as sideways / the dictionary / a poem

--------------------as sideways a poem gets written:

the dictionary's on the floor again, both of them
are. my tongue is between 'you'
and a hard place, the tip of which
won't hold much longer. this vortex
is similar, is familiar. the lilies on the table
deafen me and I am drunk, not inebriated
but consumed. dans ma vie ordinaire
je parle anglais, l'anglais américain.
in my dream I am blinded by light.

foreshadowing, a dent. something
I discovered in the back of a book —
like your face or a sort of billowing,
a bastard olive, an insolvent crisis. nonetheless
affluence fades. deterrents
or detergents in the works.

These things are not indifferent

These things that are not words:
like holes in
like thread
like separation or simply
distance (from)

These things that are not holy
are not wholly
These things are not indifferent

Something soft and ugly waits outside the door
against the picturesque mountain backdrop

These things are not windswept

Something in the corner (dark) sighs Shrinks
The ghost in the corner coughs and clears its throat, says
We have no national song or dance

(Clicks Whirrs)

Things swing in the wind

These songlike things

These things that are not instances
These things are not indifferent

Naive Extract

to make up for the other title, that was lost
to skip the middle portions, to arrive
on the periphery
to taunt the jungle itself, to take the high ground
to teeter
to gesticulate wildly, incomprehensibly
and yet to mean

to point toward a purpose
to travel a long way, from Hell to Eden and back again,
to ensure the fall of humankind
to remember the journey is more important
than the destination

to experience paradise
to fall
to miss the 'blip' in the middle entirely
to miss

to further
progress

to put the end back at the beginning again
like a tail, to tell it then
to take on these hard-headed demons
to take in the subtlety of scenery as it occurs

the warmer bits will come along at last

Pushing Against the World, Usually

we're very excited
we're very excited about us
we could be riding public transit for the first time
when the mountain swirls above, about
we're delimited by spaces

the spaces are defined by the margins
the margins defined by errors
the errors defined by their defects
the defects defined by default

we're very excited
whose fault is that?

the instructions are the event
the event is the horizon
the horizon is only inevitable
the inevitable is delayed

whose fault is that?

we're very forward
we're pushing
we're very excited
mostly
we're typing it all backwards
we're typing it all wrong
mostly
we're pushing against the world