Poem-A-Day #92 : And I Can Say

And I Can Say

Above the bar - a sort of haze on the television
a sport with a ball -

I make the same joke I always do about sportsballs and no one laughs -

There is a slippery moment - when I think I am more in tune
with the people in the now - a sort of - haze envelopes me and
I can say the things I want to say -

Let's talk about being away from this room -

The lack of noise outside the cars on the road and the crickets in the grass -
it's a calming tone - we are told it is a calming tone - it is a calming tone -

You want me to be hysterical - depressive - to have razors against my flesh -

The sound of breathing - of thinking about a word for 'this is not sad'
that is also a word for 'the mist on a lake in California right before dawn' - it doesn't exist
it exists outside of this place - a sort of haze in the mind

The Blank Screen

Jason Shulman - 2001: A Space Odyssey

The above image is a time elapse photo of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It takes a familiar medium, film, and renders it unintelligible. There are objects within the image, but holding them for long becomes tenuous.

English photographer Jason Shulman has been getting a lot of press lately for these images. It began, as far as I could tell, with a piece in Wired on May 9th. From there, the story has been 'picked up' by various reblog sites. This trend of posting another sources news to your own website as if you came up with it is an odd internet for of the Associated Press that I'm both ok and really wary of. But that's another discussion.

J.M.W. Turner -
Rain, Wind, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844)

The images are beautiful. They recall the works of J.M.W. Turner, I have professed my love before.

In some of the photos you can make out distinct images from the movies. The above 2001 image, for instance clearly showcases the red light of Hal at the center of the frame.

And while they most strongly resemble Turner or more abstract painters like Rothko or even Pollack, I was immediately struck by an omission from the discussion.

From the Wired article:

Shulman lives and works in London, and typically creates sculptures. During the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics he decided to test an idea he had about photography, which basically involved shooting the Games without going to Russia. He trained a camera on his television and took long exposure photos of athletes in motion. Most of the events he recorded were brief, leading him to wonder what might happen if he shot longer stretches of action.

And I don't doubt that this is the inspiration that Shulman's idea originated from but...

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Akron Civic Theater, Ohio (1980)

This is a photo by Hiroshi Sugimoto taken in 1980. It is a long exposure of a movie screen playing a movie. As a result of the black and white film and long exposure the screen becomes a clean white omnipresent eye hovering over the audience that appear, albeit as nearly unrecognizable smears in their seats. He started this series in 1978. His description:

Different movies give different brightnesses. If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark.

The Guardian ran a great gallery of this series on March 1 of this year.

Interestingly both the National and Tate galleries in London have Sugimoto pieces in their permanent collection. And there was a full exhibit of his work in 2004 at the Serpentine Gallery. Also in London. Where Shulman lives.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Lightening Fields 128 (2008)

Now. I'm not calling this stealing. I'm not even going to really blast Shulman because artists can and should find inspiration where it lies and I don't think this is malicious or intentional.

Inspiration comes odd, when it comes. And it's not always clear even to the creator where the seed idea came from. And that's what I'm guessing occurred here.

Shulman can be excused for not knowing a photographer since he works mainly in sculpture. I don't know every writer, so I'm going to give him a pass.

The people writing articles about him on the other hand. These are people paid to look into topics. A quick search online brings up Sugimoto's work. And that work was featured in Wired in 2014. Sugimoto's work has been in Wired at least 5 times, the most recent one in January of this year. So I don't blame Shulman. I blame bad reporting.

Because Sugimoto's work is really well-known. His experiments in photography are diverse and well-documented. He spent a few years shooting electricity at photo-sensitive panels. He photographs wax figures in a way to make them look like living people. He's an odd dude.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Fidel Castro (1999)

And that's the problem.

In all of this press about Shulman and his movie photos there is not one mention of Sugimoto. A Japanese man who has spent the better part of 60 years innovating and experimenting in his genre.

Let me be clear. Both works can, and should, be praised. They are working towards different ends. Shulman seems interested purely in what each film looks like filmed this way, in the aesthetic of the result. Sugimoto is interested in everything but the movie. He is interested in the rooms, the people, the eeriness of sitting in a room staring at nothingness for a few hours. He is interested in the time it took to film it, what it says about that time.

And this is where I will say something bad about Shulman. One of these artists is creating works that ask us to inspect ourselves and out space. The other is making a pretty picture.

