Travel Plan B

                         "B
is not for Blazon . . ."

--Alberto Lanciani,
Sbagliati L'ortografia di Alfabeti

Times Square swallows the bulb & sinks
Planned simulation of worlds as they were 
quaint dioramas of red light sin                 vivid

& distant as       oh say can you see with your eyes
not your hands           as poems are love poems even those
that admit you love me you lush & succulent thing

Admit each question marks the room
& every room the backroom           Each city
the honeymoon capital of the world          Each breath

colludes with the next           & so traditions are born
that allow the triumph of atrophy despite Mr. Skeptic's
antiseptic urban visions          Traditions make smutty

honeymoon sense out of       here's a simple travel plan
Please stop moving my lips when I write    Please stop
writing lies:  my lover's son has nothing like my eyes

These bad habits are my good traits      A tradition
of finishing only what's not in the plan       I never
went to Texas though I got there at Kim's Video

John Sales' Lone Star was out one broken a/c night
& the diorama world liquefied down my shirt
The world as it knows you melts wherever yr from

Here    The ground clamors for you   Your image nailed naked
to billboards on every border while every fingerprint in the crime scene
of New York says Hold me! I'm yours!        Yr mind is Michigan

It expands two miles for every one I drive    Yr eyes mined
from Minnesota's thousand scruffy honeymoon lakes     Yr skin
legal tender of Palo Alto   crisp coveted Ben the unwrinkled smoothie

& yr spine     fleshy bridge leads headlands through bay fog     Jump
Break the tradition  of your arms by jumping the country
into them swallowing nothing in one heartland's diabolical drama