2 Poems

Faux Fur Yarmulke
for Ace

“The stars that are out are out to get you”   –Kevin Varrone “The security in my dreams is very lax”   –Tracey McTague I’m gathering a hat from memory the kind of hats there are Some people want the blues so bad they have to name their children after chord progressions Some people have children as an excuse to steal things I don’t have to think anymore of myself as a vengeful God or any kind of God now that my stolen hat made way for a new hat     The bare sky contains my head A benevolent schemer contains that     Rosy tenor of my secret operative The table of contents for this week is longer than my attention span My attention   extracted from a snarl of personal history     intersects the full age of the world No longer   never before it turns out     surrounded by sleepers living in dull times There are guards on my pillow & dogs in my REM   They have people trained for escapist missions now that escapism is where the real danger snarls Two thousand year bender flat earthed into a leaf bag Someone stole my hat because it was time for heaven to make a wish on my naked dandelion head Five Aces (or 316 23rd Street) “April, Not an Inventory but a Blizzard”   –Alice Notley Clouds stare down        They see themselves in us in a moment of lassitude      Even your grandfather Your grandfather’s ears    The warm mouth of the subway & I’m cumulus packed with snow       Oh my god I’m snowing! Crumbled archipelago of cookies in the Greek coffee sweetens the hustle past traumatic landscapers Each season draped over the chair of the next Fleshy calendar of trousers    Bloused out heap Twelve reasons immediately on the next naked & intuitive in their weather   They draw each limb & airborne crystal palm over the city’s highest point   Visionary red eye absorbs the digital & the deep blue scene The scented timeline bends at the shutter finger The clouds make themselves comfortable Comfortable shrines to the skywriter of up the sleeve precipitation & alchemical snow To anticipate the future provide spots where it wants to happen    When you say snow here’s a grove of tingling spiders for it to fall under a tender well-oiled scalp      Deal a hand Sticky Minoan blackouts past a Gringer moon Five of a kind as a kind of generosity    Footprints on us left by the snow      That’s the kind of quietly raucous literary couple I’m talking about I demand the winter wrestle me to the ground Make me snow        The winter of Mister Softee welcome wagons  & a red carpet of lighting t through the blizzard       You there:   make me snow! Hand the b-roll mojo bags of snow to the Nescafe spring of ladies & other minor demons    I will overpower you with lust   With Cipro & problematic ravens together Totemic bitemarks in a granny smith until someone corvid consents to snow   Frederick Law Olmstead’s Tiffany glass eye      Minerva’s copper fingers call this summer But summer won’t call anyone    The four seasons screen anything that rings   They run off when the months just want to talk A viney arm or veve hand hellos it like a riddle: Find the lady  Find the Mary, Child & Sphinx Start the helicopter gauzed in grape leaves A Simea Cynthia chrysalis disguised as a human head Lawnmowers hid in a feathery meadow Between Hoyles & Peterson’s Field Guide to Fields nothings uncovered from squirrels below deck to sodden models in a tank    But past the paraffin bonfire?       The intuitive blizzard of sparks over eyelashes     What impossible suit What new deck    What fifth season piled up at hand?

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