Poem-A-Day #91 : Cole-Prophet

Cole-Prophet

It will happen suddenly - you will be walking
the sky will be blue and so clear - and the path
will be so very easy -

Across your path - a mass of monarch butterflies
their orangeness - paper burning in a fireplace -
they will beat about you until your lines erase -

And your body will cease to be -

Poem-A-Day #90 : Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

     1
Here some cheese
in a shaker - or plastic container - feeling
for all the world
like sawdust

Put it on your pizza - on your pasta
it will taste like something full
will soak the grease

Pull itself from within and without

     2
When you make tortellini for the first time
you must sing a song

     3
Some vehicle-less wheels
sever themselves form shelving - they will go off to find horses to pull them

This will never be smooth - press your fingernail into the rind
it is like a candle or the skin of a pumpkin

Inside it is the color of squash - it looks like a tree chopped down
splinters itself and peels itself

     4
The milk is pure
it is a bucket a cloth wrapped around itself
a scarf a turban a broken promise of new life

It rests until it doesn't
until it forms itself around a center
the tiniest bacteria itching until a pearl coalesces into curd

Have you watched someone churn butter ?
how it's just liquid until it suddenly isn't
have you kissed that moment ?

     5
What knife
in the heart

When you need that spread
it will come

Paolo Terzi for The Talks

Poem-A-Day #89 : Impressive Instant

Impressive Instant

One eye on the patch of skin at the base of my neck - one on the dog being dragged across the street
its legs strung up in the leash - there is a car coming

The dog has stopped walking the man is pulling and laughing - a woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth says that both will be hit

I feel like this moment is being binge watched - can it absorb - this compression

There is too much being held by this otherwise dull moment - in reality not much is released

The dog is fine - somewhere the man too - we finished our cocktails within the hour and the night crept over the mountains unsure of its place in the new spring

What is so interesting about décolletage - about the smell of water on dry earth - the color of whiskey floating in the corner of an eye

Poem-A-Day #88 : Gay Poem

Gay Poem

I stand in front of the mirror and I put my gay on :

It sleeps in a silver casket on the edge of the sink
near the toothpaste :

A cat coiled into itself möbius ass to mouth :

I want to tail something and unattached everything else
the sound of it could be a bottle under pressure giving in :

I christen this ship queer as fuck :

What do I look like when I sleep and am without my gay
do you recognize me in those lights
is it blue or some other field :

Turn to open sea full steam something something faucet away :

Ava Gardner touches up her face

Poem-A-Day #87 : Tomorrow

Tomorrow

Tomorrow the book will be done
Tomorrow I will be handsome
Tomorrow the clothes will fit
Tomorrow the car will stop coughing
Tomorrow everyone will be younger
Tomorrow I will have kisses
Tomorrow the TV will say I love you
Tomorrow money will flow this direction
Tomorrow elections will not matter
Tomorrow the cat will learn a skill
Tomorrow sugar will be healthy
Tomorrow this will all be new
Tomorrow this will all begin again
Tomorrow the feet will know the direction
Tomorrow the world will still embrace me

Poem-A-Day #86 : The Road

The Road

It's not so much that everything has been done
things are just the same as they've always been

man is man so...

               I'm trying to be nice about this

     but it's tiring to see people make claims about the breaking of the world

and not just sigh...

There is no road less travelled
just roads less defined
ambiguous meandering ambiguously

Here is a story: someone does some thing it doesn't matter what and someone looses their life savings as a result and in anger they pull a gun and the police come and there are more guns and how this ends is obvious to everyone even if it is shown that the thing done is terrible and the first person is at fault...

Perhaps molecules can only arrange themselves in so many ways

                    and maybe those arrangements can only interact in so many ways

          and those interactions can only happen so often

And they burn out ?
to be replaced by ?

So here's that road
worn and clear of overgrowth the ruts of wheels deep

man is man so...
               might as well...

Poem-A-Day #85 : Mystery #1

Mystery #1

New smell in the sheets
and on the tires of the car in the driveway

There is one burnt tile in the garage
where the box was burned

Sellers : The Rainbow Comes and Goes

The Rainbow Comes and Goes
Author: Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
Publisher: HarperCollins (4/5/16)
304p

Thoughts on Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt?

This is the type of saccharine book that you give to people when they are seriously ill or they are retiring.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

The basic premise of this book, where a mother and son talk frankly about their lives, is one that can be fraught culturally. Throw in that that son is also gay and there's probably some negative stereotypes already on the tip of your tongue.

