Rules for Asphyxiation

1. When sometimes

centuries don’t correct

themselves in perfect

gold kept time, making

tick marks so striking

they’re printed on your retina,

so everything looks like

you’re trapped by luminosity—

get very frustrated with it.

2. Whatever inclination

you may have to the

opposition, don’t let

your disposition become

so rebellious and sticky,

clinging like the insides

of a grape, and leaving slime

everywhere so that it is

just a big rambling mess.

You don’t even remember

how you got

from screaming about

the Taliban and mercenaries

and now you’re all about

the grape slime.

you see?

3. I don’t really mind

when you forget

you’re not Newton.

4. Make it so that when you chase

equinox, and I’m stuck in woolen

apparel, fit for the hiking

I won’t do,

make it go down like peroxide,

bleaching my insides

white as last night’s heaven.

parametric

I’m not sure when this started

exactly.

Ash growing into cinder,

meal dripping into grain,

the drops of kerosene

slithering through dryer vents

and the pipes that connect

the bathtub to the earth.

I’ve lost track of why

a disposition automatically

is premonition

to common sores.

Stark linens rubbing against

daybreak,

secreting the stripes

of musty morning.

I don’t like rubber

and things that only take two,

standardizations of what is

my only panoramic view

of faces

mustard on rye.

I learned to say “Thank you

very very much”

in Fanti, so that when the sound

collided against the mortar,

the kind in between bricks

or like plaque,

it might sink in better

the different syllables

and ways of saying

going backwards..