wyoming
i’ve been told my whole life i should gargle until it burns. to not slur or drag feet for crisp attacking. that truth for my beauty is taking their pill to get better mileage in the city. to be a loaded brush in the act of synonymous buying the same. as if nature was real-time composing outside my form: a cloud in the shape of a fallen leaf as the figure of a misshapen shlepp. a small bird found to be blockage of big-rig exhaust. the hole in the wall gangs stole by learning the broken rules. timing the approach of trains. leaving space for open field rustling. breaching straight lines beset by curves in balance with returning to wild. by ad-libbing set pieces in agreement with off-beat chording. improv is a cake walk without chairs. hearing music that won’t stop and not stepping into an open shaft. using muscle memory to disremember steering. saying yes. saying yes plus this to fool the wonders of the body in twelve ways. the real trick is not crowding the trumpet. suspending patterns to find meaning that can’t be derived from its conjoined parts. to undo framing. cook by ear. be quisling quick beribboned in phthalo blue. delight in backing up for soaring runs and shrieks. for precarious delay. a gap in red escarpment refuses prearrangement. rides instrumental clusters without prepping for what’s at hand. drifts without repenting. repeating displaced phrasing to land before ears catch on. to be within the pass and outside. to sit in with hidden.
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wyoming
is it bad luck to lose a black cat? or cross the path of its poster making piteous moan? a mouser went missing at the edge of a two-horse town. on the outskirts of philosophy logic. not existing in the present state but in its proclivity to change. among that which will feast on cat. coyotes. hawks. the least role of toothsome in survival of the fittest. always more happening at the periphery. melodies. chord progressions. harvesting the dead from massacre sites. remnants sometimes remaining misaligned with facts. i feel like a cat in unfamiliar surroundings wrote vincent to theo. before chancing suicide by eating a self-portrait in oil. drinking turpentine. (that buzz, though…) when molecules forget or remix. like bull rider and bull. governors of each other’s spin. briefly one in the arena when thresholds breach to form a new asterism. dipper. belt. cat at large. quickly slung apart. bull churning for the rider’s head. clowns plying chaos to draw him to an exit. they’ve just seen the ring nebula in unmatched detail. named for a round fuzz through previous and lesser lenses. shaped by the last act of a dying star. what’s relativity but the pun of what’s gray in the dark. telescoping in and out from a shot glass in a pool room. singular light year sweep to reach the lift of candied burn. the myth of nine lives. the math of ever after. less one.
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wyoming
nobody’s hymnody. his name is code for my use of the second person. for being good at chatter. filterless riding his lips. making bushmills disappear. tying sailor knots. burning midnight culinary tries. not quite an antonym. lip-synch. snitch. i lean on his altered actions. naming rights. old school opacity transitions. my diaristic muse for freewheeling cinema. when villains have better clothes. we slant towards off chance by denying the horizon. by thinking off map. become blood. agree to share rent. he quotes ry cooder for timely epitaphs: better pick up a brick! been through rehab twice. i know front and follow. he knows fronts and fences. duck blinds. alleys. back doors to black markets. those applying too much gloss. in the many chapters of this body he favors pie-induced slumbers. his image shrouded in sugar. rendered in fog. a reincarnated dog proud to return to the pack with good smells on my back. the mirror of his mind my face. an unexpected item in the bagging area. big fan of self-checkout. theft. bail reform. double-edged slick. shuffling a mannerist outside with inside hug deprivation. floodplain language. lobbed erasure over brinks. a testament to tricky pommel horse skills. swisher sweets. gaps in memory. a vexing mélange built on the frame of low-income cheese. prescriptive prairie burns. tweezerless next steps. cowpoke. fire in the hole.
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wyoming
in our make-believe you play the overcast admin at the vet’s office. i’m an injured animal. we’re waiting for the surgeon who never shows during the timescale of our game. knowing the wild west is gazing without logic through a logarithmic gateway. solving the order of words with sound design. building puzzles that ever erode conviction. this obverse back and forth opens memory. dilates an aperture filled with shocks. recalling jump cuts to different ends: unzipped tent flap. quick sand. rhapsodes in the melodrama come to town. adapting to outskirts. raising our desire to smear into each other. to be vivid among our adoptive orders. you ply me with intake forms propped up by tests. from proven fora. waivers. your genera of predictions. i parry with spare facts. fuzzy sets. umlauts. broken strokes in a manifold of witness. you can’t exhaust me with the long con or by quick calculating. i’m a floating point operating in red shifts. in the psychedelic pink of a baptismal font acting out shards of a smashed balloon. we soon withdraw into a run of tasty façades. shaped by tidy nibbles on the hither side of hurt. the plan is to slip this transit lounge. the disaster of ill stars. cambered bridges. fingerboard signposts at forking roads. and return me to the field. to race again through hardiness zones. over disturbed ground. badlands. washes. past morning glories airing impish laundry. pansies selfing in the absence of bees. hyssops. baneberries. pearly everlastings. sensing change in pressure long before you name the next storm.
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wyoming
take the city into your mouth. served neat or on the rocks. where rye spreads edges with landfill. street names recede—front, water, pearl—though claim to still touch shore. in poetry you trust. trade fourteens more or less. without lifting fingers or feet. traveler packing five books in your head. your go-to call in every bar is voiced with friction against some part of the oral passage. testing the limits of lust. bitters with a cherry on top. or probing the emperor from your perch. sipping spirits breathing you. a chip off big shoulders. where the hawk is your foe and friend. where four circles meet to form three crosses on the cusp of bliss. you carry numbness. pass faceless numbers. transcribe beatitudes without a guide. ghost tour keeping the bardo close. the future wants to know: did you take your body with you or hold it back? you don’t answer for the supersensual world. for what’s outside thresholds. where proof is lacking and words don’t track. until you find defrayal in a sky of leaves to step from the curb of your purgation. to land in regular time. how the chosen do. i see you flying past devil’s tower in close encounters of the motorcycle kind. spinning with choral ode precision. breaking lines in clefts of higher math. you shake your head at fishbowl pals on bills of fare. recalling the acumen of regulated depths. brightness stirring water-breathers and relegated brutes. what’s next is anybody’s guess. you at large. some polis. some peak. on a strand at the ends of speech. rooted in many blues. abiding the nuisance of lesser fry—let’s go motherfucker! drink up! you keep writing the winding deep. move earthworks with a capacity to swerve. enfolded by the brethren you need. wheelwright returned from the spheres.
— for Ed Roberson