#36

Stranger Fishing Trip

Patterns in the boat's wake
catch things already caught,
memories too frail to save.

Your piebald hands draped
over the hatch. Through slots
I see patterns in the boat's wake.

I imagine pools at the bottom of the lake.
The rod catches, string taught
as memories too frail to save.

I play as though I have no stake
in petty bribes to the cod,
their patterns in the boat's wake.

I've got my hand, it's shake,
to contend with as well. Got
a patched body too frail to save.

We've all got diseases to share, take.
Purple air burns down as the sky breaks.
This memory is too frail to save,
a shifting pattern in the boat's wake.

#35

Doctor says I gotta try

Imagine a perfect place, he says:

There is a white room.
It is always white and bare

at first. I fill it with my mind.
It's instructions are filled

with no question or alarm.
There is a big, fluffy bed

that basically leads into chairs.
A large, beautiful television.

I have everything to relax, eat,
and write with Lauren there

to keep me sane. In just wanting
a thing we have it. Feels like

we deserve something special
after everything. We'll learn

not to appreciate it soon enough.
The darkness never comes

that is not peaceful. Oranges
in a bountiful number. Hair

bright and shining and in multiple
colors. Weightlessness and how,

always how, we wanted to look.
Imagine how claws would grow

in us to stay there. It is too much
to imagine that I could imagine

something terrible. That we cover
ourselves in something bad.

I'll take it though. I'll take it never
paid off or even really mine.

I'll try to fly if it puts me right
in the damn sun. Come along.

#34

The Safety Poem

Well if I fell into a real deep hole?
Who would be there to pull me out?

Suppose the hole went deeper down
and I found my people.

A tribe that jealously strove
for the future. Every ugly event

that they grabbed for they tore apart
for the early learning. Imagine I learned

a dirty lesson down there. In holes
there are no meanings. As we

do not live in fantasies many
things are true. Many men

are crushed or moved to dig
and dig. Just leave the hole.

Imagine that you learn nothing
as I learned to imagine. Family,

fortune kept from all of the dirt
I could fit under a fingernail.

#33

Sestina for Summer 07 and Kerasotes Theaters 12

My worried feet hit the warm pavement outside the theater.
The people in winding lines, who do not yet disgust me, laugh.
I do a work squirm into a bowtie and a mauve hat that deadens my hair.
With this dumb dome only eighty year old women give me a smile,
right before they buy a landfill's worth. I persistently worry
about the popcorn level, filling myself over the paper edge.

I watched several things birth out of the screen here, on the edge
of my seat for a midnight ride. But, the new feeling from the theater
is only a constant churn of acid and butter flavor. The way the worry
forms inside of me, grasping and groping until I flee from the old laughs.
The shows are a horror variety here where managers lurk stealing smiles.
Looming, they smile over me with blunt performance warnings. It wilts my hair.

Tucked away from this viscous drudge I remember a slender girl's hair
on a hot, nervous first date night. I only managed to see the edge
of the screen for the view of her strange, alien figure, wishing for her smile
to explode into frame. It stayed loose and absent. So, there is the theater
that has always had this heart of disappointment inside of it. High pitched laughs
of new teens and their sticky wars in the aisles haunt me, adding to the worry.

In the soda circles and burnt hot dog vomit, I presently wander in worry
that I cannot sweep in proper ways. The popcorn sticks to the hair
that worried itself to the ground and ground itself into gum. The laugh
of the man on the fake radio station is a demon rattle. I think his knife's edge
is so sharp to cut the human condition as it does, in half. The blank theater
managers who yanked him from Hades must have found a beautiful smile.

I sing hard and embarrassing in the gray, droning back room to prepare my smile
for times when it is an actual thing. The beat up band that leads my worry
into a different place. Out the community center doors and around the theater's
hot, twisted grasp. Their claw diminishes with the chorus and dies with a hair
whip and a to-the-rafters yell. Time erases so quickly that it has no lasting edge.
Its bite is soft and numbing. It leaves little moments to catch your breath after a laugh.

