center

Whatever the cause or agent that left him in this condition for the crossing
of North Avenue no longer matters, is beneath contempt, not owed
the dignity of a name, though it twists and continues to twist his spine
away from the path he would travel, rolling his head, his gait as he staggers

Anything the dark
says goes:
for instance someplace downcoast (it says)
a risen flamingo stalls, cramps
on the air & drops out of all resplendence.

And look what Calvin spawned: evangelicalism and apocalyptic craziness. The Catholic Church has meant to prepare the people for the Judgment Day but is not trying to hasten Armageddon.

left my family
left my friends
left my house, jeep, and harley
left my kush uni gig & a doctorate degree (in the making)
left my poetry community
   my beloved new orleans

That rain forest isn’t making anybody any money
and we see a quick buck in the clearing of it
 
One banana, two banana, three banana, four
With labor this cheap, we can tally many more

She looked up and down the aisle to see who might have observed this. The older woman interrogated another label. The small dark inverted dome of a ceiling camera watched, but at its angle the bulky jacket should have blocked any view of the theft.

I can see Chere, hip Chere,
with thick, long brown hair,
t-shirts and faded Levi’s—
grunge cool before
Starbuck’s set up
its first coffee shop.

What is the value of surrealism, of surprise? Do we get better at dancing with/among the downpour, choosing when & when not to, do we get tired—what’s the balance? The balance may come in the variety.

One of the children will lose her daughter
in one of the towers on  9/11.
 
One of the children will run a huge publishing house
selling best-sellers about 9/11.

He had kept the tooth pressed into my palm the whole time, and now it stuck there in a skin-pit of its own carving. The blood had all but dried. Watching it, I was momentarily convinced that the tooth was moving, shaking somehow by itself, but I came to realize it was, in fact, my own heartbeat...