crown of infrared
                  song of drifting dune
The smooth-boled trees of his interior

I am like the king of a rainy kingdom,
rich but weak, young yet very old, 

Their sorrow is something like
buyer’s remorse. They chose 

A gauze bandage wraps the land 
and is unwound, stained orange with sulfites. 

Knowledge defeats its own end
approaching the state of heaven
when it envisions

A boy drowns in a lake. Another opens
his head against a steering wheel. Another
goes downtown. Into a boardroom. Into

And then what? Then I thought of
What I first remembered:
Underneath some porch with Gide.

To write about age you need to take something and 
break it.
(This is an art that has always loved young women.
And silent ones.)

My mother was born in a country
whose name I can’t pronounce.
Sometimes she forgets my birthday,

A several-headed monster most commonly found on street corners, usually after dark, especially in Brooklyn.