Stat®rec

From Monster Manual 

From the dark, suddenly pleasant hues, the trees, a gleaming ocean, the miles of beautiful, the rad of my Michelobean number while I walk around, forgotten, with a feather of sea-colored, bubbling thought, a found leaflet, a warning: stay awake,

Empty of virtue, stay earth, learn earth, je ne comprends pas earth, he can read earth, Ron, his limbs, and I feel like him, carried in exalt down the arch, a slanted gallows of bs, there's no end to bs, its like Jormungand the World Serpent.

At noon continuous, unsober'd, a jetsam fleet at noon, a brief foam at one, I come for love and ankles, then on the float, then finger'd in the bleachers, then with a basketball fully, a prize, a collection of tickets to cash in, a weakness of cheap prizes like sharpener, like heart attack, hey I'm being tortured, shit, I'm doing fine, feeling myrtle breezes at Target, and all blushes from hit-ons,

Thaw and the whole moon, new weird shadows, bright colas, the Saturday morning stuck with cold, a trireme of bs, arbitrary skies, an exhaled arch of

True dawn, suspending light, flavor of limes, stutter of dusk.

Everything's now an upside-down problem, the cure for cold, but with more cold, or excruciating fire, a sculpture made with violence, a warm margarita. I am all Yeah, don't drink that, but I drink to my idea of what war is, what mountains are. I drink to these powerful games, as an infamous indifference against other sorry mountains, a mountain burial under dirty dishes.

So I walk out, lips in, framed by unstoppered evil, huge smoke hair, soul-fried fear, brood along strange sea-colored edges of smashed Oldsmobile windows, and travel on through packed church-pew rows of cigarette smoking dudes, dudes from another epoch, dudes like my dad — dudes I'll turn into, I feel a jet power in it, the beating of a fat dude's heart,

Hot wings burnt, haired, cola Neptune, the world's brine, an intaglio of beer, the shallow sound of bees. I'm bursting. I imagine dying. It might be like leaving an awesome party or entering a beautiful sewer.

I'd be waving from a digital billboard, brittle, crystalline, a long, slender body with weird-ass flat, open-faced baked pixel bits, morally reprehensible, dirty, a canary's veins, a ceramic leg, a prostate made of cloth, a distressing monstrosity — its hair-in-your-bread doubt, mischievous and should I keep eating? 

I live on a golden-yellow notched leaf, numb and boiled, soiled, unstoppered, all these various physical sensations, wicked, hugely visible, a cylindrical roll of fat ham. I can't say I want, morally, it's like I'm winded in a tall building's stairwell, heaving in the greasy air,

the unctuous birds, a thousand breeders in darkness, obscurity, a thousand couples in the parking lot, witches of sound, drilling into your school. 

I think I noticed the subsidy levied upon my thoughts of god, the unexpectedly docile lions of the still parking lots, "whose protection subtracts thirty." They seem human, or imitations of human, they're only firm, fleshy tissues, a round of swampy genitalia sacrificed to organizations, for perfuming, or transported away from inexperience, forcefully and in a giant pair of pants.

Let's not do away with or be devilled by wayward memories made with muscles of cigarette smoke, pleasure and what not are a hastening sunset.

I have excruciating pulmonary feeling, 

But I want to have the perfect seizures, 

A briefcase of wasp stingers, 

A Jansport of howling embryos, 

A detachable, hinged anatomy, 

The size of the earth's surface. 

I'm not a tree, I'm idly shaven,

Stung by hymenopterous insects, 

Frightening, or falling, 

I'm tired of bs,

Bad news on that front,

There's no end to bs,

It's like these sculptures, 

Created in illo tempore by lesser demons, 

Hinged in brine, thieving my light 

Or showing more leg, 

Beer elementals in public bathrooms, 

Muffling their cellphones from loud noises, or 

Magnifying the screams of children and cats, a plan for warfare, 

A levelled town, an unfinished sandwich, what is profane.

