hark! chimes the falling oar!

haven’t been dreaming lately so i bought a case of energy bars now i have triathlete dinners with plastic knives wash it down with nitroglycerine in miniature cans iamarocket iamarocket and the burning fuel spewing out behind me like a phoenix tail is spreading fake rainclouds in the atmosphere like dirty lies it took me some time to learn to sleep as a rocket but rockets can sleep too it just passes through my system nervous like electricity under green water have you seen the sharks that keep swimming even when they sleep that’s me iamarocket i’m dreaming i am in the jungle and the ground is moving alive is dancing black snakes like rope like hair curled up conditioned writhing canopy so thick there are only potholes of sky like stars like in your bedroom when we tried to cover every inch of your ceiling but realized we’d never have enough to reverse the darkness around us thick like sunscreen on your nose’s bridge, they make spf one hundred in asia now but slowing the sun is exactly that never ever stopping just like me iamarocket running on water i am turning seas of fish into a single fish gasping like the women on gurneys they wheel through the hospital doors from the ambulances outside your apartment that sing down the streets like everyone is dying at once make us hold on to each other tighter put your fingers on my neck there are clocks inside all of us wound up

Matters of Keeping Up

hot moon surfacing in the slender alley,
like a dorsal fin cut from the asphalt—

tailing us home, tracing the widths
of our shoulders in dark chalk—

feels as though it’s hot after us,
your strides are so long and deliberate
between the potholes and gaping mouths of the street
opening wide, just begging for the tips
of your high heels, as schools of silver fish swim
against the current of waters along the curb,
flashing and fighting to stay in place
like children stomping up the escalators
ecstatic in the wrong direction—

letters blaze out in electric shop signs
O’s blink on and off, as if tickled by lost lashes
or pursing neon lips to harmonize with car alarms
singing up windows of the sheerest buildings—

this moon follows, swollen and unapologetic
like a fruit, landed at the roots of its tree
branches of unconditioned curls for leaves,
shoelaces and vines of stranded kites
hanging from their tails—

when we begin to put our hands on each other,
i catch its shape leering
like an obese woman sprawled out on the futon—

all focus is stripped, you are redressed in clasps
and streetlamps shudder,
sparking on again like indignant birthday candles

Don't Worry, It's Me (Revision)

our immeasurable potential is a flock
of fat blackbirds, frowning a telephone wire
with the weight of caked feathers, second-hand silk
as a hundred thousand voices stream through
the thick wound cable, sagging and patient,
voices saying i am sick
i love you so much i am vulnerable
perhaps tomorrow buenos dias
look for me i will be there,
sedated hums and wet gasps,
the current hurries through a body of dark veins,
a suspended nervous system
threatening to ground itself with the weight
of each new bird, until the first tail feathers touch
down, detonating the migration out
like a flung pack of cards, spades like rain,
hearts in a low flying cloud

It’s Dollar Night In the Best Part Of Town

to be stabbed.

mojo is bent out of shape outside popeye’s
engaged in dialogue with his other half
the name is self-appointed, because who needs mothers
in this transitional year of our lord
stuck in the low gears of the middle chunk of the decade
pedaling uphill, like the yellow man in frowning france,
mojo, we all need to be made new again.
it can’t possibly be your fault, and i am sorrier
than the last person to pass by and say the same.