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it could fly.

GOD
    Pulled    against a gaudy
predicament    gaudy
  a lance or trap
         up from the sequel  not to point exactly but give direction from the underworld
              
gaudy
an appraisal from above looking down at oceans lit or at her great ring on its envy finger
    “predicament” as was being said before the talk after the ease coming up against this
    maw of shine, abundant also in a direction
    where you could say form is what repeats itself
    or what inhabits the sign of its meaning
    predictable, yes, the graveyard only a stone’s throw from my throat
    glad to be smiled upon even by those
          who know nothing of our latest crimes
          stealth, lies, cruelty, women stoned, girls stolen, one abuse after—
    A doll, let’s say again a doll, dressed in her conceit dress,
    flounced, elaborately tied, buttons, bows,
    tiny underthings, smalls and smaller smalls, white socks,
    black shoes with laces. It
    does not age, it fades, molds, rips in the ways that beset things.
    Is this a lyric? Can you tell me if this is a lyric?
    It is about a doll, which is a thing and also an image, one
    kind of thing image. Anyway, there is a doll.
    A “female,” or else a cross-dresser, doubtful, but
    an interesting idea for an image.
    You would have to lift up her petticoats.
    Is this the same doll? Is it archival?
    Is it part of a collection, people have collections of dolls,
    they are serial doll lovers.
    I have had many dolls, and many lovers.
    Does this make me a lyric poet?
    Am I singing now, the way the doll might have sung
    something from “Guys and Dolls,” a musical,
    in which there were lyrics I once knew by heart.
    If I know things by heart, does this make me a lyric poet?
    If I substitute the word “God” for doll, does that make me a religious poet?
    “They are serial God lovers.”
    “I have had many gods, and many lovers.”
    “Something from Guys and Gods, a musical.”
    “Am I singing now, the way God might have sung?”
    In this substitution, a gull flies out,
    and it cries real tears. Does this make me a nature poet,
    a metaphysical poet? A god is an intellectual thing.

M. AND F. AT THE K.G.B.
    Trickily absorbed into ekphrastic juvenalia
    shot from the hip. Think I’ll listen to Emmy Lou
    before the fervor of the andante.
    Shostakovich, plural and harmonic
    but repeated over there, in the mud
    with young boys and their tools, their faces
    sweating with boundary.
    Old goat’s lust for the worldly arena.
    A woman of emendation, a man of domestic glass
    came to speak to us before our trip,
    upbraid our vague dilemmas
    and such quotidian enunciations as the Dow
    beyond what we might have witnessed
    in the early homespun riot
    before the colossal carried us off into infrastructure
    inverting the usual designation of
    girl-boy trials—she
    tracks the insignia of thought, thinks the bleachers
    will hold, he would open each flower, blossom
    in the appellant of a kindly disciple: Moses, one shoe off,
    rises to the tinsel bush. She is
    recursive, belonging to an addition, like a
    good logic, marries Mayakovsky to the sublime
    as she submits her laws to our court.
    His entreaty to come through the kitchen door
    rivals concordance, and so
    they agree:
trot trot trot
to a different beat.

PRECISION TUNING
    Curtailed argument for small    alert
    less than alert    contaminated
                             singular
    came as thought
    thought contrived instances of good
    the good night captured
    illegally captured  drawn smoke
    without looking up smoke rises through slots
    drastic in the slotted spoon or held
    Annunciation’s drastic fidelity
    still following as faithful thought
    hurt its lungs, slept.
    Such incipience must conjure new ordeals
    ordeals specific to this
    this being troubled by sanction
    so that the sanctions come from above
    as if rain, from above but superimposed.
    The superior army imposed
    the prohibited calm
    those who