Day dawns when I hit the doors, that final midnight shift over. I have a single laugh
for the moon, which must be my new sun. The fake radio devil carves a new smile
onto each thing I do. I confidently come across the pavement and at the edge
of the glass doors ride into the old place, where always an hour and a half worry
salve waits, through the impotent hell-travelers and salty smells. I can let my hair
down in the dark rooms. No longer the arbiter, broom splintering in hand, of the theater.

With my crown down the weightlessness marks me. There are other things to worry
people into the ground like edges of popcorn. I laugh, smile, and run as a hare
into a future full of green places. There is not enough natural green in a theater.

#32

Making Love Happen

I am love with the gas fireball. It keeps my relationship with the gas stove fresh. It keeps lighting me on fire. I keep coming back from the hospital gloriously alive in the newest places. In the arms now and the face. After you left with everything but stove you thought I might be alone for awhile. You thought I would have to think awhile about what I did. What we did to each other would be all over my dirty, damned mind. Not not so.

Every day I go to the grocery store and buy three pounds of bacon. I bring it home and light up the stove. I let the gas run for awhile. I unwrap the bacon while I wait and feel it's cool grease on my hand and my arm. I wear a bacon glove to entertain myself. A strike for your plan. When my gauntlet bores me I stare into the burner. It's light keeps me alive. The hospital must have an understanding that I have bacon to burn through. Which is true. I place the wrap on my burns and bring them in. They started at my fingers and spread, like the staff's suspicion. Until I am buried in the bills I will wait in our house with my new lover. I will sleep in the kitchen and hold her.

I wonder when her flame will flicker. I wonder when the heat won't seem so exciting to the touch. She'll go just like you. The parts of me that felt something will die, one by one. Hands to arms to legs to feet to any nerve ended place. I hope you'll come back before that. I know you'll be here to light my fire again. Some glorious, blazing bright day.

#31

Digging

The places that I've found to build my house in:

The unshakeable space between the halt in your breathing
and its starting again.

The point in your teeth when you dig the fresh current
of my skin. The salmon spawning color in your gums.

The curve in the body that also bends and layers
down. The painter's crevice in a playful shadow.

Each blood vessel that carries you past blushing
points and into something dense and bright.

The lucidity out on the edge of your eyes, that powerful
ledge that holds up understanding.

Each line and grasp of your hand. The bones underneath
of glorious, bleached bedrock.

I will build.
I have a loving, digging, moving shovel.

#30

The House of the Risin' Sun

I'm aiming to live in the Risin' Sun
Where Dylan lived with the Animals then
My bag's on the track where the Orleans train runs

I've been a good son and had a fair share a fun
They tell me that don't make no legends of men
I'm aiming to live in the Risin' Sun

Make a ruin of myself, so destruction will come
Take a pair of unlucky young girls as bad friends
My bag's on the track where the Orleans train runs

Every day before summer I'd think as I'd hum
Of the sound of a man when his life hits the end
He's aiming to die in the Risin' Sun

With nowhere to go on the edge of a gun
He's riding the line 'till it halts and descends
His bag on the track where the Orleans train runs

In the glint of the passenger windows I'm him
I'm gonna live transformed in the dirtiest den
My bag's on the track where the Orleans train runs
I'm aiming to live in the Risin' Sun

#29

Marty McFly Ascends K-2 at Age Forty-Five

We're not gonna make it to the top of the mountain.
Though, signs will show our deep effort.
In my ears there is a furious sound, and

I feel the blood ascending up as a fountain.
It's shooting up and spreading sickly to fester.
We're not gonna make it to the top of the mountain.

Javier says we are Jesus with his crown then
impales on an edge with no made successor.
In my ears there is a furious sound, and

his warmth is calling. I refuse to cluster 'round him,
my sanity snow slipping. Here I am lesser.
We're not gonna make it to the top of the mountain.

But, the trying is all I promised, to her proud grin.
She thought, a bustling laugh, that I was a jester.
In my ears there is a furious sound, and

I spread majestic to the rest of the men, their shepherd
leads them dead on speeding. We'll make this crest for
in my ears there is a furious sound, and
we're not gonna make it to the top of the mountain.

