Stamping

Stamping 3/31

A saucer spinning on its rim, the sound of linoleum
freezing. The hum of moist skin on crystal wine flutes.

Hymn of remembering. Skyless voice in a box;
churchyard emptying of blackened clothes.

Handles marching up, down; the man's hand attached
to grips. Clear oil flowing over reflective surfaces.

Flower print paper peeling, grandmother's basement.
We're in this together...?

Rim edge on beige, echo of porcelain; the whisper
in your navel.

Intolerant

Intolerant 3/30

1040 Individual
         the wheels on the bus go
         the babies are singing again
         the woman has bells
         the wheels on the bus go

Attach through Other
         coffee coffee
         oven fire, broken palms
         Nina Simone is Sea Lion
         coffee coffee

2009 Wages, salaries, tips, etc.
         then go home?
         10000 dollars gets you what?
         6 am bus rides 10 hours
         then go home

Excursus

Excursus 3/29

Before
the moment was blind
and the city was a jellyfish
I told you I was floating
Your eyes were closed

What I never said
That I was sitting on the rocks
and you were drifting away
Never really looking at me

This is not confession

I hold hands to face and look between fingers
See hidden ghosts
In a box in some closet you turn to dust

You are dried ivy tendrils
God imaging himself into existence

Baduism

Awesome video by Erykah Badu.

Negotiate

Negotiate 3/28

God
imagined that he existed and
managed revelations, melting girders
and firework displays on fourth days in July
He watched as his hands came into being
A foot was shoed his trunk-legs thickened
and carried him into the forests of the world

God
imagined a river and
skipping stone over surface
melts the image his forming face
Tossed a boulder in broke it down to molecules
spreads it over land
He washed in the leaves

God
imagined a vessel to carry his tired feet home
He sits at the table looking
out the windows
debates selling the house
leaving every kid behind
Tossing it over the edge

Outremer

Outremer 3/27

Breath comes in huffs
Hands run quickly over stone
This turbulent circle withing a circle
Footsteps on cobblestones
Sideways glances
Puffs of air cloud windows
Armory of second thoughts
Stones with their messages on birds
The floating down of motes
Hands slice shafts of light
Violent motions in empty space
In an empty square in the outer sea
Large bodied and throwing against himself

Expunge

Over in the sidebar is a link to my store. Go get some books.


Expunge 3/26

And this is that quiet moment with hands poised above you
His hooded face with darting eyes is focused on your neck
An axe, or, maybe a guillotine, is glinting in the sunlight
The crowd has gotten so loud you can no longer hear them
Ocean of noise - then hush - breath sliding down rope

Sorry and Bilingual

I'll be honest. I got tired yesterday. So here is the poem that was all keyed up but never made it to screens near you.

Bilingual 3/25

...out the door. The voices in the hall...

...fell...

...like ivy (she's thinking all of this afterwards).
Hushed, as the flames began...

...were orange and licking, popping floor-
boards, fingers on edges of hinges screaming
paint blisters then peels then melts...

...slam slam slam...

...like t was all happening overhead,
a sudden war in the troposphere...

...folding in, then...

Glee

I'm not a huge fan of Glee, but this is pretty hilarious.

Poulter

Today's Dinosaur Comics is 100% funny.

Enjoy it, then come back here and read this :


Poulter 3/24

Aesacus falls
Endless sound of rubbing tongues
Quill tips press into pores
This dipping scrapes one long word over ages in sans serif

Aesacus falls
Fingernails are hollow things grasping rock faces
Ocean noise in ears that flatten
Lone drum tap

Aesacus falls
Rhythmically checklists form before dying
Horizontally the sea edge pulls back its lips
Spiked tongue clicking teeth

Aesacus falls
Nostrils absorb then reflect salts
V formations begin to fill the sudden evening sky
Before aiming themselves down -

Amazing Announcement of Awesome Proportions!!!

Below is a preview of my new book!

It is available NOW on Lulu.com and soon on Amazon.com for $7.

This book covers poems published on this blog from September - October 2009. They have been heavily re-edited so you don't feel cheated. Shipping is $3. If that is a deal breaker we aren't friends.

