Thoughts on a plane:

Lips, a crossroads
Immobile tongue

Mantled in these
Mangled with seaweed
Ground together and incinerated into sand

I used to love the ocean
We found sand dollars
One for each finger
10 orifices breathing in, splaying out
Tossing purple lines from Harold’s crayon into the atmosphere:

UV light, an X-ray…
A pocket of seeds in each fingernail
Strewn, palms out, onto the shore

We poured a libation:
-High-fructose corn syrup and Vaseline,
-An abandoned train cart with the words “bribe me” in red ink,
-14 lilies of the valley,
-A 3.4 oz. vial of blood from the pinky finger of a celebrity (who prefers to remain anonymous),
-Resurfaced Sappho (questionably sourced),
-Chex mix,
-A dozen paper airplanes
Into a golden chalice

(The flight attendant offers a selection of beverages. I choose Diet Coke. There is too much ice.)

On top of the fireplace was the head of a deer, insignia from anonymous ancestors’ war victories, and a very small shard taken from the moon.
How many millions was it worth? Never failing to indicate its value, propped below the plexiglass-covered fragment was an ever-changing determiner, the numbers shifting into decline and swinging back into luxury.
It was his finest, and most coveted, item.

Slipping back into the enfolding furs of language
Adorning himself with the guts of each letter
Receiving greedily and spitting back out: Baudrillard as chewing tobacco
A worn apparatus, a towed Subaru

He stitched together, as mantled decay,

Into the auditory canal:
The Newest Model, a (new) paint job

He recorded the sound of the waves and affirmed that they did not sound much like a conch shell.

(I had forgotten about my drink. I liked it better when I could see the ice cubes.)