Greenhouse

I drink out of the wrong cup

some botanical fist enters me

I swallow before I even taste

so expected is the expectation

the sun would be yellow not blood

haze through the smoke I breathe

that is my allotment of air today

I meal plan for the week I go to

work because I am supposed to

grind I don’t want to grind

this is not a middle school dance

though I am sweaty with the same

distant dread I bury inside myself

floating spores microscopic rooms

portentous extracted less habitable

every day

Public Services

I live in the time of punishment.

Everyone roams around with whips

whipping the greased ocean, the bone forest.

Shape up! The triangles on the horizon

shrink in an ever-diminishing game of limbo.

Geometry is not for us.

The pay phone is still broken

and the man in the lobby is still mad

I will not let him use the staff phone.

I have notified facilities.

The fish that don’t die, in fact, become superfish.

Their superpower is loneliness.

Each additional moment, piece by piece,

the exoskeleton inflates.

No one is inside.

Hypnagogic April Snowstorm

I can’t sleep

I can’t wake

the streetlamps

illuminate triangles of night

teeming snowflake masses

going to work passing through

an entire history

what’s visible

from my window

in soft focus a gray body

haunting the image

a lone figure stumbling through flurries

to somewhere warmer, brighter

as little lives pass quickly down

covering the cars

as beasts we can imagine

huddled in their rows

Conversation Starter

A hug is unexpected.

Why did Clyfford Still leave

a bit of black at the bottom of the canvas?

The same reason a periwinkle nebula

gyrates in this one, in that one a mint

slash. I am killing these curators,

killing them with kindness.

Grace I must learn to give others

if I am to free my soul.

Like the drinks you bring all night.

A strange claw muscling down my throat.

I have completely forgotten

how to talk to strangers.

No one is my dad

but the dead sun

who deposited my constituent elements

long ago in this sphere.

On this I think we can agree.

Having just met and being out of practice

I will call you a friend.

My new friend. Yes!

From a secret room

you use a wrench

to operate the misters,

abandoning the bar.

I am so impressed.

As the sequoia must be

in this embrace

when dark shards fall,

piecing together a night.