Saturday, May 15, 2010

The End

I put out the dimmest light. I, quiet,
closed my eyes. The lupines only I had known
bloomed purple in the meadow
where the oak trees opened
secret ponds of light.
No one knew of them
but I. Now
no one knows of them.

None have seen, down falling slopes
of meadow, where I, walking,
was, the yellow flowers, each
a frazzled end to one green, milky, slender stem.
No one has seen heaven. Yet,
it has been known, and always will be known.
It is the masterpiece
of lupines, parted trees
and silence
no one sees.

In the small space I inhabit, the shape
of a curved hand,
I am there, not deeper
than the surface, the soft earth.
Where will I go,
I thought, under the ground, or no:
A more complicated place where our fixed rules
of elements confused; another world

Or would I simply soften, go to leaf
then back to carbon

Would I become a wild garden-

A seed fell in the woods, grew
un-looked at into bloom,
just a short time used to gather frost.
Some of us, immortal, others not: pinched out,
faced down; the dimmest lights;
a quickly-melting now.
It is we who most depend
that something blest attends us,
placing rain in our small hands, parting
trees for nothing, not to see us:
but to make an unseen and unimportant mood of shade
and light,
remembering
to end us every night.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Being a Mountain in New Mexico

I
Was
So still,
The stars
Came down
And ate out of
My hand, upturned, snow capped.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The #8


There is a man on the bus who is reading a book, or there is a man on the bus who is not reading a book but it is open on his lap and 'water' is the only word visible in the title since his sleeve obscures the rest. Or the man has a book open on his lap but he is asleep and the person next to him is reading his book, nudging him in such a way that soft currents from morning sighs and the mechanical doors that open and close somehow manage to turn pages in time to the sidelong glance tracing something about water through the margins and down each page. Or there is no book and there is only a man sleeping with the word 'water' in his lap like a puddle on the bus and he is snoring loud dreams of the world passing by through a window that's directly in front of him. He looks up from the nothing he is reading since the book has run through his fingers and pooled on the floor into a foot-print covered pulp of crumpled newsprint and he looks up to a sidelong glare from the person sitting next to him, breathing heavily as that person takes a seat, or he writhes slightly to avoid a different man, overflowingly fat, to his right but the man still does not manage to see anything because he still snores is still asleep and still looking up and the world is moving by outside too quickly and too blinding bright for discerning and then there is a rubber smothered buzz and a green light goes on somewhere and the door opens and the water in the man's lap evaporates and suddenly there is only sun, sun so bright it scrubs green into the deepest corner of each shadow and there is the vacant lot that opens the city to clear skies just beyond a row of tenentless buildings still as vacant as the lot and made in multiple shades of mute and sullen brick and the man is no longer there. Perhaps this is or is not why, dissatisfied, without a book, or thirsty, the three pedestrians dissipate in cardinal directions around every corner but one, unturned.

Prone

For the most part, I learned how to listen.

Here is the secret:
sit restively, lean forward, and always
be the one speaking.

My friends were gracious with their circumstances.
Whatever

was solely farce ran far from sight,
like a hard rain is unbelievable to an anemone -
more enviable than mistaking it all
as desert.

Still, you are never so real as when
I am. Neither my imaginations, or
my body. Could it

be otherwise? Either we are prone to decorating
even the trees and the thunder with ourselves
or we are prone.

Foggy Visions

Foggy visions clouding thought
A rose in the distance impossible to see.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Prepare, Take 2

I've wanted to experiment with trying to ruin the piece as it's being performed. This is my first attempt.


July 4, 2008

It was July and there were plates and paper napkins and platters of food and crumbs of food everywhere. It was all kosher, I think, unless maybe you mixed this with that - but no, it must have been since that's the kind of house we were in. And there was beer and then wine or we begin with wine and end with gin and wake up to beer after the smears of fireworks and a little roman firecandle or roadworks spitting fire like a narcoleptic, winking, night lamp in the backyard beyond the gas grill. It was a round table with a plastic table covering and the shirts were cotton or taken off entirely or polyester like the pants by the pool (the ones that were not taken off entirely) and of course it was Connecticut when Connecticut still smelled fragrant and the Maple leaves were dark green and the Oak Ferns were light green but the Azalea was radiant and red and the garden, despite how coiffed, had an overwhelming thickness that the ebb and lull of Cicadian rhythms locked in hemiola. There were other tables - square and rectangular with taut-skinned older folk (and soft-skinned older folk, too) arranged more hierarchically than us at our round table and with diminished appetites and more sobriety (only in a few cases). Everyone had eaten and we were all just waiting for the dark to see the works and sitting at the tables taking in the liquids or jumping in and letting the liquids take us. One or two might've exchanged a fluid but no one cared, or noticed. And then there were the cocktail umbrellas since it had been sunny all day and unbearably hot - the thick heat that is how you know Connecticut is still Connecticut and the cocktail of choice makes no difference. It's simply the one of the moment - so despite floral patterned paper umbrellas in the cups next to the platters, we begin to pull apart all the ones in our drinks or next to the platters or our plates and we pull them all apart and realize that beneath the dyes and the ornate, cartoonish flowers (someone's nearby father or grandfather or both still said 'Oriental') are characters and not the kind that spell familiarity but the kind that connote political incorrect trips over typification and someone said Said and we unraveled more and uncovered someone's very distant but still DailyNews that had been dyed and dried and repurposed for positioning just to the left of the Uncle Sam napkins and the Independence Platters in the crushed ice cup of some American sorts in the backyard garden of a dignified real estate noble or mogel hosting one of those characteristically July Connecticut Freedom Feasts and warding off the rain with the distant, daily news of a place where Said said or continues to say that this day the day of our independence day is not a holiday but a day where they repudiate our leisure with their labor someone said Said even says that there they may or may not.

The Funnies

I used to read the comics every morning,
Every single morning,
While I ate my breakfast.
Even in high school.
And they weren't funny
But I still did it.

Prepare

First, there will be a sensation of lightness in your fingers. Rough textures will be preferred, and you will spend hours sweeping the dirt from the sidewalk in front of your house. Soon enough you will stop, not from desire but from the creeping itch walking up your hands and feet. You will stay indoors, close the blinds, and tune yourself to the borders of your feeling. Everything else is disappearing too, you can see it in the cracks of light that escape and shine layers of dust in the air. You used to think it odd, that dust would gravitate to the light. Now you know: we are swimming in the detritus of everything around us, seen and unseen. You will watch your fingernails become translucent and sheer, and fall away. You will count the flecks of skin that whisper off of your skin and become bits in the light. You are becoming a collection of bits in the light.