Sigmund Freud coined the 'clinical' term for the negative trope - Oedipus Complex. In Freud's hyper-sexualized (and frankly broken) world-view a man who loves his mother beyond childhood is viewed as removed from a healthy mental state. Here is a man who can never actualize himself. He will never find, most importantly, heterosexual love. He will be stunted. A eunuch. Stripped of his 'he-ness'. You might as well chop off his dick, it would be less embarrassing.

Oedipus & The Sphinx (1864) - Gustave Moreau

Think about Norman Bates and his cross-dressing. The trope of the gay man who wanted to wear his mother's clothes instead of date a woman. These things lead to a stigma placed upon any man who dares to love his mother. These are the dark things lurking behind Freud'd legacy.

This view has wormed its way into society as a whole to the point of being nearly universal. Think of all the boys told not to hug or kiss their mothers. The fathers who tell their sons to not cry. To not show emotion.

And it has deformed society.

From men who view women as objects of desire/ownership to cultural limits placed on 'acceptable' forms of masculine affection, the damage is very real and ongoing. I would argue that it is the root of many real-world issues that surround sex, sexuality, and gender.

The shame placed on the very idea of the 'mama's boy' is one that needs to be broken. Healthy, loving relationships between parents of all genders and their children are not only ok, they are desirable. And while this book isn't a revelation on the subject (it isn't even about this topic) it is making a dent in the idea that a grown son cannot have a close relationship to his mother.

And the work subtly acknowledges this. From the description:

Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of ninety-one, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a year-long conversation unlike any they had ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other.

Hidden in there is the small detail of them making the decision to change their relationship. To become closer and to reveal themselves to each other. A sort of grown-ass conversation that everyone should have with anyone who cares.

Now, some don't have this access to their parents. And it is certainly worth noting that this kind of clarity is not necessarily important to parent/child relationships. But the idea that this closeness is undesired is one that needs to be broken down and rethought.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Poem-A-Day #84 : Button Mashing

Button Mashing

Run fast - until your feet become wheels of fire
     until you turn into a video game hedgehog

               Collect those fucking rings asshole

put them on your wrists - bangle - the sound would be a monk ringing a bell
     his two-toed slippers taking half steps taking calm to the Nth

               Around him everything else speeds to blur

Which one is the one that resonates on the mountain of your heart
      and the popping of it - how many woodland creatures pour out of that piñata

               Oh confetti raining the street in midi wind chime tones
               pile until you form the face of god

Poem-A-Day #83 : Spring Break

Spring Break

The slope comes to the riverbank
where it is absorbed by the rounded pebbles
and the smell of damp

New trees pop from the edges of clear
they are leafing and basically twigs in mud
placed there by a child or parent of a child

Sound of frogs and of birds
cicadas cocophaning in the limbs of larger wood
they will all fall soon make a snow of bodies

How fucking clear is this water
and cold
it fills with flash bang fish and noise

The clouds catch on mountains and pull seams
like two hands ripping off a tank top
everything pours into our eyes

Poem-A-Day #82 : There Is

There Is

The rapid transit of us into us
there is a word for it :

The trees are :

They point their tiny fists of spring
they have opened their fingers have gone yellow
then turn toward chlorophyll :

If it goes quick then let that go
the word is is :

Pose the mannequin like it is a painter
staring into a mirror
painting a self-portrait :

Trumpets blare and they are only car horns :

The public transport of us engages the turn lane
there is a word that is is and is not :

We are searching for prose like Gershwin
that conveys a man carrying packages on a busy Thursday
on a Manhattan street :

Dropping seeds like ribbons :

Windsocks popping brass :

Is not the word also rapid in its sphere :

Poem-A-Day #81 : Colonization (after Calvin Trillin)

Colonization (after Calvin Trillin)

Have they run out of provinces yet?

If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.

Long ago, there was just Cantonese.

(Long ago, we were easy to please.)

But then food from Szechuan came our way,

Making Cantonese strictly passé.

Szechuanese was the song that we sung,

Though the ma po could burn through your tongue.

Then when Shanghainese got in the loop

We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup.

Then Hunan, the birth province of Mao,

Came along with its own style of chow.

So we thought we were finished, and then

A new province arrived: Fukien.

Then respect was a fraction of meagre

For those eaters who’d not eaten Uighur.

