I drove out of Philly yesterday, watching
pioneers erase billboards promising
more and better of what I already had.
I was thinking about philosophy, how utility
is cheapened by those angels we call “Destiny”
or “Justification.” There is no rationalization for
breaking the law, no pardon for sharp dreamers
except another bed, one with fewer pillows.
White lines make me think words between places
between bumpers and tire tracks shouting out
blank spaces when asked, “Present?”
No, second angels sit in the back of the classroom,
use words only as gravestones because that’s genuine
utility—words weren’t meant to live on, only on top
of. Philosophy dies in falling minutes, is reborn as
imagination, finds rationality written in stars on our doormats.
I see the death of an opening and shift lanes—
I can read the billboards, but I believe the stars lie.
Love is less than diamonds, more than spheres—
teach me to draw wisdom, I want to
watch it fly north with the helicopter,
stop and sleep cigarette dreams,
palms faced up in agreement with
love is long blinks upside down,
looking like gold and feeling like hope,
falling out of the ground onto the crowd
while mercy’s outside chain-smoking.
Love is an unreliable Narrator,
she demands revenge
but all I have is $640 from a 7-11—
my only weapon a feeling of homelessness and three
minutes in which to say that I feel plastic and
penniless and dream of upward-sloping fate.
Free will is only free for spheres
and other naïve prepositions—
I don’t believe in coincidences and this is just to say that
I wish I was slower and wiser,
but makeshift tapers and what I truly need is sleep.
“ Well,” I say, “I’ve met God and he’s a poet, too. You know, he tried singing some to you one night, but you were too busy listening to the screams of the drunken college girls across the street— he couldn’t make any headway.
