How can this be beautiful?

I can feel your breadth
against my words of protest.
You are that good.

And I would wait and listen
for as long as it took,
to tell me the bad news.

From you, it flows sweetly
and showers over me; and I'm soaked
in despair. But:

It still sounds like music,
I close my eyes to feel
the vibrations, my head bobs
slowly left to right, my fingers
conduct an orchestra of strings.

They crescendo,
then are gone,
and so are you.

Your goodbye hangs in my ears
like a lovely overtone.

A Cleansing

If you carried with you

the knowledge of a lost loved one:

This singular exposed moment, in which

your mouth slightly opens in a sigh

[silence.punctuated]

Peering into it, past your molars,

reaching the esophagus, to just below

the sternum, to the core wherein

is our dearest… darkest

well of disquiet.

In that vacuum,

of your individual pains, I would that

I could gather / permeate them from you.

Me wringing out my hands.

Them flowing to the grate.

Another sigh, this time

of reprieve—your eyes

lighten / your heart

lightens.

And then would mine.

Perspectives on a Rose

I.

where light beams

through the attic,

a sunlit patchwork

doesn’t do justice to delicacy,

for the depths of redness;

of petals half-yawning.

as if from knowledge,

of last night’s nap,

of April winds and salt air—

II.

when I cut my rose, it was rooted

in the mansion garden of some wealthy

Arcadian financier.  and I often wonder if it wouldn’t

have rather stayed in a labyrinth of vines,  in the endless walls,

still set in the dirt among the cobbled planters—

I wonder but always forget about fate, about chance, and their interconnectivity…

…but can only recall the feeling of its first presence.

III.

there is the idea of the flower existing here and/or there

and then is the idea of it existing here

and there and within everything else, as a complement:

“the prettiest flower in the flower pot”

exhibits                  the flower as [tangibility]

         the flower as [abstraction]

IV.

once we travel past this moment,

we will have left

a remnant of this: the memory.

as memories are intangible, we have tokens,

through which we dictate,  in our mind, their placement

a Memento like that film, you know, in the part of the brain

that controls impulses like scrapbooking

these things become precious

as soon as you realize that they are

in this rose, there is the scent of this moment—

when you see it, think of this,

of us here:

how much better tasting is any memory,

when we’ve a way to remember it?

immaculate design

[IMMACULATE DESIGN]
AN ORIENT TOWARD ARCTURUS,
COLD VACCUOUS EXPANSE WARMED
IN PHOTON LENSING OF LATE WINTER
OF SPARSE LIGHT RESEMBLES SPARKS AND
ON LAND UNJUSTLY AMUSED AND THEN
ENGULFED BY BELIEVING—BEGGING
IN THE ULTRAVIOLET AND WHEN
ALLOWED LIFE… ACCEPTED
SUCH PERFECTION.

untitled

I’m searching for a metaphor.
Something with gravity…
I think of the morning,
and there you are

alongside your calm,
the river where I patch memory;
I can feel you jump, as I did
then, when we brushed by.

That was nothing more
than a vehicle to this point.
When your hands are wrapped in
mine, there will be no time to write this.

Landscapes > Portraits: of a Spider Web

We watched the nude bodies of those
who, from whatever cause, lack shame

and learned nothing
from their sacrifice.
We went on unaffected

I do spill trickles, here and there;
small hints in my fingers--eyes
upward, shuttered--

mostly overlooked
in the absence of convenience;

Your comfort has reduced this
to a thimble-shot of thorns

bottoms
up,

* * *

I hadn't yet seen the inside
of any world
of your creation,

does it feel to be emptied?

I consider me this one
way street
and question presence in anything

While I'm screaming out
cut me out, from here

...you go somewhere higher?

Is it
why it is
that you can't hear?

Prehumously [for Viktor Bout]

I came by way of sailors
who flood the coast with Stuff

A transplant fifteen hours
packed in all kinds of swag
the cabin there

was supposedly his,
dark curtains, quieted
nervous until sleep

expecting to wake into
that yellowed print:
carbines & Kevlar,

fevered summer of
Côte D’Ivoire—once immune
Motherland

I came dreaming
(not as myself but I knew him)
I seemed instantly aged

& steps behind him, he
who they say sells Death,
asleep in this room

making Past for life in constant Self revision,
securing luxuries, peddling misdirection

Devils make brew

When pawned souls drink stiffest:
Postpartum;
I swill dark mash from tubs
nursing from tundra
See entry: plains, swamp, lapse
You—
breathe it too, like  
water

With out flinching, static
the Cogs or cash/coin
tips; have our way with them;
     Just these ghosts and I
Taking out swine—ten potato
then a decade, moving on,
leave the underworld tapped

surface & repeat

SILENCE: garden in a wood

Because I have braved twice as many
awkward years,
my voice seeks you and misses.

