you should be happier
maybe it's not a happy work
but you should be
you don't have to live art, after all
Are you actually talking about me?
Or is that a line or something.
i'm talking to you, not about
Well.
I was just making sure.
"I live in America and have never seen wheat."
Confessions of the modern-day peasant,
all-bleached flour and no grain in sight.
When she forgot how to grow things
she forgot how to grow hearts
and my heart needed tending
from a blue-eyed aquifer.
But she had never seen wheat -
only the cold under-earth.
So what are your written secrets?
Secret. What's up?
Playing anthropologist.
What does that mean?
I'm looking for peoples' secrets. It's highly scientific.
I'm surprised. You never call.
I go to bed early lately. And I never talk right by day.
Very well. ...Until next.
Hm. Fuck it. Until next.
Mad?
No.
I tell you what. I'll tell you what I said.
I don't believe you.
It has a price. Your time.
for a cat in the hand i give you
me. scattered over america like
lakes and dips in the field,
that warm dry california dirt i
love so much. pretermit the obscenities
and our usual obituaries
allusions to greener times
the ground is warm and full of
scent. just lift it up!
you are an indoor man
groomed and adapted to
air conditioning and all of those
good inventions
i like them too.
but better are the weeds and tires
burning food and
satires of summer
turn up the radio and clink
my glass feel the soil
dry as it is
just breathe it in and
look me straight
tonight let's stick our heads in ovens
take the toaster to the bathtub
play suffocation with pillows
and try again to be teenagers
before we could buy alcohol
and tobaccer
before we understood what it means to be eternal
before we knew video games and headphones
and just wanted to die
in music at night
tonight let's go to the lake
forget our lifejackets
wonder if it's cold and toe the ice and
maybe bring our cassette players
tonight let's touch fingers and
brush shoulders with raccoons
sigh a little
as the batteries die
congratulations!
a Cadmean victory
cadmean eggs?
no, wrong holiday
hello!
it's easter and i don't really want to see you
but i dreamed you were touching my chin
and i smiled
blue hours of science
i trace your bloodflow
homorhythmic
unbelieving of its destiny
musical flesh in vertigo
did beethoven listen
with his ear horn
to a heart beat
accompanied
by his own?
sixty six breaths until the morning
forty four times i said under the streetlight
if you had known that a bird would be dying
every trickle of smoke would still be a fight
so here before day
i said
go away
i
said go away if you won't
stay
go away because you won't
stay
double for every time you touched
triple for signets of throwaway stories
divide by all of my burns in the dust
and still i am left three-score breaths from the morning