6 Texts from poems from a news-ticker or a collective social personality disorder OR poems about other things

Ryan Downey

Bear

A tearful training. An emphatic iridescence. Bear says that which we flipped. The turbulent tops, our hats. Picket-style, sign upon fence, we drop that which we bear. Bring the meat sheet says bear, Dean-side. Let us exploriate the rivers, cartilage style. We bend. We limber. It is a question of elasticity

Meat

It is a hot plate, that which we surface tension. When the simmering begins we will whisper silent revolutions. We will construct many fine lassos, bear-coat-style. We give our hands to the hammers. We say to Bear when the fighting hits we will be boiling. We scrap all the statues (metal permitting). We mete the scraps with sidelong glances and scarlet work gloves.

Hammers

If it is a question of elasticity, it is a question of dream-states. We will meet our fallout. Gently stroke its mangy mane. The tapes of tambourines looped in the foreground. We will move like shadows. Like –isms. Bear will say to bear will say to we, the sentence ends here. The interment, the torment of dangling. Bear will have spoken complex-style. There is nothing left to growl at. It is not a question of prepositions. The bears will gymnasticate this animal kingdom.

We

Are the inheritors of a shit-stained-shoe. Alliterate sans illiterate tendencies. Consummate this foretold order with less consonance than ignorance. Embrace the bank, the payment west-style. Protect this house we are less and less fond of. Bear that which is not of this animal kingdom. Smile at the lights—the shells of beetles crunching underfoot. Are cell morphing bio-metrical-style. Are where we will be when the hibernation realizes itself.

And

Too political is a means to silence the disenchanted. Either side we choose we will fallout in the same singed skin puddle. The suburban lawns say nothing to us—they say Go Team! /Cat Crossing! /Support our Troops! /Home is where the family is! Bear-rides will never be free because—that which fucks like fascism might be. Blood might be useful when the drought self-actualizes. Anthropomorphism is useful in-so-far as utility exists. Loss is what it is—that is, actual. Jingles cannot be abstained grammatically or in reality—but the language will take care of its own and so on and so on. We might grocery list our desires in such a way that they can be bought and sold and we already have and we are actual and contrarian. My cavities can only underwhelm on Tuesdays and select Sundays. I apologize for this inconvenience.

Crossing

No one laughs at these phrases. I am holier than you—pore upon pore. These lumps remind us where the name goes. Clown-love, you came red-nosed to get at it. This letter. We were detained, we were detached. Our pores grew large, they grew minds, expanded. We were dirt poor and wise. We released downcasts on the airwaves, cancer-style. I cell-split you—you hair rootless. This, said the man in the box, is real. We hop the scotch—Dean-style. Our eyes on hiatus we see the punch-line approaching.