there isn't any way better to flog a dead horse
than what i am doing now writing and writing
uninspired, insipid, self-indulgent
all of these words fit me better than their antipodes
have ever fit anybody and my genius
is the genius of a life lived timidly in gutters draining
all the population of whatever wanton mess i said
inspired like hard-wired flowers growing flummox
all along some crooked wall i am always a diffuse
untidy end of means throwing myself gaily to all
the traffic that would ever come by that would ever
run me over i never no when is enough what could be
that thing is always so small and petty and self-contained
i have lost my lid and all of my good sense and all of my timeliness
i am never timely or ever any of those good things.

'but this feels so right,' you said and i agreed i don't know if
aloud or maybe i nodded but maybe i was somewhere behind
you always a cat rubbing until i know how a cat feels every hair
until we are purring in unison then i stop and indulge a million
times more in my mind timid mouse i am nothing but.

you are my obsession like the ground like a foundation imagined
very securely you are not but i pretend and lean so hard against you
i must crack you will break away and fall away and land somewhere
much more stable where the ground will hold you and then and that's
when i will be again vapid and thin spread not to push too hard on
any one thing i will be like a dead fog that is yellow and rubs dully
on the street, speaking of cats. in case i didn't answer you then, i think
you are right like a god like something wise even if you are just you
already cracked you are my obsession like the ground like a foundation imagined.

and on and on i could tell you until my guts smeared everything until
i was nothing left until my dreams that are so violent are the least
impression and make you sick of me make you hate me with your
every tooth there is time for that, and there is always time for that i know
you know there will be time for that when you are no longer the ground
but more real and more tangible and i am only flawed skin flayed
there will be time for that soon and maybe it will be the kind of truth that
could fit us both tightly enough that we won't move anymore that we are
still the way boxers are still the way the grass is still before the wind.

all along right-writing writers write
to me what is right while i
consistently write what is wrong.