The Shambling Darkness Project

Stelarc

2010-03-30T13:19:00.001-05:00

My high school art teacher is famous for suspending himself
with hooks from office ceilings and from high rise
window washing scaffolds. It’s hard not to live in his
shadow as he is also famous for being naked and painting
his body in the ash of cremated road kill. I always wanted
to live up to that but because he wasn’t my parent it didn’t
really matter anyway and if I fell short with my pen rubbings
of giant robots or a clutch of chickens beheaded by chainsaws
it was ok because he was older and famous already
and I couldn’t expect to be famous myself just by cutting
holes in my skin or reworking my neurons with old
used computer wiring. Heck, I don’t even know how to
wire or do electrical so I probably shouldn’t feel bad about
that either although if I really put my mind to it I could
learn to dance, lose weight or peal my skin back over my head
like one of those sex robots whose mouths are always open
in strange wonder. No, I suppose I won’t become a robot
like my high school art teacher. One time I saw someone
high up on a building who looked like they were going to jump
and I stared up with my mouth open in preparation for
horror or disgust or orgasm and I thought about my High
school art teacher and for a second I thought it might be him
up there getting ready to put an end to it all because art
had failed to remake man, or because truth really was relative
or whatever reason artists destroy themselves for, art I guess.
Then I thought I hoped it wasn’t, that it wasn’t anyone who
was really going to jump off there and splatter paint
the sidewalk, though it might have been interesting to try
with a robot filled with paint to simulate the world weary
feeling I get from robots or automatic doors or lift gates
that I think about at night before I go to sleep, how they
must be tired of going up and down or in and out over
and over without crying. But then it really wasn’t anyone
up there and I was glad because if it was my high school
art teacher then I wouldn’t have the chance to tell him
that I wanted to be meaningful or relevant but that I didn’t
have the courage to step off that ledge. I imagine him
smiling, his bald futuristic head wrinkling a little from that,
and saying it was often alright not to function correctly.
Then he’d walk out of my head on his giant spider legs.

Value Judgment

2010-02-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

The café has a large window looking on to the street. A man at a booth is waving his arms dramatically to a woman who is invisible at this angle. One wants to go in and rescue her but in all likelihood it is another man who is in agreement with the gesticulator and would not look favorably on our interruption. We pass beneath mortar and brick opposite, as pigeons swirl through the cold looking for morsels, we have an urge to go in and stop the man’s talking. The world pushes urgently with its hands. The man has a thin moustache and oily skin. He is old and turning to dust as we pass, moving on to silence.

Canto Perilous

2009-11-12T16:12:00.002-05:00

Cozy and flexed, my kitchen window
stretches a new found view, it affects
the whole house, makes snow or heaves
a humid afternoon. In the floorboards
a little water from the storm, a little
ocean with sea women, sea teeth, mermaids,

ambience of drowning, particular mermaids
disperse a toad’s evolution at a cashier’s window,
movies piecing together a glance at your little
leg, the tree you are staked to; which effects
ambulation’s variables, gains strength and boards
the little organ in its house until it heaves

out a burn victim from its vacuum’s heaving
breast, rescued at sea by the fleshy slip of a mermaid’s
tongue, the pulling hands, to the squalid boards
of her double wide, mold stains above the window,
its forest floor, the brown condemned effect
of the carpet, unhurried corkscrew, to her little

shivering fingers paused over little
buttons, to the shower of fuel, who heaves
rainbows of fuel in swampy obscurity, affecting
sallow mug shots in bashful pride like a mermaid
caught with her pants down in the window,
two the jagged sticks on her resurrecting boards,

wounds where dog’s put their ribs through boards,
out of restraint the scalpel sees its ancestry in little
hanging plastic casements. Scatter my windows
with the cold ladle, telegram the scalpel heaves
into ashes on a salad dressed in creamed mermaid
the cost of a family reunion. I am cold, my affects

wash up on the beach, undulating defects
rumpled in tide, spend a little time in boards
dress in my habits, the confiscated mermaids
wearing what the common folk worry little
about. You know we eat our children, heave
them like invasive species through the window.

See how the mermaids dress heaves with opinions?
Her little tide like breast holds back the boards,
gives the affect of falling into water

Canto Perilous

2009-11-12T16:12:00.001-05:00

Canto Carnage

2009-11-11T15:33:00.002-05:00

Momma is relaxing in her favorite sledge of granite.
Practicing for the grave is what the papers say.
Memento Mori for the service she wrought.
That, and the shade of expectations, everything else
we put in the doomed arcade. I affirmed
without help or fear of the present

which describes the line of a mitered present
prefab sarcophagus which is the unspoken granite
for an extremely sensitive tooth I affirmed
by wincing, the upper part fixed to what I say
internally, harsh vertical sense of or-else
drying over the bowl which heaving hath wrought,

like a cage that permits us internment, a writhing
music so loud that gnashing is all I can present
to the regulators. The magneto shudders nothing else
as one, the skin slithers over new granite
and two, one eye smothers the other to say
the tempo chews on hinges turning affirmation

until the displaced fragment of memories firm
to globes of meat made fingers wringing
hands and spinning random lip locator to say
they are cut from fascism or other recent presents
like circumcisions on happiness. Map me a granite
chronicle, I believe in the roundness of someone else’s

limit, seem of limit standing. You, who else,
with your wallet out waiting to pay the affirmed
to negate me. Your currant agrees with the granite
tide, with scrambled evolutions, something wrought
coming out of the shadows to spin in the present.
Notice these alfalfa fields and letters that say

the scientists in the back seat of their cars sway
with sweaty rubberized DNA, there is nothing else
these letters of relatives can unearth from the present,
from the barn near the causeway of doom, can affirm
that each section of the year, strumming, wreaks
a coffin from the earth’s pores, her skin in granite.

These letters of the skin say peel me or else
top off the horn wrought twisting and be affirmed
in the granite presentation she trembles with.

Frankenstein

2009-10-08T14:51:00.001-05:00

Just before the rubbing out of function
the movies are monster green with value
or with comfort like grass in a memory
on a hill infested with ants, subterranean.
globes to make meat from fingers touching
dollar bills and a photo of me as a child

mapping me a chronicle to imitate the child
of the gardener, that knight, who functions
with his organ of poison, crumpling to the touch
of the sun. Feet are currents that resist the value
of water, a pair of shoes to a subterranean
proverb. Exclude the sun’s memory.

Exclude carelessness and favor the memory,
the one law of the interminably protected child
in a chemical shower, subterranean
prayer wheel. Set the eye to function
an undermining execution of value,
blessed misdirection in the feathery touch

of an eye. Spin the random indicator to touch
the cut of fascism or other recent renegade memories
of circumcisions, other happinesses devalued.
I will follow the yellow moon until a child
is eaten by the viper in a mechanical function
of digestion, an un-inherited subterranean

legless shudder, passing a batch of subterranean
darkness, the kind you might touch
only because you have no functioning
sense of decency, no choice or memory,
monster who crack-tooth gnaws the child
out of me. Because there is no other value

this side of death’s river, I can’t value
my twig emotion no matter how subterranean
the demon factory hovers, touching
the mists, the thump-a-thump of a child
playing cars, by and by. I’m touching
the barrier of fog burning the memory
of saints on fire, slipping in to dysfunction.

Noose, function of burning tides, hacking
value, the subterranean touch of a child’s
lumps, is memory become factory, given up.