#28

Dreams in Brains

The masonstable frame of my bed rocks,
as the visions that I have come destructively
in heat waves. Knowing the constructs I see
sing for my death I am so moved to drop.
I, in contact with ground, continue singing pop
songs until their brains expand and majestically
splatter as abstract portraits. Examing the best of these
reveals a gruesome portal to worlds of rot.

There is an urge to wake myself and find
the bed filled with sweat and idle hairs.
Yet, staying in the doom and dead brine
there is a solace not in morning airs
that stoop and sneak to take me uglyplaces
where there are concrete not suggested faces.

#27

Godly Studly Fuckin'

If I was Atlas I would drop that fucking planet
on your ass. Dickhead.

If I was Hercules I'd make you eat that shit
in the stables. Fuckwad.

If I was Hermes I'd just go fuck people really
quickly. I'm a pimp-ass motherfucker.

If I was Zeus I would throw lightning into
your bitch face. Shitface.

#26

Drop the Pipe

I launched off the side of the wall
with an ease of an unstable Californian
monk. There was money to be had in mansions
and in dry, empty pools filled with green leaves,
which was money again and all together.

You could say I eschewed the values of a Californian
family carefully. Or you could call me a fornicator
on a big sign outside of my high school. You could
do a lot of things. Are there things you couldn't do?

I launched off the side of the wall
with an ease of mind and a mean breeze
at all sides.

#25

It was a misstep, a poem never published.

What river is the Thames?
What place is the Globe?
What space does it occupy?
The Royal Company, what of it?

What is Harvard?
What is Yale?
What is even the University of Michigan?

I might ask
What is Kilimanjaro?
What is K-2?
What even is Everest? It is the tritest mountain now.

I could catalog, all of my life, places that I will
never have been to or missed at miraculous
times, key points, in my life. I could spend all
of my time filling a great, depressing volume
that would win me some regard and take me to
some places that were in the book. It might even
thin the book, the presence of itself.

What if I find happiness sometime, in my book
trek? Then can I say that it is not the most I could
have gotten? Or the best I could have had? Will
this meditation salvage that in the best way?
If I just stay at the fork and write about it, which
strange third path am I moved down? What
horrors await me in that forest of contemplation?

Who is watching? No one.
And what must I do?

#24

Running in Pamplona

What here is something shining on the wall?
I should search it 'fore nighttime's sudden fall.
My lover, some secret woman, left it here
For my belabored, battered body's stay of fear
The best of tricks, this thing, left for me to find
Other suitors passed it over stupid, blind.
I find her golden ring in the crack of brick.
'Twas wedged tightly by my maiden and I pick
At yet my prize, my paradise, it will not yield.
Seems to be with tombish efforts it was sealed.
There is a rumbling, my heart, prepared to shatter
The doom ensconces my ambition, growing patter
Its beating 'whelmed me, as had the challenge faced
Then a force, the bulls, forgotten in the race
I am now joined with wall, my goal, and surely dead.
My lover, she shall know my truth by stain of red.

#23

Pripyat, Ukraine

I had heard that Pripyat was a good place
to make a buck if you were short on moral
fortitude. The exclusion zone, as aptly named
as any place, welcomes rogues, thieves, ex-military
men in its fictions and its truths. The pulse of the city
was extinguished in a radiation high. I had not heard
before of radiation leaving such gold deposits.

She sits among the dead grass, like blown
down by a dirty, dirty bomb. Too much
dirt that was dropped here. In sifting
through the dust piles I find a necklace.
The shine, I catch it in my eye as a fishmonger
caught my hand in the market. He is dead,
but the people here are deader, flatter ghosts.
They were wiped by progress from the atomic
clock. At the end of the golden chain is something,
not to believe in, no, but a locket. A blank golden
hole, a heart with none of the tons of dirt, is resting inside.
Her treasure, saved for Petro, hid from Aleksander, almost
given to Ivan.

