(pieces)

VII.

Pluck the white-coated metal, black lipped lamps from the 

white plastic tracking.

Ink them on stamp pads.

When will they turn the water back on in the parks?

                  Better fill up a water bottle just in case it's not yet—

                                    I have a place on my bicycle to stick it.

Unusable metal tokens, polished with vinegar

Rock-polishing machine                 Coin sorting bank

(Neither take tokens.)

Plastic peg pieces punched out with brand-new game pieces:

                                                         separated,

                                                      lost,

                                                            found,

                                                          considered and

                                               discarded.

Stiff, far-twisted plastic-coated twist-ties, un-twisted,

                                    released from the ankle of the brand-new toy

                  and the punched hole in the brand-new box.

Plastic wrapper, wrapping box,

passes being brand-new—

moments, minutes, a day after broken?

Bro¦ken op‿en,

                    ap/art,

                    to↯rn, still passive;

                                                         what be it now?

                                                         what be-ed it before,

when my fingernail  could not slice it?

when I could not incise it,

             even at the corners of the box where the wrapping wrinkles up.

When my tooth could not tear it,

                  only pu l  l   ,  s  t r et ch   the wrinkled corner and

leave saliva beading up on the clear.

                  Even at the edges where the box folds in;

where the corner of my nail could not slit it,

only run along the indent, against nothing, aggressively,

only    s   t re tch  i ng and wrinkling the plastic.

   what be it then?

Before a pen is found to do the job,

                                    go where the fingernail failed.

                                    A scissors to finish what the tooth started.

What will all the stamp pads be when they've dried up?

separated,                  

       considered,

lost,         

discarded,         

《found?》  

I'll have circles the diameter of light bulbs

if I can find stamp pads the diameter of white track lamps.

Outside, inside, through the window,

through the nine-tenths-of-the-way closed curtain,

through the white plastic corner of fence,

behind an unfocused sum of tree fingers,

tree digits,

ticks a shape as bold and dimensional as a water-logged ink doodle. Ticking tail, monkey’s math, sleepy rhythm, in and out.

It's a monkey,

a faceless baboon or an unknown sort,

a crossbreed,

a generic likeness of—

but not a gibbon. Not a creature's shadow. Not altogether there.

On the edge of the dream,

a banana = slip, and as I slip into dream the ink monkey

appears like an inbreath and bobs away like an outbreath, disappearing to the park.

I left my bicycle by the fence, for the years and years of a heartbeat, with no tangible evidence of the was that passes since we were,

since the way it was and the way we were,

since and passing.

Like grabbing sunlight

as it cycles through the nine-tenths-of-the-way closed curtain.

Like banana meanings, like a rhythmic tick:

monkey’s math for water-logged ink at the start of a dream.

Like vinegar-polished metal tokens,

which cannot be sorted by mechanical banks.

Brand-new passes wrinkles, time and time of a heartbeat.

My white-coated metal, black lipped stamps pass too,

on the white plastic tracking,

like plastic wrapping,

plastic pegs,

and far-twisted twist-ties.

On the edge of the dream, there is no place to stick it.