Zombie Movie

2009-10-05T14:33:00.001-05:00

Either I’m a people in a world of zombies
or a zombie in a world of people, either
that or I’m in a movie that takes place,
in order to show what kind of thinking
goes on in a zombie’s head as he tries to eat
the person who is mistakenly hiding

in a pickup which is not a bad place to hide
except it died halfway between zombies
and safety which is when they finally eat
their way through to the credits. Either
that or it’s an illusion, and I am only thinking
of safety which is, in the end, a place

where zombies and their thinking replace
notions of getaways and trying to hide
in the right place so as not to be thinking
of anything when you go in to see this zombie
movie which will be so full of either
gore or squirming you wont be able to eat

the popcorn you got because you forgot to eat,
and which look like brains now in place
of popcorn but that doesn’t bother you either
because there is a human concern hiding
that churns deep and rubbery in the zombie
as he shambles in his bloodied suit, thinking

about how he will get you even as you think
you’ll get out of the theater and eat
some real dinner, somewhere real zombies
wouldn’t even consider like a sushi place
not fast food where the maggots are hiding
disease that turns you grunting either

to a cloud of gas, huffing putrid ether,
or just a shabby business man who thinks
he’ll make it if he tucks in his bowels, hides
the puddles and turns down the urge to eat
his neighbor, while that stain formed in his place
calls the mantra of the shopping mall zombies:

either you hide in your place or the zombies
will eat you. More importantly, do you think
they validate? Validate? Validate.

Buzz Buzz Beelzebub

2009-09-30T15:11:00.001-05:00

Witches chalk circle fails to detect
the dark lord’s insect passing over me,
evacuee of time. Instead I sing
homilies in pulped language, fragment
of my eye, the witness insists I nail
down the furniture god carved of serpents,

electric like the ocean used to be, a serpent
who probed with squeezing to detect
the winds of an epic thought naturally nailed
to my mouth, sucking, as it were, me
into delicious intention while the fragments
watched the centuries jaundice and sang

that captive prayer the belted criminals sing
at inquests. And yet you deny the serpent
who wallows for the sake of it, deny fragments
intruded and by the supreme inquisitor detected
my lies that burn, oh heaven save me,
like insects inserted in my relation like nails,

buttery up-drift, profile, garlic and snails
who with marble in their columns sing
through their nostrils songs that watch me
twist and squeeze the alter like a serpent
the good priest put his hand down and detected
squeezing my heart out into fragments

like pomegranate pulp, teeth, fragments
of bone. How he wishes to collect me, nail
me back together. I say use a metal detector
to sweep the dirt and shit until it sings
of the jointed beams that ride as two serpents
together like shoulders carrying me

into the country, setting the stake, burning me.
I am pages in the book of curses, fragments
from the garden, hiss of the condemned serpent
spreading a foliage of light, dressing with nails
the green, an avian sound resonant, sings
advent of wings, flap insipid detector

keeps the serpents in the chalk circle so we
can nail them down and cut their tails into
fragments. Singing shivers, they devour me.

Apotheosis

2009-09-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

**

The nails are in search of a man to make
not a god, but a Tonka toy inspired
by track star haircuts leaned in from shaving,
milk wash like flesh over Formica until
it’s transparent. All art should be smooth.
Two handed but concrete soft, like in a dream.

Read the air. Not god but deception dreamed
this bomb. Not juice but horizons made
this confirmation of madness secret-smooth.
Print outs of not god but robot inspired
insects. The carnival secretes a visit until
I dissipate like a sink full of shaving

cream, a cake covered in chocolate shavings
radiating out in ripples like a dream
of denuded faces cutting density until
the lord uncorks in a wild fiasco made
for the people in the dunking stand, inspired
by the amoebas all over the smooth

carpet. I am almost never smooth
no matter how much combing and shaving
I can’t quite get the ladies inspired
to stitch their pulsing cages to my dream
or to climb through pressure and make
that noise that heats the room until

the wallpaper droops, or at least until
I convalesce in wheezy flame and smooth
the sheets. Involuntarily I make
the folds of a chair ration out the shaving
light between hard stomachs in a dream
in which I am almost nearly inspired

to give in and fall down the stair well spire,
to turn within the hospital parking garage until
there is nothing but fried ampersands, dreams
of grease & gravy, secretions holy-smooth
where I am the prisoner desperately shaving
a gun out of innocence or whatever I can make.

I’ll inspire you with a ring made of wax,
shave a little time off my dream until it is smooth
and hairless and ready to be holy, holy.

**

**

Devotee

2009-09-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

*

The drain is a circle of eyes blinking back
the remnants of my shame. They investigate
so enormously as we dredge facile fact-bombs.
I am pierced in rows by a scientific fetish
and they labor in the Chrysanthemum-bulge
I cornered with the dogs to show you
I meant the best for your toad appendages.

Samples of decay threaded with appendages
like fingers and off-road tread leading back
to nightly deranges, how a house-fire bulges
with gowns of sound clawing to investigate
consciousness, the wet earth her scarlet fetish
prehensile projects from the tonsil her hope-bombs

the names withdrawing to canvass, bombed
to tombstone, all-terrain scrambled appendage,
time-balls; in with the oils like a candy fetish
in a dead rat’s mouth on the pestilent back
highway, where exterminators investigate
how long the carcasses make circus bulges

like bags of microwave popcorn bulge
from radiation, little roadside bombs
machine moved and glass investigated
by the machete who wants your appendage
removed from hero view, pruned back
along the historic landscape, that fetish

made turgid by hairs that tingle, that fetish
how your sting makes me welt, bulge
like the curve bones showing in your back
your heart beats away the dark with bomb
shakes, sprouts my prayer box to appendages
and the doctor splints, squints to investigate

how the trauma victim invests in closed gates
hedges of sheep, pink and wire fenced fetish
precision, with wild swinging appendages
that dance at the end of broken flower bulges,
like fields of gazing sunflowers carefully bomb
cut and gathered with hands to give back.

Thus the gentle caressing bomb of highway accident
is like the fetish for a missing appendage,
a bulge in your shirt worth investigating.

**

* *

Darwin's Wren

2009-09-23T16:12:00.000-05:00

Today my school had a special lecture on Darwin
which the public thought might raise a stink
with those who disagree with Moses and evolution.
Some on the faculty called for the creation
of a committee which would have a Wren
as its logo and could be seen from the walk

if you didn’t drive and chose instead to walk
which is how on the Galapagos Darwin
got around, spotting those big beaked wrens
and trudging through the waste and stink
of giant turtles who by their own creation
nest in sand bowls the product of evolutions

of flipper tosses and waddling revolutions
and romantic turtle starry night walks
on the theoretical beach, humming to create
just the right mood to catch observant Darwin
off guard with his notepad of fleeing the stink
of sea weed or the rotting body of a wren

I hit with my car on the way home, wrenching
the steering wheel to miss. I guess evolution
had it in for that bird, though it really stinks
because when I was a kid and still had to walk
I flinched at birds. poking notes like Darwin
at the beagle’s hull, like sympathy creates

possibilities, like turtles with necks create
less effective hidey-holes or if that wren
had just swooped up I wouldn’t need Darwin
to feel better, to justify its death as evolution.
I could have at least stopped, got out, walked
back to see. I open the vents to get the stink

out of the van when I pass something stinking
and dead. Sometimes it’s an act of creation
to kill, a turtle. To get in the car, leave walking
behind. Maybe there will be a giant beaked Wren
that can take on cars, something that evolves
into the splat on the road called Darwin.

Wheels roll out a wren’s beak in the traction
of my evolution. Every mark bears the stink
of creation. Monkeys walk in Darwin’s head.

