Indian Summer

Indian Summer 8/31

                And I drive

Pass the prison where they are building an annex where they have an electric chair and where the lights would dim when they used that chair

The air is perfectly transparent we are light as a feather and the clouds are pure and the sky is severe and the mountains burn green

                And I drive

To the graveyard in Zion where my grandmother is buried and I do not remember where her stone is but I manage to find it immediately

As heavy as the weather if it was raining stones and I'm not sure what I feel as I brush the dead grass form the edges of the tomb stone

That word tomb from Middle English tombe from Anglo-French tumbe from Late Latin tumba which is a sepulchral mound

In Latin tumēre means swollen

As in the mound of fresh earth the faces sitting around the hole at the funeral the earth on this post hurricane August day

First used in the 13th century

                And I drive

To the wall of names in another graveyard

I stumble across the marker of my grandfather and cannot find my mother's mother and I feel like a terrible person because I do not feel anything looking at these markers

I feel more staring into the trees and hearing the cicadas

                And I drive

The air is crisp and cool and the apples will be coming in soon that pop as your teeth hit the flesh and that sweet first taste

It hits and the flesh is pearl and water and the clarity is obscene I do not have that sort of clarity

Break the clouds against the mountain and they pile before spilling down the next slope into the valley

As I pass the new buildings and the old abandoned ones I think that I cannot possibly understand this enough to feel anything worth feeling

The stone was rough and cool and covered with fake flowers and dried grass clippings and I said out loud

I wanted more for you and I was not sure who I was talking to

                And I drive

Quaquaversal

Quaquaversal 8/30

1.
In the black soup of space
the viscous swirling soup with the milk strands
threading and braiding

The pin pricks of light
popping through the curtain
shining shafts of heat to the core of the universe

2.
A small place
opens its eye
and radiates
hot waves

3.
And

the edges peel from their stays
a flower withering closed at night
paper in a fire a microwave

everything pulls in
every finger recoiling from the flame

4.
All light is lost

Every face turns together

And stares into the abyss

Hellacious

Hellacious 8/29

The light lights us like interrogation rooms
Faces all shadows and blazing spills of light
We are playing card games and the world is undoing itself
The storm is igniting the atmosphere
Is tearing apart the souls of the stars
Pouring down every glowing drop like a firefly
Mating in the August haze

Trees bend like priests
And whip themselves

Hit me
            Hit me
                        Hit me
Bust

Cockapoo

Cockapoo 8/28

Like tequila and orange rum
two things mixing that should not

Syllabub

Syllabub 8/27

The stomach churns
                        is a broken wheel
spokes loosing in their joints

place the bowl under the cow, and milk it full

The cream will curdle
                        rise
and the turn to foam

This is the beginning
the end is a flush
of red of brown of bile

Pancake

Pancake 8/26

Big unblinking sun eye sizzling in a skillet

The smell of breakfast of butter and toast and bacon

The sound of birds

Morning light is direct sharp is crystal clear

Is crinkling gingham table clothes and paper plates

Now the sound of cicadas

Which is an afternoon sound

When the light is mumbling and drunk and heavy

It is piss orange

Overripe then rotting into the purple of evening

Marchpane

Marchpane 8/25

Marzipan is the German word for marchpane. Marchpane is the old English word for marzipan. The German word won the battle of lexicon. This is an Elizabethan recipe for it :

Take two Pounds of Jordan Almonds blanch them beat them in a mortar with rosewater
Take one Pound and half of sugar finely sifted and knead the paste with it
Then leave it to rest for one hour in a shady place in a quiet place

Then roll it as thin as you would for a tart
Use a medium-sized china plate with a smooth edge to cut it in a perfect circle
Then set an edge about it and pinch it into a seam

Then layer a pan with crumbled wafers and the marchpane and bake it a little
It will set but remain soft and smooth to the touch
Then ice it with rosewater and sugar and the beaten white of an egg

