Sonnet

I do want to go back to language
As a scene of possibility—
Those little pools of color on the bridge
Between the movie and the city

Constitute a palette worth repeating
In the mesh between our personhoods
If I could just send sense retreating
Back into those prehistoric woods

No map can help me access anymore . . .
Yet this transcriptive stance is all I know
Of opening in consciousness a door
To let the other in, to let self go

Toward acreage no person owns or made
Where meaning can’t be realized, just delayed

Vision

I was walking to the pharmacy on Third
With Lou, to buy the small pink pills
That were supposed to keep me calm for the next
Ninety days. It was one of those near-perfect
Afternoons where everything, even a weed
Poking through asphalt, looks like ornament,

All gilded by the bright pendant ornament
Of the sun. Between us walked a third
Person, whose face I couldn’t see. We’d
Been debating whether I really needed the pills,
Since, Lou said, I basically had perfect
Mental health. I took this as a joke. On the next

Block down, a wormhole opened up between the next
World and our own—a shiny lawn ornament,
I thought at first, reflecting back some yuppie’s perfect
Yard. Or no, a giant funhouse mirror? My third
Guess: a display of LEDs, mounted in a grid like pills
Inside a blister pack. If I’d been smoking weed—

But no, I hadn’t even touched my weed
All day. Hallucination was my next
Idea: some odd, late-onset side effect of the pills.
It floated there, the scintillating square, unornamented,
Opaline. On our approach, the third
Among our little group leapt up with perfect

Poise and dove through the façade. Great. Perfect.
But no one seemed to see: not the man weed-
ing his flowerbed, not the first, second, or third
Adult wheeling a stroller down the street. Who’s next?
Asked Lou, pointing toward the silver slab of firmament,
You or me? Or, I said, we could just grab my pills

And head back home. God, you’re such a pill,
said Lou. What if we could access a more perfect
World—some garden sown with ornament-
al cherry trees and asphodels and trumpetweed,
Where life isn’t just waiting for the next
Horrific vibe shift to arrive? They counted down from three.

Two notes rang out, a perfect minor third,
And spun in the air like an ornament. What happened next
I don’t recall. We’d fallen out of the dream like apples.

Dizain

I always find myself playing this game

That I call Where On Earth Did You Come From?

Where one speculates how each object came

Into being—this purse, that pack of gum—

Really picturing every wrist and thumb

That touched the stuff, worked the gears and pistons.

A harder game means a larger distance

Between player and means of production.

To whom do these things owe their existence?

I know to whom they owe their destruction.