When I do the dishes I think too much.
I think of the way objects accumulate as a kind of representation 
of an individual mind. 

A projection of my American intellect. 
Intellect that feasted until the whole brain 
moved into decline,

until it stopped forever 
its fanatical growth 
and settled down at twenty-three

to a permanent size. 
Now my intelligence is a line of hieroglyphs,
a blouse fluttering. 

I am barely able 

to breathe. I cannot appreciate 
rain on my bike. Or stand 

on a balcony for too long
without throwing something off of it. My mind 
walks slowly across the abyss.

My mind thinks of itself as a shipwreck.
My intellect is like a grist of bees 

surrounding buffalo 
in secluded forest.  

My mind rides hard with horses
under a sky and moon 
that issue chromatic variants of white.

My mind 
finishes you. Love’s cigarette lit 
in love’s one free hand reading you a poem

that begins: must then all humans love like this?