1. Zip-a-tone poet voyeur through the curtain, uncertain of just what it is he is seeing.

Moment by moment it comes into being, grows and goes before it’s too old, god fucking like two dogs trying to kill one another.

No brother, no bother, clone poet taking note from the other side, conspiring to hide what is left with the Father.

Imperfect solution, it fills the lines, veins, makes the remains something nearly the same.

From vacuum facsimile gran’ma tells how to extract the tulpa with wax mask and ash.

2. Tone poet under the lash, tries to manufacture passion for the work; “double each action” was the instruction on the note that exploded; in slow motion the words sank like a stone.

Who knew?

The way it dripped was in code, he noticed.

The droplets froze, showed him the inside of a more-noble line, his design but minus the lies.

3. Ghost poet stole the index, hustling for meaning or a smoke, anonymous amongst street corner hoes and stoplights.

A cop waves for him to go, a morning talk show host raps over Bosnia photo montage and his blind deaf and dumb audience fall out of their seats clapping, laughing as a blast rips the room in half.

Taxis pass without passengers looking for gas and

ramen noodle student gets the news his bill’s come due.

4. Politico poet broken open with a blow to the head, goes down to a chorus of “BUY ME ANOTHER ROUND, BOYS.”

Toothless queue in established patterns, sad hatless gentlemen if you knew you’d remember well.

Each votes and has a hole punched in his ear, are then collected like ticket-stubs and cast back out onto the street.

And when meat is murder what is starvation?

One man, one hungry nation fighting for scraps in the heat, collecting high society piss in glasses to toast to success.

“Truly we’re blessed.”

5. Corn-pone poet follows the carrot, dragging a cart without wheels.

Children kick, squeal, the smell of his shit and their stink co-mingling with the straw,

blisters bursting back, the line of riders stretching around the block.

He goes in circles, fingers splinted to hold the pen,

A carny slow-butting a cigarette on his behind to keep him writing.

6. Foe, poet’s own gone unsown.

Sooner than expected daylight ends.

Odious notes, impossibly-small notations in the margins, this day’s work.

Modest as it always is, it was before and

thick clots of meaning fall away when you shake it.

So don’t shake it.

7. deadbeat poet, spoke in the afternoon, spinning rusted rim-span sinking into the river.

His, a ode without a notice, pre-supposed as just a piece of flotsam up from below.

Bursting he rose, deadbeatDYNAMO from the undertow, pulp imposter, poseur impossible, poverty author breaks the surface to take a bow.

Mute, mooted but nonetheless true, a new page is torn from the book.

Sinking he stirs the sediment, what there is of it, intimate; who can tell what was art from what’s trash on the water?