And then Xi’an from Shaanxi gained fame,

Plus some others—too many to name.

Now, as each brand-new province appears,

It brings tension, increasing our fears:

Could a place we extolled as a find

Be revealed as one province behind?

So we sometimes do miss, I confess,

Simple days of chow mein but no stress,

When we never were faced with the threat

Of more provinces we hadn’t met.

Is there one tucked away near Tibet?

Have they run out of provinces yet?

• This piece is an erasure of THIS poem by Calvin Trillin that appeared in The New Yorker in April of this year. The poem is, at best, tone deaf. To say the least.

Source - The New Yorker

Poem-A-Day #80 : Haiku

Haiku

There are days when I
want to pull inside myself -
Be turtle -     Be stone

Poem-A-Day #79 : Sexy Poem

Sexy Poem

The challenge was to write about sex in a way that was thoughtful - that pressed against the sides of its box and filled the space with a marshmallow softness that was enough to leave indentations where your head rested - and what would that sex look like - would it involve ropes or feathers - the sun comes through here at exactly 2:36 will you please have your clothes off at 2:20 so we're fully in it by then - how does sex get expressed in a new way - why sex how sex when sex - do you sex - if this finger presses gently against your pubis is that sex - what if it lifts you into the air - sex crumbles under the weight of thinking about it - it is stone and fingernails pressed in drying sugar - would it involve cardboard houses and barrels of oil - hands floating over skin - did you cut your nails did you shave your chest - cover your eyes while this happens - the sheets are good cover - the darkness of the blindfold will concrete your senses - look the writing about sex is boring - the sex is boring - put in and then rotate - again - again - again - it's a pick - a spatula - it we underquote it will convey dirty - like ,,this,, - no - yes - the challenge was to write - to sex - to do that together - was it coming -

Poem-A-Day #78 : Underwear

Underwear

Bands of elastic gray and cutting fabric
under your ass cheeks

          I am trying out this jockstrap
          trying to see what the big deal is about

That floss bit that they talk about
is more rope more floating finger of gentle pressure

          Someone told me that they were the height of sensuality
          that wearing them was akin to constant turning on

The ass is not so much raised as gently tightened
and the balls are compressed

          I don't buy the story being told
          this isn't terrible this isn't amazing

It's perhaps more about knowing what is on
under the clothes the nudity in the dressed

          It's certainly less sweaty certainly a kind of freedom
          though the cheeks become red

Poem-A-Day #77 : Mediations on Water Forms

Mediations on Water Forms

I'm afraid of water :

          the ambiguity of space - sound - the lack of feelings beneath it :
there is an inherent voidness - it is rolling glass

In the photo the iceberg has just turned over
revealing its Coke bottle undersides - polished by the salt

                    within hours the surface will crack in the cold - will cover in snow :

          I pray for smoothness

          transparency

          the crack of cold air on wet surface :

light penetrates regularly only to 200 meters
between 200 and 1000 meters is the twilight zone - photosynthesis ceases and then at 1000 it all goes black - the midnight zone is where things go blind - eyeless - colorless :

                              the octopus can stand on it's tentacles
                         spread out its skin - this is called the Nosferatu pose :

          at some point I remember being able to float

          that first time - it was like a stomach turning upside down

          and I was scared shitless :

there is some sort of spreading out - a blackness - ink-like
                    polished in its opaqueness - purpling in the sunset :

whiskey over cubes - the sound

Source - Alex Cornell

Poem-A-Day #76 : The Novel

The Novel

Between the covers,
                                  a field of dead things.
This line of ants carries their harvest home.

Poem-A-Day #75 : New Leaf

New Leaf

Cardboard tube split along its spiral axis
unfurled
                     painted the purest of greens

Poem-A-Day #74 : Accountability

Accountability

I want to hold lines on paper accountable for the things they seem to be saying

Become an accountant

I have a small pencil sharpened and ready

Let's pretend that these lines can speak that they have something to say what is it that is spoken

That word account comes from old French though exploring those roots reveals nothing the word was conter and then aconter and it means to count and it recedes quickly because what is the use

I want to say that I hold myself to account that I can explain away myself in spreadsheets and lines that become flies snapping at the heels

I pick up the blue pencil my illustrator friend left behind after his visit and I draw across the walls until the space is the color of a Smurf's flesh then I take pics for my Instagram and none of it shows up