If it is asked, a response will be
inflammatory—of course,
has at least that been learned?

A breath can sharpen one’s
perfect hate
or your love as mania;

that canine delusion
ripens
in a grand gnarl of root.

Settled between our phantoms;
The Saint of Fleeting
gives his love with the burning end.

We notice little of change,
as nothing is right,
We remain calm;

Where you would have normally
planted plots,
Sweet Williams overwhelm.

Three ways not to listen to charlie hunter

I.
Listen, Gordon!  I love this tune!  I can’t remember the last time  
what was it, London, a year ago?  At the Rouge?  Were we in Hamburg?
Oh, Illinois, that stuffy, shitty charity rent-out, I hate em, too easy to drink
that night?  don’t really remember…it was probably great, I think,
I nailed the coat checker somewhere—how did we get home anyway?  
Everything’s hazy after Hunter passed the joint, yeah he does
he’s kind of an asshole but he writes good;
somehow he gets the calls; his pocket’s deep
there was a crowd around him all night, something happen?  
I heard he killed the set that night.


II.
The sun’s up, it always is
when I realize it’s too late;
I committed myself
to an obsessive-compulsive bandleader
with violent tendencies;
I needed the work,
blew myself up until he agreed
but now I’m cramming
a few years’ arpeggios and work ethic overnight
I’m not even sure he’s worth it, what am I doing?
I’m a paid fool,
he’s gonna scalp me for fun;
who knows after tonight’s episode:
I still feel bad for those poor people—
who could have seen it?


III.
Dear Charlie, (can I call you Charlie?)
My name’s Anthony Montgomery and I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana.  I am 10 and a half years old.  I think you are the best guitar player.  I have all your records.  My dad says you’re not as good as my grampa.  He says you’d know him; he used to play guitar too a long time ago.  He says I’ll be good too but I tell him never as good as you.  You’re great.  Really, really great.  I saw you before in St. Louis with my tarantula Moses. He had fun but was sad we couldn’t talk.  I’m excited that you’re coming back to town.  My dad says he’ll take me for my birthday.  I can’t wait; I’m going to run right up to you for your autograph.  Moses is coming too!
Your biggest fan,
Anthony

last night

The moon buoyed in the sky’s black, we poked at it
like twigs, falling short on the ends of our feet

Cold burn in my nose my eyes;
we pulled the neck tighter;
the taste of a spice rack
which was the trees rocking;
sloughing off their sex,
champing the awful smell for us

Somewhere far was Knowing
and it smelled lovely & celibate

There were mushrooms
in patches—we did not eat
but still smiled too much

Around wood burning,
retelling Goosephalus,
your edition was in Braille
and probably for Communists—

Inside the cover you had written:     
     “Angst in your pants” in permanent ink
     and I still don’t know why that’s funny;
The liquid marshmallow of your wit is lost to me

There was that cruel game of cards,
the boars who took the food & dirt we lost

We won’t hear the land under all concrete

A shriveled Paradise
for razing that dollar—

Oh, Metropolis,
je t’aime until the city of lights.

Clutter (ghazal)

Bouquets of Tunisian Jasmine
from the desert to his lady at the Delta.

Lion’s manes from the low savannah,
tied in vines, a verdant lushness.

Rare crystal silt, it comes from the Congo,
New Zealand, Hell, does it matter?

The mansion still feels empty;
a hollow, contrived space.

Birds from Paradise, in Venetian amber
carry the powder scents in the tropics.

She is very lucky to have him;
or else what would she be?

The Tranquil Sea’s faults yield Moonstones,
in Styrofoam, red-eyed to London.

She rubs against red Beijing silk
in bed all day, writhing, trying to forget.

untitled collage

We’re so quiet together it’s almost a bad thing.

This city has spit her out too many times.

We eat in the room cause she won’t go out
I can’t drink in bars.

It’s a lot for her to deal with.

I leave her home most of the day—
Can’t have her tricking Pico Boulevard.

I’ve messed around too, gone off,
she never asks,
I’m so sick of the Daddy spot

She knows, I know she knows, she knows I know,
I don’t give a shit.
Every day we sit around smoking and it’s good.

We rarely speak so I get to thinking,

To function without solid or gas
With body gnarling, mind gnarling,
With either of us.

We trickle,
the years between us are amplified.

