21 December 2010

improv for Roget's International, sixth edition; 12212010723

languish                                              there's a willful poem
pine                                              once written
droop                                              cast up from some growth
flag                                              cracking the dry soil despite
wilt                                              itself it is no organic spice
fade                                              emerging jointed death
wither                                              crows from source
diminish                                              rolling like the shadow beside
dry up                                              a pitted pinless hand grenade
retrograde                                              and it's no wonderful loud thing
languish                                              the poem whittles
pine                                              into grain which it's dull-eyed author cannot
droop                                              a declarative statement breaches the water 
flag                                              at the top of its arc flattens out — pin-straight
wilt                                              a moment and just a moment a clearing
fade                                              of the mind — wipes white the wash
wither                                              horizon weak and sight from where
diminish                                               every illness wills its end 
dry up                                              though many good things never began
retrograde                                              under gaze of mind's accomplished rend.

19 December 2010

[improv for sarah, 12192010927] or [rudhira okha cardame; blood, gauche and light on glass, 3 x 4"]

there are the old tropes
the reaper swinging his grim scowl
a distant, longing victim

chained to posts and deep mercy
vultures contemplating victimhood
their flapping contrapositives 
their lack of teeth does not them lack

but to snuff the fire, the impulse toward flame
even in the prolonged suffering of birth
ignites in a quick jerk and flags between
breaths. they're abundant and filthy

proud deniers, dirty foxhole diggers 
want what they want and what do they want.




01 December 2010

split infinity

The woman is above me and her body chants
Colloid mane washes across my face
Honey drips, undresses, digs her heels into my tongue
My fingers buried in her unexpected softness, trace
adipose at the shoulders, pure white grace
the bell of silence struck and sung
but colorless, maybe real never rung.

...

[posted:12012010-edit1:12032010]
[edit2:12042010-edit3:12052010]
[edit4:12092010-edit5:12192010]

(i just can't fiddle with the diction
anymore it's time to move on.)

27 November 2010

untitled 112720102142, draft

on eight purple post-it notes
i sketch the sure sound of my heel
striking the rug / yr scampering heartbeat escapes
and climbs beside my eye, into my ears
fills my lungs. i'll try to keep my cup
far enough from, i have proven ruin
so i'm unable to promise this spill.

...

[posted 11272010 - revised 11302010]

untitled 101120101104

sour, profitless things
cat hair, drifting clumps of dog
when my lover wakes soft and unwashed
she tosses my cover to the floor

she partitions, in other words.

brushes her teeth, applies a mask
washes her face then anoints the map
like a slippery film, guaranteeing breath
when miles from the unmade mess she
strikes a flint and sparks the slick veneer

pain makes her proud.

it's fine to walk to slivers
of yellow and pockets of red
to market, bank and cafe, never pointing
the bally of tourists on its way

"the snake oil," whispers each wryly visitor
"tames her violet scarring;" now toils
she sniffs her way uptown
such thick lids and eyes quick to boil

"she gets around."

and then, at night,
wish out the light and reapply her face,
place each piece beside each piece
precisely where each piece belongs

she partitions the pain that makes her proud
she gets around, for me she got around
stands up, looks up at her feet, the visitors
in this crowd help keep the scarring down.

Improv for My Pet Ostrich

yr wide eyes would know beyond this here doorframe
if yr head was yr only; yesterday the sky is clear and blue
each cloud throws blocks; blocking, each cloud spins across
a definite line, parallel yet flagging above the horizon
like a thread, loosed from the loose hem hanging off
the shoulder of an expensive navy jacket,that you'll
never ever see.

nah, you miss it completely.

04 November 2010

Ars G., 110420101035

At the top of the stair
As sure as the outreached hand
Is collared and wet
Cold to the freckle on his wrist
He's sure Laughter is half down the stair
And that apparition fingering the doorbell
Would serve cause better completely ignored.

02 November 2010

rough draft, 102820101655

i know or do not know you
beside the heft of your legs
& knit-black stockings; i do not
need nor save need in the glut,
the choking overabundance(: starts
the pulse feather, quick scrape
over the hall of tongue; cough
rich with purpose, the body, harmony
a wallet full between my legs; cough
again a selfish exhaling as if
peering through a mirror through a mirror)
of gastric detail.

Staring palms
accepting
his comfort
fingers
reddening the thigh
flesh
on flesh.

20 October 2010

Only

I can only think about the coldness
Of the green water, how the initial
Shock makes the skin alive with purpose
How I demand to be alive.

03 October 2010

Michele (revision 100320101422)

I

Sat up on the plush, pillowed chair
Crossed milky legs, flattened hair,
            and feels it bright to giggle and
            arch her slender bow.
II

I stop despite, to belly on reflection
Peering up from the gleam eye of perfection
            blood impress & blood impressing, blood
            to blood to time compressing.

III

You who go mourned
Should not a man look to be forgiven
hope
falls
Should not a man protest for dying only once
But living so many lives for bunker and bunce?