Place it into the oven until the ice rises white and high
Allow it to cool a moment to set gently
Use beaten egg white to lay golf leaf with the wing feather from a swan

The first time I had marzipan was at a birthday party in England when I was 9 or 10. The village we lived in was very small and the people across the street invited my sister and I over. We had all just had chicken pox and it was fall and had just been Halloween which the English kids in our neighborhood celebrated because why not? I remember the little sculpted animals out of the paste. I remember the soft marshmallow texture and almost non-existent taste. I remember the mother talking to another woman about a made for TV movie about a kidnapping and how she had watched it. The movie was called 'I Know My First Name Is Steven'. I interrupted to tell them I had seen it and they were horrified my mom let me watch it. I remember their faces and the sideways look they gave each other. I hated them for it.

Apple Pie

Apple Pie 8/24

1.
The candle has a fake apple scent and odd red color
It sits near the stove giving off cinnamon and warm
Sickly sweet and trying to be like mom used to make
Falling wide and short of the goal

2.
The lattice of the top
is sparkled with salt
and a trace of caramel
it opens with steam
like an egg or a present

3.
In the back of the green and white house
that my mother's parents have always lived in
as far as I remember
there were apple trees

They filled with small hard green fruit
that was lumpy and strange looking
that seemed inedible that were
just waiting to poison a child

4.
Always thought the red Runts were apples but they are apparently cherries

5.
I slice the apple slowly
lay it out on the blue plate
and fill the small bowl
with honey

The plate will sit on the counter
and the people will take the slices
and the year will restart
will burn off the old

6.
The cider tastes like the clear water feels
it is cold and clear and fresh
everything you think it will be

7.
These little fists
that look like rosehips

Bang against the windows
of the sky

And slowly weigh
every branch down

Pavlova

Pavlova 8/23

Ballerina are you a dessert ?

A tutu shaped trifle - rainless cloud

Taffeta darling

The Dying Swan
On a table
To be cut into

Ballerina are you a meal for the hungry ?

On your toes - dance for us

Darling taffeta light and airy

On one knee wings trembling
Breaking light on horizon
The edge of the stage

The end of the world
Glowing embers of the sun

æstivation

This is poem #751

æstivation 7/22

The sound of cicadas will hum the days and nights
with the soft breeze of evening across the face

And every day will echo the next

Here some mountain air will warm then cool and the
leaves will yellow but not before they green and thick

A silence will come after a hawk cries out

And each day to the lake and then with the toes
in the ice blue water and the fish lips kissing them

A restive sir a calming of the back from spasm

Like Montaigne you will spa and break the stones
of your life into smaller passable silts

Then pray for no infection

Crimp

Crimp 8/21

Like the man at the factory
forcing the sheet of metal

The girl in the mirror
with the pink lip gloss
and the hair iron
bends world to will

And builds       something
from the result

Rusticle

Rusticle 8/20

The room is thick
Stale and dry
An attic of cardboard boxes

Perpetual sound of moth wings
Paper drills and their tunnels
Spider mites about the corners

Imagine a room full of ice cold water
Black as ink and that ghost light
In submarine documentaries

Our relationship is
A skipping reel of film
Is in danger of burn out

My emotions are the Titanic
You the iceberg
Or the water or the night or the hubris

I'm being histrionic
This bedroom is full of dust
Which is a mix of our skins

Our relationship in stasis
Skipping away
As we lay holding hands like mummies

Our history is a frozen petrified thing
Filling with sediment
An elongated mouth trapped in a howl

Ballyhooly

Ballyhooly 8/19

The storefront explodes

Car bomb

A timer set for X minutes

Plans of revolution

Broken system of inequality

Government

Breatharian

Breatharian 8/18

Diet Coke is liquid light
A Quarter-Pounder with Cheese has a 'base frequency'

Come and sit at the base of the Bodhi Tree allow the sun to nourish you
Just a moment of it and your eyes will close and a path will form

