30 April 2010

Hobby-horse

Hobby-horse 4/30

And we were kids            cereal with frosting was just
sweeter
I based the season on how the air looked            what
color the clouds were
Tornado green was electric on the arms haze            skin
            had sweat glow
                                    Dirt was amazing
Planting twigs            imagined woods popping
There was this sort of even keel to minutes a short day
would fill out with a long            some sort of balancing act
            childhood

So meta            when the scene shifts and it's a blank stage
a            twentysomething man protracting his childhood
            trying to gain something from t
From the color of air even!
                        Balance for real            a sold
out feeling in the pit of stomach
Hollow feelings of reaching some kind of nothingness
Dwende            man            dwende...
The idea that you feel your dying the second you are born.

29 April 2010

Molehill

I'm wondering if you are all enjoying the little comments I've been doing in front of the poems each day. Or not.


Molehill 4/29

plaster dirt filling holes
chambers antechambers
vertical poles growing
horizontal feet rooms
small spaces hardening
standing eight feet down
propping up the sky
mold of living spaces
a dearth nothingness giant
question mark

fragility

28 April 2010

Tarantula

Spiders are really really scary things.


Tarantula 4/28

Knee-joint hinge loose swing
I can see my face a few times over
reflecting in dark eye spaces

Eye windows broken dark spaces
swirling look of hunger directing
towards everything

Drooping hunger that quickens
builds into physical
objects latching onto space

Hole of forgetting that
Thousand-eyed stare of longing
Swirl of taste echo

Democracy

I love museums. They are filled with sanctioned pillaged goods. Many gotten through empire building.

When people talk about Japan opening up its borders in the 1800s, they are actually talking about a forced event. There was a pile of ships in Japan's bay pointing guns and blocking trade routes.


Democracy 4/27

When that object was found - in some ancient sand-filled room in the desert - or the jungles - or a temple in Tibet - a sunken ship - whichever you prefer -

It was put in a box in a room with ornamental pillars in the gilt rooms of The National with lights arranged to shine the brass - scale-work - to make the green appear more realistic - more fine

It is a dragon - it's probably Chinese - Japanese - some eastern country - it was found in a village with lots of people sometime in the 1800s - it was in the center of the town

When they opened the borders of Japan - opened - like a tomb - popped - it was all orchestrated so as not to make it too sudden - too catastrophic - too something

It was so carefully handled with lots of guns and an armada - cannons - a lot of people standing eye to eye

What to make of this care-filled opening - of legs? - not that delicate - more an unsnapping - a sort of oar rippling the water - it wasn't so terrible as all that

26 April 2010

Prairie School

This is an odd one. I took out the vowels. It is meant to look like gibberish. As I would imagine language seems to the deaf.

These are letters...but what are they?

I think this is as close to theoryish experimental poetry as I am capable of.


Prairie School 4/26

mgn Hln Kllr b wll
skrtchn fgrs n drt
vlntl
wndrs f wtr knws
ts shp
ltr
hnds smsh drt
ntl bld cms

25 April 2010

Anzac

This is an attempt to capture the energy of the war dances of the Indigenous Australian tribes. It fails...I think.

The ANZAC was a WWI army corps of Australian and New Zealand British soldiers.


Anzac 4/25

Tattooed faces
            slapped thighs
crouches Tongue out flashing

                        Not quite scream
at the mass of others
Stomping feet wood plates

hoops hanging
            less
war more intimidation?

Force the hands
                        bloodless
            running

24 April 2010

Novitiate

Novitiate 4/24

Vellum folding
foreskin over finger

Like a pink petal
on water, drifting

Shadows, dots over
rocky bottom

Look at leaves
as a child unfolding

Springtime
as a miracle

Watch it come up
tap itself out in code

23 April 2010

XX

Great video. Love repetition. It reminds me of skipping film. Of great repeating lines of poetry. Of watching landscape move by windows. AWESOME!

Dragon

This is about a small dragon brooch I saw on display at the Brooklyn Museum.

I'm fascinated by enamel. It has something to do with the way light reflects off of it. The odd translucence of it. It looks like you can swim in it.