I'd like to fly directly into the sun and evaporate in a silent puff of smoke like a cartoon rocketship

Entangled in my pants,

wound up and then down, shit

do I itch,

mites of underproduction,

mites of unrealized dream

or might have been,

what are dreams,

thin sheets, a flip of the mattress,

a bit of golden sand thrown in the night,

I'd turn to the right to join in, and say

Many thanks to the band, but I feel

like my head is floating above my body

connected only via spine, sans flesh,

and the spinal column is rotating like

a stainless steel Lazy Susan, 

in fact, I look like a shallow cellist, 

a hunched-over overpriced motorcycle, 

a fried elephant, I hate everything

when I look like a dozen other things,

I feel like a clear udder of pity, which

when milked straight, with hyper-extruded pointy fingers,

shoots and stains,

and it's not going to wash away by hand,

there's no advantage to this anatomy.

Who took life's joviality? Who wants to

cleverly destroy me with my own guns?

Everything seems ground

fine, driven into the ground,

rained down, or stuffed through a sieve,

I feel like I'd say something if

I didn't have it so good.

I don't work that much, and at times

the snipers hit my coffee cup cause yeah,

everyone sins and something, you know, like

I was my own butler or some shit,

I'd say "Uh, sir, please step off the bad,"

but it’s just delicious

food or long nap or extra day off.

I’m weighed down

by a dandelion.

CAREENING*

Was a worse-now torture.  I will break this network and it is too, too hot. There  are two splendid littles, but it is hardly worthwhile. The three hunters were too many. A thousand plans now, but stay there. All words and motions are disagreeable.

I shall always be a balm. I shall continue on without being. Without being able to explain to myself, but to know the whole life will happen.

Will be, not meaningless / will be, not before/ will be, full of the deep and fuller / and I will impress it.

That is intentional – the marked . Re-think, and it feels like a truth.

The big hot end of a day is great/ is greater/ is greater even grated whole.

* lines appropriated from Anna Karenina.

THE SAVAGE BANQUET OF MACHINES  (for M.E.)

When the machines all got together they shed their coats and met in the bare in the round. Cross legged, they crossed wires. They fused parts and aligned keys. It didn’t matter who was cuter than whom or QWERTY-er than whom. They dined on prosecco and bruschetta. Like ordinary people, they told vulgar jokes, and mocked the machines who were not present.  They played charades, and hangman, and then one machine brought out a gold bag. It dazzled in the half-light. The machines got close-like – coming in towards each other like one would for a secret, but this was only a half-secret; a particle, really.  In the golden bag, was a little knickknack M1 found behind his desk.  It had marks on it, like small groves.   M2 grabbed his case and turned his right arm until music started playing.  He made M4 touch his middle, and then, they realized, he too was a grooved thing: a music box.   M3 moved closer to the Golden One with the golden bag and felt the small groves that rested before him.   No one could figure out what it was. M6 felt the soft side at the end and smelled it, pressed it, bounced it against the floor. She couldn’t quite place where she had seen this thing, but had a faint moment of déjà-vu.  M8 pushed through the crowd and noticed the spike its end. He was about to jam it into his side, when the Golden One stopped him, “We can use this for our own good; Let me show you the way.”  They all stepped back as the Golden One took a mustard sheet out of the bag, and placed it at the center of the floor. It seemed to be glowing in the light.  M9 drew her little m’s close as they rolled their way to the front to get a good view.  The Golden One pulled his levers and took the thing in its claw. He pressed the spike to the sheet and then there was a “gasp.”  It was a miracle.  The Golden One made lines on the mustard sheet and the machines knew this was a wild time. They were re-creating the past.  They were opening doorways into rooms left cold.   “Pencil,” said The Golden One. “Eraser,” said M10 as he flicked through his database with one hand.  “Yes,” said the Golden One, “we are now participating.” Then came a loud belch, that came from afar, and the machines turned their faces across the room, towards the prosecco which was all over M9’s little m’s and already starting to rust their parts. They burped up bubbles and clanked their motors. The Machines laughed, and the light dimmed with their heightened electronic awareness.

THE NIGHT GENIUS

Take this, and hold it. 

May the call be recognized and willing.

Remember, because I can’t remind you enough,

some will simply refuseand one

will profusely bank in on the solemn wanderings of nightfall.

[it begins here:]

One night-genius humbled over the saturated sky; over the pastured bleak. Solitary but prepared to make the leap; to lean deep into the hour and let his loins reach the wanting. 

He was tender in his wait.  And he waited to tenderize what would soon arrive.

He stared and  he storied. He let the day erode behind him. He counted. He danced. He slept.

