Article 18

Thumbing It Out of Padlocked Montana

A bird is just 
A flying cup of coffee 

& this corn field 
I’m sleeping in

Smells more like a fresh 
Xerox copy to me

Than tall grass bent 
In the wake of a storm—

A big tire fire still 
Burning in the motionless 

Fields of our lame 
Clairvoyance!

& it’s like I’m giving you 
Every piece I have

Of silver Montana sky
& I need you to take 

A drive with me 
Out past the house 

With one window 
Where the crows peek in 

That glint & disappear 
In the silence 

Of their glinting
Because I need 

A door in my life—
One I won’t open 

For anyone but you
& I need to tell you 

I’m not afraid of 
Us anymore 

& I need the darkness 
With its heaviness 

Of the body 
To stop falling 

All over itself
& I want you to know 

How the asylum 
I was in was just 

This big piece 
Of birthday cake 

I ate in the rain 
& how death is just 

An odyssey now—
The thousand 

Disposable 
Trillionths 

Of a second 
We have left to live 

Like ghosts 
On this earth



The Mind Is a Little Village of Nuance

& so I download 2 different 
Leaves of Grass&Deliverance

& this gives my eyes the dimension 
Of weird mountain folk in solitude 

My own white hair I rumple 
Like snow in a sophist manner 

& it’s like I’m swimming thru trees 
A little bit drunk in the silence

Of a deaf willow forest while thinking
& the poem is just a poem about

Rattling around inside itself 
& there’s no one to brush up against it 

With the sweetness of their laughter 
Only the taunt of someone

Goofing with the outcome
& the high grass in summer catching 

Fire in autumn—but where is the poem 
The little boy moving in the grass 

Makes possible? 
                           This morning 

I wanted to answer my phone like
Someone pretending I’d died 

But I hesitated & I heard the desolate 
Beep of the machine picking up 

& I thought about Nantucket—  
The coves empty in bitter snow

& how the mind is a little 
Village of nuance & that’s it 

It was a fine feeling I had watching a homicidal TV glow in an empty room, the ultra concentrated rabbit ears of how things turned out were just now beginning to hold a signal— I am watching a handful of money burning thru these beautiful white trees.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp & though the motel I was sleeping in had this one magic window that only opened when it rained, my life was a series of poorly-framed photographs. Autumn was only a snapshot of this man in a raincoat watching my door from the highway.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Winter was a Polaroid of what I did with his coat—a coat as black as trees silhouetted against whole woods of freshly fallen snow. & though I talked big, I was just a dog suspicious of the other dogs—I buried each sleepless night in Seattle & moved on.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  & nothing I read with rapt attention, occasional hilarity, or frequent bewilderment had ever been this imaginary, this painstakingly self-exclusionary except maybe the death of the goldfinch I heard singing on the path I used to walk to work each day—a kind of death of the obvious made even more obvious by its absence.&nbsp&nbsp  & because it was poorly articulated like the things in my life I’d taken for granted—

It was a spring afternoon.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  The sky was a big blue & white question mark choking on a woman’s blue scarf—which having gotten away from her was now squirting thru the air.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I was radioactive. I was reticent as a man on the toilet. I was just this guy outside a strip club in Trenton & laughing at this woman dancing in one stocking.

& the sun was a bowl of bright golden flakes—a warm & nourishing goddess—her head of long hair was like the _____ of many rivers writhing in my lap. & so I entered the poem—one bare leg scraping against one stocking leg.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp & it was like the radio played Little Pink Houses just for me & I stuck my head out the window of a stolen car in Little Rock & sang along, screaming the lyrics at the top of my voice—but I never understood why & I was vague in the morning. Or why I was all over the map figuring things out in my head.