Dainty

Dainty (Louis Comfort Tiffany) 3/23

Lead thick drips from tangled green wisteria
purple flowing grape-like and reaching
Blossoms droop the sky and mask the clouds calmly

Through the canopy light is bruised orange
and eggplant beet-sprout bleeding brown
Falling magnolia cast a tangle of hair on the floor

Everything so crystal blue shifted
Sun-set over water and a final green flash
Sound of fire down Long Island of reeds fluting

Specious

Specious 3/22

Against bathroom stall door

Denim heat-sealing shaft

Glorious eye fingering wood between shit

Buttons bloom water sounds

One hair unleashes itself slowly
            against low-tilt it curls
            reflexively spring - a clock not ticking - bang
            bang hinges slapping screws
            ducking east village movie bathroom
            don't know each other but smells - he's
            watching us while he shits
            jerks off
                        straining -

Mounting

Mounting 3/21

Ever the optimistic ending - out with a new leaf
bursting through chaff - the peony finally
pulls free - going pink and all the while ants
on their merry way

Impermanence is what I forget - always - sand
mandala of a tulip - hoarfrost breaking over
everything making thousands of eyes in the dawn

New York is filled to the gills with dirt and shit
flowers too - it manages to hold together - some
meandering long-form Canto (cue the sweep of
violins crescendo coming hard)

This is where I talk about the beauty of insects
and mention that on the first warm day of the year
I see the first bee of the year - dead -
on the sidewalk outside my apartment

How's that for hope? - optimism? - take that
fertility! - it was a bumble - not even crushed
soft - breezy - shoulders all shined leather
like armor

I'm thinking about the end of winter - about the
coming cherry trees - I visited my favorites
the other day - weepers in Brooklyn (flowers!
get your hankies!)

I touched their knotty torsos - thought about sex
and smiled at the oak trees clinging to their dead
leaves - I missed the bluebells last year but
the magnolias - damn they screamed

Impermanence - sand - monks sifting sand - making
monuments to not lasting - I can think of no better
not lasting than cherry blossoms - small pink
on the long weeping branches falling like confetti

like perfected light

Cross-bun

Cross-bun 3/20

Round bread - you bare weight
Someone dropped cruciform on you
You picked it up - ever Samaritan
You carry endlessly forward
You melt holding it up

Gridlock

Gridlock 3/19

I'm trying to write like A. R. Ammons : an exercise in avoidance
His poems went book-length reenacted long life : I write
to avoid looking into graves to prepare for my longness

See here here right next to the quarry in Zion a grand
mother in the windy November of 2007 a hole surrounded
with Astroturf : can't we even bare fresh dirt? :
I want to plant daffodils snowdrops something that comes
up early

So that when I think of my grandmother I can think of my dead aunt
who was born in the spring

On the shelf in the living room her urn vanishes at Christmas
to 'not bother guests' : My aunt was dying
the whole year I lived there on a couch watching TV until the sun
came up : no one sits in her chair

These small spheres of people form city blocks in my head
I'm getting real sentimental letting myself get bleary-eyed : I walk
those blocks and try to look for signs of spring find buds
a few drops of rain a first bee though is dead on the sidewalk

Ascribe

This is as close as I will ever get to a "love" poem.


Ascribe 3/18

I put your name in my phone
by initials so it's faster
Then
I learn how to spell your last name
It seems more something

Hail

Hail 3/17

We ate frozen yogurt in March - you had
blueberry and I had plain with mochi
and chocolate chips

We ate in your kitchen - the cat rubbing
against my ankles - your lips were sweet
and tasted like summer

After - I stood outside trying to hail a cab
as it began to rain - I watched your lights
blink out

Leprechaun

Leprechaun 3/16

I fancy a frock coat with gold buttons
a devilish grin - ne're-do-well cane and shoes
I'll carry a sack of coin - pair of gloves
I fancy a night on the town - maybe
I'll jack the ripper someone in a corner?
May be I already have - I fancy something
dangerous coming over the horizon
A flash of light in an eye - be it crazed
or delightful

Mime

Mime 3/15

We lean - then we act out pulling
a truck uphill - we act the pulling of the truck
uphill - we hitch the truck to a tree
We mime driving the truck until the axle
pulls off - the tree is stronger then the truck
We lean - laugh solidly in a pretend sunset - we
go fishing later in the morning

First World

First World 3/14

We crawled by god we did our hands were bloodied

We crawled by nail up banks and became man we did by god we did

It never occurred to think about what was left

Deep wells of feeling about those places - recollections at night in fetal positions

Knotting in stomachs we recall the by god beginning

Pioneer

Pioneer 3/13

A triumphant man on a horse - Quixote with
bayonet on snow-capped K12

A Donner - a pilgrim in the wilderness

He watches for signs of water - food
for bears

The horse is all stoic flaring nostrils - sense
of pride and haunches

Neither realizes this city waits
for no man - or horse - to continue on its merry path

Demoniac

Demoniac 3/12

I cast a circle on the beach - rocks
close to my ribcage roll each other - gently but loud

My foot draws the line - I stand in space

I listen to the rage in the Pacific - stare into the rain
I'm looking for something to happen - looking

Metathesis

Fitting, this, on my birthday.