This is not a poem about angels.

The sky burned blue and then turned quietly to song. As if the night yearned for chaos, for light, for a stringed theory of the future. All was now-kindling. He felt the sky scrape. He felt the light bolt as if a star let go from –

One small bravado.

                                One leap for planetary-kind.

It yearned for glory; for the spotlight. Was it merely shucking the universe? Did it have a good laugh?

In an ongoing battle of colonial unity, it did secede. It waved its coat tails above its spark and rode off into the battered tomorrow. It tore away from the night, waving its banner behind it, all the time running, and bolting-on

His eyes learned awareness behind the bewildering. He slapped himself and then stood in the darkness. The night-genius felt revolutionary as if he were pioneering starlight. He who was not struck down.  He spun around three times in that dark, vast place. He do-si-doed with reality, for he had one true vision:

Life was cold-cut, but electric in the palm.

DIARY OF A YOUNG VOID

Like any other, today comes with a fish in its mouth,

scales of German labor, vintage metallings, thimbles

skyscraper-sized, like the sprite's cherry body. What else,

in these typhooning sanctions, can be asked for? Granite

beds, droll breezes, even nostalgia mantling the foyer.

Crowded in a crowded world, you were my one steel O.

IN WOODS WE STUDIED

On St. Andrew's Night we grew into a castle; one of us

said: "This is the folly of lost rewards." Like a girl,

dapper, chivalrous, I knew the bat-hanging night

would be one more slipper left to post. Our hands

stuffed into remote pocket, those dental waters

oft-ringing, always with a sense of tamarind air.

You only add so much, hip to elbow, roundelays

to skirt, before the skittle-alley closes, Voyager.

Feeling then gentle as I was arrogant, I slept in your clothes.

EXPERT COMEDY

Both in and out of the fray, articulating a sandbag

and theatrical exigent, riveting fashionable drink,

you notice how others out there knock off a play

in mysterious passive voice, as if paralytic trees

had their own original progenitors to yell Hush!

There, a crow's mausoleum could be pawed over.

In this case, with your Bodleian head, its bravura

of evergreens and still crystalline coolant-dump,

you should notice more than silk-lawn clouds like

a man at the club window who feels frisson neatly.

To this we avow moral melodramas are reforming

what was left of us, ingenuous as tears, starched

by a broom closet called into real-life lifelessness.

Monikers and squirearchy mete the idiom for now.

So, like a blouse or bed-siding, you took comfort,

having to boil your shirt for more peeping freaks. 

Our new lives—transfigured, destroyed—vanish. 

Key participants in what's the central failure now.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

I remember your hair's perm fondue

like blonde glass curling in the sun. 

It had a northerly associative quality,

something quite remote to these parts.

We open up to a stoop, as over the railing

a poinsettia meadow waits for you as if

you'd seen it before in the yard of your

youth. One, mind you, you've never had.

Nerve only gets you so far in the padlock

where bushes guard tempered watches,

spruce linen you wake to when no one 

is there yet to really wake beside you—

idle and remote on cloud-mewing hills.

What dervish these late autumn days!

Partly tin, partly the huge arms of sleep.

I think of the hand of hands; the bland 

studded caskets; the dew-brown regality

of one hour, its postmarked wilderness.

The mind, it's true, has irritable spots,

absorbing much light but too little heat,

stony and diffident. It knows too much

some sorrow of chairs. So we open books

with bronze Etruscan servicemen in snow

gliding in and out of daguerreotypes. 

Meanwhile your throat is a vase of flowers

that no one senses; no stench but dusk

and compass, which one winds stealthily.

The coordinates changing. Changed for good. 

TOY HISTORY

All of our music is in a way post-apocalyptic.

Leftovers sing the blues. Ocarinas hum showtunes.

Meanwhile, a serenade captions the distance:

a single figure stepping mute through rows.

The scene's eye is carried over rolling concrete.

Such picnicked hymns and proud coral thunder. 

Lettuce, arugula. And don't forget your disquiet. 

Accept arcana, these stilling machinations now.

Can you read this? The slim noon, like an earring, 

settles confetti; the puce balustrade calms down.

We were here. This was our place. Roll-call meek

and fleeing: a stanchioned raft, some psalm's plea. 