She feels best at sundown

& we take walks to the edge of the water
asks me, “why’d we let it get so dirty?”

Sometimes I’m asked if she’s my mother
& they dare take offense when I say yes.

An Amsterdam Clairvoyant

Extend the arms outward palms up,
relax the wrists—yes—
No, this is no longer what you thought here

Your worry’s dust mutes the light,
now give me that sight:
those women,

thin robes & deep gazes,
who put fire in the eyes
from Dutch windows,

aged blue-grey, staring
at the only canal still
flowing past Den Haag—

[inspiration]

yes—there—
on that street is a restaurant
whose sign reads in neon mandarin

below that, a glass dragon,
but behind it, in the back,
the young man bussing tables,

he is the one red,
red face you want,

[expiration]

His eyes are his mother’s
but he is yours, I am sure of it,
if you too could see his birthmark:

He shares your forward thinking
and indelible love for women, wine
& the word.

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom

MUSIC BOX

It was Paris
when I loved you
& children

ran the streets,
we’d unlock hands
to shirk them,

then over dinner,
under ripe
chestnut flowers,

talking future-talk,
we promised aloud
never to have them.

Our vows
would choke us
by December

and since then
it’s never been
as it was in April—

I never met it face-to-face,
never a warm embrace
‘til April in Paris.  

Oh—what have I done?

duck [redux]

that day
the sky was smoky as
it gets in late November
and the creek
and the wind
were freezing.

I had produced nothing
that winter; I was still
trying to find myself.
Not to say
I felt out of place with me, just
there was no one else
with skin for smelting together.

When I was not thrashing
or carrying on, I was—
the house was stoned-
silent, as it was on that day.
I’d starved with little money,
no success, finally,
the hunt came out in me.
So I got up to find my pants
but never did.

the snow chased me
away and over mountains
and we did not stop for days
or nights.
a dandelion a thistle,
a down fatigue flare.
crash.

He came in the window,
knocked over my bamboo,
and ashes to the floor.
He lay still and the first thought was
there would be a feast that day.
But I found his slow rise and fall
so I brought him in and thought,
I was too lucky
and several times slapped my face;
I hadn’t had company in so long
or food for longer.

his scent stayed with me;
I had never been close enough
to one to know what they ate
and how it made them smell.
but he was pleasant
and cleaned himself sometimes;
slow, aloof, desperate and generous.

I never began to count the time
but we had our sync quickly.
Cards and little square board games
left bent on the floor among
beer bottles, porn, and his copy of
The English Lexicon.
Of course the women never came
But every night we practiced
quacking and gawking
as if through purple grass
they waded to us.

we fell in and out,
the nights blurred-overlapped;
dusted, familiar outlines.
life felt tired and I knew this—
giving up in the end
willing, for a simple existence,
something palatable.
we had that miserable understanding.

Simply,
I would have done anything to kill it,
and have lied down with it.
Blood-shot.
You were an invaluable friend
and in the coldest night, delicious
aside a carafe of pinot noir.

The Bachelor: Part I

I woke up to the sounds of laughter and glass breaking.  My alarm clock read 3:33 as I found my robe.  The air in the hall was warm and the lights were on.  I thought I had turned them off before going to bed.  I walked slowly down the hall and began to hear conversation wafting from the kitchen.  I stepped out into it.  Some old general and two young ladies were sitting at my counter, helping themselves to my stock of whisky, wine, and imported brew.  

They might have looked at me briefly but mostly they carried on drinking and laughing together.  My voice sleep deep, I tried to ask them what the fuck they were doing.  When I spoke they stopped and looked at me concernedly.  The man got up, his fingers screwing with his handlebar mustache.  The girls giggled at the air in front of them.  I looked down at my armadillo slippers.  The general’s medals rang as he started walking.  He reached me across the room where I stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.  His breath smoked as he led me towards my liquor cabinet.  He pulled out a glass and placed in it ice, father’s twelve-year-old scotch (acquired post-mortem), and some tonic water.  He handed the glass to me with a satisfied smile.  

No one had spoken a word since I walked in.  I was pissed.  But I still took a needed sip.  This must have pleased him because he laughed from his belly and so did the girls (though not from theirs.)  He dropped his hand back on my shoulder and led me back to where they sat.  I situated myself across from the ladies and was finding it very hard to complain.  I took another sip and broke a weak smile.  My microwave read 3:37.