There is the sound of a fire alarm somewhere in the building

I continue watching Parts Unknown and realize that I shall burn

That the blue pencil doctrine exists bad parts of law shall be thrown away and the good kept

Let's pretend for a second that I am not lazy that I manage motivation that I 'get things done' am one of those people who others say good things about

Let's pretend that I'm not naked while I write this and eating pizza and soda and cookies

There should be a law probably is

I think about the laws against those who cannot pay their bills about the laws against homosexuality and the forced castrations and then the forces sterilizations of the poor not white women

And I don't know what part of me to tick

Which box do I fill in when it comes time to either literally or proverbially take my life into accounts and face the great white lights of The End

I do not even believe in a god to be the keeper of that great bound book of things I did not do well so -

I think about counting myself and trying to take stock of my goods

And then I remember to hold language accountable as well call it out on its shit tell it to go fuck itself

Here language is a small token a parsing of my body it is dough and pale and full of nonsense that rarely escapes itself let alone heals anyone and yet...      and yet...

Poem-A-Day #73 : ...the dead drift among all those words meant to explain the dead

...the dead drift among all those words meant to explain the dead

The acorn still wearing its beret sets itself on the shelf while the horse chestnut faces the other direction looking freshly living and full of layers of gold beneath the red-brown

Fingers on that surface - it is oiled - the pupil a stoic white is blind and cannot possibly understand the fashions of other tree seeds

These trees that will never tree hold the ghosts of dead women - they roll on the counter like those jumping beans you get at five and dimes from here to Amarillo

They came haunted - holding on to the yards they were found in - in them you see pronged leaves in that shade of green that only happens in July when the sun pulls through filaments of chlorophyll

Here there is a desire to crack open - to find that small tree within the black hole of un-birth - a sort of ur-lung - the egg before the chicken

A hammer would help - like popping the lid of a tomb - finding a room full of those Pompeii body casts - that exhibit in New York of preserved criminal remains refashioned as art

Would that the ghosts release - find some comfort in having their tiny homes engaged with the everything else - would that the ghosts find a rumble elsewhere

• The title is taken from Garden of the Fugitives by Matt Donovan

Source - Dionisvera/Shutterstock

Poem-A-Day #72 : NPC

NPC

She smiles and points at the shelves of books
it's all very game show of her - and her arm is outstretched
and her face is smiling and there is a stone room with a fireplace
sending smoke up a chimney - there is food on the table
there is a dog sleeping nearby

She is frozen - waiting - you stare at the row of objects
the spines are dull colors no knowledge is revealed

          Buy or Sell ?

It's complicated by the desire to know more about her
about the small table with the single bowl of food - the
dog how old is it - is she alone - on purpose - you imagine
a life for her where she is happily here and it refuses to sad
but the creeping terror of broken homes hovers

A silent sort of air over the space - her frozen smile
communicating so little

In the end you won't want anything - does that please her
will she cry herself to sleep with no money for her rent

Poem-A-Day #71 : Drunk Poem

Drunk Poem

The dog is slobbering again - and the night is cold
it's May why is the night cold

I am an adult I feel like I'm 16 - I have never felt older

I recount the story of going to the concert
of the mosh pit and the elbows and how I retreated to the balcony

And there are nods - someone says 'but your hair is purple'
and there are more nods

And I remember the article about purple-haired poets
ow they were an example of the pseudo-liberal
not really woke white person - and - I - am unsure -

And the cat drags the baby bunny into the living room
and does not devour it

It fucks with the thing - until it is saved or dead
either way the night will repeat - because martinis

Poem-A-Day #70 : Cryptarchy

Cryptarchy

And the government knows these things
all the things and the knowing is a thing
that is known and unknown

Here the aliens break open and reveal their inner cat pilots
in their little helmets and suits they are feline Power Rangers
in a rainbow of colors

I want to be bigger on the inside
to twist in the wind like an airfield sock
all phallic and flappy in the tall grass

There could be a sort of fight between the cats and myself
we would be like children playing war
the men in black watching us smiling plotting

Or the government is mute on all things - a broken edifice
limping in its tower - either way I catnip and I plant mines

Poem-A-Day #69 : Confession #12

Confession #12

There are times I want to watch the world burn - allow
every cell to wither and die - dust clinging
to a Swiffer or swept like the ants
that dot the floor of my kitchen after I've sprayed them with poison

