SURVIVAL FANTASY

At the coffee shop I am listening

to two people explain to each other

how shitty the other one is being

The man keeps using the word Unpack

The woman shakes her head

like to clean it out

I want to love people

who love arguing about time

& what times does to them

& what time could never fix

One time I startled a young male elk

exiting a hot spring in Yellowstone

It was winter & neither of us belonged

where we were

I was naked in a way

that I’d like to go back to

Now I’m just new ink

on new people’s arms

over & over again

I can’t tell if I’m stupid

or if Earth is a joke I don’t get

Many animals will never be beloved

The ones with wild smells

that have nothing to do with people

The secret of pollen

is that it fucks everybody up

& then disappears into

beautiful things that keep us alive

My deprivation fantasies

all end the same way

My throat being too dry

& the sky too big

to swallow anyway

EIGHT-MONTH-OLD MIXTAPE

All winter I am thinking of gates

They open toward a summer

of friendly, sexless masses

I feel this capacity in me like a showroom

Full of bright mean lights

Growing strange, victorious plants

I believe in space, I say to my neighbor

He slams the door on my nasturtiums

American Bravery is choosing

one pleasant evening

to lower gently into your blood

I agree to an extended death

I am yelling out the windows

of this speeding automobile

I want to know the world’s secrets

but I don’t want to ask it directly

Meanwhile

Morning plays the same old records

What you are you talking about

it goes, & I go

out into it

with a fantastic invented memory

of the desert moon