Tomorrow you will count whatever is left and compose a time-line of the history of the world. For now, imagine that the world is larger than that. Be calm and unaware. Stay hydrated. Get seven hours of sleep. Reign your dreams from recklessness, and sift the morning, carefully.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Veil, Richard Rezac 1987

In all honesty survival was unlikely.
What we left behind we left behind
as dissolving tombstones in an infinite,
burgeoning field. This is best
repeated: what we left behind
we left behind. Displaced from
an eternity that is at some point a given,
only God can save our moments.
I mean remnants. In a dozen years
my yesterday will wash out into the empty
space of a frame. Or if not yesterday,
one of these ventures will.
Or all of them. So what is left is
a veil, made
of iron, with nothing behind it, and no
veil either. As if a frame will save us.
As if there is yet us within, and us about.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Sehnsucht

High above a falcon wheels and withdraws, wheels again as you parse the busy sidewalk: you are looking for someone because you are always looking for someone: you think the world is too full, that there is a glut you will never understand, and yet at times it feels simply wrong: the people whom you do not know, and yet are looking for, and yet feel split apart from, as if you were born missing yourself fully, are gone or replaced by cut-outs you imagine are human: and what if they are, what if every unbelievable face truly is as distant and separated and mistaken as you, what if they too feel split and cloven: before you can finish the question you see the falcon break from the sky: when you were younger watching high things caused vertigo: now, you are convinced that it is right to feel cautious and melancholic: it is right to look for someone whom you do not know: it is right to believe that every sidewalk ends in a precipice.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

The First Days Were The Longest

First, it was the delusion of normalcy.
Repetition had leaked the moments of the greater
moments that they like a single bird looping an unknown
or forgotten language had
represented. Or undecipherable.
A wave understood by itself is a
catastrophe.
Enough of them will compose a sedative
you neither choose nor know the end of.
If this was not the most you could
expect – well, when the last days are creaking by
like everything creaking – bones, chairs, walls
struggling for breath – you can fill out
a survey of your satisfaction. You can be honest.
And yet creeping up along the borders
of even this was the ivy of a malaise so personal I
hid it from myself. The hint
of Chosenness was waiting underneath bathmats
and the curtains already drawn back.
What was it waiting for?
To itself be chosen.
To itself be the delusion of choice.
To itself be called abnormal.
And willed.

Friday, April 30, 2010

How To Believe

Throw out all these thick and coughing
Beliefs. Split your head down
The middle with a cleaver. Come outside.
There will be a wind
Tomorrow.

Dayenu.

Enough of this
delayed gratification
nonsense i want payoff
no more dutifully
placing pennies
writing thank you notes
waiting for drugs
to kick in
reading long things
brussel sprouts
second drafts
second dates
if the first wasn’t spectacular
economy shipping
winning people over
second chances
ok no more third chances
career planning
payment plans
weekend plans
plans beyond tomorrow
fellowship submissions
episodes of True Blood
movies without Diane Keaton
or Barbra
no more research
no more planting seeds
no more planting
i will just order delivery
no more fucking credits
in the karma bank
no more poem-a-day
i am tired.

At the Seams

Today, I feel like
I'm bursting.
I don't know with what.

It might be joy,
but that is unlikely.

I don't think it's laughter,
my sense of humor
has been on vacation of late.

It could be excitement,
after all
I'm throwing a big event
on Monday.

It's probably with food,
I gorged myself all month.

But I can't be sure.

Bursting with...
The choices sound so

positive.

But doesn't it really mean
that I'm being torn
apart?

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Righteous

I have a long history of cheating.
Real cheating. Stacking the deck

in CandyLand at age four. Stealing
my brother’s stuffed pig and naming it

after him as if that were payment.
Borrowing lines from other poets

as if I could make them my own.
But ah, then it gets fuzzy: Writing

clever answers on tests because I couldn’t
grasp the real ones. Sleeping with other

men’s girlfriends. Do these things count?
I certainly got credit for them.

Am I proud? Perhaps. Of some. But
mostly I have never been a good

loser. Better to change the rules
than to throw the game, I say.

Tease

[part of the series]

There were days when we tested ourselves –
or if not ourselves, then the depths
of a neuroscience outside
of us. You laughed and repeated
whatever we saw until the bottom
of every noun fell out
from under it. We chanted Chair tree
laundromat until we
worshipped in ecstatic
tongues. I didn’t speak again until the night
so I could research our
holiness. Semantic satiation:
which means comprehension comes
from hunger.
You researched divining rods.
I reminded you of the city
around us.

F for Effort

Poems are supposed to be emotional,
or so I've been told.

Sitting down today,
I want to write a poem about anger.

But I already did that once this week,

and there's not much else
in the way of emotion
inside the tank.

So i'll just sit here
and eat pretzels. 

I want to melt cheese over them.

But that would take 
too 
much 
effort.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Obsolesence

In a world of closing doors and opening
Windows, one can safely assume the next
Vista will be different than the last,
But no less full of worms and viruses.

A poet once said, “Things fall apart.”
An entrepreneur says, you will pay
For this thing, which will fall apart
And then you will pay again.

How can we build a system that plays
By rules we can’t imagine? Cheating
Death should be the motto of the machine,
And yet, the rough beast urges Us to hack.

Short Selling

And didn't you too
bet against it years ago?
This pale art, years ago
already dead, too
withered and dusty to
have survived this long?

We are not
averse to the implications
of our age, we are
not averse to digging wells
into the shell that covers
nothing
anymore, we
are not averse to the profit
gained from
losing.

Sea Biscuit

Hi all, here's a poem from a fellow friend just to spice things up (since I can't do the same for your sex lives)

Sea biscuit:

taste

the sea

the biscuit

between the wave

in the bakery

MOTHER

mother’s best recipe

LOOK THERE’S A STARFISH

Golly!

Mother

She always knows best

so does

Sea

Biscuit.

- Sir Colin McGrath

Therapeutic

I love the clink
of freshly washed
dishes.

For each porcelain platter 
that I pile into
the pantry,
there are endless possible dishes
that it could hold
before the next time I lower it, 
blood stained,
back into the machine.

What a precarious piece of crumb cake that was!

What a precarious piece of crumb cake this is

Tottering on your nose.

It wobbles to, it wobbles fro

And you never know where it goes!

How precariously placed that crumb cake stands

Teetering on your head.

If you were an elephant, they’d congratulate you

But sadly, you’re a man.

In Case of Emergency

there is
(high voltage at track level) so
Listen 
(for instructions)
from above
for steel on steel
for a song, a screech
of faith, a show of trust
or sparks hissing at track level
Remain on Train 
(do not open side doors) do not strain
to see beyond or back, only
sidelong like a crab walking
Move to another car 
(if your immediate safety is threatened)
a wheezing, midnight Taurus
an emerald Beetle
any other glistening city escape
move away
move to some other wheeled wagon
for transporting people, burdens
Exit
(as instructed)
wary of the sparks, the
Danger




[courtesy of the CTA]

At this very moment,

you stand at the coordinates (x0, 0), your future influence extending to the coordinates (x+ct), (x-ct) as this graph of the principle of causality for the wave equation clearly explains:



Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Meditation at Halsted and Van Buren

I must have been the same to her. - Robert Hass, Meditation at Lagunitas

After after after a a a while while while I I I understood understood understood that that that
and after I understood that that that then then then I I I understood that
under under under the stairs stood myself myself my self self self and her
her her and we,
talking talking talking
this way, dissolved into the eternal afternoon, solved the eternal and after
noon noon noon everything thing
thing thing thing thing thing thing
dissolves
solves
:
justice, pine, pine pine pine, hair,
blackberry – just just just
just pine for her again and
in the after after afternoon pine under
the stairs and after after a while while her hair
like black black
berries dissolves into the black black everything,
blackberry blackberry blackberry.

