daft habits craft a man’s hand that tags clouds with mad plans. some random stab at transcending vanity, a forensics lab is a lens that refracts narrow bands of gas along electrum. stratified, lasts as long as a glance. whose? personified chance. this man asks what came before in a voice that lays down notes that live in an expanse of manhood
relax into this civilization: money ekes out the pores with valuable filth. I thought that I would write you but you’re already written. I thought that I could fight you but I’m actually smitten. i thought that I was right in the place where I’m sittin but actually I’m already off on a mission
flowers unearthed strewn in and around the empty fire time and time in time out again. veritable faith. a process that buries its own dead is some sort of person that then may expect eventual crumble toward the end of a life span not visible in a field of stars that is announced as an endless progeny as thick as a milky white fluid that he himself excretes
some, though, sink to the bottom, creatures whose lives are not worth saving, below the line that water makes visible, a bucket of coins, a load of manuscripts corrected by the finest editors, culled and copied by the cunningest manifestors, manifested by the most brilliant businessmen working in the literary world today
some previously ignored suggestion is now being implemented to cope with the imminence of more acute directions: make up for lost time, make up some excuse about money, then make up. there is area both in and outside of the mind, small spaces defined by the oscillations between boundaries. overlay triangles that can function as arrows into and outside of this poem
however, with second thoughts, I decide to take some away. just in case. this time it is not coins but husks of paper as dusk hulks out there and lingers inside an older connotation I web onto a mat of cool repose in order to find some will power oh here it is it is just convenience
ah the deft heft of having fucked up, the elusive signature of having imagined it. I sing out loud without realizing it until it is heard and a chorus forms: there are now four people around me looking at me though I still can’t hear myself. number one: camouflaged first person narrative, number two: neon-inspired withdrawal of light and (consequently) color, number three: androgyny in hound’s tooth, number four: tired fireworks finally uninspired. five: me, this.
going with the wood grain, following the floor until the wall writes itself brick by brick around a window and a dream with the same word in a language separated by a letter like door and doom or door and do or die or gold and light. lightning thankfully forgets itself on its way down- go ahead and use pressure on people and see what happens
I’m mixing purple with more red. I’m waiting on a certain few things to happen. Imagination is not patience. Go and rough up the day, there will be more sticking points. Shine up by rubbing down.
boiled water cooling at a rate that is telling. one level is red, the other green: calibrate, assimilate, estimate, mediate, all the products I ate to date, I shouldn’t disregard tell-tale signs but it’s too late
Tell (n). Search yourself. Vie. Vis a vis. Viscous. Couscous. Couped up. Major coup. Own men and lend rent when tender. Take this pen and pose over the paper feeling eery.
And no more assumptions about what stays and what goes ok
Laura Goldstein has performed her work in Chicago at Links Hall, the Elastic Arts Foundation, and the Red Rover Reading Series, and in New York at the Bowery Poetry Café and Unnameable Books. Her poetry, and reviews can be found in EAOGH, Text/Sound, Rabbit Light Movies, Otoliths, Little Red Leaves, CutBank Reviews, Moria, and The Little Magazine. She has two chapbooks: Ice in Intervals from Hex Press and Day of Answers from Tir Aux Pigeons. She currently teaches Writing and Literature at the School of the Art Institute and Loyola University.