Judgment of the Furies

2009-09-21T14:14:00.001-05:00

We inherit grace, middle school and needles.
Recall how we were gasoline weaned
for mercy’s sake because mercy delights
in her electrical lights (bitch) meanwhile sparks
on the horizon are a prelude to the whip of dawn,
her magnetic cleavage beneath the meteor gown.

You men who worship at the temple gown
we can see you are in full endowment, needles
opening the gates to penetrate the crowd, dawn
of faces in delight. She stitches with grab cloth to wean
the abandoned flesh with the illuminating sparks
in hidden faces, by covering forbidden delights

in the feel of the sling in a beefy dress, delightful
and sexy, how the shudders trumpet in a patched gown,
how well she sutures it to my face with sparks
like a mouth. The officers assign needle-
time to fix utterance to your mouths, still unweaned
of distance, other undiscussed gasping dawns,

like the good or free will entombed in the hard dawn
of her new predicament, pouty with a tourist’s delight
for gasping sake in the leaving off. Rip, weaned,
rip rip, oh the windows open with new gowns,
a hand slung bodice of beads made with needles.
I remember being drawn, joined like sparks

to kindling, into fire then rearing from sparks
up onto cloth, exploding your clothes like a dawn
sky investing fingers with the ruse of needles.
Come water, she thinks, bead by bead. It delights
with shudders the fading water of the faithful gown.
She uses her jiggling trumpet call to wean

the pavement and grasses, she disaster weans.
What comes after? the radio? disasters sparking
earthquakes in solidarity with the long grass gowns
over what is sufferable, the held breath, dawn
shaped sewer’s burning lungs. The ocean bride delights
in the first dance on the surface of needles.

So the dawn of her dark eyes sparks needles.
My hand goes through her dark gown and I lose
it. She weans me of judgment and I delight.

Hagia Sophia

2009-09-16T14:18:00.001-05:00

For a thousand years her breast was architecture’s flagship,
portal to the other world, holding the sky static
in her giant dome. Goddess of wisdom, we worship
the balanced helmet in her glossy paint, ship
in a bottle in a shop where with a t-shirt you get
a sandwich and a certificate of citizenship
in heaven, and with no commitment to stewardship,
and the shop keepers like angels are giving away
admission to knowledge or heaven or whichever way
you feel most conforms to the ambassadorship
the lord endows his buildings with, with wisdom
or the smug inverted hanging down face of wisdom

bearing hawkers of penance and bouncers pelting wisdom
with denial and velvet, buck toothed, high on internships
the cavernous emptiness of a bronzed-over wisdom
hides under plaster, saint craw, forgiving wisdom
where the priests rub their naked bodies, raising static
columns of fleshy worship, supporting the wise dome
brought from the temple of Artemis, sister of wisdom
who pawned her father’s house for what she could get
some track marks where they dragged her to get
her out of the way, morphine needles of wisdom,
minarets in her arm, blood poison to take her away
forsaking her as a goddess, though not even a saint’s way

is rough enough, like how a woman who fights away
the devil gets a plaque hewn in the scar of wisdom
like the church’s medical records, silver, bronze carried away
by the Moors, or under lathe and plaster sealed away.
Note who gets tickets to heaven can be a matter of ownership.
The rest of you maybe get statues or get to stay
in the wrinkled organs of the world, menageries packed away
like hard lozenges of mud and trees in the attic,
little bodies molded in front of the T.V. static
snowy packaging tied up and sent on rivers away
from comfort and couches, sent on a mission to get
life out of, not reviving juice, but the cracked eggs we get.

When the earth quake opened Sophia’s dome she didn’t get
under her desk in time, she couldn’t move the stars away
and climb in to the painted firmament. And things get
tricky when heaven is an idea on a wall. People get
impatient, they go for microwave dinners not wisdom,
they wonder why they were never let in on the get
or why the red silk ribbons spilled over the wall get
sticky. They wonder at the nibs of scribal penmanship.
It’s not irrelevant that the minarets look like spaceships
how the hell else could we be expected to get
from here to there? She wears a holy gown, mother fanatic,
it shimmers golden at the edges, paramour ecstatic,

Hagia, saint of balloons, rubbing up electrostatic
shock into knowledge, the brain and heart metastatic
growing one into the other until there’s no other way
but god to invert the dome to a dish so that it’s stable
in the middle, fruit on the table, round dogmatic
and delicious And a ripe and ready cure for wisdom
can be injected, spaceship, module mother wisdom,
church, sepulcher, juices injected, serum vatic
whosoever man or god can deny her ladyship,
one garment worn over or torn off, we worship.

Crown of thorns, minarets or horns, holy fellowship
demands drunkenness in air. Recall that by wisdom
we are tied, a boat in passing waters, may easily forget
the powdered dust that covers us, settling away
like the saints faces laid out in silver iconostasis.

2009-08-13T09:57:00.000-05:00

2009-07-25T16:41:00.001-05:00

Marianas Trench

2009-07-25T00:23:00.001-05:00

2009-07-14T08:21:00.001-05:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More poems

2009-07-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More poems

400th Day

2009-06-17T18:31:00.002-05:00

*

No birth stone in the carport this morning
the weather seal crows like a hen

I think a swing could hang from the beam
beside the hornets. I’ll foam them

**

A horseman carrying a stick delivers the mail
not yet dawn, the red flag lowers

this would be a good time to pray
but the coolant’s low, there’s a grinding

a grey mist follows me like dust
settling on my heart

there’s really no horse, it’s just
that everyone is still asleep and that would be cool

**

You might notice my retreads
Some day already remembering
Armadillo, step aside, Monday

Frost on your pant fronts
By Friday I will be shoeless in snow
You will say I am spared

The armadillo is dead in the culvert
Famous and spare
Like the eyes of the witness

White and empty as a cell

**

I sit in my car, abrasive heat
sweat in my undershirt
the air is a pool
air conditioning all day

I wash suffering
with my eyes closed
until it says stop

at night I hear owls
in glacial darkness
tomorrow I will get up
to feel the weight.

**

With any luck everyone has been fired from their jobs.
If we are together, brothers, we can make a new emptiness
from the bottom. As a child I hid in the attic
reading your comic books. If you’d known
You might have beat me. Sometimes birds cry at daybreak
for the going dark, coming light.
The sun is a gross hook in the trees. My superhero
is tired and wants to go home, tired of looking
out and not finding anyone. He destroys himself to shadow.

**

Sleeping While Driving

I hold on to the steering wheel
to keep from falling through the isthmus
of myself. Amusing like bodies
or African sand. Lightening makes glass
which is not water, does not want
softness. Imagine dancing in glass
slippers until your feet are bloody.
Blood red universe, I wake to the road.

**

**

2009-06-15T16:57:00.001-05:00

Get the kids
to imagine a gun
as big as the galaxy,

point it at
the universe’s head
we’ll find

our way out
of these funny valves
if we try

hard we can
get whole templates
pre waxed

in gall
staked to fresh
sausage

not one
ending
but two.

2009-05-07T14:49:00.005-05:00

Creepy Lover

found on the internet, no longer alone
wiping saliva from your cheek

the weak ones, laboratory specimens
straining rodent arms through the cage
links in order to live it up

come back and gnaw me, and please
clean the shit off the walls.

Jelly Fish

here is a jar at the grocery store marked jelly
here is another marked fish

take them both to the bread isle
and throw them as high as you can

so that they smash together at the vector
of marble rye and discount white bread

run as fast as you can, arms outspread,
and dive chest out onto the shards of glass

stinging capsules and tentacles,
there is nothing more deadly in all the sea

Worked to Death

In the bible, Job was given lucky lotto numbers.
None of these numbers add up to whole
loves of bread. The good lord gives us rashes

and boils and we are thankful. This can result
in running wildly down the street
or juice consumption. Note: buy stock in juice.