Comments

One of Madden's recent comments made me think I should mention 'comment subscribing.' For all posts that you are interested in - whether it's a poem you've written or one you've commented on or if you just want to subscribe to every post that is made - you can receive every comment by email by clicking the 'subscribe by email' link next to the 'post a comment' box. This is a helpful way to stay involved in the conversations on each poem.

Also, remember to add a label to your poems. Before you publish the post, type your name in the box next to "labels for this post" at the bottom of the post screen. I have made labels for each author by first name, so be sure to add one when you are publishing (makes sorting out whose are whose much easier).

Truer Words...

Fish gotta swim
And birds gotta fly
Poets gotta scheme
Or else they won’t eat.

Gordian.net

A nest
of
jumbled
wire
cased 
in blue plastic
sits 
before me.

I pull
at one end,
watching 
it snake
inch
by inch,
across the floor;
hoping
to unspool
the mess
at my feet.

Yet after hours
of pulling,
the woven
ball of
ethernet cable
seems only
to have grown.

Thinking [Of You] Under Water

At night I know the sea, riddled with boats,
Trusts the sand to stay beneath, the fish
To float into the mouths of bigger fish. Not fathoming its depth
Or edge, the particles of glass, clean bones
Caught up in water always foaming,
Crawling, turning shells to stone,
Holding lightly all the peopled boats
Cradled in the black cold,
Or drowning.
The sea trusts, as I trust that you,
Within my thoughts, are safe, though far,
And floating, or alone observing mobs of orange fish
Disordering the sea
In the deep part light won’t dive. The fate of swimmers,
The invisible salt, the inconstant colors
Waves inherit from the sky’s reservoir of blues
Are none of them the ocean’s province.
Like a great love it only loves,
Pours itself back in itself, not shifting
The sleeping line of the horizon.

If a cup of tea were loneliness

I spent today drinking
tea with my brother.
We shared Darjeeling,
black, and Stichomythic
conversation. You see,
he prefers to believe
in the American. For him,
anything conceivable
is possible. How fitting
this is for a young
physicist. He tells me that
we all have an effect
upon this universe.
If only I thought
in mathematical abstractions
such a view would be
just as simple. Instead,
I stare into the black
bottom of my cup and
hope that it is a witch’s
brew that will take me
back to you.

A Delicious Afternoon

Today was scrumdiddlyumptious in a mad hatter sort of way.
Weaving through the streets were trees on the move.
Flowers full in bloom thrust up on their branches
like the phalanges of a giant octopus
or a basketful of dildos. Both the same I guess
if Hokusai had anything to say about it.
Spring brings with it the delicious prospect of carnal delight.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Five Resolutions in the Name of Stress Relief

1.
No more reading news
unless you think you can do
something about it.

2.
Next time you "live chat"
with a librarian, do
not discuss late fees.

3.
Be more like Weston.
He is a cat. Cats do not
put up with this shit.

4.
For God’s sake Dinah,
there’s no reason to assume
someone is pregnant.

5.
Start trusting your friends
to catch when you’ve gone crazy.
You’re a rotten judge.

When I'm Angry

I'll be stroking my chin,
or so it will seem 
to you.
In actuality, 
I'm holding my jaw
shut
tight,
to stop myself
from doing something
regrettable.

And when I do
unclench my teeth,
my voice will quietly
waver,
because my jaw
is trembling,
trying to stay
clamped
despite my minds insistence
to do otherwise.

And if I pull it off,
you might just think
I have a cold,
and not realize that I'm
fumbling
to reinsert the pin
that you so foolishly
removed.

How I Try to Rewrite the Past and It Doesn't Work

Look, I'm just not used to writing
something straight and having enough
trust in language as an arrow rather than
as a deep pool that you happen upon
in the woods, the kind of woods you can
use the words "crystal" and "diamond"
with, maybe "shimmering," and the kind
of pool that kings throw their swords
into. The kind with an opaque surface
which may hide passageways to the center
of the earth. The kind where it's always
night. I'm not good at it. And this is all
why I've got to apologize, for the fight I picked
over a board game, or for the note I gave
in a cafe, or for everything that just hasn't added
up lately. I'm sorry: you aren't anything
more important than an experiment - less
actually: you are a variable, and I am
the hypothesis. Really, I am trying to get at
something real and weighty that you can
put in your pocket and remember when
you pull your jeans out of the washer because there
it is, crumbled and ugly. I'm trying to say
that if existence the way we know it is a kind of
qualifier, then we can predicate everything
by it, like the color of your hair or the nose
that you hate or the brotherhood you've
bound me by, even if who you are is confused.
And what I'm trying to say is that If X, Then
Y just may not apply, or in a twisted way,
the most meaningful pool may not ever be
discovered. I'm saying that I'm sorry for using
you to test this world, and that however often
I am wound around by something so simple as
hunger or exhaustion, I don't know if
it's real, or perhaps worse, if it's worth
throwing oneself over cliffs for. So you've got
to understand that that note - look, I know you
thought it would be something else, maybe
short and beautiful - but you've got to understand
that the important part of the note isn't what's
on it. It's that I gave it to you. It's that saying something
has to be worth it being given an existence of crumpling
and being thrown away, even if it's nothing.

Sweet Hallucination

A sugar cookie's soft and sweet,
A gingerbread's got bite;
Chocolate chip is the original
Post-entree delight.

Oatmeal raisin has a claim to health,
Snickerdoodle has the best name;
But the one that takes the cake's
The Thin Mint of Girl Scout fame.

It's brisk; it's bold; it's toothsome,
It's more than what it seems.
The Thin Mint dissolves on my tongue
And dances in my dreams.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Such love

The preacher on the train says
he loves God's creatures so much
he loves all people so much
he loves me so much
he'd hate to see me burn in hell.

I want to love that way.
I want my love to be a threat.
I want to say, I love you so much
love you so hard and deep,
I'd hate to see you cross me.

My mirror face

Hi there you sexy devil you.
You're a fox. A cat. A saucy
cat, a cougar perhaps? Ah,
not yet. You'll have to wait
for that. You are what you
are. You is what you are.
You are what you is you
feathered minx. You're a
walk-about wanderer
looking for some love. Who
wouldn't want a taste of
those bovine lips? A drink
of those flamenco eyes? A
sniff of that elken musk, a
view of those molars?
Botticelli would be oh so
very proud of you. Shakespeare,
Dante, and Donne, Beckett,
Klimt, and Van Gogh, Woolf
and O'Keefe, Calvino and Dali
and perhaps your mother and father too.

Lust

Greek yogurt dreams
covered in bacon grease.
If only these hips
hadn't aged so widely,
this mind would be able to bend too.

These Waters

These waters rustle like the leaves.
Spring is coming -
but an acorn drops.
Quick, bury it in the sand
before someone sees.

Sunday

Is it the first
or last
day of the week?

Either way,
tomorrow's
Monday,

so I'll call it 
lose-lose.

Masterpiece

Shut your
eyes. Stop
your ears
with wax.
They dis-
appear,
the ghosts
whom you
know not
whether
to fear
or be-
come one
of. Shh.
Listen
by not
listen-
ing. Slow
the pulse
of the
world. You
can, real-
ly. Sharp-
en your
focus
on a
leaf in
the rain.
Cover
yourself
beneath
it. The
only
true art
is blood
thirsty.
Become
the change
you want
to see
in your
self. Call
it art.
Destroy
it when
it’s no
longer
timely.
Then your
eyes can
open.

