from FLORIDA MAN

III.

Ellen is moving north of Miami
to become a clinical psychiatrist

Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, stray peacocks, the conduit
of coupon pages descending on an ocean liner

*

the funniest thing Michael ever said was “The revolution IS being televised
and it’s Morning Joe 6 a.m. - 9 a.m. est on MSNBC!”
but he was worried people would think that was what he really thought

*

false paradises interest me

sawgrass & myrtle  in the everglades
garfish gorge on sandflies   and sink dead

everything leads back to the endless repository
of analysis and nebulous loss.
resorts are fascist art. 
the surveyor splits open a python. 

*

before the tropical storm
dogs bark at the sky outside a laundromat

*

there’s nothing to do except preserve
the idle, continuous argument
What did Jesus mean by what he said?

IV.

on the other side of the universe,
Emily spills through Sarasota
rip currents    nettle  the coast Tuesday

but i’m thinking about Gorbachev  Not that.

*
everything  laundered through
some tedious & immeasurable war

it’s easy enough to drift away
in statecraft, the nuclear paradox

*
on another bad date
I am trying to pass through
Thucydides’s Trap    Hah

or just tossing scraps into the well
of feigned interest/  introspection
is easier from a distance 
and more boring

*
// back to hurricane season
It’s only a depression. in cyclones,
that’s better.  see: Saffir-Simpson

they used to name storms after army wives. there are rules now.

you can’t just use the weather
to pawn off your dead husband


information warfare

in the middle of making up a Tokyo bureau chief
i remember keeping E under the impression i read
all of Infinite Jest for our whole three year
relationship  & probably since 

one night he came home
from his shit job & two copies
of the book were keeled over on the mattress
like doomed command ships

he said we should call it “the jest nest”   
can you believe that shit

anyway

this was the summer we were living
in the Classon Ave apartment   

No    he was living there   

I had a sublet  down the road  
because he never asked me

but the end of the story makes sense that way   

2 people & their  hopeless allergies
collapsed into some basement  room,
clammy light strained in  through a screen 

endings are like that. 

everyone trying to get    to the other side  of something

War & Peace, Michael Chabon,
a Coen brothers movie — the woman
character didn't say anything except once
or twice,   mixing a drink  to advance the plot —

so i’m wondering how there’s violence 
boiled into everything 

and how  do you not  see it   Too