Poem-A-Day #365 : One Year

One Year

Let the year — crack like an egg
the yew of it drying out your mouth

                    Spit
                    if you can

Amber
if you can

                    — There
is a bird inside you it is
flapping the cage apart

Poem-A-Day #364 : Weird Sisters

Weird Sisters

I dreamt about The Golden Girls singing
the abused child they had taken in was soothed to rest
and I awoke -

In some television Miami a pastel universe
expands quickly from Blanche's ranch house
not a bang an immense zoom in

Here is the universe
and now a kitchen table where the fates of everyone
are knitted and decided over a very large cake

Dorothy holding the umbilicus knowing when to shear
Blanche measuring out the lengths of twine
Rose picking the thread

Sophia standing watch
deciding which skeins to toss into which basket
all the while singing Bobby Darin

Poem-A-Day #363 : 36

36

6 years pass
& you seem to remember the cake
from the party

There were faces then
instead of paper bags thinking themselves
into humanity

At the corner of bakery
& Waldorf School was the same feeling
you always have about relationships

What the fuck

& then what the fucking fuck

The impulse to speed away
is so strong that the blur lines come in packs of 100
for $.99 at Party City

They run the gamut from black
to neon anime hair
& even then they all seem too realistic

Looming near the Barclay's Center
the Nets seem to want to play water polo instead
of basketball

And the apartment you sat in
for 7 years melts
into a pool of metallic Studebaker gold

Here is a door frame
it goes to the roof
& manages to deposit you in Bed-Stuy

Don't look back
it wants you to feel fear it can blood let

Instead stare into the ocean & feel its boil

Poem-A-Day #362 : Hearts Have A Way

Hearts Have A Way

I beat forever my heart don't want to
what of this house in my throat

The sun beam broken on sea shine is the summer of things

Cephalopod dreams and champagne wishes
are sponges to the blood stains from the crime scene

Dune this but forget how to dune that

On the lighthouse downs the horses come rabbit
they antler and speak of the black mass with raspberries

At 3 o-clock exactly there will be apocalypse loons

I forever my beat don't want to heart
but hearts have a way they spleen themselves through

Poem-A-Day #361 : Recipe :

Recipe :

          broken hand
                    mill gris
               sound of ball bearings catching
     sleepwalking murderer

Mix thoroughly :

          until smooth
                     poster paint
               smell of egg
     pours like density

Bake at 350° :

          until a knife comes clean
                    golden like waves
               sizzle
     then

Poem-A-Day #360 : When I look up and try to speak the shifting world wakes me

When I look up and try to speak the shifting world wakes me

At the table - in a field
no
a parking lot - two tables
one crowded

I tessellate leaves
alone
as they discuss - climbing
Mt. Everest

At least one - a man
I wanted something of

Desperately -

The second - the one
about airports - I help
a woman
alone with a stroller

That I dream in fragments
and that they connect
across seasons -

Dreamt the first half
a year ago - the part
where
I run off with the man

He sings to me as we go

And at the airport - I am
detained - trapped
on the escalator
by a woman with a stroller

It is hard to know where
the table fits
in the narrative - or where
Everest aligns

I fix my car and drive from them
when was the car broken
hovers - a future question

Poem-A-Day #359 : List 2011

List 2011

The Submission
Absolute Monarchy
Conscience
Inside Scientology
Paradise Lost
Book of Secrets
Rules of Senility
The Swerve
Incognito
Something Happened
Into the Silent Land
Paradox Lost
Stone Arabia
The God Species
A Machine, A Ghost, and A Prayer
Persistence of the Color Line
The Grief of Others
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch
Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness
Einstein's Dreams
Medical Apartheid
River of Shadows
A Sideways Look at Time
A Natural History of the Piano
Do Justice to Someone
I may Be Wrong, But I Think You're Wonderful

Poem-A-Day #358 : Fire

Fire

bees
          in
                paper

Poem-A-Day #357 : Bathing every vein, etc.

Bathing every vein, etc.

