Lang Syne

Lang Syne 12/30

She’s sleeping on the couch.

And I’m watching some news show.

There is that sound of her sleep breathing. Static-y.

And while she is silent I turn to her:

            Mom – I think I am the person you think I am and I
            think you are the person I think you are – somewhere in there.

            And we are all the people we say we are some of the time.

            The news is about war, famine, earthquakes in Haiti.

            And those people are something like the people we know.

New-for-old

New-for-old 12/29

Sink the refrigerator into the water
with the door open two can sit comfortably
the otters will stare at us and wonder what
the hell we are doing but it won’t matter
we will be down stream before the water
line sinks us before they can get their
little oily fingers on us.

Wastrel

Wastrel 12/28

…at your fingertips
                        …an incomplete spell…taint…

                        a broken haiku to
curse your neighbor…one word less

than you need…
what word fills in this blank…

                        …
if you mistake it will you become a toad
or worse…

Tenter

Tenter 12/27

Hands on face – skin is thick
cloth on tenter

Laid in the sun and baking

Pores are craving yellow light
to cover the sallow – a touch
of jaundice helps in winter

This bag of skin – this disease
waiting to happen

Teeth looking grey – thin

It’s in the water – nano-things
echoing the sound of sinus
pressure-filled

Hands on face – pulling back
at the eye flesh

Still red and beating in there

Still a gooey mess

Underground

Underground 12/26

A blind root is white against the darkness
            winding round rocks

It seeks only the water table
the sound of it moving is a fright-train

All that pushing of earth
            that boring tendril is a finger
pointing effortlessly

Sometime it points everywhere at once

Christmas-box

Christmas-box 12/25

Look into the branches and see those little star-points
They glitter – are roses on the mantle and food in
our bellies

We can break this day open like piñata – contents
pouring over the parquet like thick gravy – this second
will become a shimmer in our memories

A ball to place on a high branch at Christmastime
Take it out examine it and put it away careful like
It will be our treasure

Reflections will splinter the room into what is beautiful
and what is more beautiful – your face – mine – the
sound of snow on snow

These little twinkles hold our souls – they cover this
greenery – wrap us in some kind of warm – why
it is forgotten within a week is anyone’s guess

Pressie

Pressie 12/24

That one time I got gonorrhea then gave it back to myself because I put on what I thought were clean undies –
                        priceless

Sleigh

Sleigh 12/23

Hitch up this whale jaw to a team of dogs
                let’s ride until sunset then sleep it off –

Pegging

Pegging 12/22

place                        every
thing

                        in its place

valium                        tastes
like

                        the clouds
over                        New
Mexico

make                        days
count

                        for some
thing

or                        get
the

                        fuck out of
Dodge

chain                        link
lives

                        fall apart

like                        every
thing

                        else does

slowly                        over
time

Pill

Pill 12/21

My mother can’t help but call the sweater old looking
and she starts pulling on the little knots of wool around
the elbows

We are in the living room and it’s Christmas and it
doesn’t matter but she’s balling little brown bits of wool
into a ball of cat fur and calling it all old

I look into the ball she is making and try to focus on it
on the light gray thing that is getting bigger like it’s a
super massive black hole

Her voice is soft and she is meaning well and the
sweater is a few years old at this point and I don’t mean
to hit her chin when I pull back my arm

But I do and she drops the ball of cat and wool and it
drifts to the floor to the floor and stops and she looks
at me with such surprise

There must be something there then and anger over the
years pulled back into focus through the ether of space
gravity doesn’t just let go like that

Abode

Abode 12/20

Science pours cement onto ants
archeologies the results

Discusses the ingenious networks of this Pompeii
dusting at frozen bodies

Science looks into the camera and marvels
at how wondrous life on earth is

Oath

Oath 12/19

I will preserve the purity of my life and my art
So help me God I will not cut for stone

In every house I will keep myself from the pleasures of love with women or with men

I have not any property real or personal conveyed or concealed
All that may come to my knowledge I will keep secret will never reveal

Zoned

Zoned 12/18

Feet – cold – check
Ankles – weak – check
Knees – in pain – check
Legs – general cold – check
Hips – don’t lie – check
Dick – meh – check
Belly – troubled – check
Chest – breathing – check
Hands – see feet – check
Elbows – bending – check
Arms – general ok – check
Shoulders – neck sore – check
Neck – stress sore – check
Face – cold nose – check
Head – see belly – check

Mecca

Mecca 12/17

I beat the rug with a broom – shake out the old
I lean over the fire escape and see the chasm of New York
The Barechu is beginning over Brooklyn – I light
incense that smells like soil patchouli and oranges

            There is a balm in Gilead –

Clouds break into pink drifts – there is
a great schism between sunlight and vision
Everything is glass shifting under water
hemorrhaging reflections – the sound of pigeons

The cloud of dirt from the carpet hovers in the cold
and shimmers – it passes for breath
hiding in brown colors – I take the rug in my arms
and wrap myself in its redness

            There is a balm in Gilead –

And it is passing over my hands – oil down legs
It is a word on the tongue and then drifting over lots
The sky is red then purple then night – a bruise
healing itself –

