Blue Cat Laundromat

 

The storm overperforms
My pants are wet
And there are people
Together here
Indoors, creating
That sweet vent scent
For passersby outside

We are connected
Like that, by smell
By the sniff test we all
Fail at some point
In our lives, stinking
Animally, needing
Collective water

 

 

The Sad Marvels

 

An oil slick was the most colorful thing on the street. This did not kill art. Three hundred and fifty people with their own names each carry a candle to the park. We think, Our friends are flowing and true.

 

 

The Little Woods

I lived in a scarcity of my own creation
I did not create it alone, but I contributed
like a spoonbill helping keep the eggs warm

death’s thin winter
coat won’t do without
a secret pocket for things

birthday candles, parking meters, imminent
dangers, wedding rings, sick kittens
evil-eye pins. I became additionally confused

in new ways, the internet stopped working
according to laws I understood, machines
learned more as I learned less and less. I

didn’t stop trying, but life just became
this constant soup of ordeals & bills
& I could feel my attention’s quality

attenuating, denaturing itself in
embarrassing ways, putting a
book down within minutes or

forgetting why I’d entered
a room, writing only very
small poems that fit in

a screenshot, & even
those weren’t good.
The challenge was

how to keep living
in a time of bad
thinking, or no

thinking, & I
take it up
slowly

(this doesn’t mean I think I am
the only one thinking, but the instinct
to defend oneself against inane objections

that only the most uncharitable
corner of your mind would ever level
at anyone is an essential

part of what it means for me to think now,
sad as that is, or scary, or
fundamentally misplaced, whatever, numb

fingers from brushing
against the icy sides of the freezer
a coating which came from moisture in the air

meeting the cold. I don’t think the dogs
are into it, being outside now
with all this wind. Thawed bird

god bird night of feeling nothing
there is hazard in my head
white bones between my muscles

keeping them honest. It’s god now
it’s always him
Ivan the Combinatorialist

looking up
synonyms for many
it’s too easy to say

the Gucci dog shit bag of American living
we should instead say
the Balenciaga of not caring

for your neighbor
a word which basically means
the farmer next to you)