Three Poems

Red-Orange
“One must not think life with the mind, but with opium.”
                                                                    Andre Malraux

Sugar maple, varsity red, relative of the GRACE SMOKE TREE, a moog like thing: leaves reach up when dry, a mother/daughter-bird-like notice little inner chambers; loculi. They are lactiferous vessels and carry two things. One a magical luxury, famed cure of ennui, a monumental discovery in fucking off. “In 1803, Sertürner isolated a crystalline sample of the main constituent alkaloid . . .” It grows a slate blue husk, bulbous and fertile, after the flowers have died (the endless lecture, a field of poppies, satiety, and water stains on my hands, waiting for the brilliance to pass into grey); there is a tool. A relationship.  Oily and symbiotic.  Everywhere you look, the milk-down the smooth sides, after being touched with a nushtar, gently, it weeps a honey dew, a raccoon, a lemonade, a red-orange maple leaf. She was lifted up: ascended.  The next level, void of madness, mean a need for, slice the sides, you find black seeds, mosquito eggs, the history of Madak. Acer rubrum a liaison for terracotta, white sand, terrorist assassinations, a cream, more honey than dew, reprising dreams: the parallel structure of a mosquito and an oil well. Grey “After all, romance has its didactic side as well.”                                                            “Pygmalion”                                                             David Ehrenstein Extraordinary ray of slate blue studio of anyname close-up cogwheel cow photographic light: gelatin has no E number. The recording (colloid gel) of light rays blind from a solar eclipse goes around talking about the pinhole to young children, double refraction birefringence, girlie shoes I got from Target brushed silk glurl butty glirl The golden child               perpendicular Heron               parallel Here on,           ordinary/un blue grey dress like a like slate between infrared and ultraviolet. Indigo                “every anything . . . things drift”                                                            Peter Gizzi . . . buzzing dying shaking wires black and red (to escape for refuge) when it rings clear. gernal gone gun journal gerund peri------od------- ical peridot gunfighter snow in my pond blue flesh oh, ice (!) and ink and veins: the blue blue no longer here monument erected becomes water the color new a rabbit a mini-skirt blue shoes camouflage for “linger.” metal, but it’s cut glass, diamond gun metal soldier inside the herd the edge of it anathema like a niece no, gneiss after the fire the edge of mountains: black bloom the blue black of dormancy (stars) red dwarf after death sounds so dwarf dwarf earth like how do we know how blue? gernie journey germ-------in-------- ous, germinate forecast reassurance, expanse upward indigo, like a dog, rips at knees fray     egg      liberty. germ white white under the right circle an outline an out line a negative revealed in liquid (blue liquid, isn’t it all? without color). A pitcher mold the edge: a map with lapis, sole mary a pitcher a vessel a sea with rolling dragon edges, skin indigo underneath its nexus weakness    Achilles’ arrow invisible suede musical like faded like from like form like ink faded from continents form names changed anyway the edges torn                 anyway.

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