Monomorphic

Monomorphic 8/31

Hopelessly falling off the edge of a cloud structure

Hopelessly clutching a cream-colored purse and wearing Audrey Hepburn hats

Hopelessly romantic walking into a bar ordering two drinks and waiting for no one

Hopelessly romantic films are playing at the drive-in all weekend

Hopelessly romantic and falling through what one could take for solid forms

Hopelessly romantic stealing a bag and searching for chewing gum

Hopelessly shit-faced drunk making out with a mailbox

Hopelessly romantic burning up on re-entry or some other euphemism for sex

Hopelessly romantic and Holly Golightly about everything of course the book is better

Hopelessly romantic end credits moving in white cue Dido then Enya

Hopelessly romantic rainstorms off the coast of Bermuda Triangles

Hopelessly talk in that fake accent when you wear that outfit it’s just more yes

Hopelessly romantic waters flowing over funeral pyres and wetting postcards

Hopelessly romantic chord progressions that always sound like Truman Capote talking like Philip Glass

Dept

Debt 8/30

            – and being a hopeless romantic I’ve come to rest upon the word hopeless more

I’m holding the edges of an open wound that is probably not going to heal very well and you’re all just looking at it like it’s some sort of novelty toy

            – I’ve watched the tide come in over the street and stood filling sandbags unblinking in various forms of weather

That is histrionic to the max but you love it what I’m trying to express is the feeling that my heart is flooding and I can’t hear the ocean

            – look at that churchyard filled with all the dead and soon to be dead and tell me that it’s worth something

The cochlea that part of the ear that hears a coil of sound a shell I’m peeling at these onion layers of skin and trying desperately to hold onto something

            – at least everything

Racket

Racket 8/29

fabric is liquid over the chest
rippling at the waist sending out wake
you are moving within the orbit of water contained

Mosaic

I like to follow up clear examples of me being uninspired (yesterday) with long-winded poems about writers.

I also like to speculate wildly about famous authors.


Mosaic 8/28

Gabriel has said that he is an old man and that he is happy with his life in the hammock and out of the hammock; that the walk through the old town square that may have been his last was sunlit and lovely; he has said that the leaves made endless hallway patterns on his white linen shirt and pants, his tie matched the pale blue sky and he wore a straw hat with a taught beige band. He nodded about the flowers this year; that they came early and went late and what does that mean?

Gabriel does not have an answer but will acknowledge that it indeed means something.

Joan sat in her office last night and looked through her old notebook. She noticed a passage about a woman in California, in Sedona, who has crinkles on her eyes and loves the area and will never leave. The woman told Joan this while wearing a wide brimmed hat sometime in the 60s. Her name is unimportant now, she is probably dead anyway, remembered by someone else perhaps, perhaps not. What is important is that she liked Sedona and that she had on pink lipstick that matched the shade of gloss that Joan’s daughter wore sometimes while she lived in Malibu.

Joan reads on but skips the passage where she discusses working on a movie the same year as the talk with the woman in Sedona.

Galway asks you what a pullet is
then he takes the pullet away and makes it earn itself
He returns it thriving
a nest full of eggs and a basket of red feathers later

Galway will not eat the omelets made from these eggs
but will feed them to the earth.

Misorder

Misorder 8/27

The

End

Jar

Jar 8/26

Why the smack – like a poker – a pickle?
against my cheek

You are just standing – idling – a bully
without realizing

It’s your smile – or something like it
all is lost – all

Baffle

Yep.


Baffle 8/25

I want to walk in the park in the fall and kick dry leaves then make out in the grass until we have it all through our hair

I want an excuse to buy flowers without any reason

I want to write ridiculous love poetry that I will hate myself for but will still tape on your fridge

I want to doodle while on the phone and end up drawing hearts

I want a reason to make grand declarations of things I may do at random future times

I want to wear your shirts

I want the possibility of being destroyed by you because there would be the possibility of being born again

Stand-up

This poem is mainly about this very famous photo by Nick Ut of Phan Thị Kim Phúc. She was 9 when the photo was taken. Right after snapping the picture Ut grabbed her and rushed her to a hospital.



