You can鈥檛 just go around

by Brandon Krieg


inventing holidays
                blessed malingerer,
                      you can鈥檛 just do
         what the universe
               relaxes into doing through you
easy as loose ends
                 of a wind-shredded
     flag rise and fall
               like a sleeping child鈥檚 small ribs

You can鈥檛 just have a son,
              a single oak
   the lines of your life
 plow
        widening rings around
so sunflowers might embody
                       far-reaching
 energies unsymbolic

to bees,
       You can鈥檛 just be like a bee
pocketed in gold and gold
          deposited in its pockets,
mini-billionaire, whose murmurs on blurry-warm nights
          will sometimes have just gone quiet
You can鈥檛 just not know why

you took the dark road to flash with headlights
          a crossing coyote鈥檚 eye,
              signaling to satellites
    to cease their ceaseless transmissions,
plummet, a thousand undetected Icaruses
    into remote seas, sink and transform into

                       barnacled altars to
the side-eyed indifference
      of flounders, skates, and rays:
that unconcern, you can鈥檛
          just inhabit that
like a frog so deep in its body
when it blinks the wet corners
                of its eyes show it
coated in dust from the road.


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