29 December 2008

Still Life 1,2, 4-6

Still Life #1

Negation: The light smashing
through dual panes beside
the three of us
long drags of colored paint
in low voices, a cousin’s politics
and in contrast, plucking syncopation
of a piano black.



Still Life #2

Alive in the air
a palm, too many fingers
the cold center hidden in the grey bricks
row after row 
used cars and how easily the extremities 
appear choreographed

Collaborators at the cliff’s image
you wait, he arrives, you come inside
he talks, you return to the street.



Still Life #4

Privilege denies your walking 
any sort of danger: The long-necked,
coddled retard, and her coddling progenitor 
nearly dead with age and dye hesitating 
to cross into the trafficless thoroughfare

You park in the fire lane, four feet from the door
admonishing your safety, obvious
you are not a retread gumming your parents mistakes
riding your fearlessness. 



Still Life #5

This is a place of commerce and your voice
does not fit amongst the vacuumed rugs,
the soft tailored chairs. Could be cancer
but Plotted Justice whispers, “Look for sand.”



Still Life #6 

The things you look & stuff you eat
twirling the cup, you’ve given up 
straightening your posture.

You have never seen this as a metaphor
although you understand it’s basic conceit 
eating Mexican peanuts from a Ziploc 
hidden in your purse.

11 December 2008

"I'll call you around noon"

I'll call you around noon
and then what will we do?

Spendthrifts splayed under
the winding red moon—in our teens
we found only satisfying 
escapes—now we cast 
cement past our vanishing,
something will catch

For lack of trying. Our family
reborn in new questions asked
and the passed times suggest
their memories hurdle the horizon

Land in the palms of those lucky enough 
to beg with upturned hands.

09 December 2008

i stopped believing what i saw / & instead what i knew / & worse still all of what i thought.

w h e r e   d i d   i   b u r y 
t h e   q u e s t i o n s   w h y 
d i d   i   b u r y   t h e   q u e - 
s t  i o n s       d i r t   o r 
t r e e   w h i c h   b r o k e 
m y   s p a d e   a n d   w a s 
i t   s h a t t e r e d   b y   a n g e r 
o r   r e v e r s e d   b y   l o v e 
a n d   o h   h o w   d i r t   c h 
a n g e s   j u s t   t o   p l e a s e 

accompanying the back of a painting

all these repeating angles
train hand repeater on the cliff
's edge brittle hold now crumble
master there helicopter from; the beautiful view
no matter the danger falling is
walking is loving is blinding is
building is hearing and repeating.

vietnam

Precise packets of uneven
pages lead me to believe
something hand-woven and true
has been reborn, where there was 
only self-pleasure and doubt
about the craftsmanship; But look
there is that same backward glance appeased
in some daft artisan's assertion

He wins, his witty embellishment
a thoughtful deception; This heart's december 
spread out, even little smudges
dot the surface of best laid pains.

07 December 2008

e.o. wilson

So many poets in one round poem,
& Fake accents & Finger-channeling

08 November 2008

Theories of Marketing

Down there
up the block
in the square of the intersection
black & yellow rolled over
and the fishing commitments

Xs on their foreheads
    and singing
    soon
we will shave all the hair
        from our bodies

        The wartoys march
        the off-white tile
        cracked, grouted. Cold
        ruinous and rigid.

04 November 2008

Bemoan the Turner’s World, or a God Between

1         How to hit upon what matters

2         Weighing the grading, & how to parse

3         You lazy lackey — Thought

4         The Contrarian, where hid His hands

5         While rung the bell? Turner having

6         Fourteen fingers His ring is lost.

 

7         This is the season, my enemy,

8         Today we join and brag atop the Hill

9         Preferential Wine, no lighted haze

10       No dialect. Never just, a whirl of minds

11       My friend, same, today we bear

12       Down our standards — Have you cast

13       Out the inexorable? — Have you

14       Hatchet for this Wakers’ sleep?

 

15       In deference to the nightmare we bow

16       To God & listen to His Truth

17       Milking between curb & gutter

18                     The cutting noon sun.

 

19       I’m lost inside the pulses, heavy

20       In their purposes, red or read

21       Mind left to Turner’s leech

22       Sullen skin peeling from His reach

23       Hands wringing, instead unready.

25 October 2008

Three-Quarters of an Inch

Three-quarters of an inch of wine pasted at the bottle's belly, patiently swindling. Soft, / chamber music macramés the walls, back of my head stuck between the hairs, drips from the ceiling. She's somewhere / at the top of the steps, getting ready for Church. Outside the wind conspires, I see it, the sun in hawkish repose. Blood glassed and upheld.