Dragon 4/23

I.
In the sand - trail of breadcrumbs
n the shape of snake tracks - all
shadow light and sine wave

Follow these little feet
down the dunes - into
the dunes - under

There buried to the eaves -
cathedral - sneaking - filled
with candle-light and incense

II.
Enamel scales set wetly deep green
swampland - Everglades - something else - moss

Dripping filigree forming polygonal shapes
graphite offset - random burns

One blazing sapphire eye
the other - dark - worm guano

III.
Glass podium of staring
Small hand prints smudge the edges
It sits some forgotten bending dragon
Jointed tail freezing under art focused lights

22 April 2010

Marathon

like the rhythm of numbers. They become almost like a mantra when you read them aloud. This poem is vaguely about war.

Vague seems to be how I deal with large concepts in my poetry. I can write crystal clear about the death of close relatives, about heartbreak, about sex. War ends up like this.

Maybe that's a good thing.


Marathon 4/22

Only 2 got out alive
            family loses 5
His prepared speech was delivered on the 6th
            which was 8 days after the flood
3 guns were found at the scene of the crime
            of the 3, only one was actually fired
Gunman killed 8 including himself
            6 died at the scene, 2 en route to hospitals
If you want me to guess on a timeline for withdrawal...
            I'd have to say 5 or so years.
So I was packing/tired yesterday and I didn't get around to posting a poem. I DID post about a little known punctuation mark. So sue me.

Here is the poem form yesterday:


Catechize 4/21

of course he wanted to look
the sounds of his city falling
were more then he could bear
more then she could
so she turned

what was the destruction like
the feeling of dessication
in her bones and how did
they know what became of her
if they didn't look themselves

21 April 2010

!?

This - - is an interrobang. It asks an excited question or expresses excitement as a question. It can also be used to ask rhetorical questions.

It's your punctuation of the day!

20 April 2010

Indy Apple

Here's a poem about car racing!

Sort of.

And my favorite music video with cars in it!

Fiona Apple - Criminal



Indy 4/20

Could be a car sliding black mirror road
That nighttime moment, glossy, no signs of rain
The lights make everything blue
A muscle car throb - purple chrome distortion
It's all James Dean - a woman with a hankie

Can of ironic spray paint - drift in Tokyo
Hush hush of nitrous, measure of laughter
There is a breast
floating on the hood - breast in heels
Some dark denim cocks, gasoline -

19 April 2010

Infix

This poem is obvious in its sexiness.

I like to think of it as actually being about peeling an orange.


Infix 4/19

Pebbled skin, waxen and orange
The brown spot, softer
press fingers in, entering.

Sexual orange?

Pulling pith, dry cotton space
between lips
juice, pulpy parts, on tongue.

The tearing of fingers
into soft skin, pressing.
Rind like metal, like rubbing.

Not so sexual, sensual?
A rusty serration on my thumb.

18 April 2010

Poona

As you can read from the link in the title. Pune is the 8th largest city in India. Poona is the anglicized version of the name.

The poem reflects my constant concern about trying to understand and respect other cultures without feeling like I am stealing from them. As a white guy, with UK/USA citizenship, I feel like I want to experience these things. I also feel like I'm taking something I have zero right to.

These feelings are unfounded. I know I can experience without being a terrible empire-building sort of person. The feeling remains.

I get the sense daily being a white man in a Caribbean neighborhood. A neighborhood that rapidly s changing. I suppose it is a guilt that one carries. Is it a historical guilt? Or is it a true sense of taking something that doesn't belong?

This poem tries to reconcile without really concluding.


Poona 4/18

...if I said I walked your dusty streets and
read from The Year of Magical Thinking
while remembering the dead, the Ganges
and burning flower-stained corpses...
is is passe?
Would I be just another pale-faced
white man absorbing everything
I touched? Of course
your streets aren't dusty in June, monsoons
come, the shops along Laxmi will sell anything
I could ask for, then

...in Santa Fe I spent six years osmosing Indians
other brown-faced people...I would stare up
the mesas at pueblos and wonder what kind
of spiritual abundance keeps me out...
there I read Marquez
walked forking paths of Chronicle
of a Death Foretold...there I managed to get through
three halves of In Search of Lost Time
which isn't Marquez, it's Proust, it
makes me look smart

...the mesa at Ojo Caliente...
I flip Didion nonchalantly...how could you not?
I wonder if the exclamation point knows how
stabby it looks...I stare in the mirror, think
about walking Canyon Road...will my eyes
reflect Pune now?
Will you see the burning saris, the ancient blue
saris, the dust, the rain, the saris...if
I say that I stood in a monsoon in July in Santa Fe
then took that with me to the banks of the Ganges...
would it matter that someone died?
That I exclaim it violently in my sleep?

