30 September 2010

Yips

Yips (Jyllands-Posten publishes drawings of Muhammed 2005) 9/30

And you raise the club – you swing –

You biff it –

With everyone watching
you miss downhill
from 10 feet away
with no wind –

And you blame everyone – your caddy –

The time of day – this climate
of war –

The fact that you receive death threats
at work –

The fact that you draw cartoons for a living –

That you didn’t sign on for this –

That the whole thing is kinda stupid –

Lump

I have a sinus infection. So that explains the lateness this week.
I will do my best to keep it going.

Lump (Washington National Cathedral built 1907/1990) 9/29

In 83 years
not much occurred really

Theodore Roosevelt
laid the first stone
before 20,000 people

George H. W. Bush
watched the last finial
rise into place

Between
a few wars with little
to show for themselves

The invention
of television

Space flight etc.

28 September 2010

Strap

Strap (William the Conqueror invades England 1066) 9/28

A body
on metal table
wrapped in
the flags
of the dead

Until
it is mummy
of color

Release it
into the water
or soak it
in honey
until soft enough
to eat

Color

Color (Rosetta Stone is translated 1822) 9/27

And there was understanding
across this great world

Things that we once knew were returned to us
and things we thought were known
were shown false

Everything turned an onyx reflection
inwards and then outwards

Like a ghostly version of your own face
staring out from behind the mirror
after a hot shower

27 September 2010

I've discovered a snag in my word of the day.

The e-mail with the days word arrived at 8:30PM in my inbox.

I am at work Sunday nights until after midnight.

SO

Monday will have 2 poems. One early, one late.

Mira (Francis Drake completes his trip around the world 1580) 9/26

The Concorde landed in Texas today
493 years to the day
that Francis Drake completed his
3-year trip around the world

And what monsters were found
at such high altitudes
floating belly up like otters among clouds

That night we were looking at the stars
and just below Pisces you pointed
the sea monster Cetus with its star Mira
demanding us to look

There is the beast that swallowed Jonas

The hunger of deep space must be gigantic

We will keep our noses down to avoid our fate

25 September 2010

Scratch-off

Happy Anniversary to me!

Starting today, every poem will be written as it is posted. So each poem will be unedited and posted as soon as it is done.

Wish me luck.

And be kind!

For the rest of the month I'm going to write a poem about a historical event that happened on that day as well as using the word of the day for the title.


Scratch-off (the last Magdelene Asylum closes 1996) 9/25

This is how it happens :

These nuns sell some land

This is in 1993

The land developers find 155 bodies

Like some horror movie

They take the bodies and cremate them
toss them into a mass grave

These women
most of them just young pregnant
or mentally handicapped “socially dysfunctional”

They washed clothes and sewed

Weren’t allowed to talk

It started in 1767

30,000 women
most never allowed to leave again

Not one eye blinking

Not one word raised
for 200 years

It took a land deal

And the invention of cheap washing machines

24 September 2010

Mapuche

Ladies and Gentlemen it is this website's first anniversary.

Send me something nice.

Or buy a book.


Mapuche 9/24

I don’t want to be a white man writing another guilty poem about brown men

I don’t want to be a gay man writing about anal sex on a subway

I don’t want to be an English man writing about history or the way things were

I don’t want to be a young man writing in emoticons

I don’t want to be any man writing about breasts and vaginas with teeth

I don’t want to be a son writing about fucking my mother or killing my father

I don’t want to be an educated man writing about the less educated like they are dicks

I don’t want to be a man writing about the low classes or high classes

I don’t want to be a poet man writing poetry about poetry

I don’t want to be a man trying desperately to leave the shadow of the 20th century

I don’t want to be anything to anyone

I don’t want to be a white man writing about other white men

I don’t want to be a man writing for other men writing

23 September 2010

Splenic

Splenic 9/23

It’s red and moving – the spleen is where it all goes pooling and filtered out
Everything ends here – here the purple goes blank

22 September 2010

Enormity

Enormity 9/22

I
In which a statement is made and the first layers of understanding are expressed

II
A metaphor is presented and the statement unravels until it is a tiny point of light

III
The problem is restated over a vast field of background information that resembles a lawn strewn with corpses

IV
A conclusion is reached but it is unsatisfying and the period lingers coldly

21 September 2010

Musaf

Musaf 9/21

There is a roll under your tongue – where
you write late at night – the jaw drops and you scroll
the unrooted organ

It is a spoon – held over a flame melting

These are instructions sealed in your chest – you are
made of mud – someone sent you out – unlocked

You dropped your cases – the arms tick
The letters are thickly black and illegible – you are
piling tongues

The scroll is tongues? – It is a dead father’s voice
calling down your throat

20 September 2010

Molecular Electronics

Molecular Electronics

The thought of my cells dividing makes me sweat

There are mites on me right this second – on you too
We have eco systems – regions – continents?