29 March 2007

Kentucky Truck Stop Shower

Nine bucks

gets you a 

paper

shower mat,

a clean, ruddy towel,

squirt of shampoo

small bar of soap, 

to wash off 

all that car and driving,

to scrub away

the last song 

to come into Spring City

that you sing out

to the business of mold

gathering in the grout

outside the stall

that’s just bigger than a trucker.

25 March 2009

After a Long Line

Thanks for your help with this project.

I don't really like

where you ended up taking it,

but I understand

you're quite busy

and I appreciate 

the time you spent trying

to do something.

I keep remembering 

that I always

thought

you were full of shit. 

17 June 2011

Autumn Leaf and John

Autumn Leaf 

was born on an ashram

up north 

on a piece of land her parents owned,

John

was a math guy

making Wall Street money,

they both lived in the city,

radiation levels were getting too high:

babies grew too big

in the womb,

often killing the mother,

leaving the children feeble

or worse

and vexing, Mendelian mutations 

were occurring

to a variety of the citizens:

accountants were spawning 

extra eyes, 

extra hands

and did away with sleep cycles,

bicycle messengers were growing

longer legs,

strippers

had tails

stretching out of their tailbones.

Autumn Leaf had a tail,

John had an extra thumb on each hand.

They met and fell in love at a doctor’s office in midtown.

John had a thing for her tail:  

the fucking was epic.

Autumn Leaf’s parents

allowed the two

a house on a plot of land,

the mutations hadn’t started up north,

but

away from the city

all their time piled up on one another,

their love distorted.

One day 

after another dismal effort to be intimate,

John sat at his desk

wearing a green v-neck T-shirt 

and white boxers

with watermelons printed on them

eating an apple,

looking over some old work papers,

Autumn Leaf walked up to John’s desk,

her tail twitching,

whipping back and forth,

she looked at John

and told him

she didn’t love him anymore,

the length of his tongue

flapped out of his mouth,

bits of apple

falling onto his desk,

his face turned bright red,

his eyes bulged –

he watched with his left eye

as the right eye 

shot out of his head 

into a corner,

the top of his skull

cracked open,

the explosion 

splattering the

robin’s egg-blue walls of the room

with pieces of his hot brain.

19 September 2011

The Stabbing Game

They switched the time of day

but every day for one year,

Monday through Friday

we had seventh grade science 

with Mr. Stern,

after school,

Neil Brown and I

would tear over to Friendly’s or

Burger King

in his mom’s Camaro

and then,

hopped up on burgers and milkshakes

we’d fly

a brakeless Schwinn

down the hill in his driveway

over a jump made from an old plank and a few cinder blocks

and we’d hover over 

the green downward slope of his back yard,

mid-air,

spinning the handlebars as many times as we could,

posing on the bike,

pre-Superman,

making 

deliciously uncertain landings,

we had other classes together

during the day

but 

throughout C-period

science class

we sat next to each other

as lab partners

and, when the room got quiet for a moment,

one of us would stab the other guy

as hard as we could

and, if you kept quiet when you got jabbed in the leg,

you got to stab the other guy,

we went for the thigh

since the muscles there

seemed invincible

and there was never much blood,

it hurt but, 

strangely, it was a matter of suppressing laughter

at this stupid secret game

more than holding back shouts of pain,

we started with pencils

but we got a little scared 

after chunks of lead

broke off in our thighs

so we switched over

to metal compasses,

using the stainless steel points instead – 

we figured the punctures would be cleaner – 

we never ratted each other out 

and, maybe because he was smaller than us

or maybe because we did the work,

Mr. Stern seemed

unaware 

of the stabbing game.

29 November 2011

Encyclopedia Brittanica

I met him

when I was six

going on seven,

he was the teacher

in the Sunday School my grandparents ran

at the local church,

his parents owned the house next door

to my grandparents’,

I met him a second time

five years later

in the autumn of nineteen seventy-nine,

deeply medicated

in a slow coma, 

his lungs propped,

hoses and wires hanging 

from all of him

my grandfather moved downstairs 

to the guest room

in the house on Leslie Lane

solemn tanks of oxygen 

standing watch 

in the corner,

my mormor was out -

at seventy-two

she was still 

actively doing,

teaching

aerobics,

hat-making,

tutoring chemistry students,

doing the make-up 

for the town-players -

the Sunday School teacher came over

and started

talking about going to a seminary

so he could enter the clergy,

while we were

making tacos,

he started talking 

girls, girls, girls

on the beach,

at college,

in the movies,

when I showed him my grandfather’s 

stash of Playboy magazines

he reached down my pants,

the smell of ground corn in his mouth

choked me

when he leaned in,

“do you like that?” 