The good lord has made yeast to ferment inside your folds
of skin like human wine despoiling from your workouts,
gymnasium labels with instructions of faith.

The good lord has made us candidates of grunting
while the jasmine blooming on the trellis hits us like a brick.
Job is coming to work to smite us with his check book.

If you pray hard, you can already feel the tenderness in your
underarm, holy fleshy joints. Behold, your Chinese food
is also made of plastic by little hands.

The Chinese word for rash is the same
as the Hebrew word for calculation. Play
the numbers. Either way, God will make you itch.

Parchment

Through the leg of love
time bends oblique
severing conventions, dogs and children arguing
driving the curve of a cello
until it is ancient and universal.
Petrarch, Threenoses

Your hand no longer a hookworm
I watched you fall from the palm tree
framed by a condo the exact shape
of a medical dictionary. What made
it strange was the sunset through
the fronds, surgical and foreign.

As an adult now you sleep on benches
and mimic the wail of subway cars.
Sometimes you sprinkle bleached flour
so no one can approach without
leaving footprints. I think

the wind was the tree’s doctor
who shook you from its intestines
before you could take hold
of her beautiful coconuts.

Immersion

foot, trench foot, jungle
rot, I lie alone

miles from ice
packing my thoughts

snow upon me like mosquitoes.

It’s my shoes.
Greenhouse, microcosm,
biodome, toe tongues

of fungus. I want to go down
there with a lantern

to look for the giant ape.

:::

Have you ever heard of Isis?

2009-05-07T14:47:00.001-05:00

Synthetic Island

of course everything is fake
the stucco, the quadrangles mathematicians use,
my waterbed and her earthly contents

some of them are molecular in the ocean,
that is they are having their end of life
tune down in the circling north pacific gyre

but death is not kind, no one recycles bottle caps.
They swirl and swirl getting smaller and smaller
until their water bottle caps break up into
H2O sized water bottle caps and float
water bound Frisbee-like into the blood
of a my fatty tuna which I have ordered
at market price as the middle American
rubric of healthy fine dining.

And even as I bleed out from my eyes
because the membranes cant cohere

their edges flip flapping and slapping
over each other in a pyrotechnic
gashing of evolutionary pornography

I know my daughter’s yellow and red
slide and swing will live on into the next epoch
just as parts of us will remain
puddled around it in symbiotic cadences.

The Black Hat

2009-03-11T15:10:00.002-05:00

First there will be a shooting rampage
in Alabama,
shortly thereafter in Germany,
after that there will be men oiling instruments
in their garages and crawlspaces,

whatever tunnels of flesh they can
carve out inside themselves,
moving plaque and cholesterol to the side
as though clearing a space
for a woman to sit down, a surprise guest

you would like everyone to know you
are entertaining, but ought to be content
with the truth that she is there.

One person will be killed on the highway
randomly, some others will be shot
because they were waiting on their porch
for something to happen,

everyone else should have known they had
it coming. The grass in the yard tipping
over in a breeze, pea stone driveway
crumbling under tires, azaleas pink

in this early spring. In ten minutes
the dog will stop barking, a rabbit
will move finally, and the preacher
at the door will take off his black hat

before stepping in through the door.

2009-03-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

The Hawk Card

2009-03-09T14:41:00.001-05:00

It’s just about night
and I pray to a face
a mirror frames.

The old man in a room
wearing a suit lightly
dusted with cigarette ash.

A nine year old boy
sneaks in to take handfuls
of mortar dust.

A plastic skin
around a powder of saltines,
ash and dust and food.

Ashtray of dark green
cut glass, heavy and clear
and empty.

a vein of cellophane
beside it, gilded edge
of cigarette wrapper.

A crust of life around
the dish in the sink.
Pipe of broken laughter.

The day closed around
the boy like a hand
holding a mouse.

Blood and water
and claws, singing
I won, I won.

Beard Weaned

2009-02-09T15:54:00.001-05:00

many years ago
I unsubscribed to facial hair
and found my lips
protruding from my face

the relation to my inner life was not found there

I had a thick presence
then, you could find me at mercy anonymous
or simply aroused

then I felt my chin under the hair
took to yanking my beard back along my face line
trying to remember what my father looked like

or my creepy uncle who covered a large mole
with his beard
the beard is face default

not a season of crops
but ground swollen with ice
tromp, swill and sweaty summer
scratching

sometimes I’d braid my beard
or eel out my tongue from its face nest
pizza grease and kisses

now nothing
just acres of flesh mounding
upon itself

some black seeds unfurling

Excessium

2009-02-09T15:53:00.001-05:00

I’m going to write Let Me Out
with my eyes on the window.
The engine’s got arthritis and gabs,
her clinging mechanics resist the cold
and ladders go up to rooftops. Things
are still repaired along the way.

Look, a fortune tellers turban in the tree
where the hawk yells. Shop windows
leer after me thinking I’m a pussy,
and I’m still in the car treasuring
plague. Last night someone’s cows
got out. 43 were struck on the four lane

blood like wing-splats and I write
a letter that will never get sent. Wires
dangle from the passing dirigible
because nothing is immune
to rot. There is no mercy in the month
of poems. You burned and there

was nothing left. Shadows and streets
and driving like crazy because
urgency made it to old age where her
genitals are sponged to keep them
from cracking open because no one
knows what will fall out.

Blue disc tires spinning like ice,
tractor trailers to the underworld,
windowless girls dancing in naked
rooms, spinning until they are powder.
Some cows are only dented, the others
are corralled by the angel of death.

Land Fill

2009-02-03T16:01:00.002-05:00

If there is only one immense pile of garbage
big enough to be called Continent this is it.

It’s famous for its maps, the multi colored keys
to rail and ruin, neighborhoods slipping into themselves

on instinct and variables of regret like crows
intimidated by the gull army swirling in a revised snowfall.

Focus on one tree branch bobbing, crow heavy,
moved by belching currents of methane escaping

from the earth’s immutable ass, champagne by another
name, or moose guts in a garbage bag expanding.

How long can something live rising up or bobbing
indefinitely like a dream or a map?

The masher operator reads the echo of Faulkner
in the glittering. The access road is hemmed by a chorus,

the singers pointing out, submissively, the homes
of the stars, in cosmos, rising over the lip

of the red dirt, colliding horizons of flies, the hymn
growing louder like a buzz at the heart of everything.

Wrong Blur

2009-01-30T15:07:00.001-05:00

high on the clock, centered
in the word system. The part
of what’s happened
you find to give purpose
and electricity to the flies
and swish transcendental
eyeball represented

capstone of pinch and skin
and the evil eye in the mirror
to structure it by, undefiled
sad and serious, still happening
outside among the plastic chairs
on the deck, high moon

one minute and a center word
a smooth counsel to kiss by
and hold us together like a ripe
balloon of minds collapsing
and thereby bringing the fringe
to the center

with a little gas escaping
over the walls then beaten
with bamboo canes, break
the bed and her clouds, clear day
of bombs you saw in the present
oozing in every direction,
plowed field, mountain

moon upon the clock face

2009-01-30T15:06:00.000-05:00

Hammer Time

2009-01-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

I’m soothed in your breaking glass
you make it easy like hair
which when separated and wet
can be a little unsettling
as a wet finger entering the ear
can make all the water in your body
want to leap out at once

like laughter of the brain
which is best thought of as Jello
jiggling in a pan in the passenger seat
of your red haired aunt’s station wagon
on her way to the funeral, in itself
not funny, but how she sticks her
manicured finger inside it
to stop the jiggle because it distracts her
then feels inside next
to the bananas there is a danger
with its ears laid back

and she crashes into a tree
which has stepped up
from the dark of its rotted center
and made an edge for her to
crease around

then, you smile at me
and the thin crease tinkles
around in a shower of acorns
and squirrel chatter
and swirl in red coming away
spinning like a galaxy

which is a thing that when you
look at it you don’t know
where you are any more
because the curtain of stars
and teeth and manicure and meaning.