30 September 2010

Printed on the Back of a 4" x 6" of a Man Flipping from a Paper Roof #2

I would like to murder some easy man
Live the acrimonious whole of Northwestern European lore
The bits full of colour and flags preceeding acronyms
I would demand you come along and hold my hand but
Of course, understand should you have some other plan.

29 September 2010

Geppetto's Journal

Early one morning
On an early morning hike
He pressed a prettiless plant
Between pages in a blank book

Late the next night
On an emergency late-night flight
He thought down on his darlings
Getting on in age, he couldn't recall

Had the weed the sore right ankle?
Or little Geppetto's book? He remembered
One tubercular grunt beneath his favorite quilt
Though the details of the graces were sanded flat

So high up, he thought, so impossibly far

A rose or possibly the Bible
Would shrug off such a persistent cough
Simply swat away the pest, he thought
Tripping into sleep, on his ass a pleasant bite

So high up, I thought, so impossibly far

On my
Knees begging
At your
Feet hands
Clasped insisting
Indulge in something
Sweet and so
I stare past where
Your face should be
Staring back at me.

28 September 2010

Do You Have Cancer? [sketch]

A particularly terrible evening to find oneself a slave
To soaked wool socks, a full pink cap topped with a firm button
Nothing like a cherry. She doesn't care much for this parking lot
She doesn't care about description in the negative, women drivers
Nor does she mind the extra attention, the broken yellow boxes
This is what life's become, even the dark, cross-eyed passerby
His lurking, bowed shoulders and smoky-green sweatshirt
Eyes rolling downhill; even he proves to be just another now.
Sidling questions bugger each vision, all beyond reproach
Like the causeless rain overwhelms every hungry pore before
Flooding the less-traveled corners of the strip mall's exterior.

Proletarians in Space [sketch]

The critical stare of green flipflops on blue carpet
I am outnumbered & unable to work or the work comes slowly
Common folk pad the round theater, award no books
But gaze up at passing sky framed by the curtain wall
Then, perhaps, bury their beloved corpses under the bailey
This blue grass more darkly & desperate to be fed.

26 September 2010

pornography

argon and glass, the STARDUST sign, when fed left-to-right, curls proudly
from the S at its base up to the T at its tip, inhales then cocks out its chest.

23 September 2010

improv for adam, pt. 1 092320101355

It's been so long since Time has escaped into loss
watching everything from a priori eyes, he's free
of course, to bolt when the guard ducks beside the 
bush to bust high scores in tetris, which, bloodshot, he frequently does. 

Time tells monster stories, Time sucks at Marlboro 100s, Time eats red meat
until its veins run through his teeth; Time drags his muddy ear through the street.

The dismissed guard was always a great misdirection for Time, nothing more
than the cardsharp's oily trick of light, a demoralized casualty of causality, albeit 
an interesting chord, he was nothing more than a sour afterthought 
on a tongue with a strict predilection for very sweet things like jelly rings.

But, he came looking for Time.

20 September 2010

Jersey Bauble, or Your Mother's Daughter

KING PHILIP: 
It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.
-Shakespeare, King John II



how well and noble to drink
from these rough cupped hands
far ferried of, she rethinks
ill from foreign sands
this stiff and sour cure
her painted lips tilted toward
warm tongue, numb tongue
in rush, and rush again, the breath rewards
pendant lung, expanding lung
her atrophied detour.

13 September 2010

make your escape, patty.

On reading Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom', p121-127

(From a very early point in the novel, the author makes the "good guy" very complicit in the innocuous "bad thing" that leads to the small cacophony propelling our love of the characters. We are ultimately redeemed ONLY should these small transgressions occur, but in retrospect, in retelling, in novelization, are allowed to spy, but must pass by, dark alleys into which we could make our escape; as in a dream we pilot the vehicle of reason yet soar only with passion's blessing.)

28 August 2010

body feeling 1

from the cervical curve
hoisted by a hook
toward fresh air

casting through waves
of uncounted sand pits
to catch biological blips

but hopelessness all there
the eyes perceive falling.

25 August 2010

Late, St. Scerb: Oh, You've Got My Attention

so many things ache
at just the right moment

perhaps this is your clue
peer deeper, but crawl

first to the edge of time
swing out your head then

weakly it boils, the mirror
nothing more, pale magic

each churning growl a claw
a shriek, then a bark nearer

play thankful, some distance soon clearer
i cannot push, i will never push forth

but there you are, shot, yards wrestling inches
and then splash like a cough of startled finches.

19 August 2010

xy xx bounce

you can or cannot
worry about the slate
of your children, rain
underfoot ten-toed trail
a creeping crack run through
with bold weeds
interrupting shape
then bigger, then shod
finally too weak to tamp
the overwhelming green
again, on your knees.

13 August 2010

'Crosshatch (revision 081320101050)' + post thoughts

Please. Keep close, the best part's almost here. ( its anatomy: fearful & round blossoms from, replant redolent dead sordid bunch watches the weather & peels hopeless basketweaver emerge berried handfuls mixed with sweat, though lash branded skin in one motion strips reveals a crosshatched plain of sweet. fearful from the weather of the bundle through which, where, anything might emerge but ) Soon we will swim in the cool cave full of warm water.



