I am inside each house that passes
somehow,
and my lineage is inside each house. Historically,
I am finite, in this zipped-up costume.
My grandfather sits at the upright
and has learned how to play.
My grandmother
warms
her own ashes in a saucepan by the fireplace.
She smiles like the dusty pages of a book.
Houseplants here represent time.
Four
cats are one grim reaper
and instead, discuss the next move in private.
4.30.2008
Where I Travel To
The cat disappeared into the dark—
this was his music, sad and ancient.
But smiling. Where on earth?
I fastened myself to the future with a set of pins.
Felt my way to the tomb. My family was waiting there.
The sounds were the brilliant beginnings
and ends of other sounds.
Buildings of sleep pushed up, and on the
other ends of the blowing streets, buildings of wakefulness.
This city and its sounds were dilemmas of thought.
Who worked them into these porous surfaces?
Butchers at their tables. Pathologists. Nuns.
Hearing. Slow canto.
The gleaming one piece of my eye.
Action then in the terrified room:
the storytelling old men of war, the harps.
this was his music, sad and ancient.
But smiling. Where on earth?
I fastened myself to the future with a set of pins.
Felt my way to the tomb. My family was waiting there.
The sounds were the brilliant beginnings
and ends of other sounds.
Buildings of sleep pushed up, and on the
other ends of the blowing streets, buildings of wakefulness.
This city and its sounds were dilemmas of thought.
Who worked them into these porous surfaces?
Butchers at their tables. Pathologists. Nuns.
Hearing. Slow canto.
The gleaming one piece of my eye.
Action then in the terrified room:
the storytelling old men of war, the harps.
The Grove of Graves Like Flowers
I like looking at the other side—the side
that’s not
opposed
to death.
The side that accompanies us to the beach, and moves us
like marionettes. The side that
grows a new face every second,
tufts of grass like hair flowing to the water.
A sugar
factory, small, emitting sweet gusts.
A blackbird flies
through
the lines of a bridge. He is constant. I am not
as soccer players suffer in the hot field.
that’s not
opposed
to death.
The side that accompanies us to the beach, and moves us
like marionettes. The side that
grows a new face every second,
tufts of grass like hair flowing to the water.
A sugar
factory, small, emitting sweet gusts.
A blackbird flies
through
the lines of a bridge. He is constant. I am not
as soccer players suffer in the hot field.
4.29.2008
Night Gang
The Siamese twins water my plant, and look at me
with their one heart beating, and their one stomach
churning dinner.
An Archangel
opens the fridge, eats a hard-boiled egg,
goes to sleep on my side of the bed, nuzzles my wife.
There are not many eyes and not many nights in the night,
and not many puppets in this night of eyes.
Who then
dances in there
like a little drum? I’ve been replaced by an
imposter.
with their one heart beating, and their one stomach
churning dinner.
An Archangel
opens the fridge, eats a hard-boiled egg,
goes to sleep on my side of the bed, nuzzles my wife.
There are not many eyes and not many nights in the night,
and not many puppets in this night of eyes.
Who then
dances in there
like a little drum? I’ve been replaced by an
imposter.
Too Bad
The sun is suffering from dementia.
Sad old broad.
We found her in the poorhouse, air-conditioning
on high, hiding her face because she could not
recognize it.
This was upsetting, of course, to all of us. We looked in the fridge for something
to eat.
Just onions hugging other onions.
We are accustomed to certain things.
Call the ambulance, she said.
The apples are crawling up the wall.
Sad old broad.
We found her in the poorhouse, air-conditioning
on high, hiding her face because she could not
recognize it.
This was upsetting, of course, to all of us. We looked in the fridge for something
to eat.
Just onions hugging other onions.
We are accustomed to certain things.
Call the ambulance, she said.
The apples are crawling up the wall.
Guarini Speaks
The prophet of insignificant
events—he speaks from inside of a shoehorn.
His
houseplant
has cracked a joke in the meantime,
a dead smile
upon his mother’s face, blooming original as
decay
as she responds, encouraging
shame for the subject matter.
There is a white
shrieking figure somewhere
in the painting.
He waxes on the comedy of a corkscrew, and still
the plant insists on dying,
the mother cries at the whitened mirror,
his speech is extracted from the
Earth
with forceps, a snail
sliding out
of the cloud
events—he speaks from inside of a shoehorn.
