I know I'm going to end up on YouTube.
I'm over the geographic center
of this painting.
It bleeds, it bleeds. So what.
Nothing has fallen apart.
The legs you are standing in are correct.
I cannot assure you of much else.
Reading about dance moves in a catalog
is hypothetical.
Sometimes you have to trust
the grass will show up
after the snow
but there might be a picture
of a politician tucked under
the whole mess,
like the thin film of a sheet cake.
Be careful, build a cabin made of crayons
when it melts
the word colorful will re-enter your vocabulary.
It's not as dynamic as you think
to call the world a projected image
of what your life is not.
But your friends are nice
and treat you to sodas.
They sit you down in a parking lot
and give you a long massage
then drown you in a puddle
and fill it with Koi fish.
Lines extending into space
seldom make it there.
Some say this is my brain on Breton.
The balloon extending into a bowling ball
cannot stop weather
neither can a poem
but buying off a meteorologist
with a lifetime of horoscopes
gives them a reason, at least.
That is all I am trying to do here.
Zachary Green is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago's B.A. poetry program. His work has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Cavalier Literary Couture, plain china, South Loop Review and Phantom Limb. He was selected by Jaswinder Bolina as a second-place recipient of the 2010 & '11 Elma Stuckey Poetry Award.