The Bachelor: Part II

I continued drinking as I waited for an answer to my original question but, in retrospect, I suppose I already had it.  The general picked up his own highball and gulped.  He finally introduced himself as an admiral, Admiral Lowe, but said nothing of the girls.  They introduced themselves as Marie and Gertrude, respectively.  They said they already knew me so I didn’t tell them my name.  And soon after I was laughing amongst strangers.  I had noticed the broken glass that had woken me up but said nothing for fear of killing the mood.  

They turned out to be rather nice people, actually, despite their strange mannerisms.  The Admiral was a funny man and his head was filled with joke after joke after.  He would fill my glass as soon as it was done and I am quickly drunk anyway.  

The microwave read 4:47 when we moved to the dining room.  We were set at the table and continued drinking and laughing.  I began giving them bits from my life.  Not too much--too interesting.  I explained how much I hated working at the bank every day.  They all listened and the Admiral interspersed hilarity into my bitching.  

By now the wall clock had become two clocks, perfectly synchronized, which overlapped depending on the location of the eyes and the drunk.  Both faces read 5:55 so I mentioned that the sun would be rising soon.  This made them look at each other in a slight panic.  But as we had become so endeared I explained that it was winter and there was still another hour of darkness to enjoy.  Onward.

The Bachelor: Part III

It was fun.  You see, few instances of espionage and intrigue cross bankers on a daily basis.  We types take what we can get.  I mentioned this to the Admiral and he laughed his belly laugh and said he hadn’t met anyone as bored since the Prussian ambassador to Nigeria.  I didn’t understand.  I told him I did not belong there; there is no passion in finance.  I aspired to be so much more.  He was uninterested with this particular plight so he asked me how long it had been since I had had a woman.  I hesitated and answered four years but the truth was seven.  They went somewhat quiet.  

He winked at Marie and motioned his head towards me.  He told me I was a good man, despite being so dull.  I looked back over at Marie but she had disappeared under the table.  As I sipped my highball I felt her hands peeling apart my robe.  I felt her take me into her mouth.  I sipped again.  My eyes closed and rolled back in my head.  I kept drinking and looked over the table through the haze.  It took a few moments to realize, but I was confused to see her up again, sitting back at her seat next to Gertrude.  They were already kissing, tearing at each other’s dresses.  I looked around.  Admiral Lowe was no longer sitting at the table.  Somehow, I still felt myself being fellated.

The Bachelor: Epilogue

That is the last thing I remember.

I woke up ass-naked on my balcony. The sun was out and high. My body and mind felt as if they had been stretched. I walked into my apartment. Everything looked fine; the sink was clear, no broken glass, liquor cabinet unmolested. I walked into my room. My bed was made and my robe was draped over my chair. It smelled of perfume. The alarm clock read 13:33. I had no idea what day of the week it was.

Tiramisú

The tiny duffle ruffled slightly.  
It sat between her legs,
across the hall

as I rolled my eyes up each one,
stopping at those shorts,
folded once or twice

and above all that delicious middle,
tight and hot and there, yes
above all that,

was a face that searched me out
from the corners of its eyes;
let me speak but said nothing.

I thought I’d give her everything:
a bottle of ale,
lily bouquet,

three or four poems
I wrote for someone else.
But I could have loved her, too.

She must have known it in those seconds;
the body talks and if I had the tongue
I’d show her an inspired expression.

The bag did another shuffle
and pug popped its head out.
I thought to pet it but she saw me
coming & picked it up, blinked confusedly

her burnt apple hair
jangled in front of me
I froze & turned

and ran out to the nearest bush,
vomited into the base of it
to the taste of whisky.

It was high noon
and the tower bells rang
for every day I couldn’t cut it.

Wednesday, Gloom of Fridays

The rain was glass
broken so that the air still warmed me
when I stepped into it.

I wondered; knew
you would get wet
even with an umbrella

and that finally,
no distance could keep
my stoned advances from your window.

I knew things but wonder
always on the meaning.
Distracted from the path

and without a proper sunset anywhere—
my guts hung, dripped
and washed into Back Bay.

Soaked but not cold
unless I thought of how
you were kept dry.

And by my twists of fantasy
and no tools to castrate with
I would have unraveled

that I opened the floodgates
but I’d never apologize
my knife, you are too high,

like bone neck lace
your affects hang
to hide his blue and black marks.

bloody untitled

What is said creates what you are
in the elusive parts
of my most practiced rituals.
Exchanging promise for time
from machinations
to a cracking mouth.
The glow of a color I forget
in the rush of blood to my empty parts,
lost with every bite
but remember the center of that field
where we stood,
when I shuffled around [in / the] pieces;
chewing my lips until they flowed
so that I couldn’t lay them,
finally, on you.

