burnt turf

record is mint
12.99
it’s yours, somebody
in nebraska loves you
“the flower’s always
in the almond”, evaporates
steamboat willie on my street
w/ xylophone teeth
there’s infinite parking
put eyelashes on your car
and spit
i like that
ungentrified wink
unknotting my back
like an old lover
in that faded way
it’s contagious, the echo
of shadow coming off you
in sheets, hips pulled against
me in waves of houses
lie down w/ the ghost
wake up w/ the ghost
i was dead for a long time
but look, sunday, my clothes
on the radiator are dry
and my heart is public, ripe
for the cellar that goes on
and on so we can keep chasing
ourselves into the ground
in all directions twentieth
centuries, how these rotting
bridges can hold up train after
train of coal and death, steel
veins rusting out of concrete
each train a need to keep
pushing outward
you hear it at night
in the wind
three whistles
basic desire
the bouncing ball
keeping time
you can squeeze the benjamin franklin
house between two parking meters
and feed the art world for two seconds
and pretend the end of history
falling asleep convinced
that love is whatever can speak
for the emptiness and scribble it
down for permanence
and fall asleep again, trains for
some, cars for others
general motors for all
our grinding teeth and
walmart in the back
in the morning
no strike but a loose
dream of a circulation
that equals solidarity
instead of neighborhoods bumbling
w/ little yuppie kids
in halloween costumes
they are balloons
we must pop
open your books, children, to chapter
1: letting go of status
a motorcycle farts off the car alarms
and laughter becomes us, the street, vein of
endless transfer we celebrate
no state but the seed within
chapter 2: sell the moon for a seven-minute
cartoon called “fuck the boss”
which will grow roots that tunnel out
an extensive subway system
so people can get to pleasure
on time in every part
of town—this is my plan for the city
it already happened
it’s called “burnt turf”
record is mint
the cars pulled us all apart finally
we stopped stumbling out of work
and built new bridges from the corpses
of meter maids
i mean millionaires
and walked them
and walked them again
a million here, a million there
burnt turf
record is mint
i woke up in the back seat
of a car being driven across
grays ferry
by my dead grandmother
don’t worry, she said
tossed her cigarette out the window
it’s the future, she said, broke means
together now
and drove on in silence
for a long time
i stared out the window
we were there
and love ceased to be an escape