His
houseplant
has cracked a joke in the meantime,
a dead smile
upon his mother’s face, blooming original as
decay
as she responds, encouraging
shame for the subject matter.
There is a white
shrieking figure somewhere
in the painting.
He waxes on the comedy of a corkscrew, and still
the plant insists on dying,
the mother cries at the whitened mirror,
his speech is extracted from the
Earth
with forceps, a snail
sliding out
of the cloud
4.28.2008
The Mime
Slowly grows out of the wall,
completes his this and that figure, the
outline on the wall
paper
with a few movements of
white hands, shreds the surface,
his ghostly dimensions, demented figure
we see with a wider view,
a secretive vista
in the darkened theater
hall, most
moonlit, most encouraged
by his new emergence
and this new non-sound.
completes his this and that figure, the
outline on the wall
paper
with a few movements of
white hands, shreds the surface,
his ghostly dimensions, demented figure
we see with a wider view,
a secretive vista
in the darkened theater
hall, most
moonlit, most encouraged
by his new emergence
and this new non-sound.
The Something
The thought has a thing, sun thought of as blinking eye
Coerced into the long stare at her children. A wind pauses
For reverence at our eulogy, as if one cares, which if brief, formal and boring.
Pigeons throw their voices like ventriloquists, a
Boy bounces one green grape infinitely.
This memory as thought as thing; the idea as being a thing once
And only once;
A blind man rolls a cigarette and invents language.
What’s the difference? He’s been sold, but a useless slave.
He does not remember a motel outside Pittsburgh.
The dark cozies up to the dark there. Only our night continues.
In the night, there are not only pictures, but figures,
One immense head, not many nights but
One after the other,
One long night underneath the blanket
And imagined forms, and nostalgia.
Memory clips the wings of the ocean. A certain
Immaculateness brightens then, hurries us along to the water,
This moment into faded origins, houses built
Inside other houses, lives burned into newly exposed
Bone, and who buried them in their ornate mausoleums.
Brownish white, Egypt crawls out of the cave
With its body wrapped in sack-cloth.
The stars are pygmies. The trees and their brethren
My fathers.
Coerced into the long stare at her children. A wind pauses
For reverence at our eulogy, as if one cares, which if brief, formal and boring.
Pigeons throw their voices like ventriloquists, a
Boy bounces one green grape infinitely.
This memory as thought as thing; the idea as being a thing once
And only once;
A blind man rolls a cigarette and invents language.
What’s the difference? He’s been sold, but a useless slave.
He does not remember a motel outside Pittsburgh.
The dark cozies up to the dark there. Only our night continues.
In the night, there are not only pictures, but figures,
One immense head, not many nights but
One after the other,
One long night underneath the blanket
And imagined forms, and nostalgia.
Memory clips the wings of the ocean. A certain
Immaculateness brightens then, hurries us along to the water,
This moment into faded origins, houses built
Inside other houses, lives burned into newly exposed
Bone, and who buried them in their ornate mausoleums.
Brownish white, Egypt crawls out of the cave
With its body wrapped in sack-cloth.
The stars are pygmies. The trees and their brethren
My fathers.
Continuance
The roof is quiet with non-human life.
It continues to pass forward among forward dimensions,
crossing nearly invisible panes.
I do not observe, but
am observed.
The stillness watched the stillness. Some
good
It was.
White and eerie sand dunes
heap
In my mind’s vision. Where are their plans?
What algorithms lead to their logic?
What choreographer compiled this map
of movement reminders?
The pyramids are there. Slaves on the Yangzte.
A baby cries in the portico of Greece. The rest are silent as
ceramic.
A flock of birds assembles in the blue horn of sky
completing the white triangle.
An afterthought of immense measure, I am,
bursts
almost invisibly fast at that moment,
And a population stands before me like mastodons
awaiting thaw.
It continues to pass forward among forward dimensions,
crossing nearly invisible panes.
I do not observe, but
am observed.
The stillness watched the stillness. Some
good
It was.
White and eerie sand dunes
heap
In my mind’s vision. Where are their plans?
What algorithms lead to their logic?
What choreographer compiled this map
of movement reminders?
The pyramids are there. Slaves on the Yangzte.
A baby cries in the portico of Greece. The rest are silent as
ceramic.
A flock of birds assembles in the blue horn of sky
completing the white triangle.
An afterthought of immense measure, I am,
bursts
almost invisibly fast at that moment,
And a population stands before me like mastodons
awaiting thaw.