Mu: The Lost Continent

2009-01-29T15:33:00.001-05:00

So long ago it was the right way,
one leg of the hydra holding up a neck
returning to the plastic race car track
and a carpet of skater’s blue

the curtain falls on the aftermath
of the eternal ring, polished and rapt
there’s a turning flare down
and little ones burrow into the molding

beat back the clicks of a menacing watch
out, hold up an ice field and see her
dripping away, your chasm is
awesome, ominous, stripping down
to balloon scraps, cosmic straps

buoyed up like rocket ships
to outer space, what apparatus is
gravity if not for wiping away
with collecting hands, eyes
and a brow pop-pop, mother takeoff

the night, there is a tiger pit
under the carpet, dungeon under
the tub, I knows it, object,
hazard, another day, tells me not to,
ever, but the faces get the better of me.

etch

2009-01-28T15:41:00.000-05:00

crow claw on tin gutters
one book falls off the bed

flight path over the house
merciful bedroom on approach

Zoom thrust and spin brush
plastic and tree branch

summer trees up with choking
bloom shadow of a flicker

in a cave pilot see how big
each what happened happens

to dog soprano garbage truck
in heaven grow hard

in poverty jackass sound
powdered newsprint less

one squirt stuffed in rock
solid heard what

the witch said when she
soaked in a little bottom

doom claw on tin say
child say scrape say bye

@ the Shrink's

2009-01-27T19:18:00.003-05:00

On the way out the door.

Voodoo Tooth

2009-01-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

some new walk
along the sewn line

gap on water line and stone
the dizzy mouth

taste each dish to tooth
spitting drink and hair

remember face down is
toe up, torn the buried tooth

kissing gravy blooms dried
blood china sidewalk lip

fold laundry scrub rice
from plates unbearable quiet

gentle air and bird sounds
scurry flue and rat

I feel like retching
hold it down lip wall

tooth brick I remember you
buried my tooth

and escalators the daily spoke
held hands ascent

crying can be epic
and it can be over forever

bring it along hold its hand
keep it in a buried box

forget it softly the names
I call it walking

call it broken feet
call it falling from the flightless

cliff seat of licking
sun on sharp rocks

dug in like teeth to the heart
incisor on the heart

doesn’t cut
it unties

Solid Waste

2009-01-22T15:51:00.000-05:00

More desirable than the vacant tree line,
less crass than the hem of stars obsequious
above the seagulls pouring out.

So much more. One star, as you know,
is one sun and thus perhaps one planet
burdened of beautiful trash.

Oh abominable waste heap
looming over the horizon, contemplate a summer day,
shimmer on the eye an ocean
of plastic bottles set to the heart, rhythm,

your flies pervert the veil again.
The compactor operator lashed to the cabin
crushes his lids to blot the sound, the siren
light of gas and fire, the sun

and that abominable blue more beautiful
than the crow pondering a possum carcass’
colorful circumference of light,
hemmed in that blue by awful trees.

Peacock of distance, shit and beak
strutting the mood of climates,
wide cry of fool and night, burnt back
with fist, craw, inevitably blind.

Fig.10- Embrace

2008-12-23T23:41:00.000-05:00

Colossal Squid

2008-12-20T14:57:00.000-05:00

Gravity

2008-12-08T10:47:00.003-05:00

A Perfect Cirle, Thirteenth Step

The Village

2008-12-03T15:22:00.000-05:00

It’s snowing out and so I duck in to
this café of enormous glass and refuge,

it’s counterpart to the world, walking arm
in arm with the murderous and abandoned,

ask for spare change, for beer, a cigarette.
I stir a spoon of brightness in my coffee.

No other religion is as filled with beautiful
women as is the closed eye of my cup.

Or isolated by bars where hands press the four
walls for a crack, recess of smooth

enough for fingers to add up the crease
of falling snow. I feel really bad

for the frozen contents of the snow
covered garbage bags, the melting

sweat of the dumpster. My hot cup, glass
my new world with no writing home.

I feel like a telephone of sorts where I
can reach out but don’t really have to respond.

Interpreter

2008-12-02T15:36:00.002-05:00

::

The day knows all day
that I know nothing about math

in the festering waters
the frogs are decreasing every year

in numbers, the dogs that eat them
squashed off the road

vomit yellow foam that mixes
with the rainbow of oil

on the wet road. The numbers
go on flexing their branches

in the wind. Cat looks on
with stony eyes while

the windows subtract light
and the paper is delivered

to read of heresies. The knife
is whet with an ignorant stone

the edge is a chaos of zeros
falling into themselves.

One care speaks of hemorrhage,
choking out exegesis

smoke on wet asphalt one less
the number reached,

today in the news so many arcs
of light bombard the brain

with their deaths.

::

2008-11-25T00:21:00.001-05:00

I will hide myself away.

2008-11-21T07:14:00.000-05:00

Prayer

2008-11-21T00:00:00.004-05:00

God watch over the hard-riders, the fast-movers
The ones with music loud in their ears. May they
Ever supernova upon heaven's blessed highways.
Keep us safe from fires of the mind, ever watchful
Of our disease, our wounds we carry with us.
Keep careful watch over all of us, as we watch over
Each other, as we watch over ourselves.

At the Soundless Dawn

2008-11-19T23:26:00.001-05:00

At the Soundless Dawn

2008-11-18T19:45:00.000-05:00

Commensurate

2008-11-18T15:20:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, sitting here in the park, I forget
the bonds of sand that hold me to the bench,

and I don’t let your lines mark me too easily,
like that shape of airliner, bubbles of zinc

from a bath of acid for metals, the clear blue
pierced the way a lacquered chopstick

penetrates seaweed and rice to the tuna roll,
leaving something for the fingers

to roll, a ginger examination of self, the rivets
of taste buds rumbling loose in the satin

aftertaste like eyelids staring too long
over a field finally, restricted by the cost,

folding together, the cards on the table
too severe, the bluff over the water, the bay.

I can cut you out of mind if I call you, ring,
cellophane, bandwidth, restricted use: foreign.

Fire in the Belly

2008-11-17T23:35:00.006-05:00

In the song of this season, the trees that ring the fountain
Are ablaze and the One in the fountain is no longer there.
If I am to be burst apart, to never get better, if this
Is what is required of me, then so be it. I have been reduced
To less than the sum of my parts, I remain defiant in that
I am what remains, defiant. I am pieces stitched together
With a current run through. I find myself forming the position
Of a man doubled over, eviserated, clutching whatever is left inside.
I am one of the lucky ones, I have been blessed with eyes unlocked
And I'm not listening to anyone anymore. This is a gift,
You'll get your chance if you're lucky.

I have been told to wrap each night around me to grieve
And sing my song to God. I am spurred by it, I travel by day
With fists against the ground. There are waves of grief,
Bigger and bigger that rise in the dark and I cannot describe
What I've seen there, I sometimes find myself making an animal growl,
And if banishment is what is required of me then so be it.

