Three Poems

Adopt a highway
The bride of nomadism will be back
after a tale that if you read it
months of living fall away
and land in love before
the agemates of my soul
convert a path into a road
and are house-proud on it
At the end of thirty years
let it be an invitation
to a rockslide, not a
power move, at any rate
where clown nose meets carnation
in carmine oils
Sometimes I feel like a bandit in a cave
an eagle’s rest in Elborz
to put the sun behind my thumb
and leave the lighter empty
It’s at such times
you might say I’m
THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD



*



Do you like being called a philosopher
or a journalist of ideas
or a floating stub of pencil
on the green canal
I want you to be happy
like a man wants to live with his wife
in neo-liberal derangement
How she might feel about it is another poem
full of lack of interest
contentment with plenty
weary of the same narrative
all the time
the hourglass
the loved one
the bag of money
What’s the song by Minor Threat
about the precarity of the intellectual
What did Kant say
about it being hard to think
What’s the song by Operation Ivy
FOR INTRODUCTION PURPOSES
to group in categories
of minute things



*



She put the doll in my line of sight. Why?
I wondered at the echo in the room.
Nineteen lines read aloud with
passion, emotion, feeling
I have been brave
I have shot braces
If you saw me you’d know
and if I were a banner I’d wave
Ask me how do I feel
When I jumped away from
the Lover’s Lane Killer
did I lose a sock?
Probably
And the fellows ribbed me, all nineteen
I’ll tell you something unsurprising
No need to brace yourself for this one
Lay not your hand upon your mouth
There is more than one way to
GET IT IN WRITING