___________________________________________
[ed.- a poem should never be boiled down to a phrase for the sake of explaining it. especially by its author. often times, when i really explore a poem thoroughly i feel as though the central notion, the thing the poem's author hopes to convey, or teach to, or show the reader, can be encapsulated in a phrase or a cliche. (there are subtle or explosive variations of the planted philosophy if the poet is worth his weight in words.) the example that walks up to me and tugs on my boxer shorts is Jorie Graham's "The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia"  from her book Errancy, which is a stunning and swirling lyric that quiets my heart with each read. i feel unnaturally vulnerable so baldly explicating a poem's meaning with so little evidence — nonetheless, in a phrase the poem is about how observation of a thing alters its DNA. there's an exact phrase for this that i cannot stumble across no matter how much ground i cover. anyway. all poems are ABOUT something, but every poem is also a lover; no lover is ever simply unidimensional. that's not a lover that's a whore. (and all art flirts with prostitution. a conversation for a different time.) but, returning to my central point re: "boiling down" a poem, it is essential that the poem have a solid image and a strident, specific language that doesn't allow too much interpretation. the interpretation comes in its context, not its content. (again, lets leave the content v context / essence v existence conversation for another time.) now i'm thinking of William Carlos Williams's "Red Wheelbarrow" a classic example-poem because of its length and mock-simplicity. that poem seems to come pre-boiled, but nothing could be further from the truth. are we addressing plainly the image? are we addressing the biological function of sight? (Williams was a medical doctor.) what are we, as reader, binding or pulling apart when we read this poem? why the unequal couplets with their 2-syllable even lines that split object and descriptor? (which, for me, has always given pause and troubled)   indeed, for such a 'simple' little poem we must ask ourselves on multiple readings, "What the fuck?" in its content this poem is the opposite of surreal (hyperrealism). in its context, to me, it's always been way out there. i visually dive into its imago-characters until the chickens (who refuse to sit still, by the way) burst into word-associations games, historiograms, pure particles. so where i'm going with this is trying to explain what i do in my poetry. in crafting my poetry. you CAN boil it down to a single idea. in the poem above, 'Crosshatch', i even suggest how to do it. but i'm being a bit evasive. i'm giving you the right directions in the wrong language. i hope to come back to all the poems i've posted on this site at some point, they're all put onto the blog in a pretty raw format, some of them completely unedited. it's important to come at them again. this poem i arrived at again this morning because of a sort of fight/argument i was part of with my wife. the poem is in no way about IT or HER but it addresses it AND her. this is the thing no one can ever say but every poem ever written has been about. meaning and suprameaning. not a single one of my poems is perfect, and only a handful (5? 10?) are considered done. as Paul Velary said: "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." anyway, i hope you think about my poems, is all. its not your job to get tangled in them, though it is MY job to trap you, even if just for a moment, and watch you play with your escape.]

05 August 2010

untitled 08052010720

Sometimes, memory
is calling what is not:
broken series, the
unashamed oak
peppermill, or
syncopation: all
a thing & not-thing.

There we are
at the shore
of ourselves
getting ready
to swim.

04 August 2010

Improv for Sarah, 080420102113

I'm at the edge of things
all of me, unafraid
and the edge even so the edge
flexes so a brave thing
might
sail beyond where it betrays laughter
like a heavy weight adds ply
mistakenly sings me, this withering
bloom and another thing to swallow
the rye & pitching sail, free to spite
black ribbon drawn to the spool
beyond pupil, beyond discernible will

I'm at the edge of things
half of me, afraid of what's come

Hand's blade a threat, the promise of waves
so flat & calm, salts across
and across again
again

The brave thing returns
again the rush question
rising and with a beg
in hand pleads a waxy
whip up back behind an ear
the eyes whispers as in sleep
rips, rips a heart into the ribbon

(and) I'm at the edge of things
remembering the edge of things
(and) where I stand.

27 July 2010

untitled 0722720101108, avon

what pulls the tall thin girl's white towel
closer to her teak tent-pole legs, three
delicately bent, lean firecrackers and
a curious quarter-stick of dynamite

fixed toward the ocean, so many
seem over-prepared, hesitant like
gulls idling on an island of wet rock
white wind a steady beating, just starved

kept from instinct's kiss, though the peddlers
the combers, the oogler's eyes, the uninitiated
family men, the habitual nappers, each shovels
a new hole where no new holes could imagine

their digging;
three lean firecrackers and
a quarter-stick of dynamite.

18 July 2010

George Plimpton Headache (Revision 071820101722)

I am sure I will die young
...hammerbang
......hammerbash
.........hammCrack
What cruel carpenter fucks near the reclined
And I know, George Plimpton finger-taps a cotton knee
In the packed back seat of a Silver Cloud
Though, having read through the obituaries I prefer
Philip's pounding contrast, its striation

My dreams puncture film
Insecurities of proof regarding
Petty, pretty well-dressed bourgeois

Busy bosses promptly impress, remain soigné
And sew with their feet. But the ending's neat: motion
Flickers a painted on Ka-Poe!, colors Bang!
Fall off the screen, the Rolls' door Bang! sheds snow
The black matte inverts, awake
.........hammercrack
......hammerbash
...hammBang!
I am content to die so young.