Composed Piece Through the Magnifying Glass [or Why I Ran]

It’s startling
to face you;
the well inside fills dangerously,
erases from my mind
knowledge of your path
and any of your loves.

Cock Bar Blues

Me and five of my closest
stuffed and blown up buddies.
Poker night at the Cock Bar, all-in.

I’m stinking of old stolen booze
and praying for a flush draw;
The Sentinels lost today.
I’m in the hole two and one half K,
it’s highway robbery, my stone-faced players.

Poker night at the Cock Bar, I’m all-in.

Staring down at my two, my three,
the giant clitoris I piss from.
And it all rides on the river, I’m drowning
slowly.
Nobody’s moved.
The terra cotta mud children.

Poker night at the Cock Bar, I’m in,
all-in.

I call on the Gods of flop,
“Don’t fuck me over
like that time
in Choctaw roulette.”
They do not answer.

Nobody has moved—
I look at them, they stare back,
I crack, “Why won’t you talk to me?!”

I finish three high and walk out
with my cock between my legs
and swear it’s the last time I trust
any plush bastard with an accent.

untitled

Rest
found in a solid rock,
my ass on the polished surface.
It’s neither cold nor warm
and the tatters in my pants give way
under my falling eye lids;

I haven’t slept, have not eaten much,
between yawns I let out grey smoke
wishing more of it.
Wondering when it’ll turn a sweet white.

It is that thing I hate the most,
that awkward phase between phases
that separates life’s crucial moments,
periods of apprenticeship that dare drain me
until I am myself white and leathered in skin,
until I am put in the way of that sea
of cars and countless people and finally
feel myself soften, or, at all.

Wake up!  Take back!

But every thing here is mine
and what is not will soon be, now
to lift this stone up and out of here
before the cold front returns
to wipe it all clear from my memory.

early years kaleidescoped

I learned from beautiful people,
through their filtered genius
and the worst parts of them.

I would look from the sides
and when it was clear
we’d throw our empty bottles,

shattering them on the path freshly
walked that same old way.
We learned aloofness; the convenience

of wealth disbordered;
void of adjacent distractions.
Our heads put through glass comfort

in the gutter we’d—my friend lost an arm
but made good for everything—excelled.
Beautiful.  Beautiful people.

They taught us benevolence
shaped in their image
most comfortable, aloof; damaging.

We were dejected, but reinforced
like every Confederate man, tied up
on display, dead or, almost, maybe [?]

Breath smoking with the cold
desert eagle at night,
forgetting the names of our unborn kids.

So it was learned:
to be safe is to hide; Safety is hidden and sought—
in the backwoods—in the anonymity
of face-down in the gutter.

Last Island

In the Hundred-Year flood,
as the North Valley fills,
I stand at the top of the hill.

The cracked roads bubbling / gasping
at last, the willow draped over us
like the lightest of weeps.

My mother sleeps, here in ashes
in the roots of this monster,
she is here where I should be.

Sleeping as if for ever
and the smallest hint of it—
in even seeps from its case.

I return where
the fate I made will culminate here
in a consumption;

a consummation.  

Let us call it Genocide
For A Family Name.  And
without revealing to each other

the grim expanse; in keeping
with our self-destruction;
we hold our breaths at the end.

Ode to One Thing Wicked

As I turned on my hall light
there he was again as when
we were.

I had salted the snail
and the son of a bitch
for three years chased me.

I could always end him in sleep
and loved my senses.
The remote blinking with me

the blood rushing his eye backs,
and on its way through the wind pipe
snap neatly like rats’ necks in lucky traps.

This wore down the nights;
at first good and then more
and more gross,

impending, relevant;
the counter-clock for Second Coming.
I won’t tell you my drill

but when I did it,
it was finally, wholly horror—
and not silent.  Not at all;

he screamed and I came
running to it, dripping
like a Pavlov bitch in a bell jar.

untitled

The dream slapped me awake.  The same one where

Those harpies fly in circles above me, swooping down in turns at my head as I try to escape by digging earth.  It gets warmer as I go deeper.  It never gets deep enough so that they stop lunging, missing and taking only a chunk of hair or something.  I dig as fast as I can.  I find I am miles deep in not too much time.  And it’s hot but it’s a worse pain standing still.  I am nearing the core.  It reeks of rich sulfur and benzene so that my stomach disgorges itself violently.  It soaks into the dirt and is gone.  Here I decide to stop breathing.

Epiphany: My [dream] Self finds lungs a trivial matter.

I jab at one of them with the butt of the shovel and it squeals away.  My forward stroke lands the blade against hard rock.  A few more stabs break the shovel.  The omniscient self can pry rock with bare hands.  So I start & I throw the shards behind me.  This makes it harder for the fucking harpies, who have been drawing blood.  Steadily, I move rock and move down.

Epiphany: My [dream] Self is comprised of solid gold & diamonds.

Because the rocks are not many I soon hit a door set into them.  It does not look familiar to me.  There is no handle.  The wings flap audibly and then more so.  I kick the ground.  The door falls open.  I fall through and am suspended.  The core glows and fuses in front of me.  There is the sound of a large stone door closing behind me. I see where my vomit had gone and lower my head as it floats by.  The rest of my body is mostly useless.  There is some slow range of motion.  I use it to move toward the light.  I don’t burn; it feels like music.  It’s too bright—impossible to see.

Psychological Weakening

Novice Profile: San Valentino Vaffanculo

I’m still awake / brooding over coffee at four—
indulging the blackness; feeling the flow.

small longhand;
large shorthand;
page exchanges hands

It’s no good for reading;
the paper tears where the headboards
fucked and rumbled.

sip & more tears
(this time accidents)

I may have drunk myself, banged the wall too,
but my fist is free / busily scribbling this…
horse shit.

sipping & twitching
penciled face w/ strategic tears
more twitching and something goes
click

You know
It’s late
and I’m so sick
of all the
happy…
peppy…
people…

it is said within seven years

A person exists in a crowded room with every one else acquainted
and there are cocktails and it so endemic
that when that person is walked to another room;

which resembles the old one,
where they still serve glass
with tilted umbrella so it hides the face;

their bare walls do spin more easily—
if after all that—does (s)he as well?

Does old skin flay with it
the misery of nine rooms?

ÜberGames

On Japanese television it’s not unreasonable
for contestants to agree to be shot from cannons or
outrun the Cyclops for fabulous resort packages.

One man I saw bungee from an overpass and,
with his head inches above speeding cars,
grabbed at a sixty-five-mile-per-hour waffle cone.

They raised him back up, covered in pink splatter—
he had won the car that had dirtied him. Stuck
to himself he bowed & gracefully as the kiwi landing

took his booty & for some time I lost myself
in thought, staring, replaying his near loss
in that dim bar in Nara where I knew no one.

love is a speckled beast that makes food of us all

He’s not any kind of man;
he works & bends not too far;

belt of canned oils for dead quiet
bolts—but from the window a voice

calls out sides, they line up each
believing fully in where he stands,

pines as idle, not swaying, still
they are capable of great heights

and also great depths of nothing—
only the ass of this worry

soaks through walls and into paint
and lie / staining

the real feel of sinking without arms.

conversation with young jewish girl b.1930

It is sideways
my eyes adjust to plate’s glow
and you are lit up in the display

I cannot see what goes in the periphery—
With no reference
black spots are inferred as staring eyes

He does better in things
I’ve no idea about,

with imminence;
the search closes,

the eyes,
the small room, enclose

the plate’s frozen glow—
streams flow and then stop—

leaving empty cartons of juice
and whatever else could not be taken.

return of the cannibal

The mail brought a package from
my in-laws; apparently for Easter.
A small card read Enjoy.

Inside the package were eggs. A dozen.
They were hardboiled and had painted
on them small red fruits.

I like eggs but not so much the idea.
They now decorate the finest houses
of the neighborhood:

The Joneses’ The Millers’ The Cokers’
The backyard wedding at my brother’s
where they rained down.

I was told I am never allowed back
after the pelting between picnics
and simultaneous wakes

both of which resembled rat pack’s.
But by then I was out of eggs and
my holiness also trickled.

I left for good when the week ended,
and as I moved further away
I laughed to myself

thinking I’d have been much better
off in the majors instead of here
as the league’s #1 asshole.

self-portrait [experiment in mirrors]

A man is sitting alone at this café;
take a moment to find him fulfilling the part in which he must eye passers;

so he is sipping on coffee and it is the best thing he’s got going
until his cigarettes run out but before he can light his last luck
he notices a small child, old enough to walk but not enough
to know where to go—he is standing on a curb across the street—

There is no hand attached to an adult
who would in turn be attached to
some form of self-preservation, no,
there is a child, an infantile
and the green man is nowhere here
when he steps into traffic,
swaying and a few times
stumbling in between
every single car—unable to grasp,
but somehow still courageous / oblivious,
he makes it all the way to our side
completely intact and walks off.

This moves not one person on this sidewalk.
We are confounded.  We are out-ranged.

