i.
a game of friend telephone
a chatty wander a public park
a hickey. with just enough age
to act young wisdom at least
for two fools to melt a pint of mint
and necks with looks of direct
indirection to mount an insurrection
against time and its bells
ii.
birds sing for the morning bus
but it earls unheedingly grumbling time
companionably to motion towards
a flight delayed into the normal
morning, the connection dropped
in anticipation one can be gained
at the place all Frontiers meet
las vegas. i lost the thread
of metaphor this is just
a writ now of a feeling
in the margin of transit
iii.
the way obsession delights
in attention in what it does
overthought overwrought
sharpened to a tip and tonguing
a delay a gap a gasp
iv.
self-worth as a wage of meaning
eyes upon the scale life always
spun gold from the thread of time
we can trust our spindle
is weighty and sound
in the truist sense of the word
that we can give as we receive
we as the self receiving gift
the only over-/under- the wagers
each word must make of conversations
as it travels the minimal pressure in air
closer to none
than breath
v.
my bus requires me
to change into a train. so well:
we ascend to higher forms of transit
on our way to sky, each vehicle
a rigid ridge, a shelter
collaring bone and ribbing flesh
with ties and distance
vi.
i see the first blue above in time
to disembark and find one below
where words keep dancing on the tracks
sleepers beneath the handcart of memory
and there's an engine to this yes
the articulation of horizonal gravity
a cloudy mind, the silver line to come
vii.
pretty preen pretend
pretense pretension
precompression presently
prewarned prearmed
preen prettily pretrain
viii.
my train err
ives wedging these lines
like caught cows or snows
blown, like a train does, how a
timer sparks most fireworks
when it stops, like a fuse does
or when it briefly opens,
like a shining eye
ix.
but this train is not a train for poems
or my brain now too awake to spill
and so we sit here on the edge of x
under perfumes of joy, a risen sun
and keep the measure on our skin
to softly tan to story