It was her Grandson

these are people
isnt this amazing
take a look at this joe
this is something!!!
imagine putting them together?

Fantastic FANTASTIC

what the hell do they mean,
"actors held in dictaphone mystery"?
this is from canada..
no, this is from newyork?

You know i never did like wilson.
He was from New Jersey?
Yeah, he was. He
was an autocrat.

A smartass.

Ernest Hemingway. Now, he was a handsome
guy. Yes, he was! Isn't that music pretty.

This guy. They did a terrific job here. In 1918
woodrow wilson image formed at Camp
Sherman. Fantastic Joe, Fantastic!

It's hard to believe.
Now if it was done today you'd say, "He did this with computers!"
But, it's not. Oh, World War 2, My father.

Oh World War One. he didn't talk about it
but i Remember him telling my brother. You don't
know what it was like. But afterwards he told us.

We didn't have to go World War One.
We didn't have to go in. We were just helping
Britain. That lousy Wilhelm... he was a nephew
of Queen Victoria. He was sick in the head.
Prince Albert ... he was originally from Germany.

At one time they didn't even speak English.

GARROTE

"... in which uncertainty &
ambiguity undermine human relationships ..."

GARROTE

Bare your breast for the Hanged
Young girls and women, fatalistic,
Neither more nor less
To shy from recreating figures
burn off the coiled snake.
Sundries such as scents and spirits.

20 October 2008

Structural Integrity

Dirt & Blood     You're cold now, You're
exploding through victimized & You're family
past ears, down in will be contracted, can
the furrow // I won't the general muster
open my eyes. Commit his courage. Eyes tight
this sin to memory, where Teeth pulled skinned
is the foil, bitter the vicious the flat paint. I
stories of depression, plain victimize myself
exploration of soul there I'll drop, I'll coin,
free of sponsorship, your burgeon the point &
parents' pot. This fall rain. Imagine scenarios 
Down in the Dirt. Your victims win friends, cut
apart, not pained, not pinned. in the soiled air.

03 October 2008

Biden v. Palin 10/2/2008

You're about to hit a dog
things are looking up
no one whose anyone hopes
for this kind of woe, news and shock
eyes on the prize.

He's matted in black-night crosshatch
emphatically battering radio noise
one, two many beers

You're, okay,
about to hit a dog
& your children will never forgive
the cooling slice of rubber painted on the road.

28 September 2008

Red & Inverted Converse Rose / Score the Sky

The lenses
broken, fail,
but the vision sustained
now Fire & inverted converse
cracks sanded over with practice
scan victimless vices
scan scattered screams
finally still. Converges
on apopulous
still Blood
and I remember ago
the pity
undead grace
unread paternal gaze
now,
the middle ages wash across the sky,
swelling black hopelessly beneath
the swilling gray clouds

___

Drawing in the dying star
and how effective
the big & the bright
the straight lines irrelevant
& poor spelling

You must answer to the calm silence
the name your famous mother
pulled from the sand.

Adolescent lovers all-over envelope
folded & bound and mailed & failed & waiting
for the sky
to arrive
on its own terms.

24 September 2008

Beautiful Islam

Ebullient Hymn sung backwards
sit beside me, my instinct boils
What unjust pretense aroused
What right given to man
not afforded to Hymn?

Spontaneous beauty filling
whatever holds It
wraps the form of any body.

No right was granted
& no right shall be assumed.

19 September 2008

Scab Monster

I wanted Vicious
but arrived before Savage

found it more appropriate
is that a problem? the choice
bisects the purpose's reason

I'm slicing off bits of my fingers
offering them up in their palms
I'm eating dried bits of my fingers

________


i have no ambition, it's disgusting.
I want to sit down at a table and instantly excel at something.
i seem destined to be an absolute failure.
i miss the easy life: round meals with meats and vegetables prepared by my mother: i never had to pay. sulking in my room when things didn't go my way. going out on the weekends for x and y and returning for a rent free soft bed.

i want to blame everyone for my problems.
but it's me. it's me. it's me. it's me!!!! I get it. I need a do over!
my childhood was a failure. i partied and thought a lot about how to have fun, never how i would get ahead in the future. now it's now and i'm done. I'm in limbo, nowhere. Utopia. What a fucking disaster. MoveOn.fuck

