Upper Story Coffee House

praise this dream:
            the moving sidewalks
            and all those cars snoring

they’ve been here they’ve been here they’ve been here before
where they save coffee from itself
and select words from an afterlife:
            he what with dream
            tall with the blond fur cup
            exhilarating little men running in unison
            up the stairs of your coffee mug
the coffee:
            among themselves to drink it for you
            watching roads of more energy
            dreaming an earthquake yawn
            the quake tighter      tighter      around their ankles
            to keep you vibrating in your chair where someone
rolls the instantaneous speed is incredible
but the suits relax      grow hair
break flame
            a traffic in hilarious souls
            a freeway of nervous inferno
            ricocheting off destination signs
            like fireworks
            heaving themselves out of caffeinated skies

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)

Current Affairs of Sleep

my radio has bled volume     the winds came
the way the stuffed bear
the sight of disappearing eyes 
down the blue lanes of another world
then rolling across lawns all over the city
as if hazy in sleep     if i only spoke a language there
sitting on your belly
rises and falls with your breath in dormition
over standing stones of a riverbed
the snoring articulation of political speech
all the little fish     the kings of the current
on the sea     of dreams

            the blue stream of notes
            musicfall
            each note bleeding
            blue water
            like the imagination of a fist-sized stone
            just removed from the current’s common babble

imagine the pasted-on paper wings of angels
your shoe     its eyes open
as if the bombs weren’t bigger     wouldn’t drop
than larvae     of intermediary windstorms
all the dust from the cacophony
the screaming animals the baby’s severed leg
excited     wild     the voice from the radio’s grill
the mass of the pits where there used to be a cathedral
death worshiping himself in the ultimate aesthetic choice
the knowledge of his music’s wrath    popping out eggs
from the eye of the storm   

from Oedipus' First Lover (2009)