stepping back

from this gross betrayal

I took the encyclopedia from the shelf

in both hands

and swung it like a baseball bat,

he sat up

like a monster in a horror movie

his nose made a little crunch

when he reached up to his face and said, 

“…hey.  That hurt.”

I hit him harder 

when I swung the encyclopedia 

the second time,

following through

all the way,

more like a golf swing

so he wouldn’t get up,

this time

his whole face

was soft and easy,

greasing the face of the book with wet blood.

7 February 2012

Five Punches 

Don’t

eat

my 

fucking

drugs.

28 February 2012

Majesty

Waiting on the jay, the em

or the zee

standing on the platform

on top

of the bee cue ee,

either side of the highway

two or three trees

tickle the bricks on 

the nearest buildings

the way

I’d scratch your knees,

a sidetrack 

from the anxious press

or lack 

of an odd or even number less

or greater 

into this passing stay,

the rushhh

rushhh,

rushhh

of the rainy highway.

18 April 2012

Note to a Friend

I have seen

your wife

naked

many times.

11 May 2012

Height Uptight

Around

six feet

after

a corrective 

tissue massage

or

the needles and naps

of acu

puncture,

closer

to five

nine

when I’m really

pissed off.

24 May 2012

Work

I had a girl,

she didn’t like

to work,

she spent her days

in bars

admiring strippers

and 

porn stars,

at night

when I got home

I’d walk into

our apartment

wearing a suit and tie

and,

if she was there,

and 

if she wasn’t 

too drunk

I’d let her

show me

what she learned.

22 June 2012

Note to an Artist

In

only

ten years

you 

bloomed

from 

a

pussy

huckstering

your

identity

into

a very large and 

tidy cunt.

Sappho                                                        

i: In Egypt  

Mummified crocodiles—

                                   her shredded

          songs curved with the dry

                                               sticks of their tongues.

                                  Strip by torn

strip, unknowing

                                            servants applied them

           to the mummy’s solemn  

ribs, & what ancient                                                                                                      

                                  paste

                                                 could have saved them

                   from sifting to trays

of shriveled olives

                                         & pomegranate

ii. Ellipsis

                             Her songs restored, thus:  

                                                                  unraveled to vacancies,

 whole sections traded for

                                 an arid hush, slender omissions

                       abrupting into strains 

               of a nervous lover—my tongue

                                     breaks up & a delicate fire

                            runs through my flesh— 

                                                                                                    her body ravished 

                                                   by a need so deep

                   only this forged 

                                                                    rhythm could keep her

                                            from breaking down,

                                 from seeing that the fires

                                                                  which rage inside us are a kind

                  rehearsal for death.

                                          & how to edge closer 

                                                         to that mystery than such 

                 silence

iii. In Lesbos

                Her town market 

              preserved,

                                                                           its teeming 

inventory: 

                                                        oyster, 

                                               wine flask, figs

& golden bracelets  

                           the punctured intervals erasing

                                                            half her city

                              so the streets are lent a new, 

                                                                                      imposed syncopation:

                                                     anklebone cups 

                honey

                                                              chickpeas 

                                                                        each piece 

                 parceled & perfect, 

                             as if it were the first time 

                                                                                               sounds were used

                                                           to signify the world: 

                crocodile, 

                                            pomegranate,

                        the words curving, still wet 

                                                             on my tongue. 

The Chase                                                          

I hate that the word

I spilled in anger is still

traveling away from us

into space, particles

striking each other

in a commute unending,

a mini comet

with my fury as that tiny

pinprick of fire out front.

