Philip Jenks

I. She thinks the monkey's bad luck because of all the Institutions it's seen. A curious curious George hooked to my hoodie, with arguably racialized, inappropriate lips curling out to smile and greet the staff as I ask for the nth time why no release or where is Albeheary? By now, anything may well prove to be true, which, of course, is insane. II. Sometimes I lose it. If I can't wear it, When I'm on the outside, the backpack Or higgly pocket. Little higgly pigglies Tearing at the tongue. Speak to me. Who, art? Thinning. More vodka. This time Lakeshore third floor, My DTs I can't dial. The kindest black Trans/guy who did my dialing for me. Others tore their hair out or hanged themselves. My roomie he collapsed his lung Eleven times. This is his last trip to the place. Eventual. Even. They moved me I got the same roommate Last New Year's as the one before. The shakes are permanent. The stain all the more so, like nothing. Inside, a perpetual processing. This is prisoning. Ever emotion's measured. "wrong" (with you) This isn't as or like anything. Outside, I just want back in. III. At one point, there was something to it. As when he found a hernia on me in the tub And suddenly, "operation." Herr Doctor. Then hospital at five years old and a Curious Curious George story. How he went too. Or windup Campbell's Soup. Of course he slept there, for solace. For comfort. Night rounds. Book lernt animal instinct. Aping compassion. Inappropriate lips. The old testament wronged.

something there is that loves an arrow, or flattery like when the current or blaming mouths in mirrors to private discernment and alarms engorge every room's crease. you can't hear how you sound and the voice in your head plus the ones that surge. nothing can muffle it, but everything shows up instead. Notice first, groove in couch or tore up face. house no food and he show up on the third day, shut in and announcing. He shuffle some promise which is just enough to stave off an evening out taking cell pics of yourself and all those who meant so much, who you can no longer detect save for screen reflections and the outpost toilet scene because you agree with yourself that it must be a case of November.

For Rabbi Berger, Beth El Synagogue, Durham North Carolina Bess was my gussy friend She always took care. From the friction Or could. a bell is something different. Altogether. Such costly errors Of the mind. Eso and exoterror Skeletons. The pink body Eating its shell. She had pleaded not to pick Up with the underneath Legs and all scrabbling. But the fluorescent tests Allowed for prepreception. Every ghost limb has a war story. But not every war story has a limb. Fifteen thousand candles are Little kittens. It's an exed out eye Thing for this one. Or in the rubble, an Oboe Tuned by the wind. Half of him is impounded In the tree folk Gemeinschaft Half of him is a city. If you call him in the forest You might get the gut side Vertiginous and quiver, Covered in vines and hair To camouflage What's on the inside that counts? What fixed and determinate story Hails from the forest these Fisted halls? Most of him is hanging in the tree you See blinking in the sunlight, such a drip. The rainwaiter tickles the private. Got to get it together. From formal folk Comes the shining.

Hardly any of me is solid any more, I mean I buy things every day. And there comes a time when I am feeling as windblowed as the apples in the Shenandoah. And there goes I who then again began tho what does this Mrs. Begin? (she says I am) And cast down me wretched sinner unto thee I am slightly different from a corpse at a funeral in that I am less made up but made up worse. Who I thereby did appoint myself but forgot which was mirror. I stand stabbed with wrench piss rabid at the counter matter of things in the room with which I identify. Somewheres crossed up in hot antartic mountains they live backwards together. Whose feet then were backwards whose feet were needing shoes so badly in 1964 that millions virtual millions of shoes were sent to “Appalachia Virginia” for they were too poor—“backward.” America glared haughtily at local shoe burnings that Christmas. But I’m not antarctical nor hypo thetic. My mind gleams like the fangs of a viper in white heat dying to sink my teeth into the throat of something wrong.

The idea was. At least in theory, Dust was a bad thing. There was a bowl Of it. At another Point in time The conclusion Was reached That everything Was of it. No season, no Nothing to measure To measure against So no love or hate. Left us without no Moorings or so my Father told me Vanity tables of it? Isn’t that what a vanity Table is for? What happens to As its failings accrue? No mission but to be clean. Of itself. But existing (time) And problems there – The problem of now We are back here. See the whole dust problem’s No measure. All’s dust, check. All’s virtuous, check. So why not live it up then? And thus, YOLO etc. etc. {These fok whirr pretty smart. Thing is, even in The dust bowl, the Idea, a very American One was that something Wasn’t dust. I wasn’t. The Bowl wasn’t. The dust wasn’t. Since Ecclesiastes, Been trying this one on. (how’s that working out for you?) One needn’t be geologically Or for that matter Psychologically trained to Begin unpacking the diffident And sometimes strained Relation the nation holds with All that is vanity.