4.24.2008
Limitations
A bird above the bridge in equal flight as the air, and my reason, flags
posing too as birds, and the sun as a bird.
And this, with just that,
just that with this
under it.
How does the curve of a pot fit in this world?
How does the movement from one point to another, a vine in the wind, water in a drain,
fit in our minds,
which are limited by the same things
that limit the earth,
and limit the bird,
and limit oxygen,
the periodic table of elements,
and the boundaries of a flame,
and limit history,
and Marie Antoinette’s beheading,
fission,
and the dinosaur walking the earth…
and, finally, limit my brain, to a view of this world
as a composition,
as it nods mindlessly, alone,
and extends to the
limited extend?
posing too as birds, and the sun as a bird.
And this, with just that,
just that with this
under it.
How does the curve of a pot fit in this world?
How does the movement from one point to another, a vine in the wind, water in a drain,
fit in our minds,
which are limited by the same things
that limit the earth,
and limit the bird,
and limit oxygen,
the periodic table of elements,
and the boundaries of a flame,
and limit history,
and Marie Antoinette’s beheading,
fission,
and the dinosaur walking the earth…
and, finally, limit my brain, to a view of this world
as a composition,
as it nods mindlessly, alone,
and extends to the
limited extend?
4.23.2008
Ceremony/Metaphor
A great clock is sunken off the Gulf Coast
as a crowd of people applaud.
Children are lifted from their feet when the chains are
cut, then peek to catch a glimpse of the clock’s forehead
as the green lines of water swirl in.
It is now the home to a shoal of cadaver fish.
They serenade me with their humming
in the silver evening. The white bone of
moon is barely visible
miles up, and I am blindfolded while my
dim servants attend to me. I think of what my life
used to be; I can hear the earth breathing.
The time left over
is cracked and fondled in a parrot’s mouth
ingenious, a comedian. The seagull with a black head
dives for my family. Takes one of us.
Next week, they’ll sink a piano.
as a crowd of people applaud.
Children are lifted from their feet when the chains are
cut, then peek to catch a glimpse of the clock’s forehead
as the green lines of water swirl in.
It is now the home to a shoal of cadaver fish.
They serenade me with their humming
in the silver evening. The white bone of
moon is barely visible
miles up, and I am blindfolded while my
dim servants attend to me. I think of what my life
used to be; I can hear the earth breathing.
The time left over
is cracked and fondled in a parrot’s mouth
ingenious, a comedian. The seagull with a black head
dives for my family. Takes one of us.
Next week, they’ll sink a piano.
4.22.2008
Prehistory
Some fifty billion years ago
a fireball describes both my creation, and demise.
A bone knows secrets you cannot.
It laughs at the learned.
I ride the galloping beast into the nothingness that permeates time, throughout time--
Extinction’s on the prowl.
Mother waits in her terrible wedding gown.
Mother eats the flesh of your wife.
Mother, dare I say, you look beautiful
hunched their like Cronus.
Massive-whore. My mind’s fossil will remain buried, even if they draw it
some day
on the wall of a church.
a fireball describes both my creation, and demise.
A bone knows secrets you cannot.
It laughs at the learned.
I ride the galloping beast into the nothingness that permeates time, throughout time--
Extinction’s on the prowl.
Mother waits in her terrible wedding gown.
Mother eats the flesh of your wife.
Mother, dare I say, you look beautiful
hunched their like Cronus.
Massive-whore. My mind’s fossil will remain buried, even if they draw it
some day
on the wall of a church.
A Drawing of the Day
The hair that grows out of an old woman’s shoes,
bones and teeth taken root in the flower-potted soil,
movements of dogs that describe the universe, as they experience each to the end,
a
yellow flashing
bulb
in her eye
as she hugs the artificial sphere.
As she embraces her braindead husband.
As her children disappear into the noon brightness.
As pregnant mothers drowse in the blue bath.
I will sit in the sun and draw lines.
This is my heritage.
Lines made without justice to the making of lines.
The brown bird
that wasn’t there, the dry pool, seeds that look like maggots.
My brain is a repetitive organism like sound.
If my legs caught fire it would merely be a costume.
In the whole of everything, lines, each effulgent, each false
in that they represent some movement
toward me,
I appreciate and I accept.