The day before Pripyat became Pompeii:
Her eyes melted down her face for him. She
went positively nuclear. He too yielded in a slight
way taught him by his father. They were coming
together, two live things full of atoms. The evacuation
savaged the moment in two. Her father dead, her womb barren.
Explosion and arousal, two radioactive, untouchable things. Ivan
went to school somewhere in Prague. She decided to dry up
and become an unpracticed widow through stiff resignation.
The locket is just as bare and bears her meaning well. A scoured
golden slate as useful as these shattered windows all around.
In looking there is an absence of anything but a small performance
in a classic loop pattern. Above this locket she is a music box
dancer in the dust and the broken glass. She dances above
the lonely ferris wheel and hospital as she becomes a cloud.
In the rubble there is an infinite pattern of humanity. She was
not so special that I should save this meditation.

The locket concerns me just as far as it will weigh
heavier than the simple chain. The heart will be melted down
and repurposed for another try. I slip the thing into my dusty jeans.

#22

The Son’s Grasp of Time

My mother turns 17. I show up
with a KISS cake from Dairy
Queen. The woman at the counter
looked so confused when I ordered
one. But, they had an old design template
in the back. Mom, Janet Lou, doesn’t
want the cake. She wants her
boyfriend and escape. KISS
was never that big for her anyway.
I think I scared her with
the time travel. Gene Simmons,
you aren’t helping.

My mother is turning 35
and I show up again. I prepare
a cake with my accomplishments
listed. I want her to know that
she will be proud of her 1-year-old son.
She is not scared, now, but my father
is angrier than I imagined. Still
young and strong, and I am so proud
that they have each other. As he suggests,
I don’t let the door hit my ass
on the way out. I thought this
time would be smoother, like
the chocolate icing around, “I graduate
high school with honors!” Time
is the worst thing to get messed up in.

On almost a lark I visit the hospital
in March of 1956. There in the lobby
I pause, confused. I decide that I do
not need a glimpse. Time is its own,
and these moments are not mine.
But founts of love that I have bathed
in. This is not my place, though
mine may still be warm if I return.
Before I see someone I vaguely know
I move to the girl at the desk.
She doesn’t like my city accent and long
hair. I ask her to leave the cake,
as simply as I’ve made it, for the little
girl born Janet Waldrop. She shrugs
and yields, thankfully, to my plea.
I am careful in my handing over
so that the icing, “I always loved you”,
doesn’t smudge or slide. Somewhere,
in another place, I have dropped the slice
of icing. I believe that I hear thunder
and see mighty lightning outside. I find
the idea of riding it away appeals to me.
I cannot remember how I arrived here,
or any root of my idea. Time defeats
me, my greatest thoughts, and I smile
still.

#21

Benjamin Isenberg's Ghost

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the ghost of my great-great
grandfather this afternoon. I was named, Benjamin minus Isenberg,
for him. He wrote Bible criticisms in competition with another gentlemen.
His labors seemed egotistical, ineffectual in the present, but the rheumy ghost
cleared up my misconceptions. Benjamin Isenberg's ghost was as heavy
as a pocket watch when I held him in my arms. I carried him to the stream,
in the field behind my house, and sent him to be with Moses in Egypt.

#20

Mr. T's Resolve

I need a flat top afro.
I need a dozen gold chains.
I need a no-nonsense attitude.
I need a determination to do some wife insulting.
(even if it means later I'll feel sorry)
I need a well timed death to weaken my competitor.
I need to learn to love my wife again.
I need to raise my kids correctly.
I need some killer punches.
I need the drive and grit absent from my competitor.
I need a movie contract.
I need to have been a member of the A-Team.
I need to learn to control my urges.
I need to have starred in your favorite episode of Different Strokes.
I need a new temper, apart from this broken one.
I need a bigger, better house to be proud of.
I need something like a victory to feed me.
I need to lose at the end of the movie.
(yes, you'll feel alright about it.)
I need a blanket and a new, empty apartment.
I need to never see my children again, apparently.
I need a copy of my struggle on VHS.
I need to see myself fall over and over again.
I need it to open the next chapter of the story.

#19

Worried About Taking Stock

Two glasses of cold, pseudo tropical
rum and coke

Four shots of medicine cabinet brand
vodka
down the hatch

A can and a half of Pabst, I shared
with my new next door neighbor

A Leffe Blond that started the descent
into the colorful night
ride
that I should
remember. Words sound funny.

I played with her hair first, then her wrist. She kept
rubbing my chest, though I giggled several times.

