Speed Checked by Airplane (first section)

What altitude would you find me at?
Scanning, half shut, half open. Eyeless.
Eyeless.
What trip could we trap with what rope
noose-like, noose-tight?

I see your ghost hands
translucent and fluttering
between folds of skin and bark.
We tree-like. We monolithic
statues of implacability.
Marching toward
and here we insert the place.
Me to you less face
more utility
But again we ask (do you see)
What altitude would you find me
at?
Scanning, scanning.

Follow me along the intertwined veins leading
in or out (science fails me).
A thinly veiled massacre.
An interstate.
We will inter the state.
This sarcophagus we desecrate.
We spit, let us shine at this altitude.
Let us shine.

We intertwined.
Failure strikes back & back
until we are out of floor and
into wall.
Inter
the floor that fails us.
We are at zero feet and not climbing

Wish for geometry
want for shapes but
look & find & find
nothing under the circles
but squares. Plots of plants
and a chalky set of bones
ivy ligaments dancing
and singing a still song
of stale night air.

What altitude?
If I bring you a letter of recommendation
filled with posies or charitable facts.
A crack. A fissure.
The blood leaking through
would you
hand me the job, hand me off, fend me off?
A bouquet of roses is better? A tear jerker?
Pieces of my bone marrow dissolving in your tea.
Find me at
bypass. Stop. Bypass. A letterpress. A series of
Children’s books.
Pop-up tigers. Bypass.
Stop.


This is not the solution.
We make the easy statements
The front page, the opinions
column.
Bricks we break. We stucco
We are stuck. Know that.
Find me at the bypass.

What altitude does a heart fail at?

If paradise is in a shadowy alcove
surrounded by mountains or walls
and we must climb. Bypass. At what
altitude?

If it is blood, the river, and we drink from it
what teeth will we sprout? What ivory radish
takes the place in our cavernous and fearful
holes. Quivering.


We are breathing the fumes of a massacre.
sado-masochists we three, we all.
We tripped, now trapped, but for the bypass.
& we white wash walls
with bleached blood. Bone fragment bristles
on our brushes.

Not that we are trying
We are not
here.
We are developing a tendency to ramble on the interstate.
Inter. Enter into a place (specificity?)
With more than white walls we can
but will not.
Pop-up tigers can kill a letterpress
can fill the coffers.
We fill the coffins.
We are not morbid.
We exist.


What of the dinosaurs
children’s books ask.
At what altitude?
A triceratops plying his ivory trade.
Will we find
fossilized human teeth
a Heinz 57 bottle
a pacifier burned
in a missile detonation?
Will you find us slinging
arrows, caressing bedfellows,
as the air of government lungs
fills our get well balloons?
There is nothing left to cry
at.


Some sling rocks
it is worth noting.
And the notation self detonates
our jewel encrusted jawbones.

It is a trap
this wire we trip
and we are finding
at this altitude
there is much
to be exploded.

Bypass, if you will, the paleontologists
chattering amongst themselves.
Buy me a set of futurists
at the dollar store
and let us burn this temple
down.
Pop-up tigers on the prowl
their axis set
not yet evil
these distinctions are made
by we, us three.
We will close the book.
Inter the tigers.
Forget the pictures.
And never know the words.

It is a blood river.
The futurists and the paleontologists
have agreed upon this.
Dragon floats and vocal chords we have
aplenty. We will meet our Oregon Trail.
We will remember in the end to bypass.
Stop.


Don’t check our speed. You will find
us not moving
at this point in time
and vomiting at this
altitude.

We could become rock throwers.
Grow dozens of arms.
At security gates, bypass
revolutionaries. Quiet failures.
Make the massacre slow.
Feel the bullet in our lovely hands.
Rough edges scraping off
thin flakes of our downy skin.
Let us be romantic.
Kiss me at this altitude
at the speed
of light.


They beat a pop-up tiger with dozens of clubs.
Its cubs watch with tearless empty faces.
They checked his speed.
Too fast.
From some altitude
judgment was rendered.

Can we be tree-like in our current state?
We grew the arms but we lost the patience.

Trip my trap with your heart bypass.
I can’t read science books with this monocle.
If we install pop-up tigers in science books
the river will dry up.

We need to drink.


Is this the solution?
Find me.

It was better before television.
It was better before vision.
Tell me where you lay
your porcelain mug. pig--faced
and waiting at, to, down escape
this lack of signal and take me
neck craned, a swan song, bird-
-love.

Am I making what I kiln?
Don’t confuse words please.
My hands are aching and the
arthritis is setting in. settling
in the west we see the sun.
Manifest destiny. Nothing clever.
Six shots and only one brain
to miss.

To bring it back we stop. Bypass.
My training wheels keep me too
stable.
What altitude might we reach, what
star scorned might we love love being
Forborne.
We tripped.
Saw the double sided saw
gnaw the tree.
Skin we are trapped within.

Shift back to columns.
Don’t be stucco on the
wall. Bypass the ledge.
Skip to the ground to trip
the ledger. Misunderstood,
archaic in form and taste.
We inter still. We instill. We
three are less than holy &
more & more than pain.


Throw us down by the river
and check our collective
speed. Drop a pill as in
place it down accidentally.
Watch the pipes gurgle
and fizz over until we all
feel drained.

Are we quiet failures yelling?
Pitch of the bark and woofing.
Catcalling and speeding.
My trap it was an unknown
trip.

I am mapquesting us and finding
that we are at no altitude & zero
us two less one. Break it down
catcalling to James Brown.
Get on up. It’s time to have
a funky good time.

The massacre still exists.
We just stopped watching
television and no longer
needed to say things out loud
to understand them.