20 March 2011

"She takes it in her hands / like a good idea"

"She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain, the built-in
limits. It's only as an afterthought she asks
and do you think it's beautiful?"

-from Jorie Graham's 'To a Friend Going Blind'





The simple thing is to look into your hands
cupped over your eyes, nose, mouth, thumbs
crippling temerarious jaw; I was once a child too,
I remember this and I want you to return. I want
I want to remember the shadows the color made
in play across a cobble stone street, the sun 
in play across a street leading from the sea, the sun 
subjecting itself to the horizon. I want you to return.
Because it is abandoned it is beautiful, unsubjected to us upon our pondering steed
our pondering steed, the flat, brown water warm under your golden blanket
beside me beside me besiege me, crashes
into the nearly forgotten, industrial beachhead
there is no one behind me, the shore is cold.
breath slips past my lips, the wind is warm.



16 March 2011

shitsong #1

big money men slip off their coats
can't risk it: tails all dangling, pressure too severe
perfumed water — or worse — poking up along the pinstripes
professionalism jeopardized, this objective brown wad of cash.

13 March 2011

"a big straw hat and a liquid orange suntan / he cooled himself off with a japanese handfan / motioned for silence and then he began / he said:"

Learning English - Lesson Eleven (Irony and Coincidence)

"When the Time Comes to Loosen Up Yr Grip, You Will Know" — 03122011

Purely a failure
the binary scraping sound
steel splinters bite the palm
veins purpling, flush with
pushing against what?
what failure?

Plane across which this object
this pushed thing travels, with
no levity over time
imperceptibly lifted
dropped. against the earth
the not perceiving
the failure; not the pain, the hunger
for pain, what failure?

It doesn't end well, though it ends
precisely as scripted — being separate
from failure — death not its ghost.

So convincingly forced forward, the act opposes itself.