the two thousands -- 6

Once I was caught in a perfect crowd.
It was a flickering heap.

That city was made of intestines.
The children there screwed their courage to a cow,
but this was not what we saw of it.

We saw a people composed of gestures.
They shared such promise.
They were those-who-would-never-fuck-out-loud.

The conjugal flesh was nothing
like that in the cities of the past.

I promise you these were composed
almost entirely of men wearing glasses.

They felt natural
in their concerns

so that they could eat or move their hands
without so much thinking.

Their pants narrowed.

There was no one way we could be unconnected.
It was a mass we were afraid of.

the two thousands -- 5

BANKER UTOPIA

They wore bowler hats
as a gesture of defiance

the two thousands -- 4

I was a low-rank mimetician
investigating portraiture
in incorporated angles

ie “the angle at which you can appear
to everyone as dead.”

“I was a child soldier”
to admit this
might distinguish me from gladiators

all of them chanting
“sorry”
for our season in hell.

the two thousands -- 3

GONE TO CROATAN

I am on strike again today
so can tell you about the fuckers

in most documents like this
the girls are like land.

I am glad to be given permission to speak

but here I am
disappointing you again.

the two thousands -- 2

Over our many urban centers the natural men dropped
devices

for the reproduction of porous surfaces
and the hollowing out
of playlists.

Attractive young people participated.
Everyone went along with
skidding.

They broke up everything
but property*/

for this
they went to school.

Mortality was the don
of my incompleteness.

He held banks and guns—
it was a narrow resemblance I corrected

to rip? to burn?

* corrected: they broke three bank windows in London on April fools

the two thousands -- 1

I was certain these were not the cities themselves,
not the ghosts of cities.

These were not beyond the run-of-the-mill.

They were bodies
vastly functioning

their oil and currency
the center of
exegesis

stealing seventeen minutes
for polite orgies
& local news.

We could imagine illustrious cities their bronze networks ascribing
cuckholds
& age gaps.

The consolations of pornography
dried all over my face so whatever they could do for me
was nil.

I’d opened up for it, looked straight into it
as usual.

It was admittedly
an hour’s drive
looking away from one’s fingers
at sedans

I’d take it that way
every killer treatise

lost in circulation (again).