Whoever invented it, whoever consecrated it
was free
bones and teeth taken root in the flower-potted soil,
movements of dogs that describe the universe, as they experience each to the end,
a
yellow flashing
bulb
in her eye
as she hugs the artificial sphere.
As she embraces her braindead husband.
As her children disappear into the noon brightness.
As pregnant mothers drowse in the blue bath.
I will sit in the sun and draw lines.
This is my heritage.
Lines made without justice to the making of lines.
The brown bird
that wasn’t there, the dry pool, seeds that look like maggots.
My brain is a repetitive organism like sound.
If my legs caught fire it would merely be a costume.
In the whole of everything, lines, each effulgent, each false
in that they represent some movement
toward me,
I appreciate and I accept.
Whoever invented it, whoever consecrated it
was free
Armies of Small Things
They collect on the table before us.
We move them about like game pieces
yet we hurt them when we move them.
We crack them out of their soft shells and roast them in flame,
little larvae without eyes or wings.
Strip them nude and sketch their private parts.
The trees, this year, have released moths instead of seeds.
They are stillborn as they fall into the yard.
My building has grown a few strands of gray hair,
which must be cut with a blade no smaller than a sofa.
A chair counts seconds while sharpening a knife.
Mice descend upon the garden like flies
to the belly of a deceased swine.
Soup for supper. Peace in between.
Peace in between the nails in my wall.
Peace in between the feathers of a drunken angel.
Peace amongst the infantry.
Glowing like the ten eyes of a deep-sea fish.
White and blue, the silent blood of a newborn.
Take me upstairs and amputate my eyelids—I want to stay up for this show.
We move them about like game pieces
yet we hurt them when we move them.
We crack them out of their soft shells and roast them in flame,
little larvae without eyes or wings.
Strip them nude and sketch their private parts.
The trees, this year, have released moths instead of seeds.
They are stillborn as they fall into the yard.
My building has grown a few strands of gray hair,
which must be cut with a blade no smaller than a sofa.
A chair counts seconds while sharpening a knife.
Mice descend upon the garden like flies
to the belly of a deceased swine.
Soup for supper. Peace in between.
Peace in between the nails in my wall.
Peace in between the feathers of a drunken angel.
Peace amongst the infantry.
Glowing like the ten eyes of a deep-sea fish.
White and blue, the silent blood of a newborn.
Take me upstairs and amputate my eyelids—I want to stay up for this show.
4.15.2008
The Gladiolas Are Ringing
As the vines climb the damp stone.
Mice dance with death.
The flowers rise to meet the mud and
The mud assembles to forms hands.
Maybe there will be more rain,
The snow remembers the snow.
The sun remembers the sun, its energy memory
And it’s in all of us.
Long lists of relatives are burned
In effigy.
Laugh at the orchestra of corpses,
The traveling circus of puppets.
It’s stopped in town, a healer grinning
Under his mustache.
Please do not disturb the sleeping hermit.
It is his work that interests us, his fortune,
His senses. They will save us from extinction,
At least that’s the hypothesis.
We have taken prisoners in the meantime. Hostages.
The medical trade is down to science.
Brains and feelings are basically one;
The Loch Ness Monster feeds on our young.
Computers spit daily hexes
On the still living. We are blanketed in numbers
Which sear our flesh. The stars retire to their bedrooms
Scissors in hand.
Survivors fight wars made out of tissue paper.
The sand is enamored with the sand, the frost
Hasn’t come in sixty years. We’re becoming accustomed
To the smiling faces of unrecognizable foes.
Roses bloom on the hearth, in the black wood.
Sea lions crown another man king, and then behead him.
Let’s raise the flags of our ancestors--
They mean something still in our moldy minds.
Pickled fruit shaped like our genitals,
The heads of grannies in jars, their eyes
swimming with wealth and the sublime. The man at his work,
Hammering new Bibles onto the surfaces of seeds.
A cat’s skeleton has been erected on the mantle,
The house a new museum.
Of course, its teeth replaced with diamonds.
More for us.
Lose your way in the topiary garden of time.
The trees resemble three generations of seers. The animals expect nothing and
get nothing. Spiny like the urchin, crabs, palm trees like exploded
firecrackers, fly away to Spain.
Unearth dinosaurs again and again.
An egg is everything.
Mice dance with death.
The flowers rise to meet the mud and
The mud assembles to forms hands.
Maybe there will be more rain,
The snow remembers the snow.
