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My words were sent underground to where the toggle switch detonates. That was the glare our voices were avoiding. There was something also broken about the obedience of this retainer. The arcades weren’t semaphores just because the arrows leading there facilitated those of us in line as though reliant on east or west quadrants. The ticket master was prone to elide requests from the travelers, the sliding doors sounded a fanfare for the common man, get faster as thought, or mind the gaps. What I infer can never altogether establish a space adequate to the body count. The platform motivates two guardians who were instructed in safekeeping to usher me from harm’s way but my stand point so recedes from this tableaux as to acknowledge a footprint perspective. Translucent envelope inside remaindered by the riptide or such tunnel vision as to warrant arrest. Why I was sent to the nether world inflicted with no wound. Someone lets fall a pair of zip locks containing the pixie sticks of this conspiracy; what I had to say was sent, I mentioned this I think already, underground switch and toggle intended to ignite what I could never bring myself to mean. Where the voices were avoiding me—hands outstretched at quarter day to hold back the beam—was there something broken? I weather compliant. I rally.

Two guitars were left in a room all alone They sat on different corners of the parlor In this solitude they started talking to each other My strings are tight and full of tears The man who plays me has no heart I have seen it leave out of his mouth I have seen it melt out of his eyes It dives into the pores of the earth When they squeeze me tight I bring Down the angels who live off the chorus The trios singing loosen organs With melodious screwdrivers Sentiment comes off the hinges Because a song is a mountain put into Words and landscape is the feeling that Enters something so big in the harmony We are always in danger of blowing up With passion The other guitar: In 1944 New York When the Trio Los Panchos started With Mexican & Puerto Rican birds I am the one that one of them held Tight    like a woman Their throats gardenia gardens An airport for dreams I've been in theaters and cabarets I played in an apartment on 102nd street After a baptism pregnant with women The men flirted and were offered Chicken soup Echoes came out of hallways as if from caves Someone is opening the door now The two guitars hushed and there was a Resonance in the air like what is left by The last chord of a bolero.

It is Hermes stepping off his winged sandal. ...I saw the Writing Spider sitting with aplomb Even his caduceus, despite the scandal dead center her creation, above the compost of its forfeiture, lies abandoned (sage location); what I wondered most like an Android or iPad on a nightstand was whether the sweetgum burrs and dried leaves grown footed for the purpose of bearing away were ornaments or accidents she interweaves any such device or gadget as may in the clearly golden silk, whose subwebs distract him from a more pressing matter. are occupied by diminutive male sub-celebs Herse is perched on the precipice of the mattress holding down the fort (as she holds court) with its luxurious bedspread, where tapestry long after she vanishes, stopping short vis-à-vis itself interleaves the allegory. of the epiphany or apotheosis Real gold thread weighs the covers we expect from genteel arts, or a goddess a cherub heaves to turn down for the lovers. “Who thereupon did rende the cloth in pieces every whit, Would that the same in his wings might tip the scales, Bicause the lewdnesse of the Gods was biased so in it. and with tears, put salt in these mythical tales And with an Arras weavers combe of Box she fiercely smit by sinking level with us l’enfant in the room ... Arachne on the forehead full a dozen times and more.”

BEEF: We are here between trees, with the tempo of a rosary being strung in a queue of escalating beads— BEEF: It's not quite the count in the countinghouse of my chest but the heart does make an awful attempt BEEF: a tee and a circle wherever it may be there was music coming on BEEF: which though machinery-like moves not in cogs, and never springs, but waves through BEEF: like wired applause for antic backstage buds on the pre-comeuppance buzz; but it fades BEEF: but only after the chorus has pulsed BEEF: it drops off with sudden decision, like fountain water gone dross BEEF: or it reaches the furthest point the branch turns from us, and is for some arc fully quiet... BEEF: until the roulette snaps its jaw and the choir's circuit opens to one BEEF: like a pigeon unhinged, its wings in sudden white-rumped ascent BEEF: unopposed by iridescence BEEF: unopposed by iridescence

Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God and loved one another. Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only possession. One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have lived together.  The time has come for us to part.  Let us divide our possessions.” Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me.  But if thou must needs go, so be it,” and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him saying, “We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine.” Then the older hermit said, “Charity I will not accept.  I will take nothing but mine own.  It must be divided.” And the younger one said, “If the bowl be broken, of what use would it be to thee or to me?  If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast a lot.” But the older hermit said again, “I will have but justice and mine own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance.  The bowl must be divided.” Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, “If it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us now break the bowl.” But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he cried, “O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight.”

Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other’s learning.  For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer. One day the two met in the marketplace, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods.  And after hours of contention they parted. That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past. And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books.  For he had become an unbeliever.

Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall, One named Peter, one named Paul. Fly away, Peter!   Fly away, Paul! Come back, Peter!   Come back, Paul!

Once, I was as large as any living creature could be. I could lift the world and carry it from my breast to its bath. When I looked down from the sky you could see the love in my eye: “Oh, tiny world, if anything ever happened to you, I would die.” And I said, “No!” to the hand. Snatched the pebble from the mouth, fished it out and told the world it would choke! Warned the world over & over! “Do you hear me? Do you want to choke?!” But how was the world to know what the truth might be?Perhaps they grant you special powers, these choking stones. Maybe

I was working in a bookstore and as an antidote to the twin torment of exhaustion and boredom, one day I went with a friend on a walking tour. We made it as far as Berlin and there I met the man I would move with to a boarding house, then to furnished rooms in the flat of a civil servant, and from there one morning in January to the Registry to be married. Afterward we moved to a studio apartment and two years later to the school where boys returning from the war would remove their collars and sew them back on with red thread to demonstrate the end of their allegiance to the cruel and fastidious past. Everyone wanted to be launched into a place from which you could look back and ask whether the red was also meant to enact spilled blood. You could say so, but only if you want to insist that history's minutia is best read as allegory. The fact is, history didn't exist then. Each day was a twenty-four hour stand-still on a bridge from which we discretely looked into the distance, hoping to catch sight of the future. It's near where you're standing now. One day we were lying in the sun dressed in nothing but our skin when a camera came by and devoured us.

The old woman in the parking lot wields her walker not unspryly. Gray hair lank and without style, hanging under her ski hat, as I wear a ski hat— her legs bare under her skirt, my legs bare under my skirt, she wears sneakers, I wear sneakers— windbreaker, windbreaker. She rolls up to watch me board, as people do, because it is interesting to see the wheelchair maneuvered backward into the van.You got it? she asks, as people do though I am not their child. We are not sisters either, despite the wind’s ruffling our skirts in sync— oh how she is interested in the ruffling of my skirt. The ruffle makes her giddy, starts her bald gums racing on their wordless observations as she peers into my thighs. How alike we are! says this no-sister of mine to be argued with, just some crazy old woman flashing the terrible crater of her smile to raise the wind and prove her point.