She spilled a Mike's on my couch then. Holding it side-
ways as it poured
into the cushions and caverns of couch fluff.

I pawed at her and she pawed back. There we were tumbling
too into the sweaty, scratchy cushions. We are there with the
cat hair. We are there and we sleep on a penny with a lifesaver
wrapper for a bed sheet. We become a children's novel.
It's easy to read in my face and in her body's hunch next
morning. Would I could I return to something simpler
without the complication of shrinking myself. I need
less of a drug life and more of a life lived drugged.

#18

Shakespeare I

The marks on the page are such
That i find myself to be much
impressed, sir. If you even were one
person to talk to, ever. I can't remember
if that is still a viable theory. I am afraid
to ask. The class is still, silent, and very briefly
illuminated. I will never pull the cord
hanging from the lampshade.

There is some precipice I stand myself on
that swings wildly, me carrying, through dawn.
I finish the latest comedy in-between a yawn
and an urge to know my fellows, know something
worth knowing.

And are you that?

#17

Jordan's Misogyny

Can you hear the sound of the bitches
screaming? They know I'm coming for them.
They know I'm going to shoot them in the tit.

A bird perched on a windowsill explodes in
blood. There is an old woman crying in the corner
of her apartment complex. In a prison a man
tattoos his body and fondly dreams a rough
tapestry of violence. It is an uncomfortable
ballet. It is unwatchable but the television
picks up the feed, unscrambled, staring
across the level plane of the remote control.
And it is your decision. It is a wheel where
everything moves too fast to make sense.

I don't like what this does to you. You
just ran over a cop.

No. I just ran over two cops. Oh shit,
I blew up two cop cars. Better get
an ambulance.

A park, a parkway, a highway, the streets,
the REAL streets, flow blood from their mouths.
Kubrick's copper water passing over a jury
of our peers. A silence covered over by cellphone
chatter. A meaningless bunch of words scrawled
on a subway, in a Subway. I should've been a
sandwich artist. Nothing covers regret like more
money for a charitable donation. Which battered
women's shelter do I help first? Which last?
Wall after wall of concern over humans who
keep finding an awful way.

It's just like real life. Wait, this is real life
again, right?

#16

Owen's Detective Agency

When the trees move I hope there is a tan sedan
coming into the parking lot. I am meeting a Mr. Brown
today, again, and I believe he drives a tan sedan.

In my office, away from my wife in reception, under
my desk, is a pile of papers I have doodled on.
The phone calls come rarely, we might go under.

The way her skin is dry in the morning and evening,
but not in the noontime. We take a break to make love
after lunch. Then get Chinese and wait in the evening.

I tore all of the clocks from the desks and walls
one day. There is one in the safe if we need to check
for an appointment. I don't need to be mocked by walls.

We leave when the darkness deepens in the parking lot,
and the tan sedan never comes. The day is empty, I fielded a single
call about a cat. I laugh at the handicap spot in the parking lot.

In my dry dreams I am tied between two tan sedans,
dressed like a real gumshoe, when my alarm clock
sounds the cars always pull me apart, tan sedans.

#15

Crossing Esic St. at Lightspeed

An ample grasp on my frame.
Love, a golden river then, ceaselessly replenishing.
Gravel packed roads where tires bucked and roared.
Something salty, no bloody, in my mouth.
But sweet, yes, a churro near the daunting coaster.

Here I catch my breath, to wonder whether there
is a tolerable mercy in putting down the album.
Whether all of the ratty projects, papers, perfume
panted notes were worth piling into an even
near forgotten place. Whether her smile or curl -

The way hair curled and straightened at a dance.
Horrible ways of getting around, gasoline breakdowns.
Growing up in a small-ish town.
Things I may have done on weekends.
The absolute savior of a good sweat.

The AC trembles, an old man wheezing on a clock,
and my knees hurt.

#14

To the Lifers, To Make Much of Life

On that poorly lit stage with a microphone, wildly
crackling, in your hand as a crowbar, you pull
the bronzed listeners in slowly and painfully. Numbers
about death and money. Everything that gets anyone
mad, red faced, like you when a line slips. Though,
those watching are just as well rehearsed, surreptitiously trained
how to graciously absorb your flaws. You root around in an invisible
dumpster, holding aloft and tossing a javelin into the lawn. No
one is home. Though you run to shake the doorframe, mangle
the doorbell, peel back the hinges like an orange.

