homonculus

on elevators since 1993
the close-door button
doesn't do anything.

that's not a pretty saying,
man that's a fact.

you think you're driving? you say
but i push it sometimes a few times
and sometimes hold it down and
the door closes that's a fact.

i push the button the door closes.

do you consider making
a different turn on
the way to work, or
make the turn unthinking?

try increasingly
changing your mind. try pushing
the alarm.

a fireman with the right key can
make it work in fact.
when there's a fire.

you think there's always a fire, man?

wake

circle the dining set
slits in the chairbacks a
domestic zoetrope
the stick figures of us
drink coffee, go to
work, drink coffee, go
to work, drink
coffee
the light left on

a full weekend of work to do for having put it off all week and now saturday morning look what i am doing

"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." -- Colin Powell

you are made up blocks each
everything i always wrong.

you are not a fucking prophet you
can't say fuck in prophecies fucker.

the head will work to be body the
limbs will suck at organs my
blood is always hurriedly bored.

sign in the perpetual reel hope
dragged back at you circuit
of single twos of arms.

unct

define work as i
work my
headrest
potential
foible
some job or other
willingness cruciform
strengths
it has a handle. i grip
and drive my last will
widen a crack
in soil
done enough

unconvinced

solder. soldier. sleeper trailer @ the
jobsite. go home in the parking
lot. they have it right, he says, live
like work by heating metal.

begin by sitting

when at work the lap is formed
for what swan to cradle, we're
no handle but a chamber
familial necessarily enclosing

parade

hold close his secret spine
cellular confetti & the old buick
there is no room @ the inn, but
internal skyscrapers spreading
towards the body's pulp--
the dress blues, the overseer's
oak desk, somewhere the manger
still @ work feeding the animals

eriogonum

clamorous neighbors up Lamp Street, amber
of their ceiling's spaciousness, songs
felt in the brainwaves, owe dust
to us, work downtown from us, take
beer wagons to bars. the blue moon
glooming in night becomes
charades to wanting,
our end caught
first--being
it was
when,
too human,
we did that

grain for grinding or ground grain

the old brother of
the builder shows me
wordlessly the works,
the wheel trudged by
slow water and worried
stone. brother with no
longer hands for work
but carpal wings, will
take to the roof after
selling some jam of
grist to the Ameriki

translation 2

soar in dream
powered flight, magical physics
hulking machine swarmed by technicians
the work of muscled hands
root in earth

washed awake in the aquarium

please you gods don't
tap on the glass, please
wash yr hands before returning
to work on the employees, they say
it snowed on the green
mountain, they say there's no
film of his death, they say heat
shimmers out of the burger king
across the street

altaer

his succession of afters
then life, then thought, then
after the wax, the bronze
age, the animals in the
archives salvationary & quick
to reduce the work of the
hands. rely more on air.

dear

artists in
love order symmetry
isolate
our work defines
single things

we, the named in love seem vowelled, glean
ourselves

now being
already all
i do
enjoy

clean down that way the spine, the hook preened and booked

natural little
abstract
a question of
giving strength brilliant sun
sky

And so the smaller becomes the letter.
Because better will be blue in fruit

that
what wanted
say

coming's up morn I slight more & to same