It was Dvorák that reminded me, playing out into the yard,
That I had been hearing the sound of violins all along,
That the maples lining the street had finally exploded
Into crimson and orange, and forming this golden corridor,
My three year old daughter running under it and her perfect sky,
Up to me on the steps, I am reminded that holding her
Is the only thing that feels safe anymore.

2008-11-14T00:20:00.000-05:00

Sunday Detox

2008-11-13T15:28:00.001-05:00

There you are Hotel, collapsing
onto my sofa

so, along with some strange fibers
I found attached to my arm hair
like bulbs of cured resin

we matched wits with a game
of memory
centered around which tree
goes on the color circle

I confessed in the dust I dated
Ms. Remember,

the dopest stretch of prom queen
who taught me whiskey

can stretch the children
we don’t even remember being

I twist my arm hair into a mat
for you to sit on, my dear
then pull it out, yank.

I feed my plastic cup to the recycling
bin that staunch carnivore

What room are we in anyway
does it feel like this Hotel
is falling in on itself

its like the tree, the self imploding
in on itself then popping up
each spring like the killer in this movie

I’m watching with you on the sofa.

Ground State

2008-11-12T15:05:00.001-05:00

My family plot is laid around the grave of my grandfather
except none of us is buried there yet.

My brother smokes a Marlboro and flicks his ash away
from the marker.
The smoke makes my lungs hitch up a little but I never cried
for him.

Bird call, traffic, tractors,
a little but of noise draws small circle around us.

The gray sky closes in the world, makes it finite.
Open sky
is depressing especially in the cold as it reminds us
that everything goes on and on into further cold.

Absolute zero is when all molecules stop moving
even the coming apart of cigarette ash stops its crumbling

Somehow the small sound of a gray sky prevents me
from feeling sad
that another one of us will go off soon,
erasing from the picture.

We do not discuss the fact that
my brother will never have children.

The sound would cause the ground to move
as my grandfather rolls, shifting markers

where headstones are not permitted. Only flags
for appropriate holidays

on the specter of future graves, each of us
a chorus standing in line, waiting to thaw from the future.

The numbers called, if your prefer,
loosening the solid gray, weight the back carries,

No one is left behind to put the players
on their marks. The sounds come down to zero. Stop moving.

2008-11-11T23:43:00.001-05:00

Japanese Techno Doom

2008-11-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

Just this slight laser beam to eternity
nor gross brass glitters high
high into morning, bears
backlit jiggy down so low
ladies are embarrassed
to be a species at all

dig the disco ball blast back
sparkles a dizzy to fall you down
down, trans the bee in your
ice cubes melts, flies
into the break down, hustles,
dips, does it all again

Genki girl in less dress presents
ass cheek to your eye haven
your two drink is diminished to what
what, cage me a rhombus
slathered in heels, wallet creases
ejaculates of light, smears walls.

2008-11-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

2008-11-08T19:01:00.000-05:00

I Am Convinved Yo Yo Ma is an Incarnation of the Buddha

2008-11-07T23:25:00.003-05:00

Bach Cello Suite 1 III. Courante

Elijah

2008-11-06T14:02:00.000-05:00

At her tea parties, my daughter always sets a place
for suffering.

Next to the stuffed pink leopard
she sets a red Hello Kitty tea cup and saucer

across from the empty seat a button eyed zebra
stares at the ceiling as though enraptured

before Suffering arrives chiffon is placed
on the miniature wooden seat and I

am dismissed through the pink doorway,
umbilical seal closing upon me

and I retire to the teevee where I observe
cans of Coke-a-cola poured over corpses

to speed the decay process. I hear my daughter
greet suffering, muffled voices in a distant room.

All suffering is product placement.

Supplement/Ghost

2008-11-05T15:16:00.000-05:00

::

I would like you to look here and see
you looking here back at you.

Beside you here looking is you looking
on as you look down at the you here

beside you.

::

Holberg Suite, Op. 40- Rigaudon

2008-11-05T01:56:00.003-05:00

Meridian

2008-11-05T00:45:00.000-05:00

Residual

2008-11-04T15:21:00.001-05:00

The Steelers are winning so I know it’s my brother
calling at quarter to midnight, Monday. Wind up
the oaks are dropping their small acorns on the roof
like the hard containment of a spring rain in single doses.

This late in the fourth I don’t answer the phone.
I turn the light out and the bright clouds surprise me.
The reflection from the slow turning wind-chime
makes think of ghosts. I lie still as the past washes.

There is a myth that the wind moving in the trees
is a spirit. My brother is lying in his room
with a IV drip in his arm. Once a week the nurse
arrives to change the dressing.

The trees bend under the spirit. All men are phantoms.
I know already that my brother
wants to say a few words about the rage
of the coach, the errors in the player’s virtues,

to describe the silent
balk of distance that separates the viewer
from the player’s violence as an order of corn.
When the spit flies from a coach’s mouth
it is referred to as “an order of corn”

sometimes Creamed Corn. The reference
of seed on the vine, the mystical ability
of life to become of itself through the grain
comes from the digestive encounters of corn.

Queen Elizabeth examining her first
phallic stalk could never have imagined
the lobbying efforts of bio-fuel companies,
the farmers interests and deforestation
necessary to bring about this tiny glint of joy

I can hear like acorns produced from the ghost
of wind on the roof, the distempered revelry
in my brother’s pain, of rage and therapy, bright green
cornstalks like the skin of the Incredible Hulk.

2008-11-03T21:50:00.001-05:00

Deal with the Drive

2008-11-03T15:10:00.000-05:00

What compliments the Christmas tree farm
more than the rural liquor store? How about
the Klan memorial across the street
with its car dealer sized rebel flag?
A trio of obsolescence, the trees
awaiting execution, the flag as limp
as its social prospect and the parking lot
of the liquor store, empty yet.
Though it’s not yet noon enough,
blue laws aside, for the needy
to wheel in for a lunch of blue light.

I drive by at 65, worried that my fix-a-flat
fixed tire might not handle another week
of seventy fives.
I notice still how even
travel itself is a redundancy. Some coming,
some going in lifeless vectors, caravans
of weeds and browning horizons, here
a creek-poisoned valley, there an impotent
cell phone tower mocking. Or worse
the dead houses still standing on the road
like zombies, decaying, lurching
to consume me back to the past, boards
on the windows like coins on eyes.
Doorways unhinged of doors
like the mouths of the beaten agonizing
on after the beatings have ended.

Dvorak -- Serenada for Strings, Op 22 in E Major. 2nd Mvt. Tempo di valse.

2008-11-02T15:36:00.001-05:00

2008-10-22T22:41:00.000-05:00

Laura H.

2008-10-22T20:08:00.011-05:00

When she called, I told her how it finally ended.
The only one to know the whole story, to have lived in it
For a while. I imagined her smoking out on her porch,
The twins sleeping inside, in a pseudo hippie skirt
Same hanger boots as me, last of the big-trouble girls,
Up on her nighttime hillside in Charlottesville.
She is a good friend, wife to a good friend,
Brave foot soldiers in the war of the disease.
They are two of those who have come out the other side
Of long darkness wild and new and innocent.

I told her my dream of the war, how everyone we know
Will die, and that's all. But the disease is only the beginning,
There's money and sex in it and of course the children
And the only thing we can do is wake up each morning breathing
And fight as hard as we can in an endless struggle to live well.