You are an abortionst. You slowly kill pre-formed logic
until it begs under the blade's heavy weight. It whines
and shrieks until a transformation occurs. There is no
fallacy, no illogicality, no falsehood. You've leveled the playing
field with your simple words. You are writing a stumbling,
rehearsed poetry in the stale, community air. The blade
presses deeper. It may be alive. Anonymous half-living guts.
Your hair frizzed out to nowhere, you find a blue way to shine, sad beyond
measure and reason. There is nothing around that peeks in.
No challenges to sweep you off your feet. Prince Charming,
teaching free night classes, never comes around. You build a blood
palace of imagery to keep him out of everything.

What is anything named that you've built around you?
Anyone outside is too sad to peel enough layers and start cataloguing,
lest they fall in and feel a new fury, naming everything all at once
in a new bestseller, devoured whole, flames stoked higher again. When I think
of every little touch you've made, the man who made the video
you're showing, every touch he made, to bring all of this reactionary
hate together, I go dizzy. To comprehend spending so long scratching
in dust to blow over another person's designs. It's out of reach. Every racist
city block you claim is claimed by the same kinds of people with different
brands of chalk and spit. Mark and salivate, move on, leave a colored wall,
wet with shine, that makes no sense. The beauty in it, though, is keeping the lights
on. There is a heart in you, like in the heart of any beast, and it is beautiful.
I have no doubt that you are human. I want to reduce you though. I grind energy
and hold it back, filmy scenes where I cast you into some contemporary hell.
The want isn't in strong enough portions. I let it drop. I try to walk away, to think
of a better question next time. There is a question, my mind teaches, that brings
peace to this place…

No one lives between walls. And where anyone is beautiful there are blotches.

#13

Sacrament

I buried a soul in the Westboro
bathtub that I used to bathe in. In
fact the very one where I was baptized.
Where I baptized my children.

The words on the church marquee
read: "He is Risen!"

The words on the church marquee
read: "Salvation. Don't leave Earth without it."

The words on the church marquee
read: "Where would you go if you died today?"

The words on the church marquee
read: "It's not what you have in your life. It's who you have in your life."

The words coming from the bathtub
read: "Welcome to the new salvation Francie. We are a fold."

If my hands are dried in his blood this night
then I'll feel alright locking the door behind
me. First, I lay boards across the bathtub opening
and try to nail them down. The nails don't go savior
deep. It's disconcerting. If I wash my hands a few more times.
If I am humbly and unknowingly righteous. I try to clear
my head. There are visions of Hawaii and the beautiful
coast. A man in Rod Serling's facsimile from the Travel Channel says:

"Maybe we have found Heaven on Earth here
in this lush, tropical paradise. Within our own
borders and easily accessible by plane at any
time of year, Hawaii is the ideal place to come
escape from all of life's constant troubles."

A full bongo sound plays.

#12

Vacant Friday Night Returns

A nuance I am unfamiliar with:
Inviting your expatriate friend to my
party. His irresistible aura breezed
his wooly form, crystalline in reputation,
through my kitchen. Of emptiness now,
I know, he took all that was offered him.

Perhaps next when you want my attention
you’ll take a metric ton of C4 to my favorite bar.
The neon
wrapped in flame would be less obtrusive.

#11

Boy-o

Boy-o, my name for a subject
but he drowns-o around six.
There the idea washes up discourteously
on the banks of my thought.
Utterly wasted my time, boy-o
you did nothing to what I needed.
No fragment of your spleen
can be deemed a necessity.
I won't tolerate you anymore
than a thing I've created can be tolerated.
By me, the creator, who's lost
his boy-o full mind.
Box your ears, boy-o,
does the setting sun on the devil's side.

#10

The Hour I First Believed

The tunnels that he dug
never meant anything.

The dirt disappeared, it was eaten
by the ragged earth in an instant.

