Geoffrey G. O'Brien

I tried, you know, I wanted to,



I got a couple of volumes, three



Or four, and I didn’t do



Anything, years, so I rolled it



Up and went, went and un-



Rolled it, got to a friend,



A warehouse, a treatise saying



Years of goodbye, it went on.



I tried to be over and of course,



In vain, I found it, a shore,



Completed it and it died,



I mean something sticks, I did,



Meanwhile sleep, you know,



Drenched or silent, an ash



Presented and taken away, years



In that little wrong boat



Gotten so that I might give



With much and forever, nevertheless



These things carried along

What is language is a new needed



For the going on part of the end 



You can tell has made it here because



 



The air is with condition



The outside seems to be like anything



Placed in a lab or subway car



 



The truths are showing through



The people have chosen to be



Each moves along fresh tracks



 



On the erasable surface



Toward a tiny destiny



Wearing vraiment raiment



 



It’s maybe three days after



Or exactly during seeing



The future put on its certainties



 



I want of the opposite to speak



To say what isn’t etymology, won’t



Be money to the king above my eye



 



Reach out to the invisible third



Among every two pedestrians



Where belonging bucks its norms



 



Difference lives in the least places



Shine caught in the multiple



Lie of any kind of hair



 



You can’t tell if it’s order or not



To follow the too many paths



Just above the face, below sky



 



Long enough to forget or be



Distracted from the big geographies



Where truth first learned of us



 



In the pit of an education



In the skysick life of power



In its moving rearrangements



 



I was walking on Mission Street



In love with you while damage bloomed



The right order right in the words



 



Below the preserved fade of marquees



The little sale of needless things



Listing bodies listed just past



 



It was far too easy to get here



Standing still while white time flowed



Around its professional mourners



 



Comfortable in end after end



The next one isn’t very pretty



At least we’ll see how together



 



It provides absent alternatives



My plan to put my body between



Where it already was and is going