who never thinks too cold, too coldly of themself
who lay awake (toûtseul) in tha dark room & thot to
     disappear themself.
who would not (not not notnot) be consoled & raged
on pompous ponces, jowlyfacd rich people &
     that melancholic pool, despair

last night I dreamt brad pitt and I were lovers, we
     had each committed a murder and confessed to
     ours in turn—he had killed someone who wouldn’t
     leave w/ him right away to go somewhere, a party
     or something. I—I had killed someone just then,
     as we took a turn around melancholy lake, which
     at first (in the dream) was a salt mine. the salt
     farmer was giving a lecture on the ecology of
     the pool, it was in santa cruz, it was toxic, (we do
     not anymore hear of a clean pool or pond)
     (so that even narcissus is uglified) there were chunks
     of it, salt, floating about at the edges of a pool or
     pond, resembling ice. I could not (cannot) recollect
     the details of my own murder (the one I had
     myself^(myself) committed_{of late}). ^{in any case,} we walked around the lake
(as I said) on a vertiginous & slippery path of
salt which seemed like ice, and the ^broken pieces of it floating near, salt rather, gave
a cold and melancholic feeling, and the color of the blue of the pool turned
                        pale green at its center, making it appear warm
                        and tropical. the whole effect was so seductive
                        brad wanted to leap in. I understand, I communicated
                        to him, the desire to leap into the lake of despair but
                        come now old boy do let’s carry on

a bed of roses itself is no bed of roses. Nobody wants an e-book, they would sooner leave you in the lake, a den of mouldering slime for your coffin. Everybody calling it a recession—theyr in a delusion. I am privy to these contradictory situations where I am told first the one and then the other bathroom is the wrong one. Madame, c’est là! and then o monsieur! je suis tromper! If I powder my nose in the tudes, if I choose to walk barefoot in the small hours . . . you yourself are a healing property you know. You came home from the fair only to join the circus its festal mood, to feast on frost. So one learns to make thir way amid the multitudes. And know bliss as a cowperson.

I know I am the small fry here. Whose harnassed thot drove winter aback, gos wrastlin thir daemon underground. Tho the stirrups brinked and tha mud was broke, I looked down to the rivulet between the tracks, and couldnt tell if what I saw was a turd or twisted rust metal. & the rats, rooting amid the black death and typhus. One comes out steppin, their eyes fallen on the shores, cognizant only to the trash they mucked around. Suddenly you and your neighbors thighs are pressed together, accidental camaraderie or blunt eroticism. And neither of you move away.

We race toward the mounds of gravel, the morning star met with its wanderer. 

I have an hour to read marcabru and fall in love
to study the medicines and put a rock in each corner of the house
and pray over it with pollen as my elder advised
to test my extraordinary knowledgeses
to briefly wonder whether I was actually under a spell
to write my poem about being a mongrel
I must love even the fox that impedes my path
n jettison my former ire n any gesture toward abstraction
n go to the dump finally w/ the disused bicycle tires and the broken antlers and the cracked stained glass of a ship that formerly I wdve harbored because I did not love myself
but the broken shelf
I want namore of it
the jangle-mongrel and the rose and the ndn cowboy that layall closeted
along w/ my availability to my own mind and the killings of our familyes queer and black and brown and ndn
slaughter at orlando symbol of our hermitude
massacre at aravaipa gashdla’á cho o’aa   big sycamore standing there
bear river  sand creek  tulsa  rosewood
n when I finally sussed them out
n laid the tequila in its proper trash
n attempted to corral the pony of my mind
they say the ohlone were here as if
there were no more ohlone
erected a fake shellmound called it shellmound avenue
my friends dont like that
my friends dont like that excrement
it’s not like youd give away the algorithm, my bf pointed out,
to the one yr tryin to put a spell on
marcabru uses the word ‘mestissa’ to describe the shepherdess his dickish narrator is poorly courting
which paden translates ‘half-breed’ and pound ‘low-born’ and snodgrass ‘lassie’ but I want to say mongrel, mestiza, mixedbreed
melissima most honeyed most songful
what catullus called his boyfriend’s eyes
honey the color my dead dog’s eyes the stomach of the bee
I’m going to gather pollen from the cattails in a week or two
to pray to the plant tell it I’m only taking what I need
use a coathanger to hook the ones far from shore
filter it thru chiffon four times
what is love
but a constellation of significances
lyke-like magic
los cavecs nos aüra  as the owl augurs
one gapes at a painting
the other waits for mahana

                                               FOR CACONRAD

garbage-gut humans should not continue ourselves

it can only come a frightful cropper

hairbulbs what I mistook to be      a form in nature

albatross w/ plastics crowding thir gut

what julie patton is callin superfraja-lilly-of-the-valley

veronica heterophilia    snapdragon nature preserve

pulp them                       shropshire constabulary

quing of haven                              sailing for caracas        sissy jesus-hag

point to the exact place where the fly shd go   in the ballo underpants

just where the shapes                              come to a point   triangularly

15 thousand fish dead at the mouth of tha mississipp

planes go sipsip               saying to the poor people

walk fa-ast!                     walk like yr on hot co-als!

matisse had to get up real close                       to see that was a burd

turned that viol de gamba right fwds               & added a noose

even more clîché than             peaches inna bowl

curvy long pear stem and                 butterdish suspended

in air                      perhaps the stem is penetrating a clear butter dish

conrad suggested                  & I knew I was being drawn

into a funhouse of mirrors but I cdnt stop

odilon   redon               roger & angelica

why I am against breeding