They Will Sew the Blue Sail

IN AMERICA | Douglas Piccinnini

I imagine myself

through desire

to numb myself

the victim participating

to save you placed in a gurney

in an outburst of violence

destroying old feelings

I’m brutal, at first, unsanitary

aroused, then friendly

coached by a system

released into a crowd

small system

to sanitize me in history

to awake in what I’ve been feeling

the official culture, ahistoric

awful insistent—

locked turnstile

the absolute value: wealth

whitened year in you

in any direction

dissonant

a deadlock of not-cure

to face anger, with anger

with what claims everything

“young” “tonight” on top

crumbling from the top

to build the bottom

in unmade shapes

I drink from the invisible

order that sustains me

the flammable skin I’m in

you must

be forced to be free

whomever you are

you must live

by loss of desire

burst in query

in a deeper void

the engine choke

in the same elusive surplus

circling us

and blind beyond

the chore of enchantment

the cloud light

the contours of maladies

pure surface supplying

the excessive object in me, us

less than money

thirsting—claimed