The sun remembers the sun, its energy memory
And it’s in all of us.
Long lists of relatives are burned
In effigy.
Laugh at the orchestra of corpses,
The traveling circus of puppets.
It’s stopped in town, a healer grinning
Under his mustache.
Please do not disturb the sleeping hermit.
It is his work that interests us, his fortune,
His senses. They will save us from extinction,
At least that’s the hypothesis.
We have taken prisoners in the meantime. Hostages.
The medical trade is down to science.
Brains and feelings are basically one;
The Loch Ness Monster feeds on our young.
Computers spit daily hexes
On the still living. We are blanketed in numbers
Which sear our flesh. The stars retire to their bedrooms
Scissors in hand.
Survivors fight wars made out of tissue paper.
The sand is enamored with the sand, the frost
Hasn’t come in sixty years. We’re becoming accustomed
To the smiling faces of unrecognizable foes.
Roses bloom on the hearth, in the black wood.
Sea lions crown another man king, and then behead him.
Let’s raise the flags of our ancestors--
They mean something still in our moldy minds.
Pickled fruit shaped like our genitals,
The heads of grannies in jars, their eyes
swimming with wealth and the sublime. The man at his work,
Hammering new Bibles onto the surfaces of seeds.
A cat’s skeleton has been erected on the mantle,
The house a new museum.
Of course, its teeth replaced with diamonds.
More for us.
Lose your way in the topiary garden of time.
The trees resemble three generations of seers. The animals expect nothing and
get nothing. Spiny like the urchin, crabs, palm trees like exploded
firecrackers, fly away to Spain.
Unearth dinosaurs again and again.
An egg is everything.
4.12.2008
The Rope
The rope is a long story. If it grows, it grows
From the inside out. Unravels like opening hands.
One atom pushes the next atom
Out onto the stage. But that atom was, perhaps, birthed
By the last. And as it speaks in tongues
We hurry to paraphrase its contents,
Transcribe its long soliloquies of nonsense.
We bring it along on our walks,
But we only allow it to be one rope.
It finds its way through the field in yellow grasses,
The rocks that have found themselves deposited there,
The rust covered shells of farm equipment.
It enters the doorway between trees.
Its greetings form the entirety of the woods.
Romance twitches on the bed of stones.
Somehow sensual, the lumps and hardnesses
Are snaked with the story. We leave it there
And that is the best gift.
The rope is one end to another, but it is also
many ends. There are only two ends
when you hold it in your hands.
From the inside out. Unravels like opening hands.
One atom pushes the next atom
Out onto the stage. But that atom was, perhaps, birthed
By the last. And as it speaks in tongues
We hurry to paraphrase its contents,
Transcribe its long soliloquies of nonsense.
We bring it along on our walks,
But we only allow it to be one rope.
It finds its way through the field in yellow grasses,
The rocks that have found themselves deposited there,
The rust covered shells of farm equipment.
It enters the doorway between trees.
Its greetings form the entirety of the woods.
Romance twitches on the bed of stones.
Somehow sensual, the lumps and hardnesses
Are snaked with the story. We leave it there
And that is the best gift.
The rope is one end to another, but it is also
many ends. There are only two ends
when you hold it in your hands.
Births
The earth is pushed in a rusty wheelchair.
The sun is suffering from dementia,
Hiding her face because she cannot understand it.
She was birthed in a dusty closet’s bucket,
Suckled by killers who invented this world.
Made blueprints on the backs of their lovers.
Outlined crosses with the ends of their fingers.
A blackbird cawing between your legs
Is, then, either my child or a dictator, or both.
The night is my twin who
Never was born,
And yet we took the same name.
The sun is suffering from dementia,
Hiding her face because she cannot understand it.
She was birthed in a dusty closet’s bucket,
Suckled by killers who invented this world.
Made blueprints on the backs of their lovers.
Outlined crosses with the ends of their fingers.
A blackbird cawing between your legs
Is, then, either my child or a dictator, or both.
The night is my twin who
Never was born,
And yet we took the same name.
4.11.2008
Late Night Rumors
The room is made of paper.
There’s nothing in the air but vinegar and
fall’s apples shrinking in the fridge
to deathly granny faces.
Sure, somewhere out there, there are windows with lights on in them.
Well, there were. They’re off now.
That was one year ago. One year ago today. Why did I think that was tonight?
A year is supposed to be something, I think.