Chew

Gnashing jaws clenched in pause
consider teeth as seas: incisor waves,
the swell and crest of white-caps,
the ebb and chomp of molar tides

atomizing rock and atomizing grain
into grains suspended
in an enzymatic salivation
ground down beyond round,

ground to flow swirling in a maw
agape and settle on the tongue-soft
stomach floor of salted, shifting soil.

A slow acidic, saline massage
curls it all into the digestive
primed swill of ages; gluish knots
unbound once again, or broken to rebuild
a crystalline world in sucrose and in sand.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Books

Books make my mother feel wealthy.
She's an attorney, mind you, graduate
of The Yale Law School (which you'd know
if you'd ever seen her try to chop
a zucchini or read a poem, she'll
tell you they didn't teach her that
at The Yale Law School as she botches
the dice and mangles a metaphor), so by most
measures she really is wealthy.
Nice house, three well-fed kids, four
cats presently (maxed out at seven),
but it's the books, she says, that really
make her feel she's made it. So the house,
that nice house, is filled with them.
Many unread, most never again to be
opened, but every room has a shelf
and I found some good stuff boxed
in the attic too, secret treasure troves.

My books are my burden. Books make my mother
feel wealthy, and I have inherited
her habit of accumulating them, mostly
from discount bins and friends'
giveaway piles. I will never have
a giveaway pile. As any New Yorker
will tell you, this is madness: we move
constantly, and moving my books is not
entirely unlike moving mountains. My recent
use of the library gives me nightmares:
what if I am writing a love letter, the letter
that will determine the fate of my
well my everything, and all I need is
one quote, one quote from the perfect book
which I returned the library two days before.
I thought books were permanent. These new rules
unsettle me. So I buy more dollar paperbacks
for their title or tagline or because I think
I've read about the author before, and the books
accumulate and I try to keep up but the library
keeps sending books too, and if I don't finish
them fast there's a fee, and all told it's very
overwhelming. My books, my burden, my inheritance
is very overwhelming. I'm unclear on its permanence.

Wauwinet, 1953

Wiggle your fingers 
into the thick rubber
gloves.

Slide your feet
into the thick-soled
boots.

You will require help 
with the laces --
your newly chubby fingers
lack the dexterity
needed to tie a knot.

Attach the hose
to the security-seal
bracket.

Tighten the helmet
and feel secure beneath the
brass.

You will see differently
through the circular glass pane --
learn to swivel your shoulders
to compensate for a new
lack of peripheral vision.

Step off the dock
and try to wave goodbye --
the suit will make it difficult.

Turn on your headlamp quickly
or you will get lonely
in the dark.

2:30am on Saturday morning

Chicken pot pie
and I don't care.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Chaos begets Chaos

Fully acknowledging cop-out. Will do better tomorrow.

This week's left me feeling quite sore;
It's been heartache and let-downs galore.
At the end of this bedlam
I'd give two limbs and then some
to just catch a glimpse of my floor.

Veg

When sinking 
lower,
and lower 
into quicksand,

the mush envelops me;
swaddling my stretched
muscles, and lifting
the weight from my soles.

In a way, 
it's so relaxing,
I'd rather grab
a remote control
than a lifeline. 

TVs I grew up with


Tell me the first:
two nobs hand tuned
to fourteen channels
antennae like late station wagons
perfect
fake wood siding
for a Saturday morning
where remotes are still remote
like island life or HBO.

Tell me the second:
wobbling cathodes
lifted from a basement
of liquidated rental tapes
the firm grip of business 
dissolution wobbling 
on powder-painted black steel tripod
legs 
a silver box midair
at a great distance
the six button oblong brain
detachable
from the couch control
for the AA price
of batteries.

Tell me the third:
big glass black bulge
wider than my stubby arms
more buttons than the alphabet.
The end of trading up.
Each ever-bigger filter
for those signals
shielded in the plush
metallic hug of tangled cables
and cartoons and news
stretches to fill a slightly dusty world
with its powerless and distant vision.

Eyjafjallajokull

[This is likely part of my Documenting the End of the World series.]

Weeks ago smoke filed
out in billowing
columns. Airports closed
across Europe as the ash hung like shredded
curtains. Somewhere
a great bowl was overturned
and in a café in Chicago I watched
planes of light unsettle
the dust.
We slept uneasily,
buffeted by clouds of our
inconveniences.

-Bad air, you said, and we all
breathe it
. -So, I said,
a conspiracy?
We didn't laugh.

The unpronounceable bowels of the Earth
scattered slowly
over the ruins
of our

civilization.
As if trying to
forget us.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Introduction

And this is your great
grandma, Mima.
No that's not her, she's
the next one over. Can't
you tell, she has
the family chin.
She was born in Oklahoma
Territory, before it became
a state.
She was born in a dugout.
Yes, a dugout.
Her father tattooed
all the children, in case
of an Indian attack.
The skin of her forearm was inked
with her initials.
No, her name.
Her family name?
I don't know.
Anyway.
Mima had a twin
sister. She was lazy,
let Mima do all the work.
Her life was unhappy,
but Mima married
a boxer nicknamed Big Six.
Six what?
Don't ask me...
Big Six died
of a head injury,
they say.
Mima became a
widow, gave food
to the poor, said her
prayers, raised
her children.
She grew old
watching baseball on TV;
planting flowers;
and playing practical
jokes on her daughter.
Like that one time, she dressed
as a witch.
It was a character
from the Bible.
No, a witch.
A Bible witch?
She came down to tea
with her daughter's friends
the pointy hat,
the warty nose,
the scraggly hair. Who
am I, she cackled
until someone
finally
guessed correctly.

Is it Foucault?

People don’t care about boxes anymore
Said my brother. Think of the Census.
Now you can be both
Rather than one or the other.

Windows

These white windows were never so open since the time I saw you last.

Advice

I’m not one to tell you when
to take it, or from whom, advice
being so specific to
its situation, recipient,
and giver, since the right
advice from the wrong person
or for the wrong reason is
just as right and the converse
just as harmful except when
it isn’t, really no advice
about advice can be said
to be universally applicable
since there is a universe
of moralities and another
of relationships but nevertheless
if I may offer one piece of
my own, it is the following:
Never take advice from a person
who tells you to be selfish.

Looking forward to Mediterranean food day at a lunch-provided staff meeting

Falafel.

Delicious,
beautiful,
brown
orbs
of fried
legumes.

Gently caressed,
by silky
ribbons
of liquid 
sesame seeds.

I long for thee.

