Poem of the Week

With the glove on, her pixellated breast every

demonstrably offensive line about young plums

and buds budding. With the glove and helmet on, "her"

is a proposition. With the helmet on she likes it when I

read to her from the book of desires I wrote

with the helmet on. Under the glove and helmet,

day indiscernible from night and want from love.

The other helmet cues God whispering in his quadrant.

There's no visor or need of one on the God helmet;

face a mask of contemptuous ecstasies, road

map of heaven on earth and the helmet on.

There's a crash helmet and infantry helmet

over in the corner that no longer fit as the head

of the poem has developed macrocephallicly.

Our universe, said to be coming apart at the seams,

poorly made, a Jofa from the mid-eighties, placing

us, like Butch Goring's head, at no small risk.

Jousting viable with the helmet on with the helmet

on time soups finally and selves sift. Horizons converge

in the mouth under the helmet and the glove

grips them like floss. This is Helmut Lang; I got

it at a consignment store. There's a Spartan

helmet behind glass; there's not much on it.

The helmet you were born

with very nearly obsolete, its list of incompatible

attachments growing longer by the day. Take trees,

for instance. Think of all the songs. Think of all the songs

without a helmet on and how they seem to weep

torrents over nothing for no reason. Put this on. Put

this on feel time die bewildered, binary, purchased

but no purchase gained, drainage

streaming out over the chinstrap.