[Of Course I Want Praise]

Of course I want praise
as weathervane Cassandra priest canary.
I think people want to hear what I think.
I am a normal monster.
Poets fish,
I chum maze carpets and labyrinth drywall.
That sentence reminds me edit.
There can be a second draft that doesn't obliterate the poem
Cassandra canary priest weathervane
fool say, my heresies guaranteed
by persistent flickerings.
Fishing, my lips have decades of scars.

[Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning]

Loggers Trail to Pine Knob Trail to Browning
Run Trail to Purdum Trail to Hard Cider
Trail Friday, Pine Grove Trail to West Piedmont
Trail to Browning Run Trail (a different
section than Friday) to Tobacco Farm
Trail to Timber Ridge Trail to car today.

Pines were dark green as they always are, bright
green popped on awakened oaks on ridge lines
like slopes of mountains in Bob Ross paintings,
and my first thought is a cartographer's.
I'm also trying to lose a quarter
of body mass, so poetry is third.

[Yesterday's Tsunami]

Yesterday's tsunami
billed as
worse since ever

Every day
taxes, clothes
donated estimated

Horned at stoplight
don't give
that addict quarters

Despite delete
commands
my cache saves

[It's Important]

It's important
I disclaim
I cannot write
how I write.

I write about
how I cannot
write how I
would write. This missed

rhyme: my subject
object subject
conceits, I don't
object subject

object, object
to being told
I should though my
object subject

object is suspect
at best, inconsistent always,
organized for incoherence,
susceptible to self-idolatry,
dress uniforms, broken
game plans, stanzas

as cairns to my
ability
to stack stones I
wish I wasn't,

pretending I
wish I wasn't,
fucking object
subject object.