How is it,
that on Fridays,
your name is
inexplicably typed
on my screen,
six hundred times
before lunch?

politics

[in keeping with today's oddly national theme]

politics is
rhetoric tactics and syntax
repetition strategy and anthrax

stroke my caucus
pull my lever
release my figures
from the polls
go and go
and go until

it is morning in america
and there is a low-strung star
spangle not what your country can for you
let freedom swing or try
(it's tricky with this slippery liquid handle)
draw surveils across the huddled masses
tap on liberty to see if she's hollow
but bate your rust-green
breath

save it for the crowd
because Auntie Sam
is cooking in drag
again
and it stinks in here

problem is
it makes you tactical and gassy
Auntie's abiotic wholesome eats

her meals proliferate
nuclear gatherings
causing a bawdy global belly swell
in the body politic

whoever took it out of the fridge
drizzled her melting salad
in the bowlpot and forgot
to plug the damn thing in
whoever never activated an appliance
whoever should know better by now

that the sockets of democracy
are not proprietary or to be shorted and burnt
as black as crocket's coon skin cap
tilting back to watch the night sky
and one last expedition crusoe with the eye electric

Uncle Sam is off this week
and busy with a tumbler
proselytizing some jazzy combination
of peanut butter and voting rights
while he stumbles on his long journey through the night
into the graveyard of empires

Workplace Rules

1.
Be safe, and
conscientious.
Keep your hands at your
sides and hum the National
Anthem.

2.
Remember:
the future of the office
and your coworkers
and the world
has climbed upon you.
Smile,
and stock your desk with snacks
and sedatives.

3.
Imagine everything as a Greek Myth.

4.
Work Hard.
Accept Defeat.

5.
Be a player in the dominant office
atmosphere.
Respect others and finish
nothing,
politely.

6.
Upon dying ask your wife
to drag your naked body
into the middle of the town square
to test her love.

Lament of a Fair Weather Biker

Blowing from the north northeast,
I cannot feel my ears,
This wind's so hard I barely move
In spite of shifting gears.

The lactic acid's building,
Tears and sweat are in my eyes,
I hate these fit, fast cyclists,
I hate their spandexed thighs.

Young again

She said:

I like your vibes. They sizzle my insides. And now that you’re gone I realize that my whole outlook for the last year has been outlined by failure. I don’t know if I lost 9 months or crossed the equator. I want to be beautiful for you, but the world is so open. Like a big sunroof. So this place…this doesn’t feel like home…and I need a place that feels like home, because I think I might be someone who deals with mild depression on-again off-again my whole life, but then again, maybe everyone has this problem. Our world…it likes to tell us we have problems. These large gizmos in the front of our heads have gotten us to the point that even empathy now can be sliced up so that it isn’t empathy anymore but something totally different…totally insignificant.

He replied:

We will have a home. And I like your vibes too.

Chocolate Vanilla Swirl

A true meeting of the minds
tit for tat
ying yang yogurt
pours out in an ever
narrowing gyre

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Icke

Your corporations and your new
world order and your takeovers
and your thick skinned
bloodthirsty reptilian genomes:

the world failed to cough up all its
malfeasance in its hurricanes
earthquakes and volcanic ash

that drifts like snow

to cover us all
until we cannot see
how it ended.

Vomit Inducing

Rewrite of Tim's How to Start a Revolution.

A round tern
is revolting.

I start to....
haaaauggh.

Dove Promises

Smile.
At yourself in the mirror.
Smile.
People will wonder what you’ve been up to.

Find your passion: when two hearts race, both win.
Because: daring to love completely can decorate your life.

Listen and laugh and sing.
Uncontrollably. To elevator music.
Someone will dare to love you completely.
Listen. To your heartbeat. And dance.
Laugh. Uncontrollably.
It clears the mind.

Naughty can be nice, so:
Send a love letter this week
And wink at someone driving past today.
And go to your special place.

And let me make a list of your dreams.
Because giving in is better.
Temptation is fun.
I would know.
So Smile.
Before work.
Before bed.
Before sleep.
You'll dream better.


(This is my "rewrite." I decided to do a rewrite of Dove Chocolate messages instead of anyone's poem).

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

By Deaf, By Blindness Willed

Rewrite/cut-up of Ian's Van Gogh.

Starlight paints his face, and the bats
beyond the dark signatures of blindness paint
swirls in the city lights.

The oil swirls, deaf in the yellow haze.

A chair, of course, sat farthest beyond
the starlight. We all know absinthe,
and turpentine, and
if we all know Van Gogh we all know
his other half.

The bats swirl. The oil paints. The gas
limps into how we all know to describe
achievement. Attuned to his blindness,
we all know, we all know, we all

know how he willed absinthe to oil swirls.

How the bats paint yellow signatures.

How half by the beyond is but his other.

Neighborhood

The circle whose boundary marked
the edge of the world
held us within.

Outside the circle were the
dangerous places, raging
waters and trees so tall
as to touch the sky,
and sometimes the sky,
it fell.

Our particular magic in that circle
we called up with ratty pieces of
rope, and bits of chalk, a skip and a
hop, some scribbles, and
a high-pitched song
in a language spoken only
by the ones within the circle.

A loose woman leaves kisses

She slipped out each morning
before the men could wake and stop
her, leaving deliberate bloodstains
on their sheets as she kissed their
legs and necks on her way out
with her razor thin lips,
each nick announcing neatly
that these men should scrub out
the blood of their shame
the blood of their loss
the blood of their bodies’
deficiencies, and not hers.

Rewrite of TD's "Razor Sharp," if it wasn't apparent.

Schrödinger's Cat

Boy am I sick 
of the word
theoretically.

I have theoretical plans,
a theoretical life,
a world of theoretically 
endless possiblities,

which ultimately means
a world of nothing concrete.

At this point, my life
is in a box;
both limitless
and finite.

But, honestly,
I'm sick of having a 
carton of maybes.

Someone get me 
a fucking box cutter.

Cavalier

I didn’t see you
When you drove past this morning.

Did you see the kiss
I gave him on the sidewalk?

Whenever I see a car like yours,
I peer inside—
Though I don’t want to.

I have never seen your face
Through the windshield,
In the seat where I sat
When glass and airbag smokehaze
Hit me harder than your silences.

Oh, how fitting
That I crashed your car
A worn out metaphor for worn out
Words.

How fitting
That you fixed it.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Wreck

I didn't know the meaning of the word
until I was snapped into one,
or out of one and into another,
snapped into the jagged axle
out of the jumbled stupor
into my bruised shins against the dash
out of my loneliness
into my mortality
dashing out of the smoking car
into triage mode then, thank god,
out of the heart-grip of fear
into an insurance phone-tree
out of my wallet with my license
into the car of a stranger
out of my better judgment, in tears, but
into dumb luck and my borough and finally my own front door.
Out of the wreckage, safely
into the certainty of remaining a wreck for some time.

Three Ways to Fall Asleep

1.
Count backwards from
Tomorrow
Until you get to where you
Started.

2.
Write the list of
Everything.
Include: radish leaves, sublimely, and
Without.

3.
You
Are the world's
Mirror. So,
Mirror.

Atlanta in the Spring

The wind blows yellow.
We use up all our tissues
breathing in sperm cells.

Uneasy

There's a garlic knot
in my stomach.

And a sugar lump
in my throat.

So, yeah. I guess
you could call me
an emotional eater.

A Nature Poem

White birds
With softer wings than you
Have flown above these parts.
They say honeysuckle words are meant for beehive dreamers.
In farmer’s terms I’m trying
To say that nature isn’t for those who work it anymore.
Pastoral dreams belong to whitewashed cheeks
Not fences.

May Nonfiction?

Per Eric's amazing suggestion:

CAN MAY BE SHORT NON-FICTION MONTH?

Pretty please? I am so in love with this and don't want to let it go in two weeks.

Note from Tim: Respond in the comments with your thoughts on this. This is a different animal but could be pretty awesome.

