signs and meaning , signs and meaning 


I’m telling you something
but it doesn’t work

I mean did I produce , write ,
the “ world – it’s like I keep waking up
inside it  ? 

“ the traffic cop puts cones in rows ,  but 
I don’t reject the cones , just the veil
of the placer’s unimpeachability 

this is about signs and meaning in poetry
that people , like orna , with her ethnocratic libido
could never grasp

my life , my writing , crosshatching 
( gag , the middle distance wherein life on 
this loudening earth resides , etc . 

I’m telling you something
but it doesn’t work – what is this ,

some nonconsensual choking 
by a person difficult to talk to ,
tethered to this patch of bedrock
like a long-haired thick redbone ?

I can’t believe he brought me this far to leave me


she said I was rough as pig iron , not my mode
of production , but that’s how I received it . storytelling 
is inflammatory as plastic , even broken up in transport like 
rice , ice , the unsuccessful buffer . the bust !!! is that 
you weren’t even there , stupid . I don’t feel tired
about it , the plaques on my skin dissolve , but then
reaction is confusing – I change around
things that flow in from the air and water , (aria , 
I wrote .  a real problem . faith is a hydraulic pump
wearing itself out on professional friendship . too neat . pray 
for me , as a unit of measure . it’s not possible to feel so stupid
and too smoothly hewn and pure biological stone and 
left behind – who would even do the leaving ?? your honor ,
when all is charred and bullet colored . god 
wipes every tear away , real rider , certified ,
and I have life left in me to prove it . I’ll prove it ,
I’ll master speech and be somebody . my friends think 
it’s fine , basically . it’s positive information 

enlightened ruler


you’re invited but how ? and why does what he calls 
a painful obsession make you lean for 

support and advocacy , what the office calls an opportunity ,
and the slow bullets of non-bullet trains that I just saw
blurred and blood painted on the video , are right now

intervening in my sense of space , ever since I started teaching , 
a job that tastes professional from the other room , where I’m hearing

diddy was just arrested . that’s someone with whom 
I don’t identify . take that take that – everybody needs a tag 
but who’s the person with swag enough or morals  – cutting back

in the river like a digital effect , and I’m angry , though 
there’s obviously media in it . everything I say is media 

, 
I never get apart from it , even when
I left home and made my way through cannons , mania , 
and the absolute need , the need is amazing , to make sense

in a new environment . I could break it down for you
but I don’t want to give it up           I’m thinking of the ways I’ve stayed 

and left people who wanted me around – but that’s not something 
we can ever know for certain , right ? we can’t know that 
or be less than philosophical about it , or afraid , 

right , when my one demand is to be reasonable