His hard work was nothing
but trees to paper. Hardly worth forgetting.

And in an instant, were he
to realize this. Destruction.

Were any of us to grasp fully
our meaning it would be too much.

We must hope and pray (sometime)
and dig ever deeper. down and down.

Though sweat appear and
blood linger in our bodies.

It will all evaporate. Permanence
is an impossibility. Biting

our own teeth, our mouths
falling apart. Sides of a cliff.

You can lead a horse to water.
You can, and what will it do?

Will it drink? It has to.
It will drink to continue.

How will you feel about the horse you led?
What conflict will it be in you?

What conflict in the horse?
Will you just construct

a useless metaphor from old
sayings to get on?

#9

Things I've Repeated Need Explanation

Inevitably in search of the truth you walk in circles too large and the tracks get all messed up. I don't want to walk a straight path but I need people there walking with me.

What does it mean to be electric?

Hairs on your arm are standing up obviously and men or women, sometimes both, take care to step into or out of your way. Either way, they take care. They do and you take care to breathe in the earth, or whatever you perceive is the earth, that important thing. It is one thing and you are absolutely electric for it. It is alive. You feel every particle pumping blood along and you urge it to pump faster so that you may burn out and die young. You want to take everything along with you. This moment is a pinnacle and an epiphany that you are saddling for a brilliant sunset. There needs to be nothing left after this. It could all be nuclear wasteland, a novel's worth. The setting now, though you breathed it in, is completely unimportant. As are sentence structure and the possibility that you are running on and on and on without stopping. The most important thing is feeling and feeling fast so that it doesn't slip away like an eel, this feeling, because that's what it feels like it might do.

What do you do when you're electric?

You hold and live and breathe until it passes over you. As your own holy ghost you have certain responsibilities. You catalogue and never buy into anything but this once. You sing and you dance where you thought you had no capacity. Things are unlocked and you spill like a slot machine. This is all happening and if you could fully grasp the word aware or alive then it would be perfect. You come as close as you think you can.

#8

Mystery Old Benefactor Arts Center

How about I start dropping bombs around
your head as a wreath?
Is it alright if we start there?
What is the next movement?
Can you read the white footprints painted
on the arts center floor?

Show me, folklore man, a rhythm
from a time unusual.
Get a little danger in my step
let me one two a little off kilter.
But, in time, ah,
always in time along.
With your friends, your cousin,
his friend who is learning.
The main band, Ragweed Tempo,
will return I'm sure.
These men fit my learning curve.
Your rough hands are
a finish line.
But, they feel like the starting gun
just as often.
Dizzy like anyone else, I am hoping,
after a first whirl. And then,
around again.
A dance as a funeral for
your unknown friend.
You throw me to the left
and I stomp right. Where
do I fit in the slide?
I will fit myself
--an awkwardly carved piece--
into this in due time.

How about if we finish with another set
of bombs and smiles?
Can you answer me quick enough?
Take my knowing glances and challenges
as a respect. I am not a bitch,
a hound dog, or partner.
I am equal queen of eventual
possibilities.
So shut your damn mouth.

#7

Backlot Influence

I lay my skin down on the floor.
I let it lie.
I let something sink into
the muscles that remain.

The television blares, turned up,
screeching into the upsetting space.

I king of Gorgonites.
I king of any culture surrounding me.

Yes, a transformation.
A veritable field of options,
filed down and a position
filled. I laugh as I run.

Shedding, shedding, into a sun.
(what I perceive as sun)
The backdrop stings my new skin.

#6

Had to do a screen cap of this one because the publishing tool wouldn't take the spaces.


Two Clicks - One Turning On and One Off

#5

Every Little Truthful Atom

She is watching me.
I know she is. I saw
her face in the window.

For just one second.
I heard her pounding
on the bricks outside.

Inside the noise
of the water heater, raging.
I heard low, concerned voices.

Hers and perhaps his.
Though I hope that she
is simply talking to herself

again. I hope that he
has been caught peeping
and been beaten broadside

with a bat. A Louisville
slugger at that. Knowing
where he belongs as I do.

She is waiting outside,
slipping beneath the rocks
and leaves when

I turn the shower off.
I do not know the call
of the space she inhabits.