Stand-up 8/24

In slow now look at the film reels slapping :

            A hose is turned on a crowd

There is no sound, but you can see the mouths opening :

            Bodies are enveloped in foam

This is the moment, there are others :

            The foam evaporates will

A child running, skin coming off her bones :

Kodak 1922 Test

Load

Load 8/23

Place your thumb in my palm
rough the wrists – I want you to hold them
want the nail to dig ‘til white
Use your knees against mine and hold
these legs apart
I want you to open on my chest – a firework
or a balloon

Luminary

I have a deep fascination with fireflies. The little glowing dance they do. The way they seem to rise out of nowhere at sunset and then vanish all day.


Luminary 8/22

Firefly blinks are too much like cats eyes they are
too much the rising falling summer cool evening pulling
from the blades of green soft grasses

Feet catch on the sharps of rocks on the
breaking wave of August rising up over the fields mopping
up every dark space in the harsh humidity

With all these faces in the dark unblinking with all
these tongues licking at the trees that begin to motion
a beginning that motions a dance

Feet are a waltz of toes in dirt flowers dropping petals they are
so similar to everything and the weather is so close
the stars open up and the lights are off the curtains are vines

Deprotonate

Deprotonate 8/21

You have removed yourself

Your skin is dragging and you look colorless

The outlines of your body are bold and you are paint-by-number

Melatonin has pulled itself into its old paint tubes

Your eyes are hollow orbs, marbles breaking on pavement

There is a miniature nova in your chest trailing debris

You are circling a drain in an ocean, the gulls pick your hair

Fingers don’t grasp, even your bones are pulling

A walking is happening, but only your legs seem to be going places

Morbid

Morbid 8/20

I spent a day reading about diseases
Looking at abbreviations and diagnosis
Fixating on what I could could could have

Where I've been

I want to open a vein and see it
The pooling red liquid will have something
In it that will tell me where the damage is

Like a tell

The skin is a rampart is a moat a lagoon
And these are the things that can cross it
What sort of rot gets at live flesh

The kind you let in your head

Onioned

Onioned 8/19

There are layers – dripping with clearness

Glassine paper lanterns on the river
glow irritatingly like fireflies – bobbing
in some sex dance over a lawn

Geologic process sped up and polished

Tart smelled and soil filled – there is a peeling
in our hindquarters – a releasing of the
bowels

If you wet the knife it comes slower

Firmness

Firmness 8/18

Sisyphus is digging his heels into too soft ground

We are watching a slide show of your childhood
            this is the part where you face a past while dancing with a future

Hands at 2 and 10 – 2 and 10 – are you watching that semi
            because it’s coming over here whether you move or not

His shoes are up to the Achilles in mud

You are on a flat plane – the car is in neutral and you are drifting forward

It is a waltz maybe or tango possibly
            but you are young and dancing and hopefilled

The plane is tilting – everything is rolling backwards – the way it all came

It is an orchestra – the fluting is your heartbeat is the sound of drums
            here is the part you realize the movements are endless repeating

He makes it to the top he begins again

Christen

Today was the 10th anniversary of the cafe I work at. We had a big party. Bands, cookies, discounts on coffee/tea/beer. They watched Armageddon and sang along to Aerosmith. There were belly dancers and an electric violinist.

I came home and read about the history of Sesame Street. There have been 4212 episodes in 40 years. There are still three original cast members, Bob, Susan, and Carol Spinney who does the voices of Big Bird and Oscar. Bob is 80.

I was only 3 when Mr. Hooper died in 1983, but I remember it vividly. Maybe it was a rerun? Did they rerun that episode? Did Sesame Street rerun in the 80s? Is it such a part of our collective childhoods that I remember it even if I didn't see it in 1983 on November 24th, Thanksgiving Day?