I dare someone to use this for their poem rewrite!

Crickets chirp.
But it’s too late for me to care anymore.
My love-sponge is full of sugar
And my mind is on you.
Write a poem:
Fart-wind smoothes me.

You're gone now

Maybe it’s the loss of you
Or maybe it’s just the sky
But I’ve spent all day feeling blue.

In the new millenium

If only I could unfold myself
From this horror around me.
These 451s, these ‘84s. That’s right, I’m
Surrounded. I live like a
Rabbit. My eyes are
pink. My skin is fear.
Quick. Did you hear that?
Oozies on the rise. I’ve gotta get out of here
Or they might see my heart twitch.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Toppings

There's something I like about the toppings bar.
At a glance, one can see.
The kiwi wallow in the juices of their own envy
(strawberry is more popular, but only slightly).
Blueberries, the promise of summer.
The mochi's powdered face belies its simple taste.
Meanwhile, the cheesecake bites gradually melt
into one sticky cheesecake mess, the cranky child
of the bunch. The peaches are lonely.
It bothers me when the candied cherries impose on
the lesser fruits. The shy pineapple, of pale complexion,
finds itself drenched in flamboyant red.
Imagine the self-esteem issues of the pineapple.
I make it my job to ensure that each topping remains
in its place, weeding out any would-be crossovers.
I make sure that each bin is filled to the
golden rectangle amount, the one that looks just right
and makes someone who,
when they glance over, think, I appreciate this
sterile aesthetic, this beauty
that comes from categorizing a thing by its essence -
its color, its texture, its taste - I see the choices,
and I will make mine, scoop it up
with a spoon, and carry it with me.

Bastille Day

It started out well enough: the weather
wasn't cold or anything, and a wind blew
across the scene. You thought it was a holiday

in France. I thought about the first time
of everything. The next morning we will

forget what the well-timed word means.

A wind blew in France, and everything
the next morning wasn't the weather.

The holiday was cold and anything
you thought started out with the morning
and everything. We forgot the scene.

Safety

How funny that today, to network is
the opposite of working on a net.
The words that once meant staving off the threat
of falling or starvation now mean 'biz.

To network is in fact much more akin
to weaving, leaving knots in all your crop
so others can identify and swap
some unearned favors brought from where you've been.

The world of the word's first meaning seems unreal.
There was a time when humans ran in packs,
when loyalty meant life and home and grace.
Yet each day's disappointments do reveal
a wound still open, bloody from the pacts
I swear we swore, to keep each other safe.

REWRITES

Applause all around for the efforts thus far. But it's the middle of April, and that means people are hitting a bit of a slump usually, so why not A POETRY GAME. YES.

By Wednesday, the game/challenge/OLYMPIAN FEAT OF STRENGTH is to rewrite a poem someone else wrote this month. Drastic tone changes are encouraged. Post your new title as the title, and use the first two lines of the actual post to post the original title and author.

HUZZAH

Museum

I’m in a museum.
Alone.
Piece me together with your stucco walls.
Rococo villas could exist in some other world.

Exhausted

After a long week of work,
exhaustion hits you hard,
and even just after noon
you want to take a nap.

Sometimes, Sundays
are just there
to let you 
recharge.


Saturday, April 17, 2010

HEY YOU

Yeah, you. I’m talking to you. The schmuck
staring at a screen right now, feeling all
fucking proud of yourself for taking time
out of your busy day to read a poetry blog.
I mean, who the fuck reads poems anymore?
You do, you pretentious asshole. You read
poems and you pat yourself on the back
or more likely wink at your unkempt self
in the mirror in the morning and go “good
for you, you intellectual, you keeper of
things that would otherwise be lost, you
are a good person.” Well listen, there’s
a reason those things would be lost without
self-aggrandizing shitheads like you. You’re
not saving the world, you’re reading a damn
poem. You’re not making one lick of difference
to the fate of the planet or the human race
or the state of your black soul that is full
of false humbleness. You are not brave, you
are not a living monument, you are not the
gates that say Arbeit Macht Frie or the
sequestered scrolls of the dead sea. You’re
an asshole. You are staring at your computer
and letting me insult you. Do you have no
self-respect whatsoever? Goddamn, you idiot,
you are still reading, I know you’re still
reading, what the hell is wrong with you?
Are you going to let me keep taking dirty
advantage of your openness, your willingness
to slog through mountains of shit to find
gems, when I have explicitly told you
there will be no gem here? You do realize,
don't you, that you can walk away from your
computer at any point. You can close this tab
or walk to the kitchen or pet the cat or
donate your pocket change to the United Way,
but you won't, you'll keep sitting here and
reading, because that's how devoted you are
to the folly of this vision of yourself as,
I don't know, a savior, a willing martyr,
a certified fucking saint. No. You are a captive
audience and I can do what I want with
your attention because I have it, and
you can’t have this minute back no matter
how much you want it, and now you are
realizing that you have had to fucking
scroll down the page to enable me to
continue to call you an egotistical sucker,
you’re not even a passive spectator in
your own humiliation, you are actively
helping me prove that you are the kind of
starry-eyed simpleton who won’t step
out of the way of a moving train because
you’d rather believe it will stop for you,
or someone will yank you off the tracks.
No one will. You came here in good faith
to read my poem and at this point I've called
you a moron like sixteen times and you're
still assuming there will be a payoff because
that's how poetry works, but I'm dead serious
in telling you that is not what's going on, there
is no brilliant reversal that will make all this
reading and assault on your character worthwhile.
I'm just dicking you around. Now it’s two minutes
you can’t have back, they are mine forever, and since
you can see the end of the poem now you may as well
ride the damn thing out. Just know that I have wasted
your time while looking you straight in the eye
and saying "I am here to steal your minutes, fool."
I will deposit them in an account where they are worth
absolutely nothing, and of course I realize that
I have wasted my time too in writing this exceedingly
long proof of your gullibility, but you know what,
you chump, at least I’m taking you down with me.

Clean Up Woman

Now with audio! (meaning, it's a spoken word piece, the audio isn't just the song)



When Betty Wright sings how if you love her
like you say you love her and if you need
her like you say you need her you wouldn't
hurt her and you wouldn't desert
her when you're through as if you
are the last man on the planet and she walked
thousands of miles to find you and pull
you from some wreckage of a building
that fell into itself from the weight of nothing
all that real just to watch you limp away
into some nearby burning forest
knowing in that moment that at the end
of the world the only justice is the rage and fury
of an existence that will watch itself flame out
just as the leaves of the trees become flame
and crisp into smoke and ash and barely a hint
of what they were once, I want to shake
the walls of this apartment and the foundations
of the world until they crumble and gasp
and collapse onto the blind prophets of eternity
that saw into the nature of human despair
and found it too brilliant to see anything else
and in a miscegenation of Samson and Tiresias
I will see the world and the world against
the world and I will hear through the rising
rubble a straining howl of our injustice
hobbling up until it is an orchestra where
every instrument is Betty Wright and the conductor
has lost his baton so the voices clamor over each other
like the waves of the void before the known world
existed singing if you love her if you really love her the way
you say you love her if your words are just the effects
of an entire being and if your love for her
is this being and if you are identical with love
and its object her then why is the world
spinning madly then why is the fire and why
is this the end.

