At the bottom of the painting,

write any word (for instance, “mother.”)

Now wait for more words, more names, for requests or invocations, to

fill the perimeter of the frame.
As in nebulous blooms of mold that featured, like repeats

of the Great Wave, coursing backwards,

forwards, inwards & outwards over

the studio walls and ceiling.
Left overs of Christmas virtuosity:

an entire orange

peel removed

in one go.
A picture’s virtuosity is in its coherent exchange

of one set of values, known to be valid,

for another as yet un-

known & unvalued.
Old lenses seek or find finite space.

Drop off clothes, drop off recycling, stack clean

bottles by the edge of the recycling bin in

case the old man is there, watching from his car.
Space fills up with sounds like water plunging into a glass.

The yard fills up with light. The clothes fill up with person. The bed

fills up with lint, dust and dried skin. The follicles fill up with adverbs until

the scalp fills up with nectar… 
The relics will never fill up

with veneration; it settles around,

on top of and under-

neath them.
Bubbles in old

glass windows travel

towards you at

the speed of landscape.
A body in a cold room,

under a sheet or in the back

of a car, minds or is minded, sews

confusion among the living.
History permeated:

the coffee table, the dinner table,

the air implicated

in invisible smoking.
Add one cup of coffee to zero cigarettes to equal minutes of acquaintanceship.

The basement’s full of traps we must check on soon; meanwhile, old clothes

threaten to turn you into a new old person,

providential for painting.
Swimming, painting, soldiering, writing, smoking

or going to museums: things

he did that required a

degree of strength.