What were our intentions? National “Yodel at Your Neighbors Day?”
Or things that will sound better printed on pillows,
or maybe later when we learn to whisper, as in a bit of paper
folded so as to resemble a swan? Something for class
that won’t make us look bad but will probably make us look bad.
Always incomplete, yet finished, and feeling a little smudged,
confusing at the edges. Home. Like practicing
the best way to hold a book, for standing, sitting,
lying down. “OK, home,” one says, “Do your thing.”
As one who says history evolves in a direction
and then looks around. OK, with caveats then. Decorative.
A caveat of directions. Did I say directions? I meant suspensions.
Or erections. Maybe intersections or team dance competitions,
off with the candles of the past, into the gentle and unassuming night.

*

The house and all its baby houses went sailing. It’s a tragedy.
The flowerbeds aren’t taking this well, as one forced to remain
at a meeting long into the public comments period. I’m lost once again
against the side of a box dinner. Look, it says “PRESS HERE
and peel back” but I press and press until the whole thing implodes.
Each life balances above a sleeping motif, one destined
for imprecise arguments regarding the future we’re supposed
to be sailing toward, influential tilts of the head,
and it would seem perfect long enough for people to grow cloudy
on the details, saying “belonging,” and pause a moment
in the celebration, as if to say “bravo” even though you’ve done
nothing noteworthy, but you’ve excelled at that. Like this, I still
remember the prayers of my childhood. I just no longer say them.
And the fool who would be king has become king.