Poem-A-Day #335 : [Failing - at It]

[Failing - at It]

F a
     i l  i     n
                   g  -

    a t     It  -    the

O     N     L     Y

thing books

          c a n n o t prepare

    for

Poem-A-Day #334 : New Shoes

New Shoes

The website is selling shoes - highlights thinness of the sole
color of variety - daily dance in neon for $60

Imagine toes into them - tightness of new a swaddle across arch
that leather fresh rubber - moment of paper in toe

Putting the shoes on - sock of ground beneath - sudden support

Safety is - a broken pair - foam cracked burned
rounded into parody of a clown

How aches the back in those things - how creeps the body
for $60 made in Americas you too can walk the streets in glowing style

Thinness and feeling renewed - the opening of eyes -

Classic Wasp Trainer - Gola

Poem-A-Day #333 : Narrative

Narrative

Toss - the match - right ? - I mean -
the fucker deserves to go up in flames
and God - I am tired - of sympathy -
so let's get this over with

Poem-A-Day #332 : [I don't write political poetry - but]

[I don't write political poetry - but]

I don't write political poetry - but
breathing is political

Take it through the mouth - in - to - you
as a cave
draw rope - and tie it to the nearest tree that bends to the east
that wakes with dawn and serves only the sun

It will lower inside you - a bee
in the throat of a lily

Oddly gentle - it will come - with caveats

Words don't become politics - unless
they are traded outside these walls

The caught ball of air in your throat - will
not carbon dioxide