I'm slumped early morning
watching a video on Youtube about
a woman becoming a stripper during Covid
she was telling jokes on TikTok
which pulled the horny guys over to
another platform
(a shuttle bus in the sky)
wide-eyed on their dirty screens
they were the ones who started it all
bless 'em
they didn't care about the longform jokes on YouTube
that's for self-expression
her kind of Trojan horse for the
quick-cut explanations of how the story goes
When the diseased world started 

vaccinating
or there was some other world event
then there was stagnation
oh then there was K-pop
I mean there were some serious mental health things
but there was one dance move

accidental like god said
and there was a serious surge of
LOVE
now they're all watching the pole dancing on Instagram
she goes viralllllllll
fuck!! like the lottery
less numbers more body
i mean how perfect
you could really connect like that, dancing 

and hunching for the comments

then expanding for the long-legged release
of flying through the lonely air in your bedroom
Temu lights playing through hardworking curls

again and again 

(a butterfly)
what's in that kind of dream 
I mean i would learn
to splinter like old wood
a technological axe through me
discount codes like poems
I want it to be true
I would like to imagine like that
what an elegant solution to how
we can 't be there in heaven
where everyone is
or have the right supplies to show ourselves
in the very immediate world
I mean it seems too far to drive
and then there's seasons, and bodies
not to mention how we might feel
in any given moment
And all of these things are happening simultaneously
every dirty fact and new way
of doing things beyond
what I think it could be
or just knew
how to appear to strangers
like magic

I tug at the stars 

like wrapping a cozy robe 
I’ve never owned
around me tighter
I could have been confident
in a different way
what a trip to hear your child say

mama, sometimes I think about

what could have been different

if I did something different

a whole world blossoming inside him 

as he says 
when I question him breaking into
the snack bin
I do I
you do you
I do as I do

you do as you do

Within moments

To fall

To fill

The hold

Scratches on the floor

Scratches on the chest

Scratches from within

Claw

Soothe

Tapping from within

Tapping on the chest

Tapping on the floor

The hold

To fill

To catch

Tolling

One by one the sheets 

are stripped away

until all that's left

are the bells overhead

which ring regardless

of the hour or the day

so long as there are ends

that need mending

and I haven't really woken

Reprise

Last February Paul told me he was talking to Miquita in the street when someone landed on the pavement next to them. This was from 20 years ago and now I'm alarmed that I can say yeah I was there, man, and that the same sleep I rub out of my eyes is the same as it was then, only I was rubbing that sleep gone midday and only dimly aware of the budding depression of it.

Paul said first she was on the balcony and, up high with the people she had sought she must have concluded there was nothing there.

All time is rendered so I can glibly announce: this is the fat of our times, there is nothing there and the chase is actually us chasing ourselves away from the conclusion. 

It's why WEN LAMBO must be so satisfying, all the young men in early want of a driver's manual in pdf form for an impossible trinket they can wrap round a tree like a hug.