Poem-A-Day #287 : Some Days

Some Days

Clouds are striating
they form a road into the distance - telescoping
there is a forgotten city beyond the horizon
where everything is perfect

Some days I just don't know

The letters lay themselves across the tracks
they tie themselves down
and they wait for the train to come

This isn't about poetry - that is tired
this is about the break along the horizon
that birds peel themselves out of - a cartwheel of fire
contained in the barrel of the sky

Let's plant things there
see if the line melts if perspective will allow
the flowers to look like skyscrapers

Words cannot stand today

Or any day really

Language tries to reach - to unfathom
it calls to us from a distance unmanageable

The lines of clouds race themselves
like soap down a drain

Poem-A-Day #248 : Mute

Mute

Angela Davis is talking about Palestine - again - still - forever
she is the dynamo at the end of the universe
spinning wildly free of man - and she is talking about Palestine

That word - Palestine - it renders us incapable
it drops into the already formed puddle and only renders itself mute
part of the unknowable whole - but we clap and nod in agreement with it

It is Tibet - Putin - hunger in Africa - it is the inescapable
destruction of cancer - it mutates with the passage of time
it is hard not to hear all human voices as records helplessly in groove

History is nothing if not unclean - at best
perhaps the broken turntable is a metaphor - the stupid cycle is stupid
the needle dull - the speakers are geese demanding your sandwich

The water in the pool of Palestine is unclear - still - reflections numerous
there are endless ampersands - their barbs catch in the back of the throat
they render everything as ellipses

Poem-A-Day #100 : Things - I Argue

Things - I Argue

     Someone asked me to describe my writing - I paused for millennia - my tongue a hunk of coarse liver in the canyon of my head -

               Eyes are the color of deep water - the Sonic Youth cover of Superstar is on - there is a discussion happening about how art has two definitions - one where it is a commodity and one where it's a dark room with a bathtub full of water and candles and the smell of piñon -

Ultimately personal - don't you remember - the smell of being young and in love with creation - should I quote heavily from the song - baby baby baby oh baby until you feel the same way I do -

     Hardly commercial - not an object you would want above your bed -

               There is the soft glow of something upon a pedestal - the conversation moves to Jeff Koons - his art is fundamentally tied to it being a commodity and what does that say about his process - we are not able to tone that specific bell - being neither known nor interested in balloon dogs ourselves -

How would you describe the sky - a better question - what does walking in the woods feel like - who is water -

     Is Superstar about obsession or about the power of art to control others - or is it a love song - or a stalking song - is it minor that it's all of these things -

               I argue for hours that Post-Modernism is cold an unfeeling - that it only engages with terror and depression as modes of existence -

It's just the radio -