It’s supposed to be a fossil, a nice fat eggplant peeping from the garden.
It’s supposed to be a buzzard with a scrap of flesh hanging from his lips;
carry the whole world like a tuft of cotton. Something a little vicious;
The earth rumbles so she does have to deal with quietness.
Claims to have her heart in
mind…
Claims to not be enamored
with wealth…
Claims to find real meaning
in the wind…
Claims that the circle
and the line are one thing…that
languages are equivilant…
that there are people
worth loving…
that the night is not
more persistent than day…
no one knows who were are.
Our faces are mixed up.
One picture hook hanging in the plaster.
The fish are frozen in their oceans.
The dancers are floating in freezing space.
Mostly everything is contained in the movement
of one loose vine in the wind.
I make a pact with an old man in a nightshirt, carrying a hammer.
I cannot live anymore, I tell him.
It is too delicate to feel.
It is too old, it is like mummy hair.
And if I find wisdom in a nectarine so be it.
I still have animal teeth.
There’s nothing in the air but vinegar and
fall’s apples shrinking in the fridge
to deathly granny faces.
Sure, somewhere out there, there are windows with lights on in them.
Well, there were. They’re off now.
That was one year ago. One year ago today. Why did I think that was tonight?
A year is supposed to be something, I think.
It’s supposed to be a fossil, a nice fat eggplant peeping from the garden.
It’s supposed to be a buzzard with a scrap of flesh hanging from his lips;
carry the whole world like a tuft of cotton. Something a little vicious;
The earth rumbles so she does have to deal with quietness.
Claims to have her heart in
mind…
Claims to not be enamored
with wealth…
Claims to find real meaning
in the wind…
Claims that the circle
and the line are one thing…that
languages are equivilant…
that there are people
worth loving…
that the night is not
more persistent than day…
no one knows who were are.
Our faces are mixed up.
One picture hook hanging in the plaster.
The fish are frozen in their oceans.
The dancers are floating in freezing space.
Mostly everything is contained in the movement
of one loose vine in the wind.
I make a pact with an old man in a nightshirt, carrying a hammer.
I cannot live anymore, I tell him.
It is too delicate to feel.
It is too old, it is like mummy hair.
And if I find wisdom in a nectarine so be it.
I still have animal teeth.
4.09.2008
Notes
I left a note on your door
to tell you you were miserable.
Did you get it?
I went on to describe how I would
euthanize the milk in your refrigerator,
put your teeth in the electric chair, arrange
for the sea to be hanged.
Were you busy bathing in the dark?
You sexy little marionette.
Your cat had a parakeet in her mouth.
I count the toes
on this newly birthed night.
My suckling heart does not
believe in love.
Roses mate with elephants
and what’s born seems to
come out of the red curtain.
The turnip’s bashful soul
is acknowledged
by the president of bashful souls
and upon his grave, a heap
of gravel
in the shape of Samuel Becket’s head.
to tell you you were miserable.
Did you get it?
I went on to describe how I would
euthanize the milk in your refrigerator,
put your teeth in the electric chair, arrange
for the sea to be hanged.
Were you busy bathing in the dark?
You sexy little marionette.
Your cat had a parakeet in her mouth.
I count the toes
on this newly birthed night.
My suckling heart does not
believe in love.
Roses mate with elephants
and what’s born seems to
come out of the red curtain.
The turnip’s bashful soul
is acknowledged
by the president of bashful souls
and upon his grave, a heap
of gravel
in the shape of Samuel Becket’s head.
Halitosis Of A Dying Mind
Castro wears fatigues in a Havana hospital. But then
he gets caught goosing nurses
and gets himself strapped down,
his grapefruit juice brought in a paper cup
adorned in deathly cala lilies.
I dream of cohabitating with the minerals inside great boulders
and what that must sound like, He tells her.
He’s gone mad. Give him another shot.
The broom remarks to the telephone, I haven’t bathed
in three days
and does that repulse you?
Is that too long?
I, for one, have gone underground with the bodies.
We clap for what we used to know. It’s deserving
of applause, at least we think so.
So, we’re here in the cellar of birds.
Underneath the palaces and the palm trees.
Stone cages fill time with laughter.
Quiet dosages are administered in
eyedroppers.
Night, the purple block, the beet
on a placemat with one white finger next door,
ring still around it, curse me again.
The big green eyes do not belong to my bride.
