Geoffrey Olsen

Hope acts on a mandate
the scrawl ‘I’
                    function
ferns room hold oblate glint

    mortise, the flesh frames indolent

& sets no belonging
sets form, us null blank without
residence

          (one) a bird wandering
          through here sees (two)

where is
what state?

*

Having multiplied, when hope wants for
a length careful painting
sinks under

hope pulses into the occlusion
of dayspring unwavering

the frame, the wall is fluctuating
for the fly, orange

*

The time for
slowing
past metallic,
till music arrives
bronchial

what can you watch was music,
clicks

on an
island

millions of
un-regarded
unaccounted
lives.

writes unlettered, un-hoped for
the hope

you cannot take back the
hedging cacophony

the uneasy distillate
it’s oblate &
                  without
                  proper regard

silences can
take record

trumpet, drums, bass, drums.

*

Was the Garden that Frightening?

Lost in speech, the axioms
gone dark, gravity even
with the axis

orbital

a dissolving floor
hoped for the axis
or
    unknown duration

this take was
that the animal
was barricading
itself
        glum nodes

the park who is metal
but not even the confluence
of forced lives
        a network of
hopeless wondering.

glib stuffed
            animals

the turn between resonance,
the flow zombies.

*

It blinks in a way that is understanding evil
hope: the furred face
liturgy inaction, a web that
is snow banks – melt,
the hands are tipped with nails,
heat increases & the runoff follows
the sluice
        if bent
        if static

ages wish their lines chopped off,
mercury in proximity, the stage.

incandescence no longer blurs the vision
post-explosion, the choices made
        careening
null separation

formula
atrophy

your panic was appropriate
your ownership anticipates all better strategies.
It is a noisy world—
get by,
leaking all over.

*

The paint in us leaking,
no salve/ solvent
    ear to music

leading
        senses to
        distraction
phone

not
your
call

un
heard
build

lateral, forward,
navigate unalterable zones of
accident
the bombed out walls the grit,
organic sounds colluding

tempo the
    waking

was animal
& feedback
        hopeful
the pieces of us sinew
envelopes
takes between
what they hope for, tin,
          unseen.
                      The clouds more away
from the intoxication
of
                               inner
scansions   motivates.