nothing

i have to keep saying “nothing”
fine clothing is nothing
fine nothing, for example
any dust is fine
on faded spine
or creased in shoe, red 
as dead love
my feet are on the ground
that’s nothing    
i’ve come here from somewhere
that’s nothing
teachers used to say
you’re nothing
but they don’t mean it
like i do
the street is paved
it’s nothing
you run from me
it’s nothing
you come for me
it’s nothing
i hold the you of you
so i can be paved and paved
like a city made
for nothing

---

burnt turf

record is mint
12.99 
it’s yours, somebody 
in nebraska loves you
“the flower’s always 
in the almond”, evaporates 
steamboat willie on my street 
w/ xylophone teeth
there’s infinite parking
put eyelashes on your car
and spit
i like that
ungentrified wink
unknotting my back
like an old lover 
in that faded way
it’s contagious
the echo 
of shadow 
coming off you 
in sheets, hips 
pulled against me 
in waves 
of houses
lie down w/ the ghost
wake up w/ the ghost
i was dead for a long time
but look, sunday, my clothes 
on the radiator are dry 
and my heart is public, ripe
for the cellar that goes on 
and on so we can keep chasing
ourselves into the ground 
in all directions twentieth 
centuries, how these rotting 
bridges can hold up train after 
train of coal and death, steel 
veins rusting out of concrete
each train a need to keep 
pushing outward
you hear it at night
in the wind
three whistles
basic desire
the bouncing ball
keeping time
you can squeeze the benjamin franklin
house between two parking meters
and feed the art world for two seconds
and pretend the end of history
falling asleep convinced 
that love is whatever can speak 
for the emptiness and scribble it 
down for permanence
and fall asleep again, trains 
for some, cars for others 
general motors for all 
our grinding teeth and 
wal-mart in the back
in the morning
no strike but 
a loose dream 
of a circulation 
that equals solidarity 
instead of these neighborhoods 
bumbling w/ little yuppie kids 
in halloween costumes
they are balloons
we must pop
open your books, children, to chapter 
1: letting go of status
a motorcycle farts off the car alarms
and laughter becomes us, the street, vein of 
endless transfer we celebrate
no state but the seed within 
chapter 2: sell the moon for a seven-minute
cartoon called “fuck the boss”
which will grow roots 
that tunnel out a vast 
subway system so people 
can get to pleasure 
on time in every part 
of town—this is my plan 
for the city
it already happened
it’s called “burnt turf”
record is mint
the cars pulled us 
all apart finally
we stopped stumbling 
out of work
and built new bridges 
from the corpses 
of meter maids
i mean millionaires
and walked them 
and walked them again
a million here, a million there
burnt turf
record is mint
i woke up in the backseat
of a car 
crossing grays ferry 
it was my dead grandmother 
don’t worry, she said
tossed her cigarette out the window
it’s the future, she said, broke means 
together now
and drove on in silence
for a long time
i stared out the window
we were there
and love ceased to be an escape

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