i.
through the dust motes
and out this dirty window
a broad flag limps
under a mackerel sky
beside a barren balcony
on several rooftops
ducts gather
proliferate
decide to swell up
and migrate
just this side of the window
a book sits wide open to the room
it says “We had macaroni for lunch every day”
the rest of the books make the shelves
many split personalities of closed drawers
the sun sometimes decides
to turn the trees into pumpkins
and when this happens
the lingerie riot on the line
the scalloped clouds
march toward New York and are gone
like a bird
like notebooks that you put away
and forget to open like the sun
like nobody
this desk
a substitute for page-turning
ii.
the clouds are marching to New York
and who’s to notice
copper-colored cross is hunkered
into a red brick building
across an empty parking lot
the roving clouds or the glistening ducts
or the limp flag or the rioting lingerie
or the copper cross has told everyone
to go to sleep
to sleep for stanzas
while chickenwire rusts under the bottom floors
while white paint withdraws from concrete blocks
and a bird mirage disappears into this book
over there
as if planted on the moon
a tiny red flag stirs
it has found its way up an unseen pole
atop a distant bank roof
maybe it belongs to a country
whose windows are being looked through
whose trees are all pumpkins
iii.
during an imaginary earthquake
Philip Johnson’s glasses slide down his nose a little
“I am Art Deco” cry the flag police
and the syndicate shoot through the bay windows
shattering all of the glass
they rip out all the curtains and rearrange them
whoever lives is abbreviated
told to run and to hide
and find a few new sofas
iv.
his insides were in disrepair
but he was tucked in at his desk
his papers were confined in sheet metal repositories
the book was open and the birds could not get in
nobody nodded off
seldom had been dreamed firmer pastures
v.
oh but now the birds are all lined up
the beautiful sound of somebody’s fingers
a belligerent cross is indented
into the torso of another big building
this building is white and without a little flag
the birds fly over to what looks like a gigantic electric fan
the birds alight upon the fan and make bird sounds
the fan was planted on the roof
for all of the lost roof workers
the sky drops like nothing
this all happens out the dirty window
where everything has been constructed
and nothing is new
vi.
thereabouts to sum it all up is
a plastic bag that crawls
like an inchworm up an
oldish red-bricked building
toward one of its dart-shaped windows
that point up
up to the hairy sky
with its profligate clouds
just as a grease-faced
paint-flecked
denim-jacketed man
walks out onto his balcony
with his dogs
“My air goes up to the skies
like selfie spectres”
he sighs duct-like
an engine kicks in
a broad flag
walks with a limp
up a kind of
invisible stairwell
vii.
hush
the leaf’s ear
on that pane
is in pain
as the man
limps out
his door
onto
his balcony
and shatters
the birds
as his heavens
decide
to swell up
and riot
viii.
this book
with its wishes
down to earth
where dirt
has flown
this man’s
fire esape
his rain
gutter
and
broken
concrete
his window dressing
his indented sky
