Poetry

I know why Picasso painted women that way
A jumble of parts rearranged, exaggerated,
Diminished, objectified all at once
According to his measure

you leave your mark on each sheet
in the belief you’re
 
the only one who gives a
good shit about poetry

one absurdity stacked
upon another absurdity
on top another
until all you can see
is cracked greasepaint
and garish fright wigs.

and I know now
 
how easily
a thing can live here
 
without belonging

Do you think it's here? The long road into the west
   Will inevitably come into view.
     It was not as far as we supposed to the ocean.
     At night while the waves churned,
the ghost of your little white dog danced on the periphery.

Dance around me, bug.
Gather your friends,
tell stories and camp—
Watch a woman burn for something that isn’t there.

Not devourer, but consequences last
needing machinery to connect
Things, flung into pulp cavity of a tusk
sensitive stuff in the hollow.

I touched his hat and it did stick, to test us both.    His
cigar-brown robes
weirder dusts he incubates empowder me.      Brittle, like chalk.     
In turns I hang or decorate      anti-inflammisorries 

In his lost volume on Latin grammar, De analogia, Julius Caesar advised, “Avoid strange and unfamiliar words as a sailor avoids rocks at sea.”

When you smell a hint of desire,
Tread closer, old boy,
Despite the unfamiliar air,
Challenging your every step.