Repeat after me. Overtones on overtones:
Artemisia dracunculus, moon dragon herb, the tarragon plant
We grow in our kitchen. The unready stems quickly brown and die.
A pile of tractor tires, a pile of tractors, the peat fields catch fire,
So care for your flames. “Bay, where should we walk today?”
Describe the flavor.
The broken law tilts towards the next unexplored territory.
Songs assembled from confetti
A few days after the sadness of the celebration has passed.
Write the word “teeth” where the smile once was.
In the last seven seconds you have lied to yourself seven times.
When you first realize your father stayed away from the house
Because every expression, from the uncut front lawn
To the off-yellow illumination of the doorbell,
Whispered “we don’t love you.”
You shudder with the same
Crackle in the wire.
Don’t lie to me, I’ve been counting.
The moon and the sun size the sky the same.
The moon 400x smaller than the sun paints with the same brush width.
Lucky enough that the sun has set itself 400x farther away.
Distance compensates for power. Closeness intimates the nearness of now.
Who we say we are as to what we are. A cartoonist
Writes “For music” in the memo of check 192.
The limitations of the flocking? Murder on the Orient Express
Explores the limits of the benefits of conspiracy.
Would you watch the remake if directed by Tarantino?
To see what no one sees as truth in the mystery of the detail, this is the work.
That is the question of the day. Of course I can write that way.
Any idiot can follow a recipe. Only only.
Tarragon is almost never used in Italian dishes.
Kill the young so we might proclaim them geniuses.
And this is what Poirot loves most — the private dick’s Catch 22.
One crime always becomes many and that is the beauty of your self-loathing.
When you threaten the life of a child — even one as unremarkable as mine —
Some other path breaks trail and pursues death.
The train station in Brod now houses a family of seven.
In the back bedroom Julia re-reads Nancy Drew, The Clue in the Diary.
Repeat the Kanji character for tree seven times and then say “access granted.”
“You see,” says my son Bay, not knowing what he is saying to me,
“Tarragon is polymorphic.” A jaguar codes black in one forest
But coats spotted in another. “The plant retains flexibility in its
Genetic code so it can change in shape and expression depending
On its environment.” Ordered as these chairs, we believe differently
Than designed. You listen to words expecting the way you hear
To be heard by others. The Tesla robot staggers into the closet
To smoke your last Cuban. Please click here to download the required consciousness.
Insert the word’s bones into the arms of my sleeves.
When you picked up the phone, the voice asked,
“What is your son wearing today? A blue shirt, black shoes,
Gray pants? Is that him getting on Bus 7? I hope he gets home safe today.”
What would you do?
I really don’t want to detail the back story.
Repeat after me.
If offered money by the mafia, take the money. If offered money by the mafia, take the money.
For no particular reason, the last two lines of “Answering Machine”
By The Replacements hangs in the air like an extinguished candle,
The smoke a ribbon wandering from the left wall,
A stripe of painted silk,
A scent of what was dissipation and will decay again.
Gnash a stem and a few leaves of freshly picked tarragon between your teeth.
Today we walk at night, February’s big dipper dropped an army of frogs
Into the fields. The chirrup stops when Bay says,
“I’ve never heard so many all at once.”
And then starts to restart when he pauses until the pulse
Of what the night sounds like if we were absent
Vibrates with a disorder of mathematical precision.