At the window the moisture is pulsing into a map of space

My toenails brittle themselves and become yellow

I sweat at the idea of lice

I sweat and it freezes into salt

Inside me there are bacteria rotting meat that I ate yesterday

Your shit is food

Those cities of mites are crawling in your bed – in mine
They have cars full of children

19 September 2010

Mounting

Mounting 9/19

At the light there is that river of space
divided by the small white line bridge
Across the void he is standing sunglassed
and moving his head around looking
There is that sudden announcing and the
checking him over
When the bridge pulls out of the concrete
and the little man begins to blink walk
we cross ourselves and watch each other
After the first eye catch
there is a moment before the discovery
of an abandoned building and the dust kicks

18 September 2010

Something Interesting

The soap opera As The World Turns aired its last episode yesterday.

The show was on for 54 years and was the second-longest running television soap in the US.

There were 13,858 episodes and it was the first soap opera with a running time longer then 15 minutes.

The show was also the last broadcast before President Kennedy was shot. ABC was the only network airing original programming at that time of day. A few minutes into the episode it was interrupted by Walter Cronkite. The episodes were aired live and the actors went on performing not knowing that the show had been interrupted.

Staid

Staid 9/18

Columns are staid in attendance to the site they are placed
they wince over lovers angry leavings and the coming dust
They are staid in the face of advancing tanks and raised bayonet
The coming barbarians do not faze them and the fog
only manages to slide over their arched marble surfaces

We are staid in our houses across the country managing our affairs
We are staid in the face of lips coming and going and saying
any number of things we regard as true or false
The advancing is only an advance if we take time to notice
the cold raised skin on our arms the deep thickness about us

17 September 2010

Stringing

Stringing 9/17

Line down my finger over my wrist – it is the bridge of a viola
plucking up my arm – my veins are purpling against the grain
and I am tightening everything against this moment

I am raising against your chin – everything is prickled hairs
on the body – my arms are bows moving across lines – we
are moving across lines – we are poles in a field transmitting

This is a grid of poles – a line of violin strings playing against
lightning – metal and making a net of electricity – the bow
land pressing against – humming

Cupola

Cupola 9/16

The building has an eye and it is watching – fixed
It centers on a drift – clouds drawing on a board
This dome is a stand it’s legs are catapults
Launching the stones upward – it is a beige eye
An unblink – a sunspot looping blackly

15 September 2010

Niente

Niente 9/15

We breathe
We are all locked eyes and pupils dilating
Our skin is raised against air
We are post-fucking and locked
Hands leaving white
You say don’t let go of me now
Our noses are pressed til cracking
Our focus is hazed
We breathe
And are dripping

14 September 2010

Farm

Farm 9/14

Palm on palm – the edge of the woods are clean
We lock eyes when we pay debts
We measure our fields – we come daily
upon them in the fields – picking lettuce –

What if I give you chocolate – not gold –

And then the foil tarnishes to pewter –

13 September 2010

Psychograph

This is sort of an automatic writing moment.


Psychograph 9/13

..,,,,;;;;;;::::,,,,,,;;;;;;;””””””””;’’’’’’’;;;;;…….
;;;;;;;;;;::::::;;;;…..,,,,,’””’’’’’’’’………;;;;;:::::……
,,,,,,,,,,,,,:::::::;;;;;;;…,,,,……
:::::::’’’’’’’’’

tres aboreal shantih catorce de juliet

burn break blow

12 September 2010

Lekach

Lekach 9/12

Apples make a cork noise – a screw down into the wine neck noise
and the metal slice goes through the skin – it is popping
it is splitting – separating – a pulling wound that is red
and it is coating in honey and filling the plates

It smells like fall – like leaves on the sidewalk and the rain falling
over the grasses

