"we measure success one investment at a time"
				(dean witter)

it¹s like you¹re doing a job for minimum wage, for hardly any money
tho they say you¹re making more that they¹re investing, investing wisely;
and maybe you have faith, maybe you start with faith and lose it gradually or all of a sudden;
but the job¹s ok,    not great,    not that many jobs around anyway
& you know this one,   feel comfortable in it;
not every day, but more days than not; some days are even good,
at least have good moments, little rewards (not so you could explain it),
you get a smile inside, you stand a little taller,
part of your body dissolves in warmth
					      & years later
the investment hatches,     a bunch of money shows up on your doorstep
like a baby in a basket,    like a new service that delivers recyclables
instead of picking them up, a yellow tub of newspapers and magazines from around the world, 
magazines where the animals in the pictures seem to move,
where the trees ripple in the wind; 
				  you smell something natural, something 
you occasionally get in the city, a morning the birds are louder than the freeway
or the smell on the air isn¹t the pulp mill upriver 
but some blossoming you¹re not allergic to.
you take those magazines; you pick up that investment
& the house you just walked out of is a large field with a stream running through it,
a stream with banks, a bank with a little stovepipe sticking out of it
like wind in the willows;
		  	  but you still hear the freeway,    still feel the bass thump
from the neighbors cranked up stereo; and you¹re not in your body
but a cat¹s,    or an otter¹s,     or some special mammal with four legs and wings;
& this is your body; what your body could be;
  	  if you¹d eaten better,   drank less,   spent more time sinking into the lawn,
		  			     let the lawn become multicultural

the package at the door.
the jobs that¹s suddenly disappeared;   new body not tall enough to see in the mirror.
something scurries through uncut grass & you gotta chase it, you¹re so hungry.

dark wood clamps open; dark town turned into itself
on a lathe of traffic, turning around the vein
of momentum, blood blue as asphalt
surging with sludge against scarred graffitied walls, fluorescent paint
in languages not invented yet, graphic languages attempting to capture
an image larger than thought:
			one can of spray paint is worth how many pictures,
worth 6 months in juvie, 2 years probation, a crew with decent houses
to hang in‹ mom works night shift and dad¹s in the garage with some pounders

the trees seem closer tonight, tree pulses like the vein in my wrist
curved like the street, pockmarked from a diet of coke,  doritos,  corn dogs,
combustible birthday cakes,  butane lighters
angry as hornet, angry as a drunk facing a beerless frij & an empty cigarette pack
10 minutes after the corner market¹s closed

the dancing flames of a dozen grease fires
spontane from the scalp of a used car lot our mobile homes have circled
like covered wagons firing coat hanger arrows tipped with used pampers‹
keep the kids away from the gravel    bottle shards    & burbling rivulets
of oil and antifreeze the street dogs, possums and rats
warily approach, unaware of the wildlife ranger
red-eyed on the garage roof, one bleeding nostril,
trying to tell what kind of car each 2 stars are the headlights of;
not wanting to hunt neighbors
out of season, wanting to preserve the tree with so many names carved in it
like the bible of a family never together
more than waiting for a bus
with the seats removed, windows replaced with plywood,
no one wants to drive through urine corroded streets, streets soft
with bags & boxes, shiny with cans & glass teeth,
glass mountains  challenging daredevil ants banned from homes
by the territorial roaches cats juggled to earn chicken bones
fried so deep they explode like forest fires
with sudden blinding light unclogs the nostrils, awakens memories
of other lives, other species lost in karmic elevators
where up and down, where number are obscured in the blizzard of possibilities,
a blizzard of low income housing where each dim hallway, each unpainted door
opens with a quick shoulder, shoulder a menagerie
of seeds   shells   bits of glass and metal
    a leaf for the body¹s periodic table, past the simple gases
of cloth and skin, the core metals of bones and organs
to the rare earths of insight   awe   unity
fissured by the quick halflifes of
media relationships    lab-made food
    places no water flows or tree puts down roots.

my roof as varied as 7 counties,     to hold and rain,    to cast how long a shadow how often:
my house on a special turntable that rotates in 29 days, as walls are moved inside, 
as furniture gets reacquainted
				to tell of the future
to act like an egg just hatched with feathers on the outside 
like a hair transplant     we go up against what grows underfoot
feet sinking with shoes,     feet molding without light,     surrendering to the anaerobic
leaves my skin whiter than segregation
like instant flame, spontaneous combustion in the auras between us

here the sun wets,     here the sun surprises
just the right distance from the sun like mama bears bed
where the snow never melts       the sun refuse to shine
like bears we myth ourselves into caves
     instead of under logs,     windbreaks,      slashburn eyebrows
    					gull into naked air
places gravity considers taboo
massless     inarguable     one contact creates a new receiver

that song i cant stop dancing from
stroke     strike      strafing runs across regrets        unedited memories
    that fall out of the head in biochemical evaporation      evacuates       letting in nothing 
to harden the walls with butter sculptures transcendent against a tide of twenty moons

snow boarding us,     like 10,000 year old dust popping into tsetse flies
 forcing us to dream more, rest more, wear things out more slowly,
 so the world can live in shifts, so the planet can do some tinkering from the inside, 
evolving the source-code away from a sense of program, languages no one is capable of speaking 
because of the way mind constricts      throat constricts    
      lungs give the brain something to think about
over and over again in the snowfields of constant data
whited out til we bring the ink back with eyes turned inward:
so much stored in the brain we cant access
  hidden like splinters of the true forest, 
the trees who live in many of us,
 			 their smoke our masks
the only information we have to burn, 
         libraries compressed into air conditioned vaults
the cold increasing from so many unread words 
          the  books explode into snow