when you imagined this house   what did you think would happen   all you get to be is alive   a tilted trellis for ordered vines

the date of the founding was painted much later   on the brick side   the painting much later signed   bodega roses   in the exhaustion   painterly   and spiral bound   in the heavy knit

you could do worse   than write a poem to summon wind   or to read one   and notice wind

what message could you see on the path to make you   stop or hurry past   and return   the problem with most things is they’re already something else

I count slower to give everyone longer to hide   there’s what no one wants to hear and what no one hears   rowers pull along the river   would you turn events back into instances   all the versions of this song are live

scant rosemary barely enough   for one bee   I knew he’d say he’d known any band I mentioned   so I mentioned my favorite

they’ll be the easiest to publish   I throw a balled rag at the shed   soft   so it doesn’t come down   to me it is gold

turn when you think you’ve gone too far   time and temperature the same on the bank clock   there’s this form fallen things find   bulletproof   dying will remember me   a dart board in fluttering crayon

got very good with a throwing form that’d get me every time a bullseye and very kicked out   my experience has been far from a memory   poem for the penultimate etc   to cook something slowest hold it to the body’s heat

hot to the touch or hot from the touching   Cage said “thinking the sounds worn out wore them out”   deterioration but also   as one wears a costume out

you don’t wash it off you wear it off   the heart finds its center elsewhere in the heart   the key that locks the door will never open it   the love that leads you to the city lives elsewhere   but lives   turning the pencil as I write to sharpen it

didn’t take part in the drawing lesson   skulls   the world was my skull   watched somebody clean hedges in the park   water bottle and   rag just for that

the hardest part of the long-distance sled race is feeding the dogs   ice in the frozen meat hydrates the team

it was too hot to touch so I gripped it   displaced the heat

we had live birds you could pin in your hair   and there was a target you started very near   and every time you hit it you had to step back   and there was a target you started so far from   and any time you hit it you had to step toward   where do those paths meet today   what target is just to the side

I don’t want to know what the deer see behind the shed   but what they think might appear   an elegy for those who will survive us

you stop noticing the insects after a while   that is you stop   noticing yourself   got athletic shorts from the pharmacy   the afternoon inking through   windows in newsprint   gaze now a horizon or is it the field   I ran for it

the pitcher unlearns his arm   a form now easy to fault   but if it ever works   wow