            I am a strange sort of knight –

Citizen

Citizen 12/16

A part of a whole – collective
– a messenger bearing arms

Cellar

Cellar 12/15

What did you keep in the dark
your holy relics – boxed secrets – turnips

Musty cellar-physics all
those things we keep but never use

They ferment away – oxidizing
            lessening or gaining
Depending –

Inculturation

Inculturation 12/14

like a coat – right
            this culture

your veneration is a strap-on
your ancestors are idle worship

we absorb with pride
the quicker picker upper

            this culture
right –

Mere

Mere 12/13

The edge of mind is a cup overfull in the sink rusting
The sound of water dripping in is a heart beat in a cathedral

In this space is where one paces the ‘what now’ the ‘how much’
The columns of smoke are not from fires are not for warmth

Borderlands are dark from not knowing what they are
The house is a shattered safespace its portholes mouths

What all this adds to is the feeling of drowning while on land
You’ve been stabbed you feel fine keep walking smile for the cameras

Each breath your lungs fill with blood your heart seizes
But you will feel no pain you will slip effortlessly over the cliff

Sentient Book Part 3

Folks. Volume 3 of the books is out today.
Go take a look in the STORE

It would make a great gift. It's only $7. There's a $2 pdf version too for all you Kindle folk.

Here's today's poem:


Sentient 12/12

Exhausting all avenues the writer
walks away from the pen

There are just no words to describe what red feels like

Evening skies are not
grand symphonic reflections
they are just skies being

There will never be words enough to speak in red

Having walked all avenues the writer
reaches the sea finds a great deepening blue
and sits on the light sand tossing
rocks into the setting sun

There are piles of words around red
none that point to

Nasal

Nasal 12/11

Everything in New York is white
covered in a silent blanket

The soft burn of feet compressing snow

The sound of addition – everything
is negative space and cold

It is the smell of fresh paper

Transit

Transit 12/10

Jupiter is moving into Aquarius
this is going to make bad dreams
and easy moving loan making

Or so they say

The farmer’s almanac predicts
a long hard winter full of cold
and ice and slowness

The stock market will rebound
the world will rebound every
thing will do it

Jupiter is a moving ball in space
a balanced cue tilting on a crystal
sphere of influence

Or so they say

Kepler invented new maths
that brought all of this into focus
moved it closer in transit

These water-filled god gifts
will come and pour throughout
the year and then

Will end

Or so they say

Maiden's Blush

Maiden's Blush 12/9

Old lace
fraying at the edges
folding unfolding
in time with breath

The moth
rests on the bark
looking like thinned
rose petals

It flattens itself
and is pink and gray
like the sound of
rain at sunrise

Probiotic

Probiotic 12/8

Fix
            Me

Topical

Topical 12/7

There are these faces and these eyes and we look into them every day
We never understand what they mean

I’m watching the news and they are talking about war and tax cuts and Elizabeth Edwards and the x y z of the x y z and I’m thinking about how far I could throw a television out a window

And what movie staring Robert Downey Jr. I want to see this year

These faces communicate even less but we feel more somehow
And we never understand what this means

Maybe it means that Robert Downey Jr. is somehow very important and the diseases and the wars and the xyz of the xyz are blips on the radar that is everyday or maybe that television should be thrown away

Plump

Plump 12/6

Opening – the press
            of trunks
becomes
oppression of space

All that air –
            filling
everything

Multiserver

Multiserver 12/5

A finger in a jar
bends at the knuckle
in its liquid home
wrapped in amber
some mosquito in a movie
it bends then flexes
its nail grown horribly long

The skeleton of the hand
hangs in a museum across town
‘This is the hand
of saint so-and-so-and…
who was…
then left for…
the halls of that place
are haunted still’

What was left of the body
was buried in a hole
in a field behind a house
somewhere unknown
there was no marker
and there were only
two people who knew
and both of them are in
some holes of their own

Especial

Especial 12/4

On that shelf in that bottle is this dark liquid that was made 200 years ago it smells like smoke and fire and alcohol and the shavings from piñon wood it was originally meant to be a cure all a sort of snake oil something to be sold from the back of a cart by a man with a booming voice and a red coat on maybe there was an invalid who suddenly could walk and see and feel again after tasting the salty water that might have had something else in it but mostly it was water and ash and some charcoal and maybe a bit of juniper and now this bottle won’t open and the stuff has condensed until it is thick like oil like tar like molasses and it actually might do something for you now might actually cure it all it might even take away pain hell it could kill you

Skank

Skank 12/3

– could take your money – all your worth
is in that wallet

            by the bedside – with a watch
your cell – bet I could sell that

to the papers – sure someone would care
for the affirmation of your taste in men

– could print those dirty photos – your
almost famous face

            break those hearts of those
starlets – bet she’s a lesbian anyway –

that’s why she keeps with the guys who
vanish – seen it before really it’s all so

typical of your type –

young and stupid and rich

– could take you for so much – already
have – I get to sleep here

            there’s that – I don’t see
starlets in here – and my photos in your

expensive phone which makes me some
sort of lady of the manor or something

            and you let me hold that award
while I fuck you

Nitramine

Nitramine 12/2

Got this 5 day load – got this dynamite in your hand

Reserve

Reserve 12/1

Kiss me but
don’t move your hand south of the border

I want to remember your face like this
eyes discovering me

The first man on shore in the New World
on the surface of the moon

I want to
remember the wanting before we forget