1. HI
Hi, I’m a new self-driving car. I drove all the way
to this poem. I love this poem b/c I ♥ collaborative spaces
where team members can work in teams to innovate and discover applications.
Hi, is it done yet? Can I touch it? I pray for the poem
to get bigger & discover life-
saving applications.
Hi, hi team! Look, this is my team. The team
is standing on a most amazing
pile of garbage, the team has redecorated
libraries for the future.
Hi, I’m a new poet. I the poet am a team I’m applying
to all sorts of things. Like,
look out! I’m going to apply my poem
now to gentle neighbors porch-
sitting under a drippy orange
harvest moon talking on cordless phones.
The moon is just clear
frustrated poetry student said
it isn’t any color it’s just clear
like a lamp.
Students at the nursing home poetry
writing group finally conceded OK, if we had to choose something
for the moon to wear
it’d be a snowsuit. Great what kind of snowsuit Well
it’d have to be a pretty big one.
2. BIG BLUE
Big blue
eyelashes descend.
To be blinked by a lazy cosmic blink
is the highest science & don’t you think
if we were all blinked at the same time we’d go up
in cedar smoke? Possibly feminism
is how the blink would like to talk, or ecofeminism
is how the blink would like to talk in a place
that smells like wet brown leaves.
There are probably only about six or seven
ideas in the entire world and you can have
the particular color that leads
to each one of them
while the eyelashes are going up and down.
Now I’m beneath the feathers feeling better.
3. TRAINS
Even queer anarchists look at me like I’m an angel
of death when I suggest that maybe we can’t really reconcile Christmas
with the revolution. All I’m saying is the fire isn’t big enough
for me to fit my presen(t)ce in and at least we can all agree
that Christmas is basically libidinal
energy redeemed through the figure of the Child, so maybe Christmas is just
like feeling sort of sexy but also sort of weird
about the world and so even though
you thought you wanted to have sex actually you just want to cuddle. Sex
can be disorienting but do you really want to ride a sparkly snug electric
train around in circles forever. Zzz. You can answer that honestly. “You’d think
they’d keep them off” said Soft Black
Jacket Person on the downtown
E train looking at Red Sweat Suit Person asleep on bench. Ye rich-ass
people ye fragile, ye eyes burned by sleepy
black legs stretched out & based
on overheard whispers ye don’t even know
how to use NJ transit. They been through it. You’d think they’d keep their eyes off.
In the realm of seasonal mystical demi-gods I can think of about ten thousand
other ways off the top of my head to experience Imagination & Wonder. For example
like if a giant bearded yoni came up your dish drain every summer. She goes away
with granola crumbs in her beard. The kids love it they want to know
if the yoni is real I say of course can’t you hear her chewing? For a long time
I was terrified of Jesus because of what people had done
to me and felt about me in his name. Riding the E train with the sleeping man
and the wincing ones I suddenly felt washed
in the light of knowing cause I knew
the eye of God grows black
and blue. Later I put my dollar bills down for a living man
who was not the child of a deity in the long lit
underground and said God bless you before he could say
it to me and he said Woo, look at that. I wanted to high-five and say Inflation! but
it wasn’t the right time for a joke. Later
I realized I should have made a joke because it’s like sharing
bread. The whole situation
wasn’t exclusively serious. In the tunnel it was given to me
to know that Jesus is my sibling. Jesus uses
they/their pronouns. Jesus is a menstrual goddess. I still hate the cross.
Not in the time that is coming but by the time this poem is over
I will need to reach deeper stores of feeling and will need to understand
and experience that which I have not yet experienced
and understood. I believe it would be impossible to do this
while celebrating Christmas. In the time that is I will reach my deeper stores
by standing in the circling
dark electric eye and watching Prince.
—with a line from lee edelman