03 July 2010

pop song > painting

improperly framed
the transparent glass pane
brushes against its own infertility
the director's proclivity for
carnassial misdirection

into the soft sand
beneath Pfeiffer Beach
with a waterworn wand
the director writes the word

"SOUNDTRACK"

black shot
fingers sever
black shot

whispers, twice from her
once from her consort, leading
her hands cross.
she is not guarded.
she hides nothing.
you must listen

the director is pleased
tells her, "There is nothing
that needs to change."

01 July 2010

the real wet pussy

I saw you last night
past the panning red light.

Technology has advanced
beyond the declining limits
of one woman's humble, earnest
potential.

Relax.

I did not set a trap
in which a lady
gets caught, merely
a fireworks extravaganza
to draw your attention
to the steady panning red light.

Did you see it?

25 June 2010

062520102049; List #1; for thoughts on the diction of Oates & Hemingway

Second-story vision
Blacktop, parking lot
One hand wipes east
Fingers wing-wide
Black ink, sure borders
Obscured vehicles
A clear, steady language
His smile
Not her frown, but her collected composure
Folk shield their mouths when speaking.

23 June 2010

from 'new haircut, tits and a cheese danish'

"Poppy orange, pollen yellow bounce about
Beside my table, bending, bent, scoop up the babes
Browned, begging-to-be-unbound breasts all but roll out

Here golden baubles rule toward, terminate in a balmy bin
Just south the eyes that stare at the tangled painter's pelt
The King of Brute's bruised & gilded champion's belt"

...

060220101043, Illogical Composure, or War Metaphors are Useful

if everything is nothing then nothing is everything if every nothing is a something then every something is a nothing or if some nothing is an everything then something is an every nothing if is something is a nothing then is nothing is something (, at least) if something is not then nothing is if nothing is then something is if nothing is not and something is not then nothing is and something is, then you shouldn't suggest that black dress is sort of blueish.

13 June 2010

wet pussy


i'm 
i'm 
i'm
i'm
i'm
i'm

sure you're trying
or have tried
so much depends on tense

(you were or are)

But,


i'm 
i'm 
i'm
i'm
i'm
i'm

simply sifting sand
for salt, a shakerful of 
scope sweetens the pie

(you were or are)

But,

i'm 
i'm 
i'm
i'm
i'm
i'm

too full to floss
s ... e ... s.e.
too fat for floating
eee? seee!

(you were or are)

so much depends on tense.

11 June 2010

why do women paint beaches on their nails?

You arrive like a brittle breeze at the dongan hills train station
Weighing 225, working scratch-off ticket No. 1
Head bowed in your chest, producing
A spare pack of chins, greasy gables of silver mesh
A taupe dress shirt, with a taupe collar. Where did you come
From? On the floor beside you, a wheel to aid & assist
In the hasty uncoiling of a 25-foot red garden
Hose. A tan so deep, does seep, so deep
Its occurrence is unlikely & inconceivable
In the disastrously creative mind you
Toil, boil, roll and roil in an air conditioned office building.

Your white running shoes, spotless
Your head perched like a gallon of brown milk.

07 June 2010

improv for dfw, tbots, p 38, 060720102133

When you say 'heavy,' David
you don't mean possessing
great weight, though you do speak
of gravity. The noisy birds
flung from the tree's branch

I have only one psychological deficit
& provided I solve it, like a soldier
who slavishly cleans his rifle, I will
love my wife, plant & lovingly care
for annual flowers,
save enough money to dig a hole
for a swimming pool.

Maybe you will imply a thickness of character
like how a grasp of well-rooted weeds
will choke out what was intended, yet we
never intend the weeds. David, I will ask

My wife what you meant by 'hunger.'

06 June 2010

sketch for Noah #1 (060620101037)

as the fat cat, tasty
fish & cold cracked mountain
rears on his bulbous ball joint
belly, rakes his soft clawless paws
ahead ears, abreast eyes

he laughs, blind. As blindness is the sun's
temporary gift. Noah is proud, yet does not
consider himself prideful nor hubristic.
Once upon a sill, overhearing a lesson on Hamlet.

04 June 2010

"M.I.A. at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2009" or "eating a truffle-flavored French fry"

i dont know much about communism
its red invocations, as cannon fire
the freckled innocence running amok
on a sweltering early summer afternoon

trying to learn
about something unrelated, unwillingly
tied to the aforementioned, concept
belief, idiosyncratic blaze, i place my clover

my finger, a thumb, over her militiristic
headwear & when i release
turning the page, something is new
unexpected, as in wrong, but here we are

my thumbprint rakes her covered eyes
or
pulls the ink from her shadow, children
loosing their innocence into the intrepid humidity.

