STATEMENT OF PROCESS

I refute
these intrusions
to what was once my
whole earthly deal

Wires too tangled
for later-breaking
religious inculcation
require a different
tack to shame out
the scroll impulse:
observance of
a Grace Jones
I hung in which
she’s smoking
in a robe & studded
leather gloves

I try to imagine her
hunched, tapping
inconclusively —
ok, no — & tap the mic
inside my mind
to get attention’s
attention—
allegedly, a poet’s
singular advantage

The speaker will arrive
once she finds a working
light switch in her memory
palace & some sense
of when the government
will collapse at last

Sidelined by the day’s
mysteries, like whether
this potato’s still edible, or?
Reddit mixed results
segue into Youtube reiki
to wind down from
possible self-poisoning episode

So in my ordinary
beleaguerments
nonetheless
desiccate the spirit
era

Sidelined by the empty
ontological dare of
Believe in what’s real
written across my
thing of facewash

So not
even funny
in this time of unreality,
slop settled atop
the info pyramid

It’s enough
to make
one miss
a life oriented
around self-
selected debasement

I consider better
ways to fill time:

1. Ranking types of dapple
2.

STATEMENT OF WORK

First go at existence, far
as I know & neglecting
to take legible notes

The mother tongue remains
the language of feelings:
опять is repetition
without a positive outcome
снова is hope
for a better outcome
this time

The lyric I presents
as jumbled silt in the rapids
of production,
reanimates in the exuberance
of wake up, expected nowhere

All week I replied
Mostly here to rest,
impressing nobody
at the residency

Hoping the poem
just needed a piano player,
to get going,

I approached one
in the hotel lobby
but a guest intercepted:
Are you the poet? &
said he began to write
too, recently, after
a breakup

I wanted to counter
Anything
can be a poem
but look
where that attitude’s
gotten me—