Poem of Thanks: The Hermit

        the work

today I am all commerce
a spring of threads
I worked through
the permissions bug
with the Tomasz Stańko Quintet
playing on the designated devices
wrote this and another poem
found the air where it wanted
to be found
and nowhere else
mixed pleasures
Kitra learned the hand symbol for more
and repeated it three times
for broccoli
shoving these trees
in her toothless face like
a giant vegan monster
my pain receded but still lingered
as an arctic sun
on the world rim
it was not pain it was a typography
a crown of ys
I picked up Heaven by Kawakami
again today from about the 80 mark
but doubt I'll like it
such a bummer of a book
and I want to think schools
are better about that kind
of violence these days
the conditions of labor
are the earth clothed in
permeation and destability
what I am clothed in
is storm clouds
it is a profound peace

        the search

so I finished
Meiko Kawakami's book and
the end redeems it entirely
as is the case with so many things
we enter a depth of heaven
a literal depth
where many kinds of fire thrive
early stages of a new job hunt:
reached out to a friend
at a startup to test the waters
but it didn't sound promising
love is a consonant
and sometimes y
this Godzilla show is right
about one thing:
everything is larger on the inside
what I find on the inside
is a petty rage that swells
when I tense my jaw
remaining there like a growth
or a Nietzschian realm
of beauty
how laughter
is a pure mirror
how my voice overtones
the names of friends
rings a geography of need
I am unborn every night
from the lantern
that lights my way

        the things my daughter has said (yet more of them)

tomorrow happened yesterday too
took a lot years for me to learn that
but only four for her
and that I can thank the air
by holding it a while
inside me
at the shelf-edge of all land
the late 90s houses are swallowing
themselves and
drowning our formative years
only the things I don't do
burn down my sleep
time chiming a distant glass
loved when The Good Place
referenced Cheers with
a towel-flipped shoulder
and Danson futzing
with some shot glasses
I imagine my friends
in the bar at the end
of all railroad tracks
shooting the shit
my sword hand is burning
into the shape of a star
of David now
I can finally let out that breath
of thanks
for sure one of my favorite
things Ayla has ever said to me
completely out of the blue:
can someone tell me
all about trees?

        the material

whatever small worlds
we can hold we should
I dreamed of dead sharks
tumbling in the shorebreak

I was a bird's nest
and everything was animal
which was just to illustrate
that there is a schism between

the world and the world
that you could pry apart
like a wishbone remember those?
don't see them around much anymore

too violent maybe the tearing
the ocean is wrong
in its opinions
vis-à-vis how it holds them

I am glad to have lived
to have held many things
god is on their last life
but not me

a small thing how
blueberries reinvent the sea
in spheres
as blue as thought

        the thing in itself

beyond significance
is a hotel for monstera plants

I shift into a higher mode
and get some dishes done

wash myself in the harsh light
of my given language

tell me everything I said
and the plant said okay

below the dirt I am all mouth
all bull all elbow all Beowulf

all names and all suns
down where the words start

as roots
further

        the past tense

I'm an army
Ayla says holding a sword
and a shield I'd used
for a Halloween party
do you see the monster
on my back? I'll go
in here there's a dragon
in here so you'd better be
careful you're the dragon
for my whole life now
there's a dragon in
my whole life
and you're it
dad can you help me?
I mean dragon?

later on at the Arden
for a BFG show which did
a great job with Dahl's
material including puppets
and stilts Ayla told
another story
(do you want me to tell you
all about it?) I am Edda
and Becky and Eric
and Lillian and Enzo
and everyone
they all come in when I breathe
through my mouth and into
my belly where they get mixed up together
you want to know
my favorite thing about
when they get all mixed up together?
they don't get lost
when they get all mixed together
they don't get lost

        the effort

drinking your wild dervishes
and I was the worst of them
exploding and drinking
stars that go down gritty
at the back of my throat
one time
I brought time out
to the dark fields
with my fake gun
and real shovel

        the wheel

no redundancy
only positive visualization
and the possibility of unending
I'm as lucky as lipsyncing
as gameboy as a figure of speech
this is a relationship
based on ghosts
and a cute little balcony
overlooking my hangups
at the climax of the season
they kill off one
of the most beloved characters
with nary a subtitle
he was wearing a wire
the whole time
this poem does the same
a mic taped to the chest hair
of its letters echoing
down a digital infinitude
it can see itself in itself
mirrored forever
mise en abyme
now just shaking
its repeating heads
and hand-signing
dangerous intent

        the always already

a witness can only witness
a thousand points of light
can only turn to stone
that which is already stone
I have a home in holy
what comforts it offers
a home in that city
that doubled us
like a phrase
I am learning to love
redeemer of storms
a jury of wilderness

        the alchemist

honestly who hasn't forgotten
that one night we invented fear?
all hooded figures
look like clitorises
clitorides also being acceptable
what maxima of joy
my melancholic pulse
meet me where I'm at
I'm saying not dead yet
you fuckers so real
so culture so pain
all of the charts
on the upswing
as you leave [OrganizationName]
please keep in mind
that maligning the company
or its employees will forfeit
your severance
it is important that your exit
appear voluntary
and mutually beneficial
the alchemist appears
for nine months
on the surface of activity
births a hummingbird
from his cloak
radios a virgo
with nary an eyelash
when I lived in Texas
it was a pretty shit time
to be alive so we
had a baby
and there was one point
weeks after the birth
where Tina was bleeding
uncontrollably
thick pools of red pouring
onto the bathroom floor
and black clots arriving
like deformed deaths
and they weren't letting
visitors into hospitals
because of the pandemic
and I had the baby with me
in a car seat
and the car running for AC
and eventually they pushed Tina by
in a wheelchair
to head to a different building
for triage for surgery
and the baby was wailing
and no one would tell me anything
and I imagined this was the memory
of her mother that I'd have to pass on
and the last words exchanged
were paltry and navigational
and they refused me at the door
and the same guy
selling Jesus by the sidewalk
entrance said
looks like you're going through
a tough time
I'll pray for you

        the clear movement

despair good news
a crises of
holdthoughts sparkle
the headlines
get best available
get staccato strung
and that livebody
that frenetic
open open open only
that unworthy bell heart
wide rung by words

        the exits

an entire orchard of memories
in the peach pit I am every key
every pillar of ruin and labor
it's a simple life
to be alive
say you have a language
as the bit that you clamp
in your jaws what
you got in the cart then?
when I close my eyes
I see myself
until I see through me
to the semi-past that swims
and shimmers in its nearness
pin & patient
mint & matter
I am writing
from the seat of writing
my hands
in the underworld
out of frame
how else