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Ecologue

What are this chaste
the in-charge rose
freshly longer stem
short green thorns
over potato vines
the squashy shade
slugs happy as lettuces
dug lamps in big leaves
staked in earth a cane
trellis the trailed pumpkin
yellow pods and green
bulging sunflowers
the tops of beans
paths and arteries
that’s my geometry
to burst the threatening fruit ripe
rampant anarchy of summertime
the end of always week’s end
a couple in the garden

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Rub a Raw Slice Down the Middle or Modern Plants

My porch the limbo back when  young leaves botched the ordinary harvest to garden the
modified genetic why perfect the flame under blown out and understood suddenly to opt
for  the  choice  given  a  big  bowl   of  home   no  doubt  to  tell  them  all of  course we’re
counting

on neighbors with Cheerios will ask made me smile well ask gave me  fear  Perfectly  safe
at  the  picnic  though  this  obvious chance  of  water  supper  a beach  invitation still the
fireworks  splay  the  way  we  work  the middle slice up a raw cleave sticking keeping me
that is

methodically  untouched Thanking  vacation  the  porch  remained  New leaves  summer
weeks  late would you want  let  me  ask Was there  I  press before a destination to  select
before a hint of the effect a new kiss gleans the same not simply

strong phenomenon of  substantial equivalence that the asterisk pointed to as safe proof
we could offer critique of a molecular avarice with tests/ scientists a  safe potato has one
machine metaphor bugs with evidently to kill to eat together

at The Best Bureaucratic-pestilence-wonderland a bit like the jurisdiction of eyes least/
lash/ regard Turned out  freedom always assumed safety has been voluntary when  the
regulation /religion /surgeon of modified facts operates on me

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Sources

Listed by  chapter the principle facts are influenced by human bumblebee David’s  life
whose probably more than any other open-eyes nature

with the point of view of plants-imagination-rooted-in-fact what amorous amounts of
books  particularly illuminating a classic  agriculture of people wild  animals cultivate/
culture/

choose domestication conservation Environmental winter essays by the fire bring into
context what constitutes fitness during the Neolithic era, then guns, germs and the fates

Disarm   fake  history   hand  botany  the   long  quadrant  of   Manhattan  an  excellent
precipitant some do not apprise the women’s journey in science and math manages to
rise

Of  angiosperms during the native seed’s search American  agriculture point  press-on
evolution  selects the origin  of the  selfish press Perilous grace— the  meanings of  life

how  the leopard’s spots ghost the origin house for the red queen penguin city of night
To the diversity of the University of the Diversity of Diverse Life

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Square Dance

No  other  over  you for  the climate  fire to end this whorl in  wonder  desire w/ our life’s
great  fortune  confounded  by virus/ police  violence Cancel  the rockets Spread  out  the
world-weary sheet again over  our brains/ banners/ bones Nirvana wins our hearts  twin
the hypotenuse  to a new  song on the  radio  we in wonder will we go with our lucky love
north  to Portland to  the  Oregon  coast/ sunset sky/ halcyon line/ quiet/ freedom  from
heat wave of Chaos feast

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Deities and the Human Brain

forgotten burgers/ lost theatre tickets our least fortunes
last laugh to dis to leap a human genus/ genius
wittingly advancing life too devoted to semper fie

equality never never grant it had Diana ocean
or pursuit in a hydroponic closet exactly heaven broke free
halcyon still like some kind of broccoli party

pushing scientists to garden wildness Consciousness
doesn’t take the desire between give-in-and-take-out
the dialectical intoxicating survival of plants Plants

can alter consciousness resting our brain in a sense
like us leaning our head against the doorway of our love
Every plucked petal cast for the plants’ we might

reinvent drives Whatever word-world desire has dance/
revolutionary actors/ all us bees pollinating equality
leaning like us between our brain and deities

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Afterglow

There is no more burning,
               just water
                             just river
just light.

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We’ll Take the Riddle, So Long as It Remains Unanswered

Sometimes  the   blue  is  so blue it is every shade of  blue  at  once.  The
first  sound,  the back  &  forth  of the blue  water.  A  pair of  scissors  is
blue as  is the  hem  of the blue hand that holds them. The  first urge, to
snip the blue heron from  a swath of nocturnal  shoreline. Discernment
risks  injury,  so  we sleep  inside the  blueish  swirls of  our own blueish
bodies,  mistake  the brute  flap  of a wing  for  touch,  suffering  for  the
brief amnesia  of stars. Distant  or beloved, a man’s cigar smoke is blue,
a vast graffiti of legs stretched into the blue of a borrowed beach chaise,
the  marooned  bones  fooled  into a  comfortable  shipwreck, the  lungs
into ether  or sea.  A  ghost  can  whet  the  blade  &  sit  inside  the  blue
of a palm  without  our  knowing. What  comes  is the  world before  it’d
begun, before the blue was anything other than blue.

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dwelling

again my brother calls in the middle of Property Brothers
to tell me he can build a better house. a blue house with a bluer door
& a hundred noiseless windows where i can live overlooking the sea.

a writing desk. sheets of sun stacked to the ceiling like paper. miniature
rooms hidden inside every doorknob, one with a library the size
of my thumb, fleabane vased in barnacles.

i could live there, i say. in the house built in the company of tv static
& other troubled men. feces on the walls & pillows soaked in piss,
jumpsuit removed & toothpaste spread over one man’s genitals.

yes, even there, my brother thought beauty. even there, resting
besides a hemingway novel on the bookshelf, will be an immaculate
little dwelling for his urn.

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Were God a Boy or a River Makes No Difference

Every boy is ancient & a river is as much a body
as it is a pair of hands. Who holds the blade that fails

against the rush? What within the boy dissolves every trace
of violence? The river speaks a name & a soft halo of sun

hovers over steel. The sun is gentle on the boy’s face.
Which is preferred? That each dawn be new light or the same

light remerged for centuries. Strange metaphor for a resilient
self. Even the wind appears reckless in its bloom-scattering

tantrums yet when a boy drowns, we never think to ask
if the river meant to do it. The river is but river stretching

on for miles & the boy returns home a small god walking
through fields. Until, there is no more light. Until, the stakes

of the ritual are so high the river can only mourn itself.
The brain placed back inside the stomach & a pair of new

hands folded over a corpse. How does the boy come to know
himself now? Whose name does he cry out over the wide,

rippling shoulders of the living? Mine, yours, his own,
the troubled sun’s—for whom does it even matter?

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The Professor Asks Me to Write a Joyful Poem

One without drugs or sadness
or mention of your death. One
in which you don’t beat your fists
bloody against a palm. I am
disobedient as is joy as is you,
as is the better version of the truth
that lives inside the defense. Is it more
profound to say walking towards
or walking away? Somehow, with me,
you’re always doing both: forgetting
the air mattress & your Greyhound
ticket, then forgetting to breathe.
Is forgetfulness a form of joy
or of disobedience? The day I forgot
the plunger at Ace Hardware
was the day you forgot
to put my car in park. You were fifteen,
so my fault, but as the car rolled
nearer the storefront, we laughed
through the panic because joy is you
is disobedience is me, is the weather
we last looked upon your face.
A shit storm, you’d have said,
as we ran out to the parking lot, pelted
by the sky’s sadness & with nothing
for a shield, while I was thinking
how nice it would have been
to spend a day with you in the rain.

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