...the only connection is rain...I now make
the claim that a question mark is a spoon...
will you see this? A scooping moment
where I take the eyes of everyone nearby...
the Ganges isn't near Pune, they are as apart
as the Rio Grande and the Lethe, though both run
dry...are made of concrete, sucked for wheat
corn, etc......

17 April 2010

Clustered

I'm in Pennsylvania at my parent's place for a week.

The world suddenly remembered it is April and the temperature dropped to the mid-40s after a CRAZY storm with rain, wind, sleet and hail. It snowed to the north.

April in effect y'all. It is the cruelest month after all.

I am fascinated by plants that bloom before they get leaves. Dogwood, magnolia, hawthorn. It's something to do with the long limbs holding a single flower. Like some sort of peace offering after winter. An attempt to calm the weather down and ask forgiveness of the showiness of summer.

Here is a poem about all that eye-candy.


Clustered 4/17

The hands are holding - fingers like
pear blushed magnolia - letting go - reconnecting

And like other leafless flowering plants
bodies slowly open their coats - leave their torsos
exposed to the soft rain

Witch hazel bursts against brick walls - shocks - leaves
after images on the eye

16 April 2010

Cavort

Cavort 4/16

Every night I stare out at ocean and flap my arms into the wind.

I've been told hurricane wind can be leaned against.

Salt creeps in my pores I smell like rust until morning.

Hair damps dreds into kelp horseshoe crabs tangle in eyelashes
the sunrise glazes leathered skin with wrinkles.

My puckered fingertips are prunes.

The corners of my eye barnacle and freeze.

I become figurehead a gull flayed.

15 April 2010

Accede

Accede 4/15

Write a poem about Henry VIII.
Now dedicate that poem to a woman.
The poem should not mention his giant codpieces.
Or gout.
Or dead wives.
It should mention the sky in twilight once.
Maybe a sideways reference to religion.
It cannot mention Elizabeth in any way.
Or Mary.
At the end you must make pity comments on today's politics.
And you should close with a winking nod to the lineage of Popes.

14 April 2010

Steeplechase

Steeplechase 4/14

The carrot being used...not rabbits...horses
which are scary...large...oily watery eyes
teeth bearing and large...clunking
that baaing chewing they do

The drowned pony sort of carrot...big eared dead
bodies strung out on a beach...they ran
off the cliffs, sort of...does this
make sense...the chase I mean

A run...toward a building...for support...away
form the mouth...the scare...they are like
church bell towers...hurdles climbed big
eared chasing...somesort of apocalypse

coming up over the horizon...

13 April 2010

Minimum

Minimum 4/13

It's the least I can
I only have
There's simply not
Before I can, I need
I'm on a tight
I just
Sometimes

12 April 2010

Mansion

Mansion 4/12

I.
            - cornered in while painting
stairwells (labyrinths)
What you said then right
after that holding brush to sky
(some colossus you!) you said that
this place was becoming you
that you are birds in a gilded cage
life trapped in tile vintage fabric
period furniture it was a metaphor
a job you don't
like a task in front of you (large
rock rolls down then you push
it back up, right?) of course
you were painted in by windows of
course the window is painted shut -

II.
Large plane of space flapping open from a doorway

An error in landscape

Sudden temples and hellonearth

III.
If I said this was a rope
of fourteens, would that make sense?

It is.

A series of stations lapping themselves
Right here by the desk is where we
fight over the bills mounting.

Rememeber by the window? You, paint.

It's a ghost of hanging.