When my body’s gone,

I’ll still be the record

of all the words I say—

that slow, irregular

Morse code rippling out

to the stars. But some day

millennia from now,

some unfathomable

life form may catch,

in their alien equivalent

of an ear, my future

long since past—how,

with my next words,

I hunted down that ridiculous

quarrel, how I trailed it,

shadowed it past pulsars                                                       

& through asteroid belts,

far past our galaxy’s

milkiest rim. I hope,

whoever might overhear this,

that they’re as patient

as you, my sweets,

that they don’t turn away

before they hear how I sent   

the smallest emissary

of a kiss stowed in a capsule

of whispered syllables

to hazard those hurling

fires uncharted,                                              

that unnamable dust.

Witch Doctor                    

She may not got

much teeth, but

if she likes you

she’ll make

your skinniest hen

lay a double-yolked

egg. I knocked

on her door,

still learning to shed

all my muscles

had acquired: 

the rigidity of curb,

my step aligned

to the obedience

of crosswalk & yield.

She mixed herself

a bowl of yolk

& ashes—the sticky

pulp of birth

& departure—slicked

her hands with it,

& darkened her body

with a second skin,

exhaling incantations, 

slipping in & out

of two languages

like a high heel

& a clog. A breeze

lifted from the lake,

& as she washed,

& tempera dissolved

to the water basin’s

wood, she sang

her dream:

the snake’s

scaled rainbow

coiling the grass

as it tunneled

out of itself,

the clouded membrane

finally torn

from its eyes.

At The Viewing Window

(The National Theatre of Scotland, 2012)

It has been four years since we watched Cumming

….ehr…. Dionysus hoisted upside down

from stage overhead; dangling in ankle cuffs

and his fiery gold lame kilt, no underwear.

Then we caught the nightclub act he toured

up at Feinstein's.

                               "When shall we three meet again… ?"

"A drum, a drum!" Tonight, "Macbeth" is circling

in a bound about Dionysus's stage.

A descending stairway, two beds, a tub for bathing,

a sink, a table, a chair: an inescapable cell.

The clinical observation window on the upstage

wall dimensionally matches the proscenium.

There is another small window that allows

others viewing from the other side of the door.

A mirror over the sink. Several air vents.

Three video screens are mounted across

the top of the proscenium arch. This psych ward

is of that cool clinical green. Antiseptic, flickering;

grungy tile from mop wear. The descant

is perhaps Scottish stones.

                   The conceit is narrow,

generous. With much artfully collapsed, the play's

contour remains intact. A man caught

in loops of immediacy and guilt. Damage,

self-torment, and lyrical madness make

their horrific, majestic revelation: "The patient

must minister to himself."

                             Shakespeare, Browning,

Yeats, Falkner, Cumming, dolls, man.

 → 

Hard to write about Cumming as Macbeth;

him wrestling with naked guilt in one

of the ward beds while another man appears

 with him only in the green grainy video

screens (the blinking three sisters?), loiters

at Macbeth's bare feet extending toward him.

How later in the production, in another of the beds,

Cumming almost comically makes love to himself

as both wife and husband. Flickers in a tub

as in a murderous bed. "Desire is endless

and unappeasable and is never far from Despair."*               

After The Ball

Many––familiar with folk songs

and popular music––titter with anticipation.

(I don't think anyone is expecting anything like

the 1913 scandal of "The Rite of Spring."

Though there was some dust-up

with the Metropolitan wanting

the opera in English.) The BAM seats

at twenty-five dollars apiece

were scarfed up and enthusiasts

have been waiting. I, for one,

am tired of writing elegies.

         Wainwright gets criticized, routinely,

 for his exhibitionisms: a foppish suit,

 a dashing toreador hat, a rhinestone

 pin. But when it comes to song,

 he singswithout the slightest arrogance.

         I've read the reviews in other countries:

 "…baffling … Prima Donna  is monotonous."

"Love is not a victory march. It's

a cold—and it's a broken--Hallelujah."

"The one that loves me truly…

is probably down at the stables….

gently polishing my cabriolet."

It's Paris, Bastille Day, 1970.

Régine is facing a new resolve.

The devoted, driving butler

is a foppish Baritone; the enticing

journalist, a tenor. The maid

is a resilient, perky soprano.

"Who is this woman?"

Régine to the journalist, upon him

serendipitously revealing his Japanese

girlfriend (Suzuki to Pinkerton?).

That the evening fireworks

are fleeting is part of their beauty.

To me, the opera seems more liturgical

than orgasmic. The public has already/

will or will not clamour.

