happenstances [2012/2016]

1.

wrest the cigarette from a congestion of rhyme

and the kingdom is cast into happenstance     

underlined in baffles     we are tubular

(totally)     in smoking speaker cones

and we are lungs and tongues strummed birthing

on the stump at midnight

2.

passing as a fracture     a diminished vamp is wishing

is a rhythm     is a canvas usurping jazz

and where circuits tax the brackets of otherwise

corridors are horns blowing     inflating parentheses

and speaking craters into the back of a chair

is confusion     or a punctured afternoon

3.

my own face is strings scraped     an entrapment

as tremors occupy the evening’s body

and we were glass and silence broken     unclassifiable

over the head of any ship’s captain

or a lantern     a platinum quitter at dawn

is everything in language     dust     and television

4.

this abscission isn’t sudden     or flirting with the skyline

and I am flexing happenstance     posing

where animals once articulated the bottom

where nepotism is miniscule and the earth

and where we were once the world’s strongest man

and a decimal     immature beyond all our moons

5.

(leaning     leaning     leaning)     and knots of universe unwind

in the suburbs     in the transition to malignancy

and satisfaction is usually cumbersome

or circular     or a movement shying into language

but this passage is temporal     is teeth chattering
as another cigarette is drawn from the diurnal pack