Revision

Red Sea

You are full of magnets and pretty
crystals. You approach, wrapped in seven
different medications, none of which make
me like you. Your hair is purple. It used
to be red, and before that brown, I think.
I liked the red but right now it is purple. Hello.

Hello. Your body is an antique clock
with a smaller clock nested inside. I forget
how short you are when I'm not looking at you
and how you glide and jangle when you walk.
I cough and you vanish
in a mechanical clattering of speech bubbles.

Outside the buses are coming every thirty minutes
and the sky is the color of milk. I don't mind
walking. I think a bicycle is being stolen.
The phrase "as red as the sea" hijacks my train
of thought. When I get home I decide to write
a poem. Disappointingly, I am stuck thinking about your hair.

Suddenly it's a series

Untitled Sonnet 1

When we say the same thing at the same time the world
turns inside out like a glove. I was walking
and the rain was covering my face in little kisses.
I pictured you and I pictured your hands talking
inscrutably through a magical telephone,
electricity modulating like a set of lungs.
I see the whole scene through four inches of glass.
When I awaken, the atmosphere is curled
asleep around itself, and white noise hisses
from the television (left on all night).
It's morning. Your eyes are the color of a dial tone,
the window is a field of light green light,
and you are million, multiple, like the grass
blades stretching up to the little sun like tongues.

Untitled Sonnet 2

We lay for days, letting the doubts collect
like mildew on the sponges in our skulls.
I was the psychiatrist, and held
the silence still. You had an amber rod

and ran it up and down my back, "to draw
the evil out." We saw the Northern Lights
once, from the window. You snatched back your hand
when it brushed past my leg. The impulse then

electric burned a little circle in
your skin. That's when the CD player skipped.
The room began to darken like a cut
apple. Some fuses blew, and orange sparks

leapt from our bodies to the sky and back.
We danced like candles in a microwave.

Some New Guys

April wiped me out. I've just now gotten around to finishing some things.

Article

A is for an
acrobat, an axe, an ac-
cident, an ambulance, agony,

an all-American athlete,
an argument, aggravated
assault, an alibi, an acquittal,

Adam, an aphrodisiac,
an apple, an act
of the Almighty, an atheist,

an attitude, an ambience,
an almost adult, arrogance,
ambition, alcohol, art.

The Future

Robots will write love poems for us.
We will write odes on interstellar flight
that neglect to mention the importance
of robotic navigation, but the robots
will forgive us. We will be sad
to finally confirm our universal aloneness.

We will throw parties at the least
provocation. Drinks will not induce
vomiting, headache, or loss of motor
control unless we want them to. It's good
to have options. Other planets will turn
out to be boring. We will remain

Earthbound, transcribing each others' lives
alone, or maybe the robots will do that too.