Let's not make light of the Buddha or the boy Bomjon
Though they may be light

There is plenty room in the universe for things unexplained
And the power of a cheeseburger and Buddha alike may be true

Take in the air of New York City and feel it rock around your lungs
It is diamond-hard and cracking like old paint

Feel the wind off the ocean hit you like a slap to the face
Breathe deeply and often and you can feel yourself sustain

Wiley Brooks believes he could survive without food
If only this world wasn't so corrupted that he needs the pollution

Of a McDonald's Happy Meal a Diet Coke a Slurpee and Twinkies
So that he is on par with the vibrations around him

And maybe that is the truth
And maybe the tree's leaves shake like that because it is laughing

Ribald

Ribald 8/17

Reaching out towards anyone passing who looks like they may have anything more then themselves

This is a ceaseless ship moving over the horizon some great ark of lost souls in unison in conjunction with the ebb of the sea

All along the towers of the world these lepers move along subway cars and public squares reaching out spindly fingers their tiny hands

The lurching of the sea of life will move them on before they become too unsightly will move all of us along before then it will

Scouch

Scouch 8/16

I thought I could get into the ivory tower through the back door

That I could be the social poet tweeting my words into the air

Creeping pass the turnstile at the entrance and running break neck for the white monolith where the writers circle endlessly and touch the places the famous men have touched

My feet ache and the hair on my arms is standing on end in the chill of the night coming off the river Lethe

It is all so maddening

Standing at the shore of this moat waiting for the bridge to lower

For that something to fill in the darkness and the light

I call out to the shadows I can see walking in their narrow halls in the tower of song and they continue to pace their rooms too busy to hear my one in a million voice I'm sure they have heard all of this before

I write short poems on paper and fold them into planes and let them float into the water

Let me say that I am prepared to do this until I am unable to hold the pen

And I don't care how cold it is

And those faces at the window never need to look my way for me to feel my entrance to the rooms beyond

I will build my own rooms on this side of the world

They will include the sound of air and the smell of grass and they will have no roof and the walls will be cardboard and paste I will open windows into them and doors and stars will circle them and the shadows will all vanish in the light I've created

Rowdy-dow

Rowdy-dow 8/15

Late at night the rain
against the leaves
soft foam sound

Amongst them the drum beats
far off and then the light of fire

When eyes are closed
and the cool air swirls
about your naked chest

There is the sense that this
eternal war will cease in our lifetimes

That the endless glow
of sword on breastbone
will ember and ash

That whatever horse we crawled out of could take us back in

Aerology

So they maybe found flowing water on Mars.

The little kid inside of me is all clenched fists and jumping up and down.

I want to go there.


Aerology 8/14

Mercury quickly

Venus and its crimson light
its love handles
and crushing tilting landscape

Picture Earth and its blueness
its whiteness and its swirling axis
the moon that may have been two moons

The life teeming on the surface
in the water and air
in the circling ring of satellites

Picture Mars
that soft red halo of troposphere
glowing against the darkness of space

There are the white ends of the planet
crystalline and blinking
the yellow of the sun

Jupiter large and marbled
collecting moons and scars
unblinking endless

Bathe in the gray of it
the soup of it
hear the crackle of the lightening

Picture Saturn tilting rings into Uranus
and its blue and green like oil and water

Neptune and its secret rings

Pluto Ceres Haumea Makemake Eris
at the outer edges and so much more besides

Picture them alone out there
marbles on the floor
shooting toward center

Early Doors

Early Doors 8/13

And this body has seen a few nights
pull up to the edges of its toes
cool them like the ocean piling on

There have been a few places softened
and quite a few hardened there are
so many white threads of scar tissue
around the heart still pumping blood

It used to be that if you came in
early that if you were the first
you could take your choice of the
front and centers down by the stage

The theater as they say was your world
which was your oyster and here were
the bits and bobs for the picking

This body is past the early doors
there is no one who can be first

Jobble

Jobble 8/12

...then you turn 3/4 of the way and the wind takes your hair a bit and it blocks out your eyes so only your mouth and nose are visible your arm is swinging out and your legs are quick over the patchy grasses I think you said something that got lost in the wind...

