M i k e   B a g w e l l

I was looking for a good thing / to try about. Every year, / there are parades for veterans. / That might be something.

-the-rent-will-be-leaflike-our-loveliest-friend-who-is-gone-to-molecules-say-we’re-falling-into-the-mouth-of-the-machine-or-returning-to-gales-during-orange-monuments-or-the-fire-skin-I’m-glad-to-touch-how-music-lasts-

The other of the other / is the sky and its sphere / of longing. // Kolaptō grew in reverse, / roamed dung-billed instead / of bildungsromaned, / raised in a house / with all its mirrors pointed inward / to reflect only their dark walls.

no one has died / will ever die / in fact I’m reviving / all of my dead / all of everyone’s / into a world / of meaning / thought I’d share / the good news

when I open my eyes the world / makes small adjustments / like everyone is suddenly not / wearing a tuxedo // they are tearing a hole / in the center of the road / digging furiously with shovels / and bulldozers

The arc of Mechaskypenis is a tragic arc, / the plight of the machined shadow / in the palm of a great forest, / a dead forest, a forest of rot and emptiness. // Flames licked at the curtains inside him, fire / in his house, smoke in his childhood bedroom / too thick to see through for 18 summers.

you-were-thinking-the-word-intertwined-instead-of-passed-away-suppose-I-am-not-lost-is-the-way-through-and-the-beautiful-thing-is-that-we-can-keep-taking-and-then-giving-back-mountains-are-things-that-we-can-take-but-giving-them-back-will-require-more-of-ourselves-than-we-can-offer-

I lay down against the dialogue / and wake as the platonic ideal / of mouth movements, turn / the door into itself / by walking through it / fall infinitely through my life / along the x-axis. An honest living.

The distance between the mirror / and myself is a cloud of clouds. // But nothing raining today, / just my reflections / shooting each other / with dream bullets / around crowded corners.

Kid Cumulus forgets his name / and goes hunting for it / in the forest of proper nouns, / cutting his own trail, / cutting his friends in half / to peer through the telescope / of their intestines / to climb the rungs of their sex / into the dripping moon.

with one face I am prepared / for anything / light finds me / on my own terms / the way I want to be found / a trumpet blows / I rise from the dead / my bones coming together

What I want to say is something / about the translucence of clouds / being damn near pornographic. / The mood shifts with subtle rains until / all that’s left is background radiation.