14 September 2008

midnight-word experiment 1 & 2

the string — taught, fragile — & wrapped
fingers. Clocks lose harmony, rolling clouds
dampen the night sky,
blotter, beaten,
choke out contrast,

I fear,
this delicate tie may be the only universal
binding, no love
not desire
a simple existing

Without prescription,
the delicate timing of a knot's design &
binding  our fear —
The ascending sky, black scraping out along the wide white shapes, 
water-pigment floating &

We do not panic in the loss of our independence
Mimic beauty, our bodies riding side-by-side 


_____


Jagged and flat on the night
& cut into there

Look now! It's what
you expected not: All Breath
and Structure. Bound in dissimilarities 
sickness.  I've turn away
Scars what i reveal
there
at the site of this inspection

puckered
(where cut)

& bloody
(where stitched)

not yet healed
not yet

shattered or
I've found myself, cursed,
the discovery,
so vain
so insignificant

our tired pursuit
bowed in deference
addresses the devastation
affections drip from the opened body

a perfect meter
in violence & transit

a Storm for the Stars
my hand
across your lips

no one here
implying no one
to reaffirm life,
to vandalize our truth,
blithe, boost,
no gilded angel
at the gates of dawn.

05 September 2008

emortualis

king-sized bed, question of comfort,
that kind of thing is no concern

_____

lists are metaphors for real conversation
non-random variables conjured in presence
curiosity, hopeful connections / expectation

bent for sound, unreal inside a crowd's eye
never meant for the smash of purpose

_____

03 September 2008

ZZzonZzz i heare:

footsteps, at. my. back.
creak
ing door

ringing pinging
into the hallway
, onto convenience

tip plucking keys
smooththen sudden
Stop

warm buzz wait below
i follow it, head first.

29 August 2008

abuse & leisure / ugly women

still no shoes, nor the virtue of shoes,
same piercing gravel road, neither
the purse to spy a map nor compass
but how i've bumped this great vacant villa

where lies an ottoman
for my abuse & leisure
beside that: a chair, a fireplace
for care, great care and staring

where i rest, my legs
forgiven and mind set
to share a burden of waking
one morning -- i wake unshod.

--

1
ugly women deserve
jealousy, eyes like slits
in a steam pipe, fat
with unchecked rage & hands
sublime, unclenched.

a black and white dress, petals
hung from a dim lamp; darting
two-thumbed jewel; scanning
the longest legs, not-your's hair
& unimagined fulfillment

if your face was more symmetrical
you'd be a poem or limerick, though
time to all false unveils, and in wind
embraces the gate into love & powder

2
our journey's race run
the blister feels earned
uneven, puppeted: I've come
to love your single swooping
uneven cheek, it's tenuous play

hands laid onto the war
pulling breath from my chest,
witnessing your name
returns a calm even strength.

06 July 2008

Terpitude + M-W Poetry Project p1: Metaphor of Anemone / and Failures





Quick Explanation: I've been slacking with my writing recently. Between my job and 'extra curricular' activities, in a dark, dark corner somewhere I find a little solace and sneak away to write sometimes, but it's not enough. So I've designed a quick and simple writing exercise for myself ala college Sophomore-era creative writing classes: Merriam-Webster jets me a 'Word of the Day' email everyday, so I'll take that as an opportunity to provide myself with a promise of, at least, to have a puzzle-work ingredients for a poem everyday. However, if a poem takes more than a day to write I won't expect to abandon it simply because a new word arrives.

Cool, so here is today's coffer:







Merriam-Webster’s



Word of the Day



July 6




turpitude \TER-puh-tood\
noun
Meaning
: inherent baseness : depravity; also : a base act Example Sentence
The judge declared that the murders were the product of a gross moral turpitude.




Did you know?
"Turpitude" came to English from Latin by way of Middle French. The Latin word “turpitudo” comes from “turpis,” which means "vile" or "base." The word is often heard in the phrase "moral turpitude," an expression used in law to designate an act or behavior that gravely violates the sentiment or accepted standard of the community. A criminal offense that involves "moral turpitude" is considered wrong or evil by moral standards, in addition to being the violation of a statute.







Heaped upon muscular hooks mass the messes,


the pile washes with sea water, anemone


slowly creeps into blackness

blue at extremes, crawling further.


