No Argument

The critical materials have left
the country in nests

of the past, with hours
taken at the temple gone

mechanistic or something
places I think we’ve possibly

headed to before. Every fire door stays
closed until fire becomes

the mission then anyone
who lives here is who you think they are.

The best course is to change course
immediately, invisible

as a kinsman without
observation entry level

though getting more personal
i.e. on easy terms when affairs

lent themselves that way for the
only person who could be sure. Blinds down

in with the panel, like anyone can
tell who will be waiting for it

out of the corner of my eye but
not for the first time.

Priority Line

All sides come out
in a simple way of reenacting
whoever had thought of a hidden agenda
without being capable of it

with information made of so recent a friend
who sublet, talks to air
falling freezing in the cold after kind
hearts have left

why plan to disperse such a wrong dive
at the bottom gate
since at least we retraced what was real
and broke the wishes nobody liked

to stop working for the oracle, you got your thrill
pack your boat
the low tone within these rooms
it is reason.

The Collected eBay Feedback of Michael Carr

Play Again

Buildings go up
headlights against bars
if there’s one more thrill
more personnel behind the door
the birds drink
night color disintegrates
its inhabitants, guardians
you’d thought of before
taken for surroundings
knocking itself out
glass jewelry very stylish
with a word lit up
up top the smaller hours
walk more exactly
all those you have reason to
doubt dredged off
until there’s nothing in my heart
and those you get to like
as anyone so bright
blades fill the sky
when your hand brands you

True of Others

I still do it now, I did what I felt.
That kind of idea: wooden spiders, the rising
of one, then ten, becoming hunters. When I got up it was
as a stranger, left in the Japanese museum house,
still hidden there ad nauseam. In this sense I have
discovered the need of a twin, asking to stay
in another’s stead, who would get extinguished.
That way there was some defense, the dream was
a shell, or was forsaken—and one thing more, I don’t care,
I hope there’s somebody to remind me. In the food court
nothing could be further than the ghosts, they won’t
go where I go. They will regard us as equals,
but unjustly set over them, I can’t accept that kind of
friendship. Brother’s love must be forgotten, things are
different in dwellings of the cherubim. Hence I am what
you see, leave me alone. The oasis is too high, like a wasted
hostess, the way anything could get to be.
A light storm at dawn, what will it tell you? Repolarized,
trafficked around, no doubt they will come back—
gentler though, without getting any closer. After hours
the day before, with one of the minotaurs, the memory of the
face of night was better, whatever was left of it. Looking as
any might be expected to, just as any other might do.

The Model Stain

At the earliest stage of royalist fate
there’s no change in personal appearance
in the hut in a silent season
I knew my appointment was human.
Open on a Sunday holiday, reverberating
above the heads who am I to
deny this breed. At the Whitney
I don’t have dreams to remember

there was a brief walk-on, it worked for
awhile. When I demurred it was
as far back as the start
one would assume, lying on the kitchen floor
our exile came first. Then do me one better
such rarities need to be alone, anyone’s paths
could have crossed but not ours.