Bone eventually writes over bone,
the hieroglyph of nature is one symbol pressed into
the ore. Mushrooms sprout from my heart.
Mustache like a blackbird
very sharp against the blueness
of the Gulf Of Mexico, greenness, the way
flames engulf a grand piano, seashells are your eyes, and
a freckled hand passes over.
he gets caught goosing nurses
and gets himself strapped down,
his grapefruit juice brought in a paper cup
adorned in deathly cala lilies.
I dream of cohabitating with the minerals inside great boulders
and what that must sound like, He tells her.
He’s gone mad. Give him another shot.
The broom remarks to the telephone, I haven’t bathed
in three days
and does that repulse you?
Is that too long?
I, for one, have gone underground with the bodies.
We clap for what we used to know. It’s deserving
of applause, at least we think so.
So, we’re here in the cellar of birds.
Underneath the palaces and the palm trees.
Stone cages fill time with laughter.
Quiet dosages are administered in
eyedroppers.
Night, the purple block, the beet
on a placemat with one white finger next door,
ring still around it, curse me again.
The big green eyes do not belong to my bride.
Bone eventually writes over bone,
the hieroglyph of nature is one symbol pressed into
the ore. Mushrooms sprout from my heart.
Mustache like a blackbird
very sharp against the blueness
of the Gulf Of Mexico, greenness, the way
flames engulf a grand piano, seashells are your eyes, and
a freckled hand passes over.
4.07.2008
Containing The Number 1
My own eyes in a flashlight
are a cat’s eyes, a plaything, jade of
Prometheus.
Pink light, orange light,
the light of ice that comes off in chunks,
winter’s hurting gives
clues
to the owl’s demise…
perhaps one day
the glow of fission
will reimburse us all…
Relates me to my memory,
two dances
that multiplied, split in half,
country thirds
like mated
corn
are a cat’s eyes, a plaything, jade of
Prometheus.
Pink light, orange light,
the light of ice that comes off in chunks,
winter’s hurting gives
clues
to the owl’s demise…
perhaps one day
the glow of fission
will reimburse us all…
Relates me to my memory,
two dances
that multiplied, split in half,
country thirds
like mated
corn
Late Night Rumors
The room is made of paper.
There’s nothing in the air but vinegar and
fall’s apples shrinking in the fridge
to granny faces.
There are windows with lights on in them.
Well, there were.
But they’re off now.
That was one year ago. One year ago today that they were on.
A year is supposed to be something, I think.
It’s supposed to be a fossil, a nice fat eggplant you can eat.
It’s supposed to be a buzzard
with a scrap of flesh hanging from his lips;
carry the whole world like a tuft of cotton.
She rumbles so she does have to deal with quietness.
Claims to have her heart in
mind…
Claims to not be enamored
with wealth…
Claims to find real meaning
in the wind…
Claims that the circle
and the line are one thing…that
languages are equivilant…
that there are people
worth loving…
that the night is not
more persistent than day…
No one knows who were are.
Our faces are mixed up.
One picture hook hanging in the plaster.
The fish are frozen in their oceans.
I make a pact with an old man in a nightshirt, carrying a hammer.
I cannot live anymore, I tell him.
It is too delicate to feel.
It is too old, like mummy hair.
And if I find wisdom in a nectarine so be it.
I still have animal teeth.
There’s nothing in the air but vinegar and
fall’s apples shrinking in the fridge
to granny faces.
There are windows with lights on in them.
Well, there were.
But they’re off now.
That was one year ago. One year ago today that they were on.
A year is supposed to be something, I think.
It’s supposed to be a fossil, a nice fat eggplant you can eat.
It’s supposed to be a buzzard
with a scrap of flesh hanging from his lips;
carry the whole world like a tuft of cotton.
She rumbles so she does have to deal with quietness.
Claims to have her heart in
mind…
Claims to not be enamored
with wealth…
Claims to find real meaning
in the wind…
Claims that the circle
and the line are one thing…that
languages are equivilant…
that there are people
worth loving…
that the night is not
more persistent than day…
No one knows who were are.
Our faces are mixed up.
One picture hook hanging in the plaster.
The fish are frozen in their oceans.
I make a pact with an old man in a nightshirt, carrying a hammer.
I cannot live anymore, I tell him.
It is too delicate to feel.
It is too old, like mummy hair.
And if I find wisdom in a nectarine so be it.
I still have animal teeth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