01 June 2010

15 seconds (Lust I), or Improv for Intervals

15 seconds of touching deconstructs
Beyond immunity since contracting puberty
Five... ten... fifteen...

Chemical leaks and a nicotine patch
Falling through the screw, always you
Five... ten... fifteen...

Quietly castrated mirrors crash my lake
Carves atop dreaming, winter air like a fate
Five... ten... fifteen...

hand tattoo

sharp shovel sting
on a sun beat hand
outlined cross, a burial mound
the dirt puckers, rises
as if someone were pushing up
from a slammed down palm. i am
rushing home to you curled
weakly or coiled, licking yr teeth
on our couch, but either way
any way, you are loved
insanely: Preciously burnt, your ear warm
against my chest, lub dub, a-lub dub, lub dub.

the grim industrial ink flickers
dying neon, it is panic who bites first
oh, how my shoes could use a shine!
this is how i know i love you.

pun

Opportunity comes a dozen times a year
Mix the sperm, the just-right egg, bake
Then paint on the makeup: Light rouge
Coverup, eye shadow. Dig a man-high hole.

Yesterday morning i locked
a sun-lit swushing, algae-
eaten stare in a mason's jar.

28 May 2010

untitled 52820101700

what bucks you about the rules?

do not
shout at women
shout at men
suck yr fingers in public places
expose yr toes to the city the grey sandwhich
be evil or mean
(though you will be compelled toward
Him constantly. stay
away, stare into
the sun, be
innocent of Nothing
never.)
chew gum til the flavor fades
swallow.

arch

Surprise, you steal soft bases
Rather than arch, that
Predatory flare stalking your spine
Pardoning fumes map your X
In a way particular to 0;

The squek as well reminds one
Of poor, remembered smoke
Around which fires choke
And whistling volleys provoke.

Which is why i thought archery.
More, as crushing a fib, fantasy
From under what one imagines

Are ashes, reaches skyward
Its sporting design to strangle

Steals me through a shade.

23 May 2010

untitled 52020101139

What the vicious side saw past thorns
past nothing protecting unsteady skin
a single stone kicked
down & loosing the hands' avalanche

greasy fingers rub against
bottled reaction, bubbling red
this one look, snow-shape wrapped
around something that once
cast breath. So often, I can tell what something is not:

sewing needle
starving joy
mother love or contempt
strapless black bikini
jacket wrapped, goose feathers
a thing part of the original garment.

08 May 2010

Improv for Anders, or How to Hide a Poem #1

smothered, absolutely smothered
in the warmest two-armed velour bosom
the phone's receiver vaguely lipped over with black mold

should any festooned trouble arise, remember, or 
crack smoke rings with the best hand-me-down lips 
yr handsome black-blue escape, remember, or argue
the face in the island's mirror unable to commit to the win

things fall through your teeth terminal things bright
things may come to this. easy repeating things. lists.
men remember via stimulation of the limbic, women

hung on the tip of your nose hung from newly greened oaks 
hung from the noon sky hung from new oceans hung from rivulets 
of memory cut paths hung from a polished window pane
suspended freely beside a framed print of a Zorn gouche

a mother's exhaled feeling of feeling, nails dug under 
soft new flesh, free of disgust or discernible muscle
always new. rippling. introducing her into the universe.


29 April 2010

improv for Long Island ex-pat

observing things, people at motion
subconsciously drowns a creeping star
they wipe across the sky -- warm missiles
with self-regulating (seismic) voices rinsing
voices, certain but unrelenting  the smell
a knee-high pile of leaves, dry branches
set ablaze creeping stars wipe
across my face flush with observation
and stronger wrapped in purple, velvet cloth.

24 April 2010

42120101135, untitled for 9/9/99

Been a while, friend
but i still remember
tastes of your skin
before hands get lost
let me touch your hem
breathes in me again
ignites that first night
forgotten memories
long frozen rhyme
future i do recall
when monstrous lust must
in glacial sweat fall
the ache towers tall
returns the bellow's call

leather

the way you settled w yr pricey leather curves
reflected twice inside the perfect square
mouth-wide, beside dry eyes
heave a matching leather bag with skinny
shoulders. you are ruined, spread
across this royal path to my bed
blankets velvet, why do you think
our sky-high pirouettes are shaped like
this gently bent negative space
from where yr shudder originates?

11 April 2010

Improv for Disaster, or Indexed: Four False Starts

1. Outloud, too loud to be heard, count the memories passed by

2. The dismissive vein tapped into daily

3. All walls, being higher than others,
must or must not terminate at both ends

4. The designs of beauty preclude you --
boomeranged, bent into a parading affair

untitled 2161208

I long for her hand and dream of holding,
From a distance watch them hollow, sigh

And in the afternoon of a blink disappear
Tap your forehead, miss the rot
Suspicion buzz in circles, time rubs
Its legs, hands, thick meaty palms
Greasy with hot cooking oil

You can only blame them, who else?, so
Suspiciously slick and mock-inviting

Are you willing to play with the language
Passively cherish --

There is a field beneath flaking sky
Warm photosynthetic layer keeps it dry
Amber waves of microwave heat
Steam escaping a mugfull of retreat.