Poem-A-Day #68 : ...and the Memory is Also Small

...and the Memory is Also Small

On the other side of the highway
the silver SUV sped towards home

It sought center
and smoothness

It carried a procession of bodies
through that space as careful as a mother

And the dog

It didn't have time to be more than
yet another small branch of kindling

Spinning - a loom endlessly kicked
in some dark room

Gold turning into straw then into shoots
and finally seeds blown in the wind

Poem-A-Day #67 : On Being Ashamed of Not Finishing Books

On Being Ashamed of Not Finishing Books

The books I have not finished line a shelf in my bedroom - they stare down at me as I sleep

          mocking my own production - How the fuck dare I
demand eyes when I can't even...

                                        I could burn them -
                              hide the evidence - keep my cat warm on winter nights when the heater is broken and I don't have enough blankets - there are never enough blankets

I could knit them - make a quilt - could learn form them the shape of comfort

While I sleep the spines unfurl and reach out from their dusty corners - their bookmarks are tongues speaking in words I have not heard

The pages are snow - are the crust in your eyes - are the lidless idylls of ancient gods

Poem-A-Day #66 : Political Poem No.2

Political Poem No.2

The book ends with a scene of a woman and a man in the rain
her pregnant belly revealed - her sudden acceptance of the way the wind blows

He looks at her and begs her for status

And in that rain - the book bleeds off the page - her pregnant belly
is the room you are sitting in - hard with life - pulsing in the sounds of cloud

And this book from Mozambique across 14 years of translation

Opens the door into something - a pit - a sort of repetition of thought
it prolongs the moment and shortens it - is this universe his

That there is no clear answer to that question is perhaps the literal end of colonialism

And that the answer is not as simple as yes or no - is also a sign
that there is no end - that there is never an end - that rising begets collapsing

Tired from the climb and the balancing

• The scene described is form the book The First Wife by Pauline Chiziane

Poem-A-Day #65 : The Body

The Body

Glitter in the blood - on the pavement - an oil slick of confetti

This is the pooling of every beaten queer body - it bleeds until the sidewalk looks like an 80s music video and the world is tinted in purple and light

Watch it die

                    It is an animal with its neck broken

You are sitting at the dinner table and see it before you hear it - the queer is a bird is going to hit the window - is going to leave a mark

It is the wet slap of a towel in a bathhouse on the floor of the shower

And it is on your dinner table

                    On your child's plate - they will eat it

The newscaster is dancing around the subject of the body in the gutter

The people walking by - the metallic flow from the mouth - a swarm of flies diffusing in the night they will attack the moon down

Poem-A-Day #64 : Funny Business

Funny Business

Outside the wind is tearing the dirt from the ground - the sound of whistles reminds me of screaming audiences and balloons being squeezed of their air

And my mind wanders back tot he TV and the man on the screen is riffing quickly:

          She's like a walking talking Stephen Hawking

          She's brainier than Kurt Cobain's garage ceiling

I think about the space between the glass in the window and the seal in the frame - gaps in time - that moment when word hits the air and then settles on the ground like ashes

Here is a joke

Here is the pause between sound waves and atoms

          There's lots of sexual positions named for superheores - the Spiderman - the Superman
          The other night a guy said Batman and I asked him what is the Batman

          He said it's when you kill her parents

There is the sound of clicking out int he street - rain on the glass that is actually not water but grains of sand lifting themselves in flight

There is the moment of dissonance - cognitive - otherwise - the trembling of muscles as they turn your neck to see the darkness outside be opaque in itself

• The jokes are Jimmy Carr's

Poem-A-Day #63 : Character Sheet

Character Sheet

Fill out your name

          Add your race

                     Your gender

          What are your motivations

          Think about your weaknesses

That time when you were a child and you sat in the garden and the small mouse touched your hand and you panicked and hit it with the book and it crunched under A Wrinkle in Time

How you wake up sometimes thinking that your body is failing and you have cancer or AIDS or are going to die young even though you creep towards less young every breath

How many d20s do you roll to figure out how to move on

          What armor is enough

Here is a backpack you do not get to say what is inside just know that it has an inside

Rope enough

Initiative will change

Poem-A-Day #62 : Fusion

Fusion

Ink on water - the shooting lines
are instant and then sudden - they pause
before combining

They darken then vanish

Lines of veins pumping across hydration
- absorb this and then release
in pink and running glass