But if you will look back
under the awning, the man is so much
more aware and more pleased
with the freakish that he’ll forget
to tip the bill and the waitress will refuse
to let him sign for it on her chest;
nothing could make more sense today.

to my friend on the anniversary...

what is time but the fleeting
I could never see, but hear it burn
into every other’s fore- arm or head

with your sound coming through them;
what would be mist
for a year, un- / set in this clay kiln;

with that we wipe our brows;
the blood still
chasing the mercury.

[RIP Raj – 1985-2005]

too much butter; not enough ice

understand
that I am distanced from you people
only because
there is no way to distinguish most of you

and when I try at times
I go through; I meet and look at you all;
I am struck dull,
it’s not that I expect too much it is that

I expect something at all
and that is what seems impossible—this
overshadowed only
by the fact that you’ve got the same look

in every shot:
turned-head, squinty-front-eye, look sexy
for the camera darling;
only a Polaroid palisade keeps them

from looking into you;
realizing that façade’s your only hand to
ad rem originality.

DamageControl_Field_Manual

AdvancedCase_Study_01

You are / pacing the room / left hand occupied by joint
soaking / over night in æther / the sun rays open
this reminds you of something; you think of it;
turn it over; something is written on the underside—in
phosphor / you are charmed / obliquely
you begin to copy the words on a paper bag
the tongue’s dull / protruding point
more words appear / as though in the possession
and are increasingly volatile / you write faster
you feel / comprehendible;
it is a great and beautiful thing / to have discovered
you gloat & / lose your place / to the space above you
floating / there it is nothing / more than when it began
it is too high up to pluck / a strange hand hovers under it
it is scared / you are very scared / hanging—
the poem—loses all / bowel control.

fiddle & jug

I’ve got rolling papers
and some wheat grass
Have I eaten?  What have I got

left?  Little organs,
my uncle’s reeds;
the air goes in there

and you cover these with your hands
My bowie knife
That was a gift from

dad who saw the wars
and the inside of bars &

some female’s holiest gift
to Man
The box where I keep bread loaf

My mother had taught me
how to bake;
to leave it in ‘til the buns swelled;

send them kneeling and screaming
But she’s been gone & my old man,
he should be by now

What have I got?  All their left time
All Fiddle & Jug.  Smoky.  Smoky.  
Grass chewy.

looking in at your element

I am swimming upriver to reach you
when you would have come down;
there are thirty nautical miles remaining

I appear as the gasping prune on
your radar [brane defiance]

defy once—come back, back
the stones, tall, stacked; come
to Far, a long island

I follow willow boughs, their tips
dip along the banks—graduated
depth, displacement, confidence

grab one
stop
for breath

as you can see me,
a speck where you stand

but you cannot hear me, which
is better for you for now;

you should not see me so wet as I am;
things exist you should not hear, smell,

feel: paddling, swallowing salt water taste
& the trout, pea brains, taking me to school.

apnea

*here: to initiate

They say my nose beaks
like some bird kind;
Shove tanks of O &
spark* under my wings

I don’t complain, I think
I lack the faculties anyway
Chickens shit fear
of dying over death

Grope about slime
for your things
needed, sliding,
Emerge In Seeing Glass

Not feeling; seeing
Skin fisted open
Found varied shards
[in size and cause]

They trim,
what you hate
Never feel that blood
loss is negligible

They ask if the well is clear.
Why is there no answer?

It’s wrapped tight
around the throat so
that we are forced
to make these noises.

d'un chariot hippomobile

NOTÉ: BELGIQUE – SEPTEMBRE 1625 – 6:13 p.m.

finally it smells like something, like our parts, our plane [parallel]
some idiot has since scattered
around shanties as if it was some idea, aesthetically speaking

the lack of light, heels
my eyes exhaust overexposed & yours would if they were
less like the small tarts

of flap-dragon; the bowl on the table; torch light; hilly spans
we have touched;
where wine is frantic / walls ooze brown motif here but there

they are common men who drink brandy, scotch / not bourbon
and would have cindered these Pedantics.  oh, the brevity
one feels after well fed well clad and hung stocks of folk

but, even without sight,
I assure you, my friend, it was a time you would do well to keep
in fore- or hind- or whatever ways you are moved

when delirious with poison cup; I remember—
you stumbled but stayed well in their key

[with] his blue and lapping tongue / [many of] you will be stung /
[for] he snaps [at] all that comes / snatching [at his] feasts of plums /
snip! snap! Dragon!

