“I chicken out at the edges of it,” 8 ½ inches of lit
Samsung, my business of screwing business and selling no soul
to clamors in suits digging gins at high
noon, the trade of books not barter bard or Mauss’ gift —
too Lowell, a.k.a Bobby Brahmin with his throat on fire with Logos
and the donut gamut police cocking
idealities, but the sign said stop not fucking park.
Tickets explode, buds bloom
and purple, Spring arrives forward, asks you for favors
in the back room, at the edges
illegible pledges scribbled out in primitive time, sun’s up
and oddly objects called bodies know
arcs in limbo even, the Lion of Oz cries spin and proclaims
computers pharming behind the screen.

1.

Brainwashes love inside overpriced? Cargo heart, more Spam in your can
or what you can’t cant, as in do, big Hairystotle
manage the state of desire with the state-
ment you guess, get into it and intuit Mary Mac, her aorta gone Pop-Tart
along high ways asphalting miles
into Davis, a square in the town of roasteries
making funny in May I chew your lobes love how
homebody says je tout-tourne, whatever
consumption you put up with, and against it.
“Love is not mocked whatever use you put to it” —
say guru chemic, say techno lippy and thought’s a mouth,
bios stuff denim, some cocoa doxa parataxis
to know out of electric spins a double measure yarn.
No fakery, but the McCoy, real said here.

2.

“As absolutely devoid of meaning as a French horn,” or that of Coltrane
the Starbucks noise for post-consumer
silly, supping from a hangnail yuppie’s used latte grail
not struck of meaning but meaning
light speaks form and affect, buddy, a metaphysic
evacuates history’s bowels, meaning spewing wrongs,
two thousand years of shimmer shimmy
and oops, the loop of leggo my ego ergo a shithead
trying to think his way to the honey.
Off kilter, off bass, as in crass, as in eyeballing primitive —
Dear Paris, if you want a war
go pick his petunia in wide daylight, as in to never scare
at heights or widths, losing nothing to recommend it.
What useful knowledge, this, never sensed no
sensible episteme I matrix mama meme.

3.

Language, how do you say it? Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol.
What a mouthful says Lansing lancing on, or Spicer
digging alien compost noise, green noise
all thumbs chicken scratched in airtime, hitched
space time pace time construct time Olson say instanter again
subjectivity slates and peeps, if you said a dime
for every brick of this coast, if you said no death drive
but lick the road to know, Jack, in times of some and soma
Mexico won’t bed you but lay you down —
you, me, we things, those who live by the sword
get shot by those who don’t, or else live
by mouthy technology, to put in wheelwork toothed.
To go on go, to go on, and on the dial WNOW continuum —
“Death is not final. Only parking lots.”

What of construction the line becomes if not the real of stories,
what other realities can we structure, what other measures
through what other coils, what other face,
what other other. No such thought as knowing  
over the curved space of stone, no such thought as end,
but what thinking can’t know if Kid can’t know
he thinks thinking with no knowing no knowing of presents,
no knowing of gifted now givens by alien unknowns.
I don’t even know if they’re sneakers or shoes, or shneakers
or snews, says Kid, or why days flipping out into numbering.   
Meta moments, referring to yourself your whole
self and nothing but yourself. Sure, but even the stone’s stony
becoming, and Kid went out for pizza,
came back with a cold and some Zima. It’s like popping
a balloon, says Kid, in reference to the hungers.
In reference to the others, to look up, to look up at a star
but look over, as in check, as in the fiction
Kid writes to entities, an alien in jeans
sold by a promise before Levis. He hasn’t looked
a tree in days, the sticker said hemp let it grow,
and the clock’s confused. What matters the plotless,
which he guesses everysomething, prone to a synchronic city.
Prone. Get up and get your work on, go home
to idiot box and dream, the American dream,
when next to wake up to a, as A is for Alarm.

• • •

“No next just happens. Impossible.”

He can’t decide on a side, for if there is no outside
then there is no inside. Choice a thunk, a Platonic baby
in the tub. That hole to peak through,
say a bucket, say junk it and restart the machine.
The story is of breathing, pollen and letters,
shapes of bees, an abyss behind a shadow hand cast.
A die. A table of bets. When in doubt, flip  
to feel what you feel. Among the agencies the machine calls,
blinking workforces, campers wired happy.
The company will tell you about you. Kid’s hungry
but he can’t figure next, needing in his canary cage,
as yet another whole. No next just happens.
Impossible. No perceptible luck but a scratch.
The cat dragging herself in, mewling, a catalyst
in foyer limbo harping detuned. All these blank-headed horns,
feedback confessions, ciphers of brightly
chirps, the sounding meshes quickening
quibble squalor, somewhere a humanoid engine
knocking on doors in searches for pacts
with that Jesus from Topeka. Kid lights another, slow
toward a rush. Oxidation not an option.
Possessed by possessions he hasn’t to the mystery of real life
a clue, and there are dishes he had to have come to.
Awake, dinner by satellite. Channel of history,
your own privation screenings. The green lights of bombs.
When in doubt, flip to what you feel to feel. Something
in the void. An empty structure.

• • •

“Sound imperatively arrives.”

Once in the story you can’t get out. At least that’s mesh theory
or time to riff punk through an autonomous night,
darkness with its own laws, an agglutination  
of ciphers say cell messages. To save or to delete,
that is the question, that is the question of rhythm and of cycle,
the repetitions never but danse-paysage, O Blaise,
the light wasn’t on before remember, says Kid,
that’s why the moth seems new. The clicking the clicking
clicked to him, mandibles scraping, beetle
with the mod cut got to him. Got to. Sound imperatively arrives.
And Kid figures quanta a manna, tequila a Shiva,
and bed the home of a roam. And always an entering,
waving lengths in figuring figures of figuring figures of measure.
But why there can be for to slow, as how here can is be,
but to feel at great rates say discount the numbers,
cheaply sounds chaotic aortic goes will go go.  
Something’s wrong, says Kid, I’m giddy without payday  
and there’s nowhere to do. Say yes to space,
as in amplitude, the distance between
if you move or you’re moved. What’s a brink’s a brink,
says Lilah, a limit that makes the more
beautiful question everysomething, the whole void and nothing
but the void the matter, fragments floating
in heating and hearting, thou art hearing ear here,
you know, a particle trying for light a speed.
I like the folds, says Kid, I like the folds over till, speaking
besetting jazzmen at keys, jasmine tang of happenings.
Sitting up with the lights. An instrument not
the hanged man strung up like out.