09 April 2010

Instructions for Reading in Public

When reading in public
Carelessly snicker
Puffing air from both nostrils
A plush dragon
Loud enough
To be heard. This way
Blackberried blonde
Prickly Dominican mom
Decked-out Congolese deacon
Will have but the shiniest doubt
You are in precious and personal
Communique with this particular clerk
And His vastly taxonomic work.

Be sure to snicker
just loud enough
to be heard.

28 March 2010

The Photographer's Job

The photo's shallow focus
Eminence; A crepuscular grain of stoicism
Litters the simple portrait, unadorned
With background yet cluttered
In grey tones of cotton, four ivory buttons
One beside its perch.
Refusing the portraitist's love
His shorn fingernails long-ago grazed
Preposterously upon the subject's left cheek.
Subject, accepted, as 3 million eyes remove
Recast the ambulant crown of jackal's fur.

22 March 2010

untitled 3222010

To think rain then see the umbrella
Unafraid of
Confident in
Its huge freckled beauty
Aquiline and staring deeply
Red breast-sized droplets
Slapping the evening air
Wide painterly halo, impossible
Pinkish-flesh surrounding the street lamps'
Pulsing head. Never
Believe such things, even whispered
Atop a long-sallow, sworn-upon pillow
As they were, on many tender nights.

Gut softness exposed to cross fingernails
Of moonlight, here things are more realistic
And I am convinced
That I am convinced
I am that Man, warmer than coal
Rich as butter patiently churned
From darling milk.

untitled 3162010100, for a.w.

I don't want to play dress-up
in my beautiful skin & now behind
powdered teeth

I am wailing for happiness
see, already under a shroud
so why bisect with a tie

Or stomp out the sun with the false curl of a hat
why the heels, toes cut out
not waiting, wailing

Nothing done with a smile nor easily
nude practicality & little wisps of Whitman
collapsing alveoli, alluvial grapes, still on vines

Strangle around a skirt I will not entertain
will not entertain its baroque desire to drool
to widen here, elongate there, draw their upon-me eyes

Kneeward & beyond to where. Part of me

Wants
replanting each grape
refilling the grave

To impress you
though that share is small
the more substantial stock

Only wants to raise myself.

untitled 3162010

there is no learning
only the watch and
sea, desperate
paddling & constrictions

(wind, sharks, hunger
& their very thin relations
but this cold ungiving night)

not shackles but
endless, star-filled sky
pregnant & bending horizon's breath

the chill a child
mistakes for death
on the back of his neck.

x-bouffant observation

the math is simple
if i think feminine
even in the negative,
first i've thought feminine

your calculated gamble
has worked, you cannot
unsee this penny: heads
or the bird, its luck
now yours.

06 March 2010

"A young teacher explains to her children, 'Modern Art is interested in Abstraction.' And I cringe. And I am aware of my cringing."

"Don't make this about you
And your 'Cartoons.' Your inability
To function on human planes
Is what renders us untenable."

X.

"No, no, no, I see all the same
Shapes and colors, I get it. I see
This Mickey Mouse head-shape and
That drunkish pigeon. And the ..."

X.

"And the themes, the repeating squirls,
Floating around like lazy smoke. Who
Gives a fuck? The almost-straight big dick
Slashes, real repressed kind of masculine violence
Only a pansy like you could whimper
In public. For the whole world to see."

X.

"Well, I don't want it. Not one of them.
Doing a thing badly is a terrible disguise.
And now? This flaccid hand wringing
Bullshit."

X.

"I don't fucking care where you're hanging.
Arguments require two people. Human
Planes, Sid.This. Here. You're a fucking
Failure."

(for Cy Twombly)

poppies

the definite bisection is imagined
and there are no poppies, signifying
nothing. indifferent men hush
then drain over obscured mouths

in this place
no decision

flesh tensing, as urgent lights spun
kicked off brick beside the sand
and oil, lacking comport
bisection still of nothing

in this place
no decision

many-whirled pink existence, they
must not be souls or even poppies
those of us who Are will not survive it
the closer they seem, the more real

in this place
no decision

and out toward the horizon, the hanged sky
under blockage, they are small, disassociated
real, though with no sun to create them, incongruous
those of us who Are (or Are still) refuse abstraction

in this place
no decision

out toward this minor & faraway bough
men lay across the road, without affect
and beside them all a pair prepares to break
his hand leaving her side, her hands leaving his

in this place
no decision

the field is ready for harvest
the fields are ready for harvest

(for Anseml Kiefer)

25 February 2010

nines

As the physicality of night/day
slips further away, a little now
a little more tomorrow, the air

its promise hungrily eats
knowing there are other ways
only to put on countless pounds of crushing weight

soft, heavy flaps wet on chests
as pressure-in upon the ears, as hair
knotted fingers, powdered teeth on the tongue

searches for then creates casualty.