I cried this evening for the first time in a long long time.

Was it for the weird finality that a big anniversary party has? The fact that such-and-such a time has gone what now then? The general loss of childhood? The sudden remembering of the great loss my family has experienced in the last few years?

I cried.

And I'm not sure why.


Christen 8/17

Water in the river

Drinking in the river

Taking in the river

Stinted

Stinted 8/16

Four trees are squaring off an archway
                then braiding into the sky    they open up
leaves against blue

How many years of forcing the limbs down then
bending them at right angles

This is botany in sudden action
                like a burning symbolic bush    man’s furious
control over earth

Giant bonsai experiment with man-sized figures
holding hands underneath

Posterity

I posted today's poem yesterday. And here, yesterday's poem today.

Which is about history. So we can all pretend it was intentional.


Posterity

You, who read this    what is it like
            Who are your neighbors?

Can you see the Milky Way from the roof of Santa Fe
            I wrote about trees in that house            leaves            sounds of spring

How like applause they are            how ominous
            The shape of an aspen stand turning yellow against a smoke-filled sky

Something I learned in the high deserts speaking
            in riddles reveals what you want to hide faster

Or so they say            I love that saying    pure ambivalence
            I was in a play about ambivalence in Santa Fe

Is the warehouse still standing?
            They were going to put up shopping malls

Of course            you should read this on the third bench from the middle of
            the Brooklyn Bridge            that is where I am

Of course you could be reading it anywhere            Does anything even exist
            since Coney Island and the cost of living and swine flu?

Did they ever put in that Starbucks on the corner?
            I used to look in abandoned windows and think about living

I stood on the beach as they closed the gates on Astro Land
            all balloons            collapsing bull markets

Chaser

Chaser 8/15

Was literature never enough – it seemed like a rib removed
Sitting in plain sight on the top shelf
            – was it keeping its dust well?

Bones become air-filled as they age
Lighter and lighter they become kindling

In your room – late at night – watching this part of you
It never seemed important enough to keep inside

You scratch up the walls trying to locate a femur of emotion

Does the formaldehyde smell of the funeral home lock night terror
A jarred finger-bone – a puce of some dead saint even
            – do these things make you more?

I know that you wanted to be a serious writer – your face tells
That you thought it would be romantic and pious

Romantic piety looks like shimmering frustration
            – how could you know that?

Beaner

Beaner 8/13

Standing on the corner they are sitting and waiting for the trucks to come up and then they jump in the back and they go pick oranges or lettuce or put up a building or take one down or they paint something or maybe they have a party I’m not even sure but they are dropped off as the sun sets out over the flat spaces

He worked in the kitchen and cooked and he was pretty nice tall and thin like a pole or someone who doesn’t eat well enough but is doing OK and when they came we thought it was immigration but it was just the regular cops and it was because he was hitting his wife none of us even knew he was married

Oiling

Oiling 8/12

The little candles tinker in the dark of Westminster
Each a hope-prayer against something that could fill the room
            stuff out the boxed seats            parade by Mary, Queen of Scots’ cinder block
And in the font the old hands are dipping
The folds of skin smoothing with held waters

After a storm the potholes become just as mirrored as the rest

These folds are running aligning themselves and pressing
            they are wringing out themselves over the basin
In the shadows of flickering red old skin is onion-skin is paper in high illumination
Over the room the ceiling arches in bowed eyebrows
            each a painted expression of surprise            awe

Multi-gym

Multi-gym 8/11

Bend me down to my knees and enter me by force
Split me open - melon - I spoil as your thighs run
Hair on hair you are rubber banding bone against rail
Tell me - can hear my tendons harping

Peal

Peal 8/10

There are not enough angels

Realty

Realty

The lot across the street is being cut down
                        Weeds have been grown for three months
They suck at the air, choking in the humidity
                        A soft plastic thread spinning becomes a hack
It is watching dominos, they fall so gently
                        Like a sudden narcolepsy of grasses
From across the street behind glass there is no sound
                        Just the falling, the clumping
The sparrows hopping madly in the sidewalk

Noisome

This is based in the memory of a 19 year-old being beaten not far from where I lived in Santa Fe.

