Two Poems

The 4th of July

What then I’ve held and gone back to bed for twists In history in reading in lighting up The I like a vertical cigarette or upside down exclamation Marks my words with an oof! where are my flipflops? Spinning in the window of opportunity over And over the shoulder a helicopter zips Off and a sprinkler comes on, music! to my backrest The surfeit balm to my drowsy wounds Sirens and barking dogs and firecrackers celebrate the breaks That crack open our brittle book and go all the way down To the spine independent suspension rattles our bones Somewhere below this collosal head about when we think to go off All Hallow’s Eve Sworn statement under penulty of perjury bounce Cubana white crush and Took the changes of How High the Moon and wrote Donna Lee A knock out tattered by a placebo said the bartender Under pendulum of venery irreducible in perpetuity that’s deep, it’s deep A declaration of fellowship a set of waves Or surfaces dovetail in a carnival period climaxing on Shrove Tuesday A galvanic couple provides a public spectacle heterodox cranny continental Other guests come as Lawrence of Chicago blood The Tin Woodsman a gypsy various composite witches We walk home at midnight in our same old neighborhood for the first time ever

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