#4

Shoveling Snow with Mary Jo

At twenty I say,
What is the worth of my life
and how do I weigh the brittle years?
At fifty, what if I say it again?
I say something different though.
I'll leave a spot.


Murakami talks to me about
shoveling snow as a writer.
I shovel and sweat to get deeper.
The heat in my collar expands
my head and I float.
Then a pinprick,
the cold mountain air descending.
I am Alice falling down low
into unknown. Just landscape.
No city trees king queen.

In twenty years, in ten
I am so different again and again.
This is ceaseless I restlessly
think and crumble. Building
myself a little better each time.
If I built as fast as the savings and loan,
I could save one or two phrases.
They float away harmlessly.
We tragically forget all that goes
on by the next fall.
And go on.

#3

As an exercise to start this month of poetry, which I'm trying to take more seriously than last year's, though I'm not editing any of these past first writings still, I'm going to print a poem and follow it's pattern. I've chosen a poem which struck me recently. I was thumbing through my Contemporary Poetry textbook and found this poem by Charles Simic which simply bares his name as a title. It really hit me, though I know nothing of Simic at all. I thought it might be fun and interesting, and most definitely a good way to frame the experiment, to try to copy the poem's form. Copy in this way, I mean: I will name a poem after myself and start the poem with my name. Whatever comes after will be my own ideas about how a poem so lofty might go. Here's the original:

Charles Simic

Charles Simic is a sentence.
A sentence has a beginning and an end.

Is he a simple or a compound sentence?
It depends on the weather,
It depends on the stars above.

What is the subject of the sentence?
The subject is your beloved Charles Simic.

How many verbs are there in the sentence?
Eating, sleeping and fucking are some of its verbs.

What is the object of the sentence?
The object, my little ones,
Is not yet in sight.

And who is writing this awkward sentence?
A blackmailer, a girl in love,
And an applicant for a job.

Will they end with a period or a question mark?
They'll end with an exclamation point and an ink spot.

Benjamin Morgan

Benjamin Morgan is an asshole.
Charles Simic was probably one too.
I don't know him though,
he certainly doesn't need to be lower than me.

Charles Simic is/was an asshole.
Benjamin Morgan is the biggest asshole.
He jumps into puddles of your intentions,
weighing into them, hoping for permanent stains.

He hates the sound of your voice,
when it is amplified as art.
He absolutely hates,
and cannot create for himself.

Benjamin Morgan has only one use.
As a writer of metaphors.
To create a scene vile enough
to describe himself.
Because he is not just an asshole.
No one is.

Benjamin Morgan is a hot dog
redder than an angry man's face
surrounded by peeling cornmeal.

#2

On Discovering the Blood Flowing From My Nose

To my friends, wherever
you are

This New Year's Eve I had
too many beers.
I slipped up and vomited for
the better part of the new decade.
But, I am invincible and here
is why.

The guitar swung, like a clock,
a pendulum, a variety of symbols,
into the bridge of my nose, breaking
nothing. and I am invincible
I say again.

I hope that your New Year's Eve
was fun, functional, enjoyable.
I hope you ended up in the gutter
I gloriously rose from. I know
the toilet's mysterious ways.
I hurl into knowledge. I am
fucking aware, keenly, killing brain cells.
But I do not fear the reaper,
his scythe cannot break me,
my bones.

This is all bravado in a teeny
manifesto. This next ten
I will be human as I can.
Forgive me, forgive me,
I don't know sin.

#1

Oranges

Oranges can't fill
Can't fill in
Fill in the hole
The hole shaped like you
Like you would never leave

But you left a bag of oranges behind
I crushed them in my tiny, metal fingers
I am a cold being darling
You left me all behind
Jenkins and LaHaye style
Jesus jumping Jesus I say Christ
How horrible

Every tumor hole I fill with a ripe orange
knowing its rotting story
and knowing your tendencies
and mine as well
well deep
well shaped holes
wells of orange deposit
I planted a tree in a too deep hole
in our backyard
Thought you might come back for it
Sent a postcard

New Years Poem Resolutin'

I resolve... poems all this month... every day... here's the first two.