The papers filled with how he was gay. His business, etc... The opinion of the city was very much in his favor, but there was a strange homophobic underlay.


Noisome 8/8

There is that bloodstain again
Why doesn’t monsoon rain wash away faggot blood?
My street is dust filled and the arroyos are filling too
            but this stain is dark and wet looking

The violence of the gunshot the head kick the hand to jaw
They are painting the street again
Yellow lines and white lines over pooling congeal
            but the dust is too much makes it go brown

I watch them smooth out the black asphalt
Cover everything over again and again
The pain is so new that it reflects and pains the eyes
            but it is no mirror

Bellicose

Bellicose 8/7

At the bottom of her things
                        a box filled with sand

A small piece of paper
                    floating within

                        “This is to present…
your commemorative…

                        historic…
Berlin Wall...”

Tiny flecks of blue paint
                        swirling traced red

It all holds

Old Economy

Old Economy 8/6

In that dream with the fish swimming in the air that were incidental but beautiful
we paid for everything with tow nails painted to look like pearls
The soft folding calcite turning almost mercury under the paint and polish
Some would put holes in them, string a necklace to show off their wealth
in the sun, they glinted like teeth after a cleaning

In that dream with the boats that hovered just a centimeter off the water
we were buying yards of blue fabric that had thin traces of Byzantium copper woven in
In the sunlight they moved in green patterns across the surface, like fish
in coral reefs off of Australia
You could hear fire in there screaming along with advancing armies

We walked the bazzar, tried on fake gold crowns, and bartered for a set of spoons
with our initials on them in inlaid purples
In that dream with the clouds piling up like chocolate ice cream and whipping cream
we watched the rain fall in endless slow motion, dying before it reached the ground
We managed to save our nails by painting them burgundy and wearing Chuck Taylors

Nebbish

This is a joke.

Just to let you know.


Nebbish 8/5

Semite Shoes ™ are the ones with the cool double S logo
they look like lightning bolts – the Nazi kind
It’s some sort of reclamation of a shared history – the
ironic re-branding of footless shoes
They come in two colors – black and white

Aggress

Aggress 8/4

I hermit – make shells from couch cushions
                ridge the glass opaque and bead my eyes into stalks

Do I slime my way to your door – make trails
                along the edge of your shoelaces

Inside I light candles and debate our policies of avoiding
                draw baths and empty them – letting the bubble stains evolve
                into new personal species

Paperhanging

Paperhanging 8/3

Her eyes are visible            between goldenrod reeds
            little frog’s egg eyes            peeping like millet

You want to draw your hand over her            trace her outlines
            with your nail            draw up nipples wrists

The yellow wallpaper            peeling and falling
            has taken its share of lovers

In its time            the soft flowing lines and women
            sang out to numbers            took their hands

Would you run forever in pale?
            tip-toe at the edge            look into the mouth of sun

Raspberry

Raspberry 8/2

One hand pulls the forehead taught
            the other            runs sawing at the skin
the nails chewed down to the pink

His head criss-crosses
            a broken map of Europa’s ice fields
Breaking skin            blood font

And he’s handsome enough to
            think about             fucking through
scratches            sudden neck spasms

Lean him against a subway car
            Push on walls            inside him
His tongue flicking in            out

Cud

The new picture is a sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It was about 10:30 in the morning. The gallery is lit from huge skylights above. I was filled with an odd serenity in the museum.

It was the first place I visited after I arrived. I had not slept for 12 hours. It was a revelation of history and quiet.


Cud 8/1

Tasty in the morning
And in the afternoon
Not at dinner time
That’s steak time