23 February 2010

Good

When poets don't have a thing to say
In the way of segue or ending
They talk to trees: Oak, Pine, Poplar, Spruce

Doesn't matter what they meant to say
Anything that shudders and drop seeds
Will attend, fetishizing Whitman

The metaphor gets contrived, conceited
& the direct rebellion against it, solipsism
Shoves the reader into first person's moth-eaten closet

A philosophical realist there will thrive
Where he can thrust his hips toward the lips
Of the unassuming eye of you know who.

Goodbye and Saturation

There was something I meant to say
About how my sexuality is like your sexuality
About the rusty, blood-warm nails pounded through
my sexuality, your sexuality

But I cannot remember precisely what I meant to say
Beside that bit about my violence, your violence.

A Terrible Life, A Wonderful Night

Clam his fat purple question
In the bag rainbow cereal flowers stale
Recently shaved and though he carries
A new bathroom mat, folded and tagged 

I doubt

He shaves in the privacy of his own bathroom
A menu and a paint pen, a cup of coffee
From somewhere else, black and olive drab
Match well, and does this concern you?

Have the implications of matching been considered?
Somewhere around the equaline nose explodes
Whispers and histories, fine

I'll leave

You all alone, allow your chewing & glancing
And unscrupulous, unfair, feeble flirting.

Be plucked, a gummy charm
on their fingertips and at least
someone will leave this
fragrant pine box smiling.

21 February 2010

untitled 222815

Why mention bulbous croci
quadrisected from their fleeting escape?
In contrast they bob yet drag
on the Swiss-White serrated decline.
(

questions push sight back
but premature answers hurl us
from the perch
trained from this reduction:
substitution of image for shadow

)
The scope sways
in windy howl, in nerves, in memory knocking
over a child-sized column of blocks
scrollwork and English letters carved into each side.

untitled 220856

the sea walks in
an adjacent room

from the Southwest corner
to the couch from the

Southwest corner to
the couch, patient crashing

patterned like a Sufi tapestry
funerary gait, colors alive in the grave.

16 February 2010

untitled 215956

I turn the page
He turns the page
She does not turn the page

I rip the page without harming the spine
He rips this page and the one before it
She would never rip out a page

I draw two bulging triangles on the book's cover
He a red circle on its final sheet
She traces the words with lip-stick pen-cil

I am no good in bed
He is no good in bed
She is disarmingly good in bed

In the morning I open the shades
He yawns and jumps from bed
She pulls the covers over her head.

11 February 2010

'A Ocye Uby' (A Terrible Poem for a Terrible Time)

you want to focus all this
into one spot, all the light
cascades then pinpoint hot
through pressure and worries
about breath and good pulling
out good hair and good sitting
on your wooden chair, look
at nothing, hear nothing, eat
your ears and learn what heat
touches and where and where
you belong inside your where
and wear your wares so rare
(so rare so rare so rare so rare!)
around the neck under the hair
such long and losing hair there
under a starting stare, there.

10 February 2010

Dancing Partner

he must protect
his essentials, it's sort of
essential; the hard coat
over his soft finger-parts
he reinforces each with lacquer
& the sun scratching
into his eyes     is
quickly sacked by iridescent shades
the shades of which lovingly swish
before being cut-in by lowbred red
in an expensive tux.

both examples fairly simple, but
essential: he is willing to
ignore laughter: he wobbles
in shade-chasing commitment, but
essential: he willfully courts
disaster on all non-essential fronts.

Sacrifice.

in his zig-zagging car
you could not frame to kill him
this he ensures essentially.

09 February 2010

improv for the university of arizona

a leg up on th'open door 
s'afforded me certain 
opertunities past 
couple a years -- i fer one
can't stand lookin't th'sun beat street
not one bit -- eh doesn't huurt 
or nothing but all'uh little 
lil glasses starin'p atcha 
twinklin psychic tolls ta be paid is all 
and anyway i always know whats comin cause'ah that
i see what umm not supposed ta 
just bean afraid'a tha stuff under my feet.

24 January 2010

ceramic, erratic bleats

making love to the noise
half-so-sharp, what yr allowed to hear
but the secret is soft, personal edges
& quick-legged, leggy, we study
because we must our histories made & our
culture, our quick-histories making
the sounds repeating, mostly metallic ghosts
ceramic, erratic bleats, patternless repeating
puddled cups of light over the racing pigs
burn and hiss and sizzle, blip, nothing big
patternless, bang & hapless slide, stripes of red.

Oh

What am i running for? Where to?
Yes, to catch the bus and all, but
Why? I can't get drunk anymore
These ferrets munch my bed, my
Oh, my mailman's a piss less than dead.

What's the point, and where's there to learn?
So, I've resolved to sing-a-long to the street
Give up the fight, bound to pick up its rhymes
The cold allows me certain private rights.