Tongue burns the white brown and the golden mass fills the cells
it makes everything burn brighter – makes your nose
skim the surfaces for familiarity – each section leaves
a noise on the surface of the ceramic plate

Each core squares firmly on the wooden plane – and sits
darkly holding its seeds

Monogenic

Monogenic (chair) 9/11

A rightful sit an upright solid thing filling with light and flesh

Dead tree you are carved up and stoic in your cage

Smooth from asses worn until dirty and never washed

Chair you are a rain spotted site a fresh filled meadow covered in dung

An essay on resting

10 September 2010

Pant

Pant 9/10

if I   have a         hard         time   looking you
in the eye   and speaking   clearly         it has
nothing to do with your         eyes

nothing to do with your         smile or the crinkles
around your   mouth
         it’s just the air   the tight pants
the something I ate

I am not in love         this is not about love
   my breathing is regular   see
your hands don’t make my   heart   skip   at all

I don’t think about your stomach

if I seem   shaken         it has   nothing to do
with you   it’s gas         or   caffeine
or the sick uncle in Florida

it is not your leg touching mine under the table

09 September 2010

So-so

So-so 9/9

Trees are a black foreground and the clouds are
a glowing white backdrop painted onto the light box sky

It is the first day of cool weather – the first fallish moment

I have placed my ass in New York for a year – what
have I received from this tower?

This glowing sky – this September – I have been given
a rotting flower – a pumpkin carved with Jesus

No – I have taken these things

Scooped out the insides and placed them on a table there
are knives and I am taking each apart and making a collage

I am using the blood of things to make alphabets

This A is bone marrow – the N a failed romance – what
am I doing here?

The sky is always like this in September – this weird calm
this Magritte sighing

I am waiting for fireflies to make comets – cicadas to sing elegies

Hunt

Hunt 9/8

I’m tired of love

Of the game – the endless parade of candy

There is a loss here – my head is hurting

I’m tired of everything that is

There is no there there – no – there is
but it is a quietly roaring hated there

I’m tired of throwing arrows

Slinging the energy of myself into the world

There are fibrous strings leashing onto strangers

I’m tired of being drugged

Dragged around by my hopeless naïve sentimentality

It’s a field of clover bending under the sun’s hand

I’m tired of myself

Of being hopeless – of the taste of blood in my mouth

I’m very tired of not getting what I want

07 September 2010

Incompetent

Incompetent 9/7

I’m tired of love
            roses are tired – I’m allergic to perfume

If I just grab you and throw you down right here
            Now I mean – on this sidewalk

Nothing can explain how you really feel
            the trees are not happy for you – will never be

I want to be forever
            Leaves keep falling – keep coming back

Sun still rattles the windows
            and I am tired of love – of not being thrown

06 September 2010

Discomfort

Discomfort 9/6

– then he pushed me against the wall
my hands against stucco – bruises welling
up – held me and fucked me

I’m not telling you this because it was fun –
because it was – or because I like the
attention – because I do – I’m telling you
so you become jealous of your lack of wall

Your lack of support – no hands around
your waist – no rough sandpaper hair
on your back – no cock

05 September 2010

Pepper-spray

Pepper-spray 9/5

Admit I’ve got you by the lapels
that your jaw is hinging on a wire – laying
silently – your teeth are popping corn

I am holding you an inch from the floor

Admit that I’ve got your buttons in my fists
that your threads are undoing – rewinding
and jamming the gutters

This is a bloodletting

I am a stabbing

04 September 2010

Bulls-eye

Bulls-eye 9/4

Clear lens
subtly making rainbows
against the hollow of horn
            the inside of head
                        the cockles of tongue

03 September 2010

Gall

Gall 9/3

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love I

02 September 2010

Goelette

Goelette 9/2

Water is a map of stars – a swirl of floating
points on a pulsing black

There is a sense of paint dripping from the moon

And above is the fixed porcelain sky – vented
lopsidedly cracking

We are sitting in a bowl floating that ocean

You are dipping candles – slow wax fingers
I am tying and untying lengths of rope

There are 100 corks filling 100 holes

Our little bowl has no spoon

01 September 2010

Band

Happy September!


Band 9/1

I am sick of beauty
There is a bag in the corner for it

                  For the eyes that shine when I enter a room
                  For the hands on my arm on my hands on my face
                  For the mouth on my mouth

The tie on the bag is silver
The bag is soaked in kerosene

I have one match and it is windy