Peanuts

The husk bends beneath
beneath my fingers,
but does not break.

I press harder,
straining the stringy
fibers, to no avail.

Adding rotation,
I twist the husk,
and fruitlessly

pull in opposite directions, 
as if manipulating 
a Chinese fingertrap.

But with a final
twist, and yank,
my fingers burst through,

and I feast 
on my tiny prize,
amidst clouds

of brown, 
pulverized,
tissue-paper

seed coating, floating 
like confetti 
about my head.

Friday, April 16, 2010

You cannot take from me anything I would more willingly part withal

not the words from my mouth
nor the leave of my presence;
not my hand in the darkness,
nor a leaf out of my book.

You cannot take from me, sir
anything I would more willingly
impart unto you as a blessing
except my life, except
my life. Except my life.

Rain, Check

There once was was a woman named Uddle,
who would lie down each day in a puddle.
She'd search out a slug,
and give it a hug,
because she just needed someone to cuddle.

race

vague pronoun
of the skin
why do we always
seem
to find your undulating
referent
slipping off beneath
those amber waves

Thursday, April 15, 2010

On trying to be the calm center of my own universe

Some nights it is comfort enough
to shed my clothes on my way through the door
with no regard for where they land
and fall asleep in a bed strewn
with books and socks and glasses.

It is enough to sit on the roof writing
letters I will never send, watching the spark
of sunset receding westward on the skyscrapers,
and come inside when I have tired of the quiet
and not at anyone’s beckoning.

Some nights it is intimate enough
to let the cat fall asleep across my chest,
his belly exposed as he buzzes in rapture,
and to concentrate on being still for him.

I have no conclusion.
Tonight it is not enough.

Sestoum

This is an experiment of sorts where I've tried to use a sestina's scheme but instead of repeating end words, tried to repeat entire lines.

If you had leaned into me
and if we put words to every instrumental,
if I had spoken up over the wheeze of a car starting
and if the car had not started anyway,
if we counted the years by each winter
and if each spring we walked the coast,

then in the Spring we will walk the coast.
You leaned into me
and we counted the years go by. Last winter
we put words to the instrumental
of a car that had not started.
I sang over the wheeze of the car not starting

and as I sang, the wheeze of the car not starting
sprang and walked along the coast.
The car had not started, after all,
and so you leaned into me
whispering how words are instrumental
to counting. Each year the winter

counts itself. "The winter,"
I said over the wheeze of a car starting,
"will put words to an instrumental
about Spring and walking along the coast."
You leaned into me.
The car did not start,

and though the car did start
we still counted the year by its winter.
You leaned into me
as I spoke up over the wheeze of the car starting
and we thought about spring, and the coast.
The words to instrumentals

are in the end just words. Instrumental
to a car not starting
are its own dreams of spring. The coast
will count the years by their winters.
And I will remember the wheeze of a car starting,
and how you leaned into me.

Razor Sharp

Her lips are so thin,
that the men she kissed
had to spend the morning
scrubbing bloodstains 
from their pillowcases.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

How To Start A Revolution

Turn
Around.

W4W 22F NYC

What is a blind date
but one big stumbling block
before the desperate?

Pop Rocks

Tear the package.

Spill them
slowly 
into your hand.

Sprinkle the fluorescent
pebbles
across your tongue. 

Press upward.

Feel a crackle 
along the roof of your mouth.

This is as close 
as you will ever come
to tasting lightning. 

van Gogh

paints by absinthe
and starlight
willed blindness his achievement
a signature, too
in the dark
that we all know
but not how to describe
a chair
beyond the farthest city lights
he sat
half his face
in the gaslimp yellow haze
his other half
deaf but attuned to oil
swirls, turpentine
and the bats, of course
if there were bats

A Benadryl Dose

I'll cut the clover with surgical precision.
I'll suck the sap, venom in your wound,
and make you sterile. You think everything is close
to weeds in the neighborhood subdivision Willow Tree,
this backyard hill of snake skins, crab apples gone
to worms and newts with half-tails.

The most terrifying thing is a wasp's nest
above the front door. You stare at the cones
and see them raising on your skin. We both jump,
hiking our feet to our knees, as we search
for our lost dogs who have wandered
in the unsold lots, wild places
where people take their dogs
to shit so they don't have to pick it up.

An owl hoots and the buffalo farm is long gone--now a tree nursery--
and I say we must end this mad world of mad worlds and make it clean.
You come home and find a snake trapped under the garage door.
After you brush your teeth, you lift your shirt and see
a line of bug bites around your waist. I trace the path
and wonder what is hiding beneath the couch cushions.
You grab your shirt from the back and pull it off in a fit.

In the morning, news of the high pollen count and the possibility
of tax incentives for people with mustaches make you feel dizzy.
We both like the idea of a nap on grass but we
must strike the snake heads with our shovels,
even after they are severed and dead. We must

chase the purple cabbages that run from us,
squeeze the goldfish of their marbles,
take the airplanes to the chipmunks,
chew the eggshells until they silken.

I'll take the muppet from your lips
in a week and let you sleep.
I'll pinprick your heart to know
the dander, the mold of the world,
and leave you stunned in the thunder of spring.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Where the Mail Trucks Sleep

I like to live where the mail trucks sleep,
to see them safely stowed
each night as I file to my bed
and they along the road.

Not snow nor rain nor heat or gloom
affects their nightly pose,
and I in turn am comforted
toward my own repose.

These stately beasts that fume by day,
that honk and puff and glower
stand magnificent at night
as proof of stately power.

Goodnight, sweet trucks, and fare thee well,
I wish you peaceful rest
and dreams of sweet deliveries
upon tomorrow's quest.

These Lips

I'm sorry Mother but I'll paint my lips
Plum Sky, Medieval Blush, Flirty Nude,
Spring Rose, BonBon Sands and even the shade
you hate the most--my NARS lip stain in Rage.
But I'm not wearing these lips to kiss the mouth
of some man and write my number on his hand.
You try to wipe my lips with a tissue but
no I’ll kiss my own hand first and look
at the imprint that settles into my skin.
I’ll read those fine lines like scoring the Bible pages,
I’ll flip through those onion thin verses
and show you the name Jezebel does not appear.

It Was So Far Off That We Thought It Was Too Far And Perhaps Imaginary, Or, We Woke Feeling Meteoric

We checked the time too often in the following
weeks, but not even the precision
of moments buried
the smoking ash of a fire we
never expected to see the end of. Like the dull wake
at the first line of movie credits.
We blinked, and rubbed our eyes.
I bought a notebook.
You helped rip the pages out.

Whisper

Your briefest words
make me shiver,
as though they were
your fingertips
reaching 
through calendar pages
to tickle
the back of my neck.

Lisbon

Ah - the seaborne European empire
of sunsets and of sighs, of narrow coast
and a sun that's soon to clamor and rise
on five thousand miles of salt and unlit
American coast that is no longer
Portugal.
                 Is that why you search the West
sky for signs that time is running backwards?

Do you still await an ocean to drown
the mountains of Spain and bring you rosy
dawns from some fresh sea and with it your lost
King Sebastian?
                              I think I met him once,
your ageless King: he ferried me across
a tide of legs engaged in marathon
to safety safely lost in thought on streets.
"I'm going that way" before he leaves me
to retrace the alleys tiled in silence -
a Sunday parade of two for two.
                                                            Wails
from an Evangel interrupt and King
is lost to preacher in a whitesoaked room
of grey dusk
                           where, the lone parishioner,
his backrow love dressed all in white, listens
for the hollow echo of a sermon lost
to darkness on the last dull tube of light.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Bildungsroman

Something was an open eye.

There were bright things cut like glass and spackled together. Some will tell
you that from far enough away you will see a woman kneeling and weeping
into her hands. Others say it is a great reef. Or the vascular system in an

ageless tree. Then

horrible things happened. Grief came on the heels of yesterday morning's
hike up a wet hill, dark and not yet dawn, shimmering like the thousand-
eye of a spider. And yet the dawn for all we knew really was a chariot drawn

across the horizon. Every night was a tragedy in a single act; every night
was the twinkle of a forgotten light atop a buoy no one else ever saw
except in the morning. But better notes too were written,

and we left them in patient cursive on our pillows
to remember us by.

8 PM

It's eight o'clock in the evening.
My uncle is downstairs,
brewing coffee 
and frying eggs.

I stand on the top step, 
confused, 
anticipating something 
that isn't coming.

I wish that, as my nose indicates,
I had the day ahead of me. 

But I peer out the window
and realize,
that I can only look forward
to sleep. 

Why can't the real morning
motivate me so?

A Reminder of You in a Reminder of Me

You bought this mug at a yard sale
Because the cartoon frog painted on its side
Had a smile that reminded you of mine.

The dishwasher has stripped the paint away
But I still drink tea from it and think of you.
Your memory has been good to me.

i have no idea what to call this


a font of blood, my neck the source wells up
red, and warmth runs through me, spreads on the cotton
by my clavicle and the car window
is broken. i do not bleed or i did
not see who shot. so i lie

still

for years i tried to sleep on my side
with my ear pressed close to my pillow's cheek.
the sound of a heartbeat in the feathers.
as foreign to down as a black boot crunching

snow underfoot. step after heartfelt step
i hear this intruder in my dreams - pacing - 
before biology arrives to explain comfort and
before the night surgeon tattoos visions
on the underside of eyelids in the dark.
these boots i am wearing are not mine.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Going out to drink, to dance

It’s a circular flow out into the uncertainty of night where visibility fades to black. It’s an exploration. It involves planning, preparation, dressing, departing, traveling, arriving, arriving, arriving, enjoying, playing, drinking, paying, remaining a while, moving, dancing, flirting, lingering, chatting, watching, approaching, blushing, changing locations; it may involve a smile, a glare, a scowl, it may involve reaching out, faltering, falling into an embrace, falling back, falling into a trance, falling in line, falling down, falling in love; it might end collecting oneself, collecting one's things, departing again, traveling again, and finally, ceasing with all of this to arrive back where it all began — home — feeling serene in the familiarity and silence not because it’s quiet but because prolonged exposure to such loud music causes partial and temporary deafness.
Spring for me is a mini death
But it's the French sort.
So I guess that's okay.

The Tables Have Turned

What a funny expression, as if we were sitting
down for a pleasant meal at the Excellent Dumpling House
and some nameless force spun the lazy
susan when we weren’t looking, and suddenly
the pheasant was out of your reach. As if we were throwing
dice down a long table in Vegas and luck finally found
or deserted us. No, the table must be between us,
I suppose. Or common to us, as if staring at the wall
of a third grade class one day, and the long chart of two
times two and three and four suddenly referred to some
other kind of math, with all the rules changed. But no,
that is not right either, because in that classroom
we would both be equally powerless and afraid.
Frankly, I think the whole conceit is hollow.
No table has turned. We have, sitting at it,
and now it seems it must be time to walk away.

60 Minutes

There's an old man on TV
complaining that I don't cherish time.

He tells me not to make plans,
because in their anticipation 
life will pass me by.

Yet, just two weeks ago, 
when I felt down, his advice
was that time heals all wounds.

So tonight I asked him, "Andy,
what would you have me do?
Should I just sit here,
slowly bleeding?"

He smirked and replied,
"take my advice, you brat.
It's gotten me this far,
and that makes me an expert."

But I don't hear the old man.

I'm hypnotized
by his wobbling jowls,
and by thinking of how to avoid 
becoming as smug as him.

Endnote

It is when the sun has split
the heavens like a brilliant can opener
and all of everything has burst
out of the wide, jagged gap
in a kaleidoscope of junked cars and windmills,
and apple cores, and bags
of mown grass that I remember how
revelation means uncovering.

Apocalypse, too.

What of the world which is the shadow
of the world?

Lift the corners and snap it
like straightening a blanket: underneath
is not the street you live on or the route
you take each morning to work but the rocky
coastline of Patmos creeping

into infinity.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Apartments by Owner

I hate birds
but will admit
the term “nesting
instinct” most accurately
describes my drive
to collect that
which in sum
makes a home.
I will tuck
down and cotton
into the walls
to plug drafts,
drag in wooden
flotsam to suit
our prairie aesthetic,
and feed everyone.
I want to
paint the walls
in warm yellows
and hang curtains
that flutter gently
in afternoon breezes.
Pier One will
be my hunting
ground, and may
God have mercy
on any man
who tries to
out-barter me
at the flea
market on Saturdays.
Exposed brick, lofted
ceilings, utilities included:
none of this
matters a whit.
I’d just like
not to move
for a while.
Fight or flight
must get old
for birds too.

Ransom Note

I'm writing this
just in case my baby calls,
so just in case
my baby calls, you can say
I was taken, all at once.

And just in case my baby
calls know that it was me
and not me, that both were taken,
that both
left.

I am reading a prophesy of what is to come.

And what is to come says Go.

So just in case I'm not around
when I won't be around and my baby calls,
tell her I've gone,
tell her I'm taken.

Tell her it's the same thing.

Packed

I pile the clothes into a bag,
which I will carry
across the city.

I have to be ready
for changes in weather,
lugging enough
to warm me into the night.

But with each article,
the bag gets bulkier.
So I have to weigh comfort 
against readiness.

After months of dragging 
boxes, from town to town.
I've come to realize,
that it's exhausting 
to try and prepare myself 
for anything.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Rubbed Raw

My heart is still raw, but you wouldn’t know it.
Every morning I groggily bundle it in soft layers
and a hood and usher it out the door, making sure
it has not forgotten its backpack. I zip angel food
cake and encouraging notes into its lunchbox.

I’ve gotten my heart the best headphones money can buy.
They fit perfectly over its ears, with a bass boost for the beat
so it does not forget its purpose. I pad the cells
of my calendar to keep it from rattling, so no emptiness
makes sonorous the gaping void that might echo
thoughts of her back upon themselves indefinitely.

Most days it stays pretty well cushioned. The bumps
and sharp turns of the day knock my heart against
its casing, but it is bottom-heavy and well grounded.
It almost always rights itself before anything spills out.

The trick is to make sure that, like a foot in a new
shoe, it is not rubbed too long in the same place.
I don’t think there’s a thing in this world I could talk about
for twenty minutes straight without weeping.
Polish a pocketed penny with your thumb for half a day,
and tell me its luster restored brings no tear to your eye.