Saturday, April 9, 2011

When I am lying in bed at night

gasping for air and even the creases
in the backs of my knees are sweaty
the only way to sleep is to arrange my
limbs upon the bedsheets such that no
one part of my body touches another
count backwards starting with dry
ice and imagine I'm in a place that's cold, cold
cold, so cold that I bundle myself into
a downy silence pierced by the radiator's
hiss reminding me that snow
falls outside.

Yellow Dust

Yellow Dust makes these runners
run with white masks over their mouths,
safe from the river's smell that covers
the track, but not from this wind blowing south.
They look like surgeons rushing to an operation
as they breathe in their own heavy release
of stress, excitement, anger, or self-satisfication -
whatever makes people run these days when nothing seems
to chase them, except for those unseen things,
which there is no mask, no cover, no amount of speed
that can shake away those feelings that cling
to, that stick to, the heart that pumps
the monotone motion of arms swinging
in rhythm with desperate feet that cramp
but still run foot over foot over cramping foot.

There is No Sheriff on the Wild Wild Web

Seek out the Web that newest wild domain,
a lawless, limitless space where you can
wage your useless battles and numb your pain.

In life your rantings branded you insane,
so to the computer you quickly ran,
seeking out the Web that newest wild domain.

At every petty thing that earned your disdain
you spout bile worldwide and using your WAN
wage your useless battles and numb your pain,

from the copper wire throne where you now reign.
Shout out to recruit more trolls to your clan,
"Seek out the Web this newest wild domain,

Where cries of 'Nazi!' are common refrain,
every joke a 'yo' mama' and each review a pan;
wage your useless battles and numb your pain."

Now survey the wreckage, see your enemies slain,
and tell me, do you feel more of a man?
Seek out the Web that newest wild domain,
wage your useless battles and numb your pain.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Armageddon

Bruce Willis, take your heroism into space.
Strip away layers of time so we see only the present
storm of metal shearing ice and fire.
Bore to the heart of all that matters and
only stop for sentiment in the minutes
before The End, when the signal
goes clear because you need to say goodbye.
Maybe I've been reading too much
of late, but that Russian guy was right
when he called you a cowboy.

Cake

Cake has always been a tricky
concept for me. Whether tasty sticky
toffee pudding, delicious delicate angel food,
gummy leaden cheesecake, or frosting glued
'twixt layers of mealy yellow dreck
that parades around without a single speck
of flavor, we call it the same -- cake.
But I would think that for the sake
of fairness we must try to differ-
entiate which types we prefer
and elevate them with some nom de guerre
to herald them as they charge with flair
across our taste buds. It'd be a shame
to make a great dessert share a name
with Little Debbie snack things, packed in
plastic, anemic, and lacking
any art. So I propose
that as a tulip, is not a daisy, is not an orchid, is not a carnation, is not a rose
we not reduce the family cake
to some sad, contrived, fake
state of same,
and instead let each member proclaim
itself freely.

Quod Erat Demonstratum

In spare hours carved from sleep
I’ve been reading up on math proofs
from old notebooks with crouched lead text
assembled in a trademark headlong march
of complex symbols and reasoning
that means I copied from the board.

Maybe copying from the board is how we learn
plagiarism. I can’t after all identify the swirling Greek
letters, skipping over un-colonized bits of English alphabet—
only desperate times could call for a positive integer j
and I can’t after all explain in any of my own words
what follows the three-dot triangle meaning
therefore but really saying I dare you to follow.

These are lines of flawless logic, where a conclusive then
always follows if and suppose and let, and belonging
has its own symbol, and there’s a term lemma
just to signify a side-theorem I had to prove along the way,
sorry. I would drag a finger along the text to test the sensation
of proof, like braille, but lead blurs, and these are proofs
I could never reconstruct.

I never copied QED at the end of any notebook proof
because that which was to be demonstrated
wasn’t demonstrated by me. Instead
I shaded in a small black square each time
to remind myself to return.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Día de sangre

Mosquito-shadows pock the ceiling;
The walls are a warning to those that survived.

Over those mountains, other feet
Keep rhythms that make the blood flow.

Hunting

The names of people --
who emailed me only once
after I responded to their
craigslist classifieds --
litter my gchat contact list.

Sometimes I'll glance down and --
catching a name in the corner of my eye --
think of moments I shared
with them
when we lived together,
and I believe,
momentarily,
that these phantom relationships
actually occurred.

Really, who am I
to say that these memories
are any less valid
than those I can trace
more clearly?

Make

the skin fit
to electroplate
with india ink
torch then hair
to a black bulb
scalp divine
unscrew eyes
to luxury
a radish

Alone

I missed you
before you were even gone,
but after we had

parted. I
came home to silence, silence
of familiar sounds.