From her window, Régine,

having just taken the fireworks in her gaze—

we have just watched them explode

en scene across her mansion's façade––

confronts the holy dark. She considers

leaping from her balcony; but chooses,

instead, to everyone's delight,

to deliver a "Wainwright" song.

Indentity Redux

(Paved Paradise, John Kelly, 2009)

The first television program put

into reruns was "The Lone Ranger."

-- Snapple bottle cap

A frame. Two keyboards, a bass,

a dulcimer, and five guitars

set the stage for "Dagmar Onassis."

Kiss. Kiss. What? does

it matter that the roses upstage

on the grand piano are red?

If you have have been asked

to wear the dream,

what difference does it matter

if the dress is white or blue

and if the shoes shine red? We park

the day's carousel

and heed whatever

falls out and captivates.

With ghosts––Damia? Hutch?

Jacques Brel? Judy

Garland—shimmering

somewhere nearby—the evening

nears its end: John Kelly's guitars

and Joni Mitchell's plaintive

melodies about longing, sex,

our Frankenstein technologies,

Science's tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision.

The wingless moon floats

beyond the encapsulating

spotlight, and each one

in the theater must find

each's own way home.

* Allen Wheelis         

Detroit, Love, Mine

Rereading Kafka’s letters to Felice

in a bookstore of this city far

from home as clouds in a low sky

out the window decide to be light or dark,

I follow his pushing, pulling, for

and against her, until he’s paralyzed and it ends.

My love for Mary starts to seep

from my bones, down their grainy

hard surfaces, drips through cracks,

from outcroppings, into caves

black with no source of inner light

until it pools and, glistening, catches me

by surprise.

November Landing

The earth was made beautiful

and useful.

Now November drags red purples,

orange yellows out of branches

over flat Michigan.

They’re working hard

to be radiant beside the airport as I land,

to send their message from the earth

to the sky.

It’s written into the blacktop to expose

these colors by total contrast

between its paved darkness and the tactile

eruption of landscape,

between my destination and me,

still free from the ground.

Soon, I’ll be among the runways, then

will leave them for long avenues that ease

my way to sprawl.

River Bar

By Jefferson’s broken pavement,

bald lots and towers of dark glass,

tankers crowd the river as if it were a highway.

In the River Bar, a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl

who works nights is beautiful.

Has anyone told her?

Does anyone know?

Oh, Detroit!

Beauty is bred by a leisure

you do not have.

Made in Firenze

Jeff Wright, "Curtain Call."  Collage, 2012.

Thump-bellied lightning straddler, I think

Tethered to the recent lateness

A place to visit outside the screech jolt

Concealed in the mirror’s munching maw

What men die for and women fog harp

Apollo lugging a faded penumbra

Ready for anything, anytime, anywhere

Pallas Athena taking off her clunky armor

Leaving it all behind one second at a time

Flaking them off like pearl grist

Droop nests in your heart, sagging

Anxious to torch the language 

Your scorching touch, a lifeline

Foam-bathed in the apologies for nothing

Made in Cheyenne

In a sense, innocence itself is a pure sin

The jester making a cameo on The Jetsons

And we gag voluntarily on the manifesto 

Yanked from the crinkled cocoon

THE POEM a bum rap giving us the bum’s rush

Bumblebees buzzing the butterfly bush

OH LOVE OF LOVES

I woke in the green zone dying to live

Emily Brontë in black bombazine pump-crocked

Her Bambi gloves totally banjo-proof

Seaweed on the dashboard, the needle spinning 

The snow belled now, drifts stagger-riven

Jiggle-tumbling and frag-ripped at dawn

Aurora autographs the wind’s willowed wand

Made in Tinsletown

You will know it by its cross bill and wing bars

Alternating bouts of flapping with gliding

Always seems like forever before hand

Days of wine and rosy fingered fireworks

No more, Aurora, to find a free signifier

No more to the tower come, trespasser

I woke lashed to the spoke and gagging

Diddling Emily Brontë’s fuckstiff titty nubs

Ruled by convention’s readout (redoubt)