I told her how when you lose someone you care about that much,
You have to focus all your rage against their memory in an attempt
To kill whatever you carry of them in your heart. She understood me.
I told her everything. I paced around the backyard in my own boots,
the streetlight in the alley shining against the cedar.

At the end she said, "I'm sorry Clay, that sounds terrible."
Which surprised me, because I never thought about
Any of it as being terrible, just events lined together
In the fabric of a story, but I heard for the first time,
Pure sympathy in that and I thought of her eyes and god bless
Or damn her one for somehow she remembers the exact date
Of every event, every conversation, the names
Of all the players, my therapist, the guys I work with.
She knows the Grove job and the shop in the basement
Where I break down every day. She holds, perfectly,
The whole of the story, and she said that to me.
Which is all anyone ever wants, really, which is
For someone to hear them, to understand, to say
"I'm sorry that happened. Everything is going to be okay."

2008-10-18T06:52:00.000-05:00

Poem From a Friend

2008-10-14T00:02:00.003-05:00

If you cannot find

a worthy companion,
better to travel alone,
like a king who has renounced
his kingdom or an elephant
that has left the elephant grove.

*

Travel alone
rather than in the company of fools.
A solitary life is better
than a life kept in bad company.

Buddha, translated by Karma Yonten Senge

thanks to Heather

2008-10-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

Home

2008-10-09T23:32:00.002-05:00

Second Stage of Cruelty

2008-10-08T22:29:00.002-05:00

the After the Thought

2008-10-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

This is a not need to be a car accident to hospitable
bed, your lie like Quakers to reach the gem case,
a-slip tire’s tears unseen weeps the wet road, grease
relax the pagoda balanced tree elevate the hooves

just this side of the disaster. After works come crumple
besides me, the despised trumpets hotly turmoil oh
requiem of come vial, distastes to tea, the bowl of crackers
cantankerous mightily of Protestant admission refused.

One long hallway of smelling salts, the mop bucket
order plates of fries, quite unsettled, lonely outlet
spark plugs the grass, cut halo of weed eater wire,
back device, not spine but strategy of unswerving,

polished stone, wood, barnacle in the back beneath skin
feel the argument slowing, hunch down breathe
vice-grip, verily, your hysterical diaphragm, swollen
tract, familiar recess, return to stoop, fall to laying down

hospital gown to prove the sweet play, I stood before
you gentlemen, a graze, edge of pasture and moon,
unaccountable dispatch of wire, the wet log earth
untoothes the roots, the tree flats a stand of road.

Face Without Features

2008-10-06T13:24:00.001-05:00

I am painting a picture of a woman’s face
but she has no features except some sienna
in white around the mouth and eyes, moulds
of brush stroke and evaporation.

There is the face of a sainted devil, teeth and
goat beard crowning out into flame. He is spray
paint and stencil. Hard lines and plastic sheen.
He looks so leering I did him twice and then
a third time in the upper left corner just
the teeth, the clicking gates come out.

A man and woman, correction, a zombie man
and woman, 21st century American gothic wed
to the upper torso of the canvas above a line
of lurching zombies, 21st century cherubim
learned of the end of consumption, our graves,
the sole feast of our returning, cutting off
arrival with chewing, chewing out of heaven.

As I paint in the car port, my daughter comes out
and asks to help. Cover the zombie head
with oozy yellow water color, I tell her. Go
ahead. See, the plastic spray paint repels
the water. Beads of goo, en-yellowing.

She says it’s kind of scary and points
to the faceless woman. Way up at the top
is the same woman with eyes and a halo
looking down on the zombie parade. I think
it’s god, or god’s approval over all this
decline. Don’t worry, I tell her. That
woman is my mother, not yours.

Passage clouté

2008-10-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve got a book in my bread named squalor.
You can read it through the crosswalks or perched
on a tree stump like the nexus of a compass
drawn on the corner of a map.

Read the passage where the paper wept corrugated
lead into sweeps of ink, read your name in a tumble
on the sweet current of carpet across the word
for knees the trees whisper as they draw their legs in.

Learn the name for limpid from that crass and vibrating
crosswalk, her stumbling image strobed the standing
man to falling down over his own urgent foot.

The heads of these buildings and telephone poles
peek in to my backpack. In the 7-11, the loaves
of streetwise bread convert to beards like Tolstoy.
That is, just another long concession to giving in.

I Submit

2008-10-01T20:04:00.002-05:00

High On Fire has taken something Motorhead started over thirty years ago and perfected it.

Yokota High school smoking area circa 1987

2008-09-24T09:54:00.001-05:00

Les Vapeurs

2008-09-19T13:50:00.003-05:00

At night in the wooden precipice of sleep
I see between the black branches of oak trees
a lighter dark to the sky beyond,
so far beyond that the idea of distance
as a measure of travel unhinges
from language and bobs away
before filling with ocean and going down.

Because he may be sick tonight,
I want to think of my father, put him up
in place of my childhood. I think
of still water closing over the boat.
Instead I get the memory of a bus-stop
beside a concrete wall, a gaggle of children,
a blue bench of faded plastic, tin ashtray
filled with rain water and the soggy tea of butts.

I’m not even sure I am one of these children
I think I remember, so honey suckle grows
over the picture and I advance a fear of bees
which brings me back to my father
who is deadly allergic to bees.
Maybe it is the vine and its green steamy
odor, sledge of bright perfume that
always makes me think of triffids
or other sinister botanical assassins
drawing me in with a puff of pink
pollen and a tentacled vine.

Maybe it’s the blankets twisting
up my thigh and words over the bright
forever of space. Maybe the only way
I can ever conquer my childhood
is to be a beekeeper like Sylvia Plath,
grow larger than everything else, at least
in my mind, so I can squash it all.
Maybe I like to sit at empty bus stops
and smoke because that is the true
place of distillation. Distances becoming.

A pure turn of the bowl for the tea
ceremony, the leaves crumbled just
so, whisk of tree branch across the sky,
the steam evaporates, so begins autumn
which withers up the vines.

:

9th Circle

2008-09-05T21:46:00.003-05:00

Relentlessly Bleak

2008-09-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

So much rain these mosquitoes emerge
from the carboniferous where too much
oxygen had bugs as big as Pintos. Light
flash of synaptic carry overs finds them
nudging into my house on the dog’s belly
though I try to brush them away, they
only squash into smears of blood, mine
and the dogs mixed to resonate that
tiny grinding of some microscopic
insect lollapalooza bloodbath.

Black they are as the souls of Scando
death rockers, Viking boats upon the dog’s
stomach, braided beards, red knot
entry to the kingdom and late night
assail upon my domesticity. Fuck.
They creep me out. What can I do
but take the job serving hotdogs
at their fairgrounds. I can’t not take
the dog out to piss, that’s an alternative
of too much mopping and wood rot.

I should do what everyone does and
consider my role in the food-chain
as symbolic. I am the systemic sacrifice
who also leads the lamb, here dog,
together we are walking troughs
of divine substance for those creatures
whose purity will outlive us both in
number if not in duration. Hissing
presence in a cavernous nowhere, their
wings buzz the neon blood bank.

