Legislation

I am the hairstyle omnibus outlawing all the messy hair traveling ten miles over the speed limit in residential areas and stopping at the corner for tortillas twice a week, I am bric-a-brac made into stencils for graffiti, eating from bird-bones at the top of a telephone pole, tan and innocent, nearly flashing back to you and dehydrated, in the dirt-line lawn with all the tree skin, with the smell of fresh iron, where I am jotting down all the numbers of the mountain ranges so I can explain them to you and eating rings of day old fruit from the birdbath, where I am riding the bicycle from here to there, deciding when to wash, outlawing, I am slim and all sizes of twigs, I am waiting for the palm trees to shut off in the sun, I am writing citations to Narcissus on the corner near the high school, I am forgetting and I have gotten tan.

Silly As It Sounds

Where I found you saying things that I replaced with other words that were me, out with the deckhands mopping the ship floor that was also me, where the willow holds still like the clouds that are not there today, where now I am the fairy bench next to the stump under the tree checking my airplane tickets and serving catered meals, where the electric wires hang over Lord Byron and I am his messed mustache, where the palms are holed and lived in by the white-wing doves I thought were pigeons, where I ride my bicycle out from to get to you though you are hiding in the holes for the trees rolling tortillas up with other tortillas and me inside, where I swear there is a jam jar where both of us could fit, space enough in there for a sneeze, where travel documents are gesundheits written on slants of air, where I am sure that the bum can wear his winter hat now and the priests are all whispering into their collars, where the sun cooks everything medium rare, where the postmodernists scuff their shoes to a spit shine I can see my reflection in, the tv on there in the mountains by the couch that pulls out into a bed, where you and I sleep dreaming of your childhood and the lakes up and down your arms like captions in a silent movie, where I am the projector and I am lost acting, moving my mouth.

Flying And Seeing Where I Land

I am the hours it takes to get to London and I am the sweet of the plums under the tree where Keats wrote and I am saying little of the desert now filled up by butterscotch and the sun and the train tracks, I am the words I replaced you with where the birds left their little prints, a little prince I am painted across the television so the corners are visible only, where we met near the sign that says ‘execution,’ near the car loaded beach and my cold bum on the cement, I am sure someone important was shot here and that you are telling me, where I am eating toast all day in the dawn rising up past the window and the window rising up between the clouds and the clouds slipping down past the buildings where we are, where the church meets with the public housing spilled out with plastic oranges, I am kneeling and going out on my knees to find a shop that sells French toast, no longer worried about who may be a hero and on the wires the pigeons are higher up and more crowded, where there is little room for us to change into costumes and I am delivering the jam all across the city behind the financial institutions and you shouldn’t worry because I am only telling you, and the ice trays stacked in the cold trees.

This Is The Story

I have been a long time in this story of where I am.Now that I am back, this is the story of the yard, this is the story of Narcissus, this is the chair someone sat on in the fire, this is the vegetarian prawn sauce and these are the woodchips that come frozen in little plastic bags, these are the strange lines the pigeons walk in the sky tracing the worm paths, so this is the cigarette field where we grow the albino fruit, this is the tortilla at dawn, the instructions for your phone and the empty tea box beside the bed, these are the peanut shells I wrote your name on and your name piled up in a bowl, so this is the rain sound out on the roof, the sound of airplanes in the yard at dawn.

Inside

I won’t go to the yard anymore, I am tanning in the dark and drawing pictures of the stoplights in London next to the cross roads and the cactuses, I am in the house far from the birds watching jam spread across the walls through the smoke, I am forgetting to pass out the lettuces at the high school, I am the plastic bag clinging to the electric wires at the feet of the Proust scholars, so I am on the telephone advocating natural selection and I am still near the street on my bicycle where I am, I am cooking for the birdfeeders and traveling through the satellite signals, getting lost in the constellations, I am in the bus writing prescriptions for the bipolar and I am climbing on all the furniture that you have jumped from one by one, from the light just above the ground, from the kitchen to the bedroom, I am in the controller signaling the end to a movie, I am the hairlip in the tv with new shoes on, I have said every final line with you and I am helping you avoid the cracks in the yard.