I will not kick my friends
start where the tunnel ends:
the you in the song is me
but I stole generously from your story
they were young in a dull
hot
town
yet that Spring all the fruit froze in the Valley
two mothers talked & laughed so long their boiling bottled formula
blew up
glass glittering a kitchen
now they’re fiends (heh heh) for forty years
vintage Mercedes rag-top model—
vanilla enamel
evil wheel(s):
fate Faulkner imagines for Caddy
stamps
berries
yeast
what’s childhood
to a woman who has everything?
a beetle wanders with authority
inside the windshield waves a leg
Stravinsky’s brass section
jeered at him until their brains
changed ran riot into
Beauty—do you wonder why you’re literately ill?
(her head hasn’t flown off
for months)
girls were scolded to sit still
but every child should have a wingchair
once, Greg was a boy
so: presidential
on the beach tonight I see his teeth
from twenty feet
fork & knife X his plate to prove
he’s a pirate
if you think
you have
a unified
self
(that ringing isn’t supposed to be here)
Judge made you write it down
a hundred times I’ll turn my phone off
in the courtroom
say something indelible
you don’t listen to your brain too much
the longer you go the faster it went
sayitagain
say sound a shape speed liquefies
say sight a white mustache on sister’s lip
fish
lemons
ice
our eyelid aprons lead
towards night
sax
jasmine
thyme
how much do I love you
I will not kick my friends