the funeral planner

Cover every mirror in the house. Tear one (1) garment.

Jewish ritual mourning is seven days of riding bareback

in the saddle of grief. 

I’ve spent 19 years sitting shiva for everyone not yet dead.

I grieve for
men on the street who haven’t already picked out
their shrouds, children walking dogs that will become
dog-faced Have you seen me? posters, the future lost
balloons that will break themselves from skinny-boned wrists.
The car keys I don’t yet own that I already plan on losing.

 I ask you,  Have you ever mourned your parents

 before they’ve even died? You say, No,

 no, smile at me like I’m telling you jokes.

I’m here to tell you I have, imagined already the poem
I’ll write for my father’s funeral, a broken-winged
pigeon of a thing. It’s why I can’t smile back at you when

you hint you’d like this friendship to go someplace 

warm for the winter-- you haven’t even begun reading, 

but I’ve already flipped to the last page of our book, 

and trust me, soft thing, you don’t

want to know how this one ends.

RESIN, a slightly revised erasure poem from a wikipedia article about asphalt

bitumen or similar black
produced by the destructive distillation
gas, tar, the binder, the addition

macadam roads completely overtaken
Brea Tar Pit sand mistakenly trinidads The Dead sand
these dump trucks route the hot engine warm.
The back of tippers commonly used as a release

microscoping algae, once-living things, mud on the bottom of the ocean or lake
the heat and pressure of burial deep in the earth. The remains were transformed meteorites.

detailed studies have shown
waterproofing of the baskets in the ancient Middle East.
In the Book of Genesis, the name of the substance used to bind the bricks:
(This must be regarded as legendary)
moom.
mummy embalms mummies

Herotodus said it slowly boiled,
leaving a material of asscabbards.
Statuettes of household deities
indicated a naptha seeping,
the bottom occasionally to surface more than 99.99% pure

which doth shine like purple,
being of strong scent adulterated with Pitch
which they use for lamps instead of oyle for it is a kind of moyst.

The Greek fire contained, among other things, a pamphlet dated 1621, by a certain Monsieur.
Existence, by means of the arches, the courses in the city of Paris,
The intrusion of dirt and filth,

He expatiates this material for terraces
the notion of terraces in the streets
to cross the brain of a Parisian neglected
until the revolution, a surge

three strands of hair pushed into a shoulder of bodily warmth

when thoughts grow in complexity the foundation fades
into a distance that may as well be considered disappeared

feed me i can't eat on my own, the simplest things resist any
formulaic approach

it seems the smallest thing again unnerves me

find a thing to eat
kick it to show how violence is so nice
so nice to fight and kick at a simple thing
so bad go your nerves otherwise resistance has a limit before the tear

buckets of trout from which steam rises
inside of us a storm rises
the physical remains inconsolable

YOU ONLY YOLO ONCE

Chapter 1
it can be a model for change, provided
you keep translating when the book
turns out to be gibberish
after all

nonsense marks

so much sunlight, caught in cobwebs
reeds blown to kowtow
by the blades of a helicopter gunship

Chapter 2
no room for cream
the guy grins, rips open
a sugar packet with his teeth
he was in Vietnam but he's okay

Chapter 3
later at the party you meet
such fine juicy people
lovers of music and clothes, you hate
to validate awful Vronsky but
he still deserved Anna

Chapter 4
sip sip stained teeth stained tongue
reflecting on land wars in asia
and your own opus of wasted life
apparently hoping

Chapter 5
for the Alfred Nobel Prize in Reasonable-ness