Metathesis 3/11

I wake up and think about writing long poems long
poems that will make anyone who reads them want to write longer
poems : Usually this is before I'm dressed and my balls are all
dangling from the heat of sheets and radiator steam in the radiator
After a good hot shower and a piss I will be ready to admit that that and
my own fear of long poems : The friction of verse against computer
screen the magnetics involved in it these days is frankly disturbing : I
mean look at this glowing box before you so full of
shining and secrets that I cannot begin to understand
how the letters get from finger to there anymore : One could argue that modern
writing is the most perfect form of the process the most blind and least
understandable the most like breath from muse to finger : That
could be made to be true I suppose : No one understands any process anymore
we could argue that this is the golden age of everything the last great age
here in my fingertips in this computer in yours : All this perfection
is tantalizing makes my mouth water to think it means no war just sex waking
up to perfect spring days year round : I wake up in the morning and think of this
not of the dangling sword over the continent of dwindling everything LI stand
in the shower naked and wet singing Nina Simone songs
and only think of good feelings in my roots

Sorghum

Sorghum 3/10

I cannot hear wind on the internet
Grass tops become square pixels - each a
slightly different shade

They are too perfectly haphazard

Dwarfed by a flashing advertisement
where a woman purses her lips
moistens while intently looking into your room

She sells space - a promise
of connection with real people
Her skin is color blocks

Perfect and smooth like plastic

Implead

Implead 3/9

I take umbrage
                           take it and go to a movie
                           a four o'clock cartoon
                  Some hideous animal is searching
         for its equally hideous parents in a jungle
         now a city
         now a beach

Tedious Disney film! Get off my back!
I'm on a date with umbrage

I'm trying to bring it into resentment
Trying to make it dark bottomless

You are dully animated muddy in color
You are refocusing my anger towards your creators
                           lazy people who have lackluster processes
                           who send out shoddy work
                  You hope children won't notice
         but what of their futures? their lack
         of imagination
         of fond memories of the past?

What of the future?
You have taken umbrage my long-term friend
You have turned it into hope for others to come along
         replace this rubbish

Litany

You will have to excuse my minimalist moments lately. I've been in a sort of toned-down space.


Litany (3/8)

Here is a building for you : Tall brick and mortar : A good building
Imagine a good building : How does that look?

Voluble

Voluble 3/7

I have nothing to say anymore

Brandish

Brandish 3/6

That proverbial gun that never goes off

That is how I want to be seen

Something loaded - a word - phrase - that parses slowly

Waved about in parking lots behind convenience stores

I carry weight - great weight

I deliver awe - sustained suspense - a repeating shutter

Post-human

Post-human 3/5

Will we grow gills - open up red

After the trees have gone will oceans rise
Then what of our internet journals?

Who will tell us what to care about
when Perez Hilton is a fish?

Whig

Whig 3/4

I want to secede - today - I am calling
a rain day on everything - a snow day
a state of emergency

My new land will only involve sleeping
and cuddling

I made a flag and everything

Verizon Sucks and Jojoba

Verizon has taken away my internet. So here is yesterday's poem:

Jojoba 3/3

Radiators
make my skin crawl - that
banging in the pipes rattles
my mind goes enough at night
to keep me up

I rub oil into the cracks in my knuckles
and smooth out my nose before bed

Little can remedy the brain shaking

Key Worker

Key Worker 3/2

If I say I let you steal my soul - that I opened that wound for you
I picked at my dermis until you could weevil in

That the night you wore my sweater you left it smelling of you for weeks

None of it is cliffs - ocean - rushing waters around buildings
New York doesn't sink because I do - I allowed this leak...

I walk in the sunrise that is sick and late winter and I try - try - to make it spring

March isn't warm enough for sexy shirts but I wear the hello out of a vest

If I acknowledge your in-ness - the odd healing pattern of the scar
and blindly rub salt over the space hoping to bring up an itch

Do you think you could find your way of leaving me alone faster?

My spaces are filled - I have enough hands in shafts of light
waiting for me to pull them to safety - I know - you're building a next

I can feel your pecking - they are shiny red purple things
I'm sure it is all so wonderful...

         yet...

Your picking mechanism is accidental - I think you broke
without even knowing the vault contained anything of value

Maternal

Maternal 3/1

See this body - see that it is a piece of paper
a glowing light box - ink artery

Fold each end inwards and make a crane of me
a leaping frog - if skilled - a dragon

Make a hat and protect yourself from rain - let
words melt down into late-night mascara owl eyes

Roll me into a tube - telescope me
let my body become a frame for yours