In the horror movie the man
with burned skin uses the tendons
of the teen like puppet strings

We are meant to laugh
at least smile it's hard to say
it was the 80s

There is a moment of tightening
around the heart a beginning
of disease that will kill you

A metaphor in that and in puppets
muscle twitch and horror tropes
what beyond the shore calls it forth

Is the only question
here - a sort of answer:

you will be stolen in the night
the thief will be your dreams
you can die there can be reborn

Poem-A-Day #356 : Stuffed

Stuffed

i
The bear has a birthday hat on
is sitting calmly - pink chair - is
staring at the ceiling

ii
The eyes are cataract - chipped
glass - they are windows in
a church bombed in a war

iii
Pray at the pew of it - hard - unfeeling
the sort of colors streaming on your face
that make everything seem alive

iv
And the hat came from a night concert
the man who I have obsessed over
placing it on my head - no reason given

v
Pink like grapefruit
faded to bubblegum on your shoe
Grandmother's chair

vi
Addiction to history - ashes on skin
bear that traveled in boxes and bags
- it's too much honestly

vii
Let's pretend that we had kissed
that the chair had been reupholstered
that the fruit had been bruised

Poem-A-Day #355 : Acid

Acid

Glass

A steady fall

Sound of cue ball
breaking

Steady lights in the eye

Here comes the wave
of flesh

Pop of shoulder

Purple fingers
shaking truth

Poem-A-Day #354 : Ars

Ars

lingering
like a child in the labyrinth
trying not to get closer
to center

my mind
endlessly recycles itself
a loop - coming undone
at the ends

snake refusing to eat its tail
but caught still
in the woosh of it
the idea of the eating

here is a comment
about lights and obsession
one about Tesla
play the hits -

ok - the path is wide
is covered in dead leaves
underneath is -
something

Poem-A-Day #353 : Trigger

Trigger

from the Dutch trekken "to pull"
the rope is attached to your spine - your spine
fleshless taken exposed lost tail that it is
you are a dog on a chain you are
a dog sniffing the crotches
of every man in the place
from Latin catena it was always just a link
to be held closed soldered
silver shadowing the fence hides a monster - you
are the monster
here a needle thread floss make a wish
a bullet of yarn a trigger of hemp
beads of silk and bone the teeth of every dead soul
that burned across this earth

Poem-A-Day #352 : Weary As Water

Weary As Water

                                                                 The sound
                                                                                    the sky makes
                                         as clouds overtake the sun
                       makes me
                                         want to leave my body.

Be weary in this.

Allow the water to soak your fingers until you can no longer grip the mug of warm tea.

Cranberry sage. Then everything is colder, right
here the rook

moat yourself.
                        Scream into the paper bag.

                                                                     Let's pretend to be pangolins.
                                           Break our skin
                   plate the bone
                                           until we roll like cinnamon.

Let's be cream and just as weary.

Light,
          from star to starship.

Resist the impulse to build a city on rock and roll.

Fingers are less prune, more drum head, they hold things. Again they feel.

                                               Dandelion seeds
                                     must
                                              have a name beyond pinwheels.
                                                                                                  The sky is a seed bank
                                                                 endlessly emptying
                                                 the body.
                                The body.

Poem-A-Day #351 : Rorschach (after Jeanne Marie Beaumont)

Rorschach (after Jeanne Marie Beaumont)

I spill water on the old coffee table.
Too simple. Grains expose themselves like privates.

It feels like the kind of wood - HA -
one searches for when lost in the forest. Dry.

That one stain from the burrito - think
about culture spilling forth like foam. Go on.

The bones of a cripple
left to bleach in the winter sun - taking way too long.

Crutches left in a church hallway, no souls around,
desiring to grab one and hobble forth newly less.

Not my table. Whose? A woman's, dead and ringed
by the ivory of dogwood blossoms, spring's crown.

Her face, sounding. A flute? Sure.
I said privates because this shouldn't be seen this way.

Count the rings - Kim Novak in Vertigo -
the scent of pine will fill and fill and fill.

Next. It sat in her townhouse
filled with its early 90s neon and chrome and whiteness.

Oddly cool. Not particularly desired
but the face of those men she dated.

And if I say "tree"?
I'd say - life we cannot fathom.

Cabinet? Container.
Tell me again.

A map. A map of the universe
breaking and disintegrating.