Unmoored by Hinge Theory at KGB’s on East 4th

Cables of impulse tribute so inclined entwine

Season of the clutch hitter vs. the pinch hitter 

It’s always the external stomp duet inside

Naked and invisible on the road to La Mama Etc

Made in Olympia

Blue trucks of temporary immortality 

Your eyes shammy sky’s palimpsests

Guests etched into the meat locker

The Have-Nots have not been invited

Says the poet, “Language is a joke” *

Waitress of giant, starving vagrants

Thief of sighs on the upper bridge

Cigarette cherries punk-branding night

Born in the supertramp white nova

My black crown’s orbit, decaying slips

Pledged to undertaking wang speed

The urban fury turbine undiminished 

Ink cutouts cradle the cloud scuttle

Vulcan’s nightcap volt arc webbed 

*Andy Clausen

Made in Burma

Sick and wasted, purling at the gates

Every day a tidal wave washing over

Swamp-dashed in the cramp factory

Where loss gnaws on the news of never

NO IDLING

Snowbound and hounded by memory

Surrounded by repositories of absence

I dozed in the wheeze-rattled dollhouse

Bones clinkered and hurtle-blown 

Emily Brontë refusing to stay down

Morpheus showing us how to be human

As Icarus claws the wind’s mask

You mewl, white chalk on asphalt

It doesn’t matter anymore who started it

Made in Naples

Meet me at Café Anacreon, calm flicker-besieged

O bounty hunters of lockstep salvation

My eyes engulfed in infinite glue, I’ll look

For you, Emily, where flags rout the wind

Where missionaries meet Venus from Eryx

Born in the squelch puddle drain, I’ll seek you out

My court date, jack-rigged

FINAL BETS

Black is the color of my true love’s crossbow

Venus asking for an ice pick in the Green Room

Cupid’s mother, asking for a shaft

I watched her take a bow at the slam tonight

One more time, she hit on her true mark

And let fly an arrow to my still-beating heart

Made in Nome

Kickin’ it off with The Dead Weather

“Hey, you from the heavens”

The artist needs to white out a blizzard

Dear Emily Brontë drizzled with jizz 

Zeus set you up for a fall too, Paris

Moving down the catwalk like a simoom

In slow mo — able to enfranchise the masses

Cast in the role of a moral objective 

Slaving away on my virtual tombstone

Outside the “vitrine of therapeutic mystery”

River of fevergrief, take me all the way

“Strange Times” from The Black Keys

Out of my gourd, I played myself por toi

For you, even the sky turns blue

Made in Babylon

Meaningless love floods the space between us

UNSTOPPABLE AND UNENDING

Baffled by the dream’s harness chafe, I woke

Emily Brontë, spit-sucked and ooze-spasmed

Boondoggled by the kerfuffle mongers

Overdrawn at the 9-Lives Branch

Every collar a burden of stiff-bundled moans

Failing to volunteer for settling

You kept antagonizing the flicker wrench

You were easy as jailbait

Your bones, gurgling, giddy geysers of blood

WANTON — DEAD OR ALIVE

It was the same when Phaedra dropped by

You’ll find everything to your satisfaction

Made in Jungleland

How can you dilly-dally while daffodils aspire?

Elysian night owls talon-lifting the cerulean tent

Pan asked me to be here stranded in Forever’s corner

Mugwumps bogarting the joint, fie and shame!

Emma Goldman, lead us over the ramparts

Don’t want to be in a revolution where I can’t dance

My heart infected by doped lightning 

Wild skanky panky, skip-handled and groove-tongued

Hanging in there, pointing out Emily Brontë to guests

I wake in the Café Telemachus   FINAL OFFER

Eileen Myles playing an A7 on my guitar

Carrying on about the next stop is Jungleland

This House of Cards is made of wind

These words hiss like missiles flying in your direction

 Made in Pago Pago

Drinking horsetail tea we ask for your pledge

Dreaming grandpaw’s doodle-riddled invoices

From the Glitter and Doom Tour, 90.7 WFUV

All agog at the vast martini swell on Ganymede

You and your series of brilliant lost mazurkas

Unbatten your hatch and loosen your snood

Ghost of red shifts rails on the veranda again

Daedalus and Ariadne dancing in the labyrinth

One leg made of huckleberry wing surges

And all my efforts to fly are fodder for a farrago

As thermal increases forecast new diseases

Buntings and honeycreepers nest in my chest

Yet there’s no place to hide from inner yearning 

My motor runs off the fumes of egging hecklers