Who's worth deceiving? Not much for a question
Even less of an answer. Pedestrian-eyes alight,
The night no longer gives coin for believing.

crazy girl

turns away, smiling and afraid? how strong
are those skinny legs, pogoing mossy hills
such pure cane sugar and round classical wale

can you see her now?

dimpled aspect & exploited reflections dancing on
face so vivid, banking hermetic perfections off
the neon (choose, it makes you bigger) walls

erase concavity, release it, swept under
the rug & tectonic how you move
in the night a mercuric foil river
deep mouth split and pried, arrowheaded

unleash no-dreams of breath or sleepless
taste the nature of this colluding warmth pushing
silksure alternating metaphor from a distance

erasing concavity.

22 January 2010

Scene 1: Speeding atop commuter subway, backwards, uncompromisingly peaceful

The candy flowers fall from somewhere P cannot see
This image he has also stolen
Long ago, as well as the idea
He rides the speedy thing backwards
& in the mornings, everyone at angles jangling
For their morning seat, how he laughed
To himself, like there was someone within
Earshot to receive his hypothetically boisterous laughter
But he would ride them backward
Like, he imagined,
A hapless, bouncing cowboy pulling a 10-gallon hat over his ears
Like, he imagined,
Squeezing his fat head into a child's itchy, wool sweater
Like, he imagined,
An Indian, (he stole this image, too!) he sat
& not
Like, he imagined,
This Indian, smiled stoopidly & without wondering
Why they are called Indians
But, see this now, P doesn't have a hat nor a sweater, but
He sits without seeing much of anything in the mousy abovespace
And meditatively commutes, just like them but doesn't see
On this beautiful Fritz Lang-type thing
& he
Offers sage bits & wise buds & P's happy there, alone
But where'd all these slowly floating flowers come from?

--for adam

18 January 2010

Skylight

Too many tired cop cars filled with tired cops
Hands spread over buzz-cuts or grazing my
Papers, some other day's work, filthy little
Camera tricks cheapen real color
& the near-white screen, resolution so radical
So high now, for what? Black tire after black tire

On parade, irony manicured and concave
With privilege assuming their cult, a fraternal wall
Just. Just as. Just, as I am an addict
& these are my only hot, smiling addictions, plainly listed:
The bent grammar of observation & its distant

Propositions
Hung from Pyrrhic diaphragm
Where only slow, emboldened
Diagonal aggressions march over & over
& into the spectacular hanging & dead sun

Where one charter ends, another begins
At this intersection, a beautiful & hopeless word,
Of 34th & 9th; the sour aprons laughed cold
Passed by blank power, buzzed and blue
The listing and its sirens roll on & on
& victimless. Their various acids invert
March on the Real Capital, lose their shit
And abandon decorum, faith down the road
From goodwill and straightaway their partners
Full attention heretofore earned turns the barrel, blistering
toward the hanging & soon dead sun.

improv for the problems, the playoffs & the plumbing

He got hit, helmet to his blindside
And crumbled for some other purpose
Week-old Italian bread crushed over fresh greens

His mind, momentarily jellied, babied, puree
Projects a shushing squirt of hot butter, candied
Prophesying and rhythmic luster lock

Look up, from the pain and clapped passions
Lickable bright, Airbus A380 streaming through the sky
Cotton and confetti now, a graffiti of giving-up.

14 January 2010

improv for drawn sources

The river never waits
Cutting, though many other
Names exist, rock and bone
Pollute the pure, Season's
Unwashed hands deign piety
Every stoic stroke wears away
Each push a fresh argument
One hesitates suggesting fire
But Frost, these things moving
A child pressed to crawl
Will crawl upon your turning
Through ears, the river never
Waits and morals never makes.

improv for central nodes

The death toll
Is unknown, no man
Can lift such heaviness
Merely observing
One must become
His hyperthrobbing heart
One must become
Large and lift
And lift, how
High will you imagine
The death toll rises.

04 January 2010

George Plimpton Headache

I am sure I will die young
     hammerbang
          hammerbash
               hammCrack
What cruel carpenter makes love only near the reclined
And I know, George Plimpton was never kidnapped
In the packed back seat of a Bentley car
Thought having read his obituary I prefer
Philip and his pounding contrast, its striation

My dream would not film easily
Insecurities of proof regarding
Petty, pretty, well-dressed bourgeois

Crumbled bosses promptly impressed, remain soigné
And shuffle their feet. But the ending's neat: things just
Flicker, a painted on Ka-Poe!, colors Bang!
Fall off the screen, a car door Bang! shedding snow
The black matte inverts, awake.
               hammCrack
          hammerbash
      hammerbang
I am quite sure I will die young.

02 January 2010

Hyphen, Mustela

How that lip gloss returned
your step-down's thick honeyed haze
& i enter, cut-up
pictures in hand-built frames, hand-me-down
table & a glass bowl for keys:

It was here
you mentioned the needle
stuck in yr best friend's arm
his sad soundtrack persona
non grata; up at the podium
in yr house slippers, nude
an audience adorned:

At the stolen breakfast booth in
yr railroad kitchenette, baptized
& dying, cold beside our lit cigarette
& i remember your name for its ghost.

Pointed ears perched, pinked white pelt
frames a fitful, hungry mouth, his flat brown fur
midday blacktop snaked with frost
fleeing breath sneaks past a matted sun:

It is neither fair, nor right.