Numpty

Numpty 8/11

Among the broken things lining the stair
I find the head of a king a hole clean through

And the sight of a jagged light casting about me
brings me to tears for whatever it is we have lost

I am a stupid man casting lines hoping some ship
will pull the continents together again

Take this broken king and peer inside
there is a garden there with a path and primroses

Each one blooming in a different color
shading the memory of every garden ever seen

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown

His smile was sideways and unruly
it only serves to weaken your reserve

The flower beds are full of broken dishes
unclean and rusty next to marigolds

Hedgehogs curl under leaves and break into lines
they follow-the-leader and do a Shakespeare rag

Here if you look at the sky through the cracked headed king
you can see the aura of the sun and the flares

You can see into the black hole at the center of it all
and the mirror beyond is just as cracked

And the gate swings outwards only and the man cannot enter
but no one can leave unless the man moves aside

I would call that fate or destiny or entrapment
but in these walls lies all broken things one needs

Doosra

Doosra 8/10

Wood hitting wood falling to ground and clicking in running and going and faking it right when it looks left the other one crashing and running and all that...

Job

Job 8/9

Sharp against metal
the woodpecker is clearly confused
is waking the deathwatches from
their dark hollow ladder

Lying in bed the comforter is light
it is July and the trees shake themselves
the dog is chasing something small
and chipmunk-like into some brush

The river flooded its banks
it took the sand moved it there
and buried the new flowers
up to their stamens

The steady rhythm of the tapping
of beak on abandoned rungs
is a clock winding up
is the hiccup before fresh breath

Maggotorium

Maggotorium 8/8

The smell of wet wood
is rich - cinnamon - brown and red

That green smell of leaves
grass - that yellow smell of rot

Combining

And there is that white smell
underneath - that clean smell

Celery and paper
the sound of crickets - marbles

Rolling over each other - pebbles
in a river - cold and clear

Cold and clear

Eco

Eco 8/7

The silver side of the eye
flits in the sun
popping in and out of the iris
a beak
                        a crow for your life

That it lands in the field
that glows amber in the sunlight
right before you shut your eyes
is a for granted
                        is an obviously

What does it eat there
and the silver side of the eye
turns burnished bronze
it gilds under pressure
                        and it blackens with age

Marrowsky

Marrowsky 8/6

It is roaring with pain

A high White Horse souse
broke the news this horning
that the Mouse majority leader
was a shining wit

Meanwhile...

The weight of rages will press
hard upon employers
as the economy maintains its row slovenly

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

The Kinquering Congs Mary Hinge Mary Hinge

Galactico

Galactico 8/5

I need a new starter in my life

Who can do the heavy lifting
in my head and arms and legs

Make this mess clean itself

Kick as many goals as can be kicked
touch the roof of the net darling

Touch all of the net

Wahoo

Wahoo 8/4

That feeling when you jerk awake
when you've been falling

Limerence

Limerence 8/3

That smell as you walk by
it fills the air with a softness
sweet and blanking out color
around you and everything

Frenemy

Frenemy 8/2

Broken person
you slant eyes
count days

West Ridinger

West Ridinger (Thrithjungar) 8/1

1.
Each morning
the line of sky lightens
along the same arc
it pinks in the east
like the crowning head
of a child

2.
But it mainly just stops being dark
The stars fade into the blue and cloud cover
And there is always cloud cover
Everything reflects green and light and gay
Birds and all that birds and all
It is neither birth nor death and nothing crowns

3.
The trees are ink black
right before dawn

Their leaves silent silhouettes
against the glowing sky

Then it all brightens
and color ruins everything