The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder, 
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, 
From livid curtain’s hue, a tanagram emerges: a country.” 

Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desire
of many dwindles to us
and our “activities,” wholesome

The deep water in the travel poster finds me 
In the change as I was about to back away 
From the idea of the comedy around us— 

I’d had a “good night’s sleep,” meaning
thinking of waking, and waking,
shifting closer together, and then not.

What kind of a mentality 
causes men to commit suicide in their air-conditioned glass
      boxes? 

Then I reached the field and I thought 
this is not a joke not a book 
but a poem about something—but what?

as was proven 
when they entered the house 
in which the priest was, 

If we are going to mean in so many ways 
let them all be lopped off. 

For all I know I was meant to be one of those marchers
into a microtonal near-future whose pile has worn away—
the others, whose drab histrionics provoke unease to this day,

Not that it was needed that much, this much
was clear. A little cleverness would do
as well, a lei woven of servility