There were all these tricks
We used to navigate
The night sky including
Having it out midsentence
With midcentury sax
The Russian language worked
Like painting school for me
The word for tongue a bubbly
It was to be an era
When whistles were restored
To their riverlike potential
You were in the background
Nursing A speck of the ocean
Would prove to be A great leader to us
Which all happened Before
In the apple blood of our Alaskan youth
When dust took itself
For a priori SEX-Y
I did what I always did that is
I silenced the amphibian joy in me
& refused to cooperate
& when dust imagined itself
I slept in the drum
With all the moss I could find
But these were only ever first steps
For papyrus always came crawling back
(tongue out) & then what?
If we had focused
If we had focused the cypress
I think the cypress
We had raised
Would’ve gone far, Love
As a child I had the appearance of a pier
When fish swam under me
I heard nothing but praise
But fall came (once, I think)
& as we drowned a goulash dream
A dream of goulash made me feel
I should be inland instead, a one-man band
Sponsors for everyone & everything
A day like any other
Five hundred pages
With no contractions
The roses revealed
Their own selfishness
I qualified for something
We slipped into sea
Half sibilant half shilling
Desire a synapse
Which left unattended
For any longer might
Have repositioned itself
As a salt marsh inside you
Your music taught me
Democracy the kind
Puppies knew not to touch
Or better yet revise