Simulator

2008-09-03T14:17:00.001-05:00

Where route 27 bends into Georgia is a man in a wheelchair
who waves at the cars as they pass going seventy.
The wheelchair may be the result of a spinal defect,
degeneration of the structure of the back, like my father
and brother, the core too tired of holding its end of everything
up. On Monday mornings the dog wakes everyone
barking at the garbage truck, recycling, a glitter
sparkling stars as the shatter of glass emerges me from sleep.
There are other drivers on the road, the cars are
thick armor for the jellyfish brains operating from inside,
bleary eyed and translucent to the radio’s swell.
I wonder if back pain is the vengeance of evolution,
payback for up righting out of the pond, a coalescing
of paramecium like two minivans meeting head on
in the swale. My eyes are old fashioned swivel dials of the radio.
Crows mock me to motion from the dead center
of my lane and make me swerve like I know what they know.
That there is ten miles of cellular dead air here past
Swamp Creek, past where my ankle is cramping at pushing
the gas. I pass the man on the border of two states,
one is moderate health care, the other is a heavy riff of sludge
metal. His wave is encouraging, saying go on, push
through it. Resigned, the both of us, just sitting there.

::

2008-09-01T23:25:00.000-05:00

Blessed Black Wings

2008-08-20T19:14:00.003-05:00

Black Rhino

2008-08-18T21:27:00.001-05:00

While Getting Yr Doctorate, We Steals Yr Women

2008-08-14T00:37:00.003-05:00

High on Fire

2008-08-06T22:24:00.008-05:00

This monster patterned after learned dysfunction,
Cells born of electricity, humming with electricity.
This monster is a trap-root buried, speared straight down.
Days of hornets stitched across his back, run him through the woods,
Set the dogs on him. High on fire, this monster staggers toward the mob,
Lurks the perimeter of the elementary school, carries his daughter,
Three years old, on his back under trees. The closed fist of his ribs continue,
This monster engulfed in fire. Train the cameras on him.
Forgets to pack sandwiches for the pool, tends daily to the equipment.
Observe monster family systems: rides quiet in the truck
Beside his quiet daddy, falls from space into a boiling Atlantic,
Slows his truck at lunch by the playground to maybe glimpse his son.
This monster shaves slowly in his tub, his own little girl pours water
Over his head, this monster weeps.

Brother in the Wind

2008-08-04T17:01:00.000-05:00

--High on Fire

Art Is Your Enemy

2008-08-03T15:32:00.001-05:00

Against All Odds

2008-07-24T23:49:00.001-05:00

Bleachface

2008-07-24T13:18:00.001-05:00

The welding school instructor leaned

into his connection to show us just

how to pose for action. I was fat

as any of the others in attendance.

Before this I was a clown for kid’s

parties, oil faced and woven hair.

Before that baskets of night

watching trucks sleep with stars.

There was some cold then. This

because of the sex appeal

of a television commercial, I’m

salving the hot end of my torch,

tack arc and blinder beams to not

look into. If I learned this I would

be complete and successful.

It is the clown’s dream to wear

regular clothes, but also a key

could fit into the rotten teeth

I see my grandfather smiling

at me through, a slot which loosens

up a man’s place to dwell next

to a stove with a drink in his

heart like a knife, holding two

parts together so as to seam

down a night cloth-dark, and duct

tape silenced to anything, become

hard cornered, holding

together an ended comfort.

When it was my turn the torch banged

a little heavier than I expected

and melted a corner of my glove

which I immediately brought up

to my nose to smell and the goo

tacked on there and seared out

olfactory futures for a good ever.

Then my eyeballs went

clown white and sizzled, basket

beard went up to smell like

burger king, all flesh and pot

to piss on. And just so, tight

jeans gave me over to the door

locked forever to the right edge,

no ship rivets in my future, no

offshore deep water money

making, no ever in the end of

disappointment my grandfather’s

smile sealing up, all snarl

after a sear of bourbon

hard going down, trucks through

the ice, no ship, just laughter

grinding along with me, burnt eye

never seeing you again, burnt

halter-top exposé of retina, lip

disorder not speech, hairline

out mode of the done up, my line,

your line, cracked out the get-go

It’s not time enough, clownish

forbearance doesn’t cut it, this

gauge won’t melt it out, witch’s

longing to transcend. The course

I failed but made it to the hospital

where a nurse polishes my inside

out until it made a gloss and can

breath the night, porcelain edged.

Look Alive

2008-07-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

Although there are roller coasters, a pair of tiger cubs

at the gate distract the girls before we even get to the toilets,

post interstate, traveler’s dementia, souring sweet air

over the spilled blue Icee, there is only an allofasudden

standing in line to ride the Hangman or the Rattler

all of the water park spred below,

each delectable flavor of death the coasters serve up

here and there the wasted trailer

leans its hulk in a direct line to some distant

industry. America’s amusement parks,

strands of garbage and stalls of animals, milk squash,

yards of water logged bread,

feast of the gull and pigeon, ants forever in line

the sweltering preamble to the Swamp Thing,

a feet down hanging coaster that’s main thrill

are a pair of overfed alligators

confusing the children with even more threats. Just

this morning words comes of a teenager

decapitated at another park, other deadly portend through

the mists of America where we all stand

sweating to board the Anaconda or the Magnum,

force of doom, the rising up to taste. Surely

it is early man, not the zombies, rising up from the

water-park’s Lazy river, slouch shouldered,

wet and flavored with the taste of Band-Aids and urine,

the heated ooze and swirl of gestating bacteria

here is our origin and our doom, fat upon the inner tube

spinning away from the world’s regret.

2008-06-18T15:52:00.001-05:00

2008-06-10T14:37:00.001-05:00

If there's no such thing as a victimless crime,

what happened to this man?

Keep Swimming

2008-05-14T19:41:00.001-05:00

Mace Windu,

2008-05-12T18:09:00.003-05:00

Dressed in his Jedi robes, led me down a narrow back passage in my brain I didn't even know was there. It opened onto a hot room with low hanging cage-lights and concrete walls. There was a pit in the center with a concrete ramp, and I followed him down, it was hot and close like a boiler room. Stacked like cord-wood in one corner of the pit were life-size versions of lemon-flavored sour-patch kids, large bodies almost entirely devoid of form, piled like bodies. They were, they were bodies. I could almost taste their sweet gritty coating, salivating at the memory of their flavor in my mouth. There were maybe fifty or more. I asked Samuel L. Jackson-Mace Windu what could they possibly be for, lying there like a new sugary holocaust? He explained in a baritone like was like the ocean at night, they were my bad histories, the deep old memories, the ones that hurt. He asked me did I want them, or was I in fact done? I didn't even recognize most of them, none of them had faces anyway, I said no, I wanted them to go away. He told me okay. He told me they would dissolve, slowly, over the course of two days.

2008-05-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

I Always Wanted

2008-04-27T11:07:00.001-05:00

to be a drunken pole-cat out in the yard preachin' to the hogs.

Ready Made

2008-04-23T12:51:00.001-05:00

Here is the Black Dahlia’s body,

the two halves of her corpse split

into a darkness upon the field.

It is not you but the poem

whose face is invisible behind her hair,

as though it has been erased. Tutelary

image of a True Crime world.

It is not you but the poem

whose mouth goes on smiling too far.

Thus what seems like nature is cracked

skin upon a stretched armature.

But see? Her starfish is shaved. As sure

as the Mona Lisa’s moustache.

We go from a bright room to the dark

and feel the light creep close for a touch.

This is the mouth of the poem.

There is only the idea of seeing. The body,

field-dumped, framed in grass and road side.

See her turn over, minotaur to the grain?

This is the poem getting up, coming through

black and white history, her two halves

tortured by memory, the same way love

goes on, if we remember. It is not

you looking through the peephole, but

the poem, posed for the show. See?

It is the poem who is eating you.

A Useful Illustration

2008-04-19T09:48:00.002-05:00

from John

Nike A Go-Go

2008-04-19T09:41:00.002-05:00

Behold He Is Risen

2008-04-06T12:33:00.002-05:00