polygamy

I thought about it then
brought them to meet my
parents. We were three
and arrived late at the club

where they were Sundays
A table for five set
under an awning
riddled with leaves;

vines. A white cherumbim
arced his urine from high
above the end plaza

Before I said anything
Donald put out his hand
and Juan his and suddenly
they knew my parents

We ate and charmed them
but somewhere near the flan
we told them our plans
and they stopped eating

Didn’t look at each other just
stared at us—jaws not slack
predictably so

She slapped down her napkin
We tried mind warfare
She threatened to take my money
that was really their money

And surprising no one
my father began to cry
because he knew my back
better than any part of me

They had already offered Juan
a managerial position
at the plastics factory
before the fact,

exposition—
false leaves off-
colored and lewd angels
one shatters with a hammer

We still thanked them
and rose to leave, on the way
the three of us stopping to
piss in the fountain.

untitled poem

file-buster
axe hand
taken to the lock
so sparks fly
at the plexi-
glass covered eyes
axe hand job
gold plated teeth
and lips make
gestures
flavored sugar
sour
waving at admirers
through
the prism
that is
in completely clear
if you had the time?
four hands are not
better
than two
that function fully

excavation—wholeness

kissing through a grate,
black holes
bring freedom through
suffering; the abandonment
of want.

crabby patties

how do you know all that you know how to really know anything at all?

the time again
is changing
and I feel we’re behind it
falling
faster
more intently
with purpose we aim our heads and
realize that landing
in a fault we cannot claim
hurts
so much
more
than the one we shell ourselves—
the meat that it gives will
sustain no life
but this one here.

from where, i do not come

in this place one finds everything
found anywhere else

but at the origin of things
there should
be a bold sense

its leaves spreading evenly
     and it sitting between them
     giving off light

even the unoriginal
will originate from greatness;
a source that is great only once

to me
this name means—land-
land-mass, mass-of-land—
into the treeline
is dark and familiar
inviting
to me

I see you speak spores fly from your mouth
settle on the solubility of inhibition;

what I hear
is not foreign—you point
and say: “the trees end there
let us settle this land.”

strawberry flavored eggs

I’m entertained with the thought
of a summer session

Julius’ month sounds ripe
and my mouth waters

that I would eat of no tree
until then.

as a conquest

you hold water and are as real as
your words that flit
about the page—a something
I feel inclined to drink of

the knowledge is worded
the truth is I do not know
how your tongue would make a sound
cooperating with sticky lips
to please all eight of the nine senses

twelve months out of the year
we play each other
thoughts
tallied through various passages
of time
so our existence feels un-mute,
traversing the scape
I have failed on—

to get it
is possibly to have gotten naught

but lost that high
plain breathing; your
expiration / inspiration

I must learn again
for the first time
an infant
whose old soul
has forgotten the way
to walk.

free will

in light of the falling sun cyclical burn the trees breathe easy
the cola end here as vessels;
veins from which sailors fling themselves over
to melt among the froth of nuclear fusion they float on
ready? like sperm, Lemmings
work but it does not feel right watching them fall and sink head to feet and
never once scream the searing into our ears, the selfish actors
we are peering down at them—envious: the ever green.

self-portrait [assessing the subject]

grey hairs draped over the nape
like a waterfall
crashing at the base of the head

who from a great many ages holds erect
beams of wealth in the oral tradition,
pasted cantos,
| wall | to | wall | patterns |
of speech

they must be had
before this man ends—
when conjoined the line of souls discolored
who smoke like sulfur scent skyward

austere from redundance;
the tired shades and seasons

crouching behind him—in the silence

we are conscious of our lungs
we are tickled with fever in the tall grass
for a smooth acre of flesh to place our hand.

sight exercise

infinity:
a line,
progressively longer;
thinner

Vi on the Tower of London

I yelled
I beat her dog

GET DOWN

thrash bled nothing

purple petals
fill the vitae cushion:
even in its better days
a shredded bedding

my arms lost short
on that street
that cradled
a perfect body
perfectly.

discord

I tolled through the house
smashing in the face of every
clock with the sides of my fists;
but they started to bleed and
I was forced to use elbows

on a grandfather who’d long
stopped tocking
whose springs made the most
delicious twangs in
the hooks of my hands

it was amusing to watch the
movement quicken now
or any sound; without
screeches in low—
low vibrations of air

that were largely unnoticed
for many of the young
years by me
by me
but I am freed

all sounds pour in past
the tufts of tangled
hair and ear canals
that finally take

as refreshing as the end
of a clock’s life when it
shatters the agony
of springs and clicking

and ticking and slowing the
pace down into a final
explosion of sound and
their ever-changing pitches
that I love.