Yves Klein’s Trash

is clichéd—treasures I salvage
early one morning, flea marketed
fantasies I find in green
monochromatic plastic,

once famous blue
pitched in polychromatic
fashion. What is leftover

wasted like underwear, another
pair of Klein’s found tucked
under the bed at a new apartment
then properly chucked.

But you were always unique—
your roll-your-own roughness
a Frenchman’s foreign maleness,

those butts unfiltered in ash-trays
littering the rough-smoked museum
of facts, the undeniably erotic
images my fingers reach for

in automation, the desire
to own something of the past,
like the bird that builds a nest

from garbage on the metal ledge
of a don’t walk light,
the red blinking sign half blocked
by twigs and what’s left

of life’s little bits balled in to strings.
And after I’m done my raid
the air reeks of refuse,

bag-slapped by wind’s palm
my own words turn colour-
blind, the most abstract
junk of all.