precisely the right tool at the right time

This could work. It could. We could make it happen. The word could. U in the middle of cold. Jammed through the gutterus. Guts fulla Jell-O. There’s always room for Cosby in the back seat of a heist. Movies are actually dreams. You insert yourself. You assert yourself. You insert yourself into yourself. An attempt you must make. Take steps. Listen to feet. One step. Another step. Short steps, lengthening. Out of the uterus. Unlike a helicopter. A helicopter carrying kidneys. Unlike your heart. Unlike your tongue. With its blades. Like your penis which shoots volcanic ash, now that you are older. Around the air. Staying up like that. Unlike that. We move unlike a helicopter. The pilot must not touch. We move more like a mortician at a ball. Just a step towards the punch where she stands, the surveyor with toothpick speared sausage samples on a sizzle plate and miniature waffles attached to her skirt. Underfed wallflowers in the shadows picking. Unilateral disarmament of charm. Towed along by undertoe. Unlike a steamer. Eyeless as an oyster’s sister. In a nun’s habit. At the nunnery, in silk, the French Jimmy Carter constructed a hatchery. We built a bridge to it using our hearts and the money we made at poetry. Darker clouds foretold an editor’s appearance from the drear behind us. Turbans we don’t need. We wore them anyway, over our Amway berets. We fall, and catch ourselves. The pilot’s sandwich. Combine, the tricky sentence. Combine, he used the word like a farmer. His hair is a brain teaser. Spelling. A woman was coming, then disappeared. Too much disappearance. Things should stay. Kleenex ought not be removed from boxes. Vexes and chicken bones out backa the fast food joint. Things not made of metal should become things. They should act like things of metal, not move. I was once metal. Very metal. Things should act like metal, to scare invaders. Or move slowly. To quieten dispassions. Regurgitating morsels of chocolat, he assumed the air quality of a man in a balloon crossing himself traversing the Gobi. Make noise when they move cactii. It should be arthritic. An hour before sunset. The rusted strands of swing sets in late November. When the playground’s full (of lost Christmas shoppers). Not worth the effort. Worth thinking about trying. The attempt. The step. This is perverted. The fall caught and repeated, movement ahead. This is an alternative music video. The man who mooneyed around saw a woman disappear. She wore black leather pants that shined. They shone. Her black leather shone. He renamed the sun “lamp upon Eyeshot’s glory”. Numbers are good when renaming things that will be stacked. The sun... Ah yes. Everything which occurs visually occurs within the confines of a stadium. The stadium now has your name. It turns things not made of metal into objects worthy of numbers. A number makes it slow down. The number ten stuck between zero and twenty. Standing on the top deck of the Circle Line, smell the Hudson’s nonsmell. The Hudson’s no-stink of wake, disturbance, reflection. No ships here. Only stones. Rocks. Boulders. Arranged on the water. Gulls should skip across the water. Tossed low and sharp, twenty quick skips, then under. Within each stone there’d be a helicopter cycling. A boy watching. His words circling. Gaining. Helicopter drone emptying. Adults vessels. Boys scattering. Girls pointing. Walking on sharks. Letting in dump trucks reversing. Then the trucks stop. No planes. No copters. No James Bonds. Stones sink. A runner runs along the water, running towards a mirage helicopter carrying Mayor Miss America. His heart beats like a helicopter’s blades, muffled by muscle and skin. The ferris wheel across the river stopped. Flags on top. Turned out to be a clock. Telling the right time. According to Godot’s offspring who overpopulate the park. The Statue of Liberty never sees the sunset. She’s too busy thinking about who amongst who’s walking up her staircase she’d fuck, according to their footfalls and chatter. The she answers the question, “Why isn’t this guy worth talking to?” dismissively. Then she adds baking soda to her fridge. She surveys her freezer. It locks her to tonight, invites her to tomorrow. Outside the window her laundry does not blow away in the sunny gale so strong. It’s made of metal. Metal. Slaves and metal. And sand.

Postscript It’s easy to juggle crows. They stay up awhile. This could work. We’ll paint over our tattooed fangs with wings. Get a few shaggy dogs the kids call lions. Name our arms Faith and Hope. Say we were born in 1891. Point out our graves. Call out our local enemies. There’s nothing wrong with that. When the bicyclist comes up with a cigarette dangling and asks for a light, we’ll help him. When he asks the time, we’ll tell him, although an hour later we’ll realize we told him it was much later than it was. When the dog runs off with its leash trailing, we’ll watch it catch the squirrel and leave a tail behind. And the young mothers will push their children in shopping carts.