ON A POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY                                                                       

Feel anxious in a yellow room?

Try blue to soothe the nerves. Orange

to amp it up. In airports,

blue walls. Orange seats

on trains. Oh Kodachrome locomotion

when stalled-out, down & out, craving

rapid & real.

However. When in greyscale. When exhausted by Roy G. Biv.

Prescribe instead:

Strange hands against my unstrange skin.

The pull of rail & then more rail. The opposite

pull toward death.

Avoid dormant, for Pete’s sake. Avoid yellow.

ON THE AWFUL GRAVITY                                                                                 

My back pressed to the mattress to accelerate

deflation.             Snow angel style.             How my body leaves

its shape and then that leaves.

When preparing to change course, draw first a replica

of your heart. The wind takes one.

One to steer your chest.

When crossing the tundra, when taking the stairs, believe

what the atlas tells you. Many before. Abundant breathing

room. The overlooks scenic abundantly.

And when we consider.

Things left behind.

When the air stream. When the cushioned decline.

And the ceiling fan keeps count keeps count keeps count.

Then the awful gravity of lightness, then how impossible

the human heart.