Poem-A-Day #350 : The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Emperor Has No Clothes

1
The chair ruptures - extends
into the ceiling - meets the sky
it reaches with intentions to choke

2
The ass in the chair is absorbed

3
What does the gold of a crown
do in a blood stream - hot and mobbing
can it maintain points - hold its stones
against the tide of cells

4
The diamonds are from this hole
and this hole is dry and fucking

5
That the body was nude when absorbed
that the chair a sort of live tree
turning root in its chamber -

6
To the skies with everything

7
Place the amethyst in your palm
and pray to whatever god
that you remain clear-headed
in the face of this

Poem-A-Day #349 : Infinite Projections Into Space

Infinite Projections Into Space

I'm so tired of thinking about Zeno

...

Here          a space to occupy ourselves
droll and whatnot          a second space that fills halfway on will alone

Look - I said that we could be friends - and in doing so negated the chance

...

In the slipstream of the canoe
one lone fresh water salmon
pinks about          it doesn't roe here
nor does it          understand that it could
it just               becomes a thing
eating               at the muck on the bottom
of the river
thinking about sex and food nothing else

...

Let's not kid ourselves

we can tangle any time

...

The purple in the light bulb screams burn out          the rattle
a sure sign of darkness to come

In the instant of night - out in Los Alamos - there is a green flash
and it reminds us of the fires

But it's just the horizon eating itself         just the breath exhaled
by the horses pulling the chariot

...

The tortoise tho

...

In the video          the woman is tweezing a snail shell
the parts a broken cup and saucer          a clear kintsugi
upon the brown fragility of its surface          the detail
that the glue is only on the outside -

A naked snail - foot like - a weird sort of digit          sits
patiently

...

It all just spills outwards

The dam giving way to the winter melt          the sound of it - crunching
like a wafer - there is a need to hear this sound - concrete crumbling
edifice and economy          collapse

We watch Walking Dead and hope we'd not get wire to the head

But we all know we'd die episode 1

...

Poem-A-Day #348 : Knife In Water

Knife In Water

The darkness of thought - knife in water

imagine that kind of jump

                                          where body can
                                vanish in liquid
I crave that kind of
going

Imagine me knifing the water each time I say goodbye -

I re-read the ending of The Anthropology of Water
and do not remember that the final image
is of a dying cat -
                              The cat is looking out from very far back in its eyes now, from a huge room where everything is running slowly away

                                                        - and then -
                                                                             The soul of a cat is mortal.

                                                                                                                          - and then -
                                                                                                                                               It does its best.

Think about Anne Carson's imagined dead and real dead - and then add self to that

A hacking cough that results in a claw-footed tub in your toilet

the words
                                               tangle knot
                                       find purchase to foot on - there
is beauty in the glass knife piercing your rib cage

What is best? -

The dying distance themselves from the living - not
because they are afraid of infecting us with their death
but because they may want to turn back

paths become dangerous backwards

Poem-A-Day #347 : Ritual

Ritual

waking
the crease on your nose
becomes the sign of roots
in the pipes

a growth - twitches
there is a need to cleanse
the night from us
enter newness

shed the pillows and
down water over
shoulders over heads
pop the bubbles

in the dim
of shirts and pants and
you will seem less
but also more

Poem-A-Day #346 : I Look Terrible In Photos

Now is a good time to mention that I am about to hit the one year mark of this version of Poem-A-Day. I've been debating what I want from this thing and have found myself deciding to alter how these work.

So...the project will continue, but I'm going offline.

I will still post 2-3 poems a week on here, but the majority of the poems will live in a physical, handwritten form. This is to free up the project from the constraints of blogger and to give me a bit of breathing room to explore posting more essay-type things on this blog.

I may start posting more of them to Instagram or Twitter as a result. We will see.


I Look Terrible In Photos

In every photo of myself I am a tree ,  arms reaching out their wires attempting to dig a wall ,  being a tree in photographs results in a body that is constantly a seedling ,  it never fruits ,  always in flower ,  I remember the smallness of the earth and the press of roots but there is little calling from the sun ,  it is an orb in the sky that will not quit smiling ,  a cruel thing that ,  the camera an eye unblinking (  an image no one has thought of before  ) ,  a shield pitted with arrows ,  here are the results of the capturing ,  the soul is iced and held and in constant summer clothing ,  eyes will never catch the glint of the stars because the stars are forever behind the blueness of daylight ,  the sun has won here and the wooden feeling in the body has as well ,  in every damn photo I stand there with a hunch and the arms of a dead man ,  it laughs in its suit and tie ,  the blue of blood pops in the black and white of the moment ,  here everyone ,  an offering .