The Circumference

every circle is perfect on the good days.
and there are no bad days, God
tends to the circles like the bee tends to the flower, and
everything that God learns while studying
inside me becomes a circle in paradise.
and there are no bad days. But
on the bad days,
God lights a cigarette and blows rings of smoke
into the abyss; everything inside me that God
struggles to understand becomes
a cigarette burn on some delicate
tapestry or eyelid, and somewhere in paradise
a circle fills with milk and darkness
and hardens into an eye.

On the good days,
when God studies inside me, the cigarettes
sit quietly on the edge of a piano and the
pianos sit quietly on the edge of the self,
and there is no self; the day shines
and the pianos do not sing, they listen to themselves
being quiet, listen to the hum of the resting wood and feel
the divinity of life. But
on the bad days,
when God brings fire and sits at the pianos, on
the days when God lights
a cigarette and plays the pianos, plays only
the long, temperamental songs
from the opera of the soul, on those days the self
curls. The end of the self, where on the good days
God studies the circumference of God, reaches
back to the self’s beginning and the cigarettes
burn. On those days, the smoke drifts

through the air like the self on a bad day, and
there is one less circle in paradise, a new eye
opens and shines like the keys of a piano
after they’ve been licked by the delicate
fingers of God; the eye shines from
beginning to end, and there is no end, it
shines like the keys of a piano, like a garden
during a summer performance of the opera of the soul,
and in that garden, the bees tend the flowers like
God tends to the circle, and the good day finds
its beginning in the bad, and everything
is studied, and everything is learned,
and there is no fire, and there is no self and
every circle is perfect on the good days.

Sequence of Events

1.
In the kingdom of air, all things
are braided. The air is passed between us
like a thread. The air is passed from plants
to us like a thread. The air is passed from
earth to sky like a

2.
In the kingdom of air

4.
Once there was a prince who sold his own mother to a foreign power.
He asked for a single gold coin. He fed that coin
to the payment slot of a pinball machine
and let each of the balls slip effortlessly between the flippers and into the hole.

5. In the kingdom of air, another list of things
that twinkle in the disquieted
light: butter, twigs, the shell of a turtle
coated in fresh honey.

6.
Sometimes I wonder
what would
make me feel more alone:
being the only person in a parade
being the only person
watching as a parade goes by

7.
In the kingdom of factories, the machines
gather to breathe. The air is a braid. The air
is a fluid braid pulsing in sour lungs.

8.
Anointed boy, cherry-bearer, sugar of the sun,
these are the names the mother gave to the prince
as she pumped him full of nutrients

X. In the kingdom of air and factories,
the pollution comes not from the factories
but from the dreams that factories come from.

11.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever really alone.

Y.
Another list, more disquietude: Elephant
collections, Margarine as an answer
in a game of charades, Half turn of a wrench

13.
This poem was designed to end whenever you want it to.
I should have told you earlier.
I should have done so many things.
I should have kept that gold coin.

14.
In the kingdom of factories and loneliness, a mother
remembers the nutrient-rich machine she called her son
“Take this honey,” she says to the turtle sitting on her lap
“bring it to the dreams the factories come from,
bring it back to God.”

15. Sometimes I

16.
In the kingdom of air and sometimes,
everything is a pulse between two moments.
The plants are a braid, the dreams are a braid,
the disquiet is a braid cursed in sugar,
holding the lungs like a hand.