nowhere quicker

On greedy dreams and fiery throats 

Metal swallowing beaks and souls 

Inside fluorescent lights flicker

The Magician

We laughed
When right away he pulled a rabbit out of his hat,
when he pretended to saw a stranger in half,
made disappear my friend Mathew Graff,
when he mimed eating a distressed fat rat,
spat
fire and drank blood-red wine and became a bat,
swallowed a sword and threw up a cat,
then flew away on a winged giraffe.
Now I no longer heard anybody laugh.
Then a man came in, as we had begun to nervously chat,
and said "I'm the magician." We shouted, "So who was that?"

Friggatriskaidekaphobic

The friggatriskaidekaphobic moves
me to pity so much I laugh the laugh
of vestal vultures, homeless houses, grooved
graves, of the blazing blues, of fires, giraffes.

Common uses of a poet

Here some common uses of the poet:
Mutate city into unreal city
thus make it poem-real.
Keep fire from melting ice
and rusting a red wheel barrow.
Reverse-translation into Ashbery.
Use words like iridescent, thicket, and
petrichor; never feel.
Prophet, politician, and philosopher; now
poets hidden in half a page
Of this week's New Yorker.
Impress other poets.

Report of an Arrest

The state police report:
At one o'clock last night,  
a liquid gold sedan—
"a Mazda 3," they write, 
"an import," driven by
a man of black-and-white
complexion, suit and tie—
had come to park beside
a purple Firebird, right 
behind the fire temple,
on Ash across from Crown. 
And not that far from stairs,
and couple hydrants there.
Police became alarmed
at once because they saw
a sickly bandaged arm  
emerging from the car,
and wave—as if a star.
"Do not report," upset,
he said, "my life, oh please,
as though the world at large
considers me a threat!"
Arrested by police
right there and then, his charge:
Disturbing of the peace!