IV.
            - outside you're covered
from head to toe in pinkish
blandness (it's period appro-
priate) straddling the tree hose
attacking messes the dog is
running away is back is gone
and what of the cage?
door open insects attack the wet
paint like sugar paste
(it very well might be)
your eyes are looking like windows
covered in plastic that boarded
up mansion that blackened
store the smell of ancient sandals
standing at the mouth of a sea
a beacon sound of wind -

10 April 2010

Peise

Peise 4/10

The King said to his children he said
         I am giing this part of land to you, this
         to you, this to you
He did this for each, the pretty one got the best
and so on down to the ugliest, who got swamp

The pretty ones all fought each other
over the lands until they were all dead
while the King was abandoned with ugly
         I really like it here
he said one day
Ugly smiled, made tea, waited...

09 April 2010

Pippin

A Halloween poem in April.

Pippin 4/9

Knife down and unveil
the little holes, eyes
mouth like skeletons

Knife down the sides
break oil-cloth skin
with sound of snowplows

When done, the core is
square peg, looking like
an abandoned tree trunk

08 April 2010

Easter Egg

Easter Egg 4/8

- those blue shells in the grass - little all torn apart - that clear membrane holding the shatters like safety glass - that night the noise of water woke us and there was that car on fire in front of the house - we ran around crazy thinking we'd burn up until you put on your glasses and realized that it was out in the street - everything was ok then - we watched from the windows as they pulled apart the hood and water went everywhere - I wasn't even scared when the gas lit up and flowed down the drains - nothing flammable exists in sewers right? - at worst there's blood - there was that story about sewage workers near a hospital opening a clogged line being bathed in blood and puss - like newborns -

Oxford Blue

Oxford Blue 4/7

Spaces between bricks
filled with old sidewalk
Imagine gum stains
spirals in firework shapes
Red rectangles blacking
in sun behind curtains
The dry brown fingers
that were ivy cling
Pry at the spaces and beg
to dig at the books inside

06 April 2010

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 parcels slowly

Waved about in a parking lot behind a convenience store or museum

I carry weight - great amounts even

I only deliver awe - sustained suspense - never complete trajectory

05 April 2010

Post-human

Post-human 3/5

Will we grow gills - open red

After trees have gone will oceans rise
Then what
Of our internet journals - our diamonds

Who will tell us what we care about?

04 April 2010

Macanese

Macanese 4/4

                           A looping fold
                  paper on ribbon
Soaking
         in water rings

                           She speaks
                  raises her hands
in curves
         against the light

                           Invisible mosquitoes
                  or some palsied
caged thinking
         beating in her

                           The ribbon paper
                  bleeds across the table-top
She speaks a word of Spanish
         then Cantonese

                           Syllables piling
                  up in black knots across
the spaces between us
         they block out the lamp-light

Late Disguised

I might start taking Saturday's off. Not of writing a poem, just posting. This is something to debate. Will let everyone know.

I need me some sunshine.


Disguised 4/3

Arrows don't flower so much as cause flowering
Point on skin blooms vessels and spills white light

Why are you the bulls-eye?
The raging thorny forehead lashing against red
You covered yourself in goat skin came up the hills
Kicking dirt into the eyes of anyone asking anything

Spear points fly, enormous arrows exploding
Making your back rupture into field of poppies

You mate like this, making Minotaur of our love
You Pasiphae, you thin disguised ex.

02 April 2010

Descent

Descent (woodpecker) 4/2

(sound of hollow wood)

Down the palm a heart-line a river to the wrist
Calm and cold heart-wood line that seems to crack at the turns

(sound of beak in soft places)
A flick in the marrow the tree is wincing

Lord God Bird with red throat
your feathers spread are white fingers inkwelled

You quick in dying spaces
You number leaves that remount stems
You become legend

(sound of clapping hands or leaves underfoot)

You are invisible source of echo are returned sound across the void

01 April 2010

Header!

April's picture is of jellyfish in San Francisco.

March was a screen capture from Planet Earth.

February was a photo of Grand Army Plaza at 2AM.

January was a frozen bicycle on Union in Park Slope.

All by me!

Truculent

Truculent 4/1

Bludgeon me with swords, unwashed, etc.

Indulge the contrivance of smiling while being lashed
Ripping flesh yawns gaps
Along vertebrae, vessels thread themselves,
On whips, chains, etc.

Relate to me the whys
Can this serve a purpose, or
Is it all a massive bend over?