Biology's virtue sweeps away their sadness: Filtering the neurotoxin


Note to self: Refine around metaphor of Anemone/Turpitude



AUGUST 1 UPDATE:
Initial experiment was a complete failure. As with moth endeavours, as soon as the thing was begun I psyched myself out of the required work. This is the ultimate problem of my life. I could give it an easy label, "Fear of Success," but that feels... cheap. Easy. I keep finding myself suggesting a deeper investigation. A second look. Like those behind me who can separate fun and work and are constantly looking over my shoulder, complimenting and/or ridiculing. There is no difference. Is this a poem? Maybe, a little. Not really. Sometimes it's fun to just trail off and let the words pave the way. So that's that.

Watching Comedian earlier today led me to thoughts of how Life is just hard work. In the barrel some lives float to the top, others settle toward the bottom in the shift caused by the upward motion of those who succeed. Generally, it seems to me, I do not have the propulsion to succeed but have the desire for something greater. My failures of person constitute that sinking feeling. I'm forced to choose between easy and up.

Easy or Up?

Everyday is a sort of fork where any decision you make can greatly influence the rest of your life. In either way. Anyway.

I'm done beating the horse.

03 July 2008

George (Autopilot)

something so lite so overwhelming
the rise
the sad
sand, sinking all
dog barks, a reminder
some live for questions and some
love livid reality, lapping at the marrow.

what a strange eastern european tradition,
lapping at the piddle marrow, when there's so much
meat circling the bone.

if unspoken, tradition
shutter a whispering
need, call it a habit.
and if you turn off a thing
never desired

something so lite
so overwhelming
the rise, the sad sand, the sinking
all dog barks, some live for questions
some love livid reality, lapping at the marrow.

(incomplete first draft)

28 June 2008

Delta: Flight 80 (Unfinished: Will be led)

Punctured plane window,
A variant of any death,
The numbers fall away:

Now, in fear, she is equalized
Sound erased ­-- In sloppy strokes,
a child rubs the butt of his hand
Over half-dimmed pencil marks --

Now, placated and abundant:
Reference point a descent;
Reference point distant,
Controlled by a panicked calm

Punctured plane window,
The ice collects in rivulets
Around her eyes,
Nose, mouth and ears:

The child perched upon the branch
Smiles in spite of the bash
Pushed into to her, the love of her father
Don’t sit too close, never under the window,
Don’t offer, don’t give, don’t negotiate, and never winnow.

This time, reflected, never winnows
Blood pools at the puncture’s knees
Calls for immemorial, never screams
Violence and all her ungracious grabbing.

08 June 2008

Lovely Rita

It's so easy to miss the off ramp,
drumming up the wheel
and screaming raw your lungs.

05 June 2008

Calaca #2

down victor
victor drown
black town
scare kids
creeping around
blackout light
ride it out
drown victor
black town
underwater
underwater
underwater
eyeless vision
no never not not
no not never never
victimless revision
black town
down victor
drown town

01 May 2008

White Trash

what's the poison
degradation, the failing
of language — more &
sore swallowing feels the same —
the radiating nervousness,
from the bone out, about
to vomit, to convulse,
in the interest of hiding
your fears you hide them
behind cars, under baseball bats,
inside bottles — half drunk —
in the powder sallow in your
cheek.

'Who's hiding?'
'What voices?'

the stone rolls back, an open grave,
no body. you know things:
you can't hide what hasn't died;
you can love anything,
but you can't love an unloving nothing;
that voice breaks agonizing silence,
that smell rend comfort because
both are haunting, both
familiar specters; a trailer is just a house
and accents straddle words. you know
things & won't let go
of the trash
in the middle of the road.

FUTURES

" ... & wind which the eye loves so deeply it
would spill itself out and liquefy
to pay for it ... "

-from Futures by Jorie Graham


I worry that when I'm dead, someone will exhume my ridiculous Black Books (which WILL be buried with my fleshy flesh flesh) and structure some base cowboy religion on my rants and half-empty ravines.

Religion always beetles people into strange little, indefensible rituals.
Here are yours, from the Lazarus Joe, Pontiff Exhumed:

My followers, all good people, harangue each other into big-city solitude: Stuck up beside your candle collection with an old bean can full of Micron 05s, your thoughts would choke you like mine have choked me, but instead of the bright lights going dimmer, they fall, cold, high-speed film: