A Comment on Numismatics

This sense of laughter is approximate, a duplication.
Wishful thinking is not enough
to carry neglect, long division.
We check again after the boards are full,
chalk clouds filling our lungs.
Vapor turns the dust to cement.

Paranoia enlightened the animals
and taught them how to trust human beings
while string theory mended the seams.
Numbers appear as words, five for 5, three for 3,
carry the 1 over the zero.

This is how we solve for ex, extremes, spending
the night with the disarmed and destroyed,
animals careful not to nip their prey.
Breathing lends itself to perspiration; we lose more water
with contaminates and approximations than with war.
Money is inedible, care, inevitable.

Stretched from window to window,
ear to ear, symmetrical voices:
when Freud forgot his atlas, he used the telephone.

Innuendo folded in airplanes,
slipped between buildings:
we hoped for a safe landing, a memory planted.

But I could only stay up for so long, wait for your mother
to dress you while the bed became the softest grave.

I fold myself into pockets of memory, my whispers stretched
from window to window in vibrating string.

Lullabies of the Suburban Sprawl

Time suggests houses,
patterns with doors and windows,
secret rooms and escape hatches.
We melt the glue, the seams
beneath wallpaper:
facades for temperance.

I like her because
she fails to jumble her narratives,
lays bricks evenly across
our shared property.
She raises ghosts with her eyebrows,
raises questions
with doorknobs, flimsy latches.

Time suggests houses,
but it also suggests fluid,
streams running in uneven paths,
remembering only to cross the future:
our only permanent fixture.

Heraldry

The cities are mountains,
leaving jagged punctures.
The night swells into steel.
Eyes twitch, take pictures,
the barrier between rooftops
and ceilings.

A student of delicate error,
I flicker past the prayers,
the empty windows leading to
familiar rooms.
Wings are not enough to float
between buildings, swords' edges.

Out of ritual, we memorize
the barrier between rooftops
and ceilings, trust
and documentation. Draw what you
see, not what you know.