I wonder,
if I sit here long enough,
if I would become

part of this
terrace tableau, wind coating
me with city grit;

the spiny
aloe sprouting between my
toes; ants and insects

marshalling
themselves across my thighs, their
wobbly ranks running

rivulets;
the dragonflies lighting their
amber bodies on

my shoulders.
Even the bats would wing at
night against my cheek

then out once
more into the sky, restive
through all the darkest

hours, at dawn
tucking into a corner
of rooftop to roost.

--a good portion of this lifted from Karla K. Morton's Sailor's Delight

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Challenge

Don't you dare
Me. I'll do it.

Unfulfilled

In the waning years of his life,
he fed his dog nothing
but ham and ice cream,
making up for the grandchildren
he'd never had
to pamper.

Elisabeth Malkin's Metaphor for Justice

A law enforcement experiment,
a drug-ravaged border town,
a 20-year-old police chief

fired after failing to turn up for work, 
a college criminology student, hired in October. 
Nobody would take the job.

To avoid the drug gangs warring
for control, she did not gun or uniform.
Made it clear that she would leave

higher authorities. Last week, she asked
a three-day leave to care for her son,
and there, speculation: she had been threatened.

She did not show up on Monday
when the mayor of a town near Juárez fired
her. Nobody knows where she is,

or whether there was threatened.
Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson:
“a witness saw her safely cross a bridge

to El Paso. But with the threats
law enforcement officials face — a chief
beheaded – ”

Town officials were not alarmed:
“We’re confident that she is safe
some place. If there were a kind of situation,

we know about it. That kind of news just
flies.” And the mayor wished her the best 
in any future projects she may take on.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

For the one who never sleeps but must not show her exhaustion.

The myth of the city is that of the happy accident,
The big break, the impromptu genius made possible
By the inevitable but random collision of particles
Of genius within the island’s bounded space.

She promises the rush of sighting idols in their gym clothes,
Lures her pilgrims with the manic pace and up up up
Of buildings, stocks, your fortunes too (it follows)
By the ragged edge of South Seaport and winding Village streets.

She doesn’t like to talk about her upper body
Which is unfashionably square, no sensual curves
But a grid so tight even the unruly trees appear geometric.
Admitting her marquis lights flash predictably
And the sheer number of dream-chasers washed up on her curbs
Would only disappoint the fresh-faced suitor, still eager to uncover her fabled naked grace.

On the Floor

(scrubbing the milk
(you spilled at breakfast
(twenty years ago and
still you are (You little
shit--you spilled it!)

How well to one
we do our wrongs.)

Prometheus

With bones
and fat
and meat
he brought
their ire.

With fennel
stalk he
fought to
bring back
fire.

And for his
actions
he lived
with an
ever-aching
gut.

A small
sacrifice
to free us
from a
flavorless
rut.

The Park at Noon

Empty but for the play of shadows
on metal swingsets, slides, and one of those
carousels without the horses, slightly off
kilter, now resting from its limping gait.
Ants wind their way through peels of paint the sun's
parched; one by one by instinct filing.
The concrete dais in the corner crumbles
under a solitary Christmas wreath
that dangles in April, sighing O
trailing red ribbons on the breeze. Fronds splay
the dusty underside of palms, and up
stretch a green net of gauze against the sky.
A man comes down the street, his cries the names
of fruit, as if to speak them gives him pain.

To Maslow: A Slight Amendment

We now review a theory
in the realm of psychology.
One Maslow sought to estimate
man's curiosity innate
and in form pyramidical
cast Needs all Hierarchical
the which men, if exemplary,
would satisfy successively,
transcending each category
to reach full potentiality.
However, a deficiency:
Maslow thought in 1943!
We must amend but so slightly
to account for temporality,
the advent of technology -
specifically, the T.V.


In the first level, we can see
man's physiological needs:
the need to breathe, the need for sleep,
dispose of waste, drink water, eat.
The TV can't provide these, true,
but an approximate will do:
the required info's all compiled
with Bear Grylls in Man vs. Wild.


The basic needs now being met,
man naturally thinks of next
security for his family,
of health, employ, and property,
and safety from delinquency.
Staying inside and watching TV
takes care of all these, obviously.


To fulfill Love/Belonging/Social Needs
are the sitcoms from the 50's-70's.
Providing acceptance and community,
this level is affirming emotionally.


Next, the need for respect, both internally
and recognition in the public eye.
To cultivate respect for self and humanity,
there's no better option than Judge Judy.

The Cognitive, Aesthetic, and Growth Needs
are all to be found on Sesame Street.


Subsequent to reaching the acme,
man acquires these tendencies:
Efficient Perception of Reality
(Keeping up with the Kardashians and all reality TV),
Heightened Awareness Ethically
(Dexter; Breaking Bad; Weeds),
Philosophical Sensitivity
(The Simpsons, Conan O'Brien, and House, M.D.),
Autonomous Originality
(Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon),
and Regard for Nature & Universality
(Shark Week, the other stuff on Discovery).


Having followed the entire process precisely,
man will achieve transcendence nicely.
Moreover, his needs, being met by TV,
don't require the aid of society.
Maslow's model, formerly triangulaire,
may be changed to the far more simple square:


Thus we see all man's needs, complex and pristine,
satisfied when he's sitting in front of the screen.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Challenge

Don't you dare
Me. I'll do it.

The Worm

I have a subcutaneous worm.
Not ringworm or tapeworm
or hook, round, or pinworm,
but a worm more like those things
in Dune, or in Beetlejuice,
or in Tremors with Kevin Bacon,
shrunken and released
into the desert of my back.

I feel the worm snaking
through my body, coiling
in my shoulders, or constricting
around my ribcage.
The worm leaves a tunnel of
pain and tension behind.

And as I take a few Advil,
I think to myself,
"what this really needs
is some spice melange."

Poem for April 3rd

The next night, on our journey, a scene occurred.
A more graphic pen is required to paint its
weird details. This was one of the places where the earth
was in a state: the fire begins a long way below,
burns slowly, still more slowly, creates great
hollows. And there is always danger of breaking
the crust and sinking into the fire.
Night came on, and all was gloom. By and by
I thought I saw in the distance several lights;
going farther the lights became a glare;
we emerged and stood in open space.
What an unearthly scene! The whole earth
for miles full of flickers of fire, flames
of many colors - red, gold, blue, and purple - darted up
on every hand, some forked and jagged, some javelin
straight, rising above, in places licking
the dust, then, gaining fresh energy, springing
high as the others. Coming full out of the dark
I half fancied those flames were endowed with
life: a high carnival of curious creatures let loose
for a time from their prison-house.
Clouds of smoke swept into our eyes, and the
hot stifling air choked us. After looking some
time, we moved forward. I never expected
to get through alive; but death was better
than turning back. Slowly we picked our way,
and trembled. All went well for about three
miles. Suddenly, behind, a cry - We stopped
and waited for the worst. There came dashing
into the midst a frightened horse,
it tore along, the mad creature bounded
on, went far ahead, crashing
against half-burnt trunks of trees.
All were straining after the one that had
disappeared, but we pushed on, the smoke
still blinding. Soon we entered a splendid
forest; and, coming from vivid light into
darkness, the darkness to me was blackness
indeed. As my eyes grew accustomed I could see
the white tip of my dog's tail. This faithful
friend, a black collie, with a white tail;
so I kept my eyes fixed on that little bit
of white, and felt as long as I could see
it, I was safe. If the white spot
disappeared, I knew we must be prepared.

-from Kate Marsden, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Naming of Things

It was not until I rescued a cat and named her Pidgin
that I truly began to wonder whether we all grow into the names we are given.
Though hers is an homage to the muddled languages of her tortoise-shell fur,
she can’t possibly hear the difference in spelling.

Pidge spends hours staring out the window of our studio
at the real pigeons. She does not seem to want to hurt them, but melodically coos
stories of their foibles to me when I come home. Pidge absconds with mouth-fulls
of my dinner each night. She may think I expect this of her.

I do not give away my real name lightly. My surname
betrays my heritage to listeners without my consent, which is also the core
of the name Dinah, that lack of consent, the voiceless sister whose rape
allowed the Israelites to make war with a clear conscience.

But then we are all named without consent, all names are given.
Perhaps I grew into the habit of correcting mispronunciations, of relative
quiet, of serving as a justification for the actions of my relatives.
Perhaps I know I am expected to be a very good sister.

The naming of things has always seemed a weighty task;
names are worn for so long and used so often. But this added burden
makes the responsibility unbearable, for who am I to bestow on anything
a history that must be grown into?

Rats With Wings

Their claws scrape
across the metal
box dangling
from my window.

Each morning I hear the hoots
echoing about the brick-
lined alley outside my room,
signaling an imminent landning.

They descend. And
with each talon
that rasps across the A/C vent,
I twinge, feeling the nails
across my skin.

What do they want so badly?

Will pecking their way
into my room yield
some prize?
There's nothing so great
in here to justify
such effort.

Is the ledge beneath my
Frigidaire so appealing?
Are they just antagonizing me?
Or, like so many New Yorkers,
do they have to banish someone
else, to find a place
to sleep?