What the Lyric Is

The wrong words sit beside us Where the flesh is heavy. The right words come most easily To those who sleep. I put my boots in a CVS bag Because the weather demanded it And my jacket over The windshield in the morning To confuse the sun. Of mine own life, I'll tell you One thing the internet Won't tell you—I wear my hair Like a woman sometimes. The project of the snow's To put the sky in lo-fi And the memory of last week's Snow's a gash in the air. The mountains and seas Have a queer look about them. A hoax of golden daffodils Obscures them, you might say. I've been told We should pretend That everything we see is real, That images should try As best they can To come to life. I feel that iron Should take the place of snow In the literature And that silk flowers Should be manufactured like Real ones each spring. I'm reading the letters Of distinguished men to you. A broadside of a bad poem On very good paper. A treatise on how to infuse Brandy with plums. My fat ass Surveys the greensward And when I step In the manner befitting a person Of little station in the world The dandelions seem to Vanish in retrospect As though to die were just To overlook the rituals That accompany The death and life of weeds And to fold oneself Back into one's roots. I am so big I mean my ass is so big I can't fit in this room I'm building. My ass can barely fit Without assistance Through the door of this stanza Which is why I invented The pronoun "you." The streetlamps Seemed to you to want to Break apart the clouds So we left the city, are always In the process Of abandoning a city Somewhere. Some days now You'll find us trolling The hillsides for wildflowers. Other times, sitting at the very center Of our garden, googling "beauty" With the filter off.