I saw an exhibition (called Sleeping By The Mississippi) of Alec Soth's while 
driving from Boston to New Orleans and writing these poems. See a bunch more 
at http://alecsoth.com/photography/.







Soon After Easter 



Here in New Jersey
I ate a chocolate
I found in a dead log


One of many dead logs
Weighing down the acreage
That was appraised for me like a credential
By my host
Who revealed himself over dinner


To be a republican


It was inside a green plastic egg
Still not found on Thursday
Disappointing to the parent
That had overestimated its own kid
And that valued
Diligence and industry


(Afraid I imagined
The kid
Was still looking)


And if it had known
A disappointment to the kid too
The yolk it was meant to have
Was coconut flavored milk chocolate
By Lindt
Wrapped in reflective silver and blue
Itself egglike


I ate it after several minutes
Of having it in my pocket
Wondering what might hatch

















PULLING GREASE



we search shorn badlands for what’s there
and find
it’s not great work


we spread the word of a very different gospel
one that is twisted in the middle
but frustratingly won’t
fail to find itself in the end
like a möbius


it starts as a profession
of dark love for dark things
the animals and air
there


then into yet another purple sky
thin impersonation
of the night it brags about
seeing just beyond the horizon


there are the two of them
advisers of a different way
exceptional strategists and
navigators-without-fail
from each to the other


like hysterical documentarians one lurks
near the terminal where night casually waits
like a Japanese teen for his bus to arrive
as if day were Boston
and he wants to get to New York


and follows him on
fearlessly he
boards the animal tube


no one else notices him
sit among them
and pull in their grease


it’s obvious he’s worrying
about his performance
having both been glory
and been unremarkable
before


he’s just some guy
really
with a job bigger than he
thought he could do
and now doing it
he realizes anyone could
if they’d just shut up
about who they were


being one of the guys in a city
lost among the lost coins and
slack herds mushing forward
overcome with false purpose
he manages to feel apart from them
an individual
like many others
are naturally able
and to know himself as just a man a
ponderous onerous little idiot
who types and erases curse words
to exercise two powers










Haiku 44


Two people who walk
Home into complete silence
Strangely just blow up