Sheets of Glass

an acre of city with a pleasant person
singing songs about slavery as quiet
iron rises in a fungal form unable
to control the new world rivets
down the alligator spine

the hand of static intervention
tremors and reckons the base
interference at an unreasonable
level and the twelfth minute
feedsback a pulsing electronic organ

cow heart and a datsun battery
keeps my body red and turns my hairs
around on my body but I’m alive
and swelling in the cold air

and where I keep my hat
only the yield sign knows
and where I keep my sleeves
is out on the wind’s

---

Firing Line

red letter four before the time was right
in the short grass sucking hose water
off the Foundation’s land
in the back of the head
with a rope round the wrist
believe I won’t do it again
pull of a phantom hand
believe I won’t do it again

he keeps his mouth open
teeth jut out
his belief

right as broken wrist in wire
wrap and cigar smoke
a marionette’s stigmata
with joints that bend both ways
and dozens of features
so that he is a wooden
man in all contempt
pain that calls you close
main in all contempt 

---

Musik Utah

wingspan of a lung lurching out of the cage
to push out with such force to collapse
and suck in another pressure
if the blood were thicker
like the blood of a new world tree
        if he was adaptable
        and could do more

such a waste his thumb decayed
while he was requesting permission
he could no longer rest his aerophone
in the security of a time signature

if his tree was white under the bark
had been replaced by estrogen
as a colony of coral once did

adjustable and free of modern convenience
in a mormon seabed
a salt pool in land
saw the air rise up
in his collapse
carrying only color
with no lines 

---

Hard Noxious Weed

hand on the ten year fence from ship planks and war nails
hand on a short hat much darker than my suit
over with one push of my right knee
tension in my pant leg with no dirt
on the ground sucked out by Melaleuca
churning butter in the air
stuffed with unused paper
wood saturated with oil
veined with ants who prefer permeance

foot on the root that killed this grass
foot on the dirt getting looser
knocked up with spent shells– would be paperbarks
over the grasshopper I buried alive
dug up again and buried alive

they can’t figure out how to burn
Melaleuca past the primary layer
because it’s been to university
I rip up the scraps and strike at the canola wood
until my hands smell like Melbourne

where you chew up the leaves
if you have a headache
my stale head never stopped
blame the mutilation 

---

That Dread Scratch Man

With a hole in my head you might call me sugar
making bricks out of compounds and put them for let
because the real wide boys live under the rocks
you might call me ivory because my teeth are correct
counted every night because it’s his job to
keep me looking strong like a waterbird
stalking shrimp you might call me untied bed
soap machine, bubble gum machine
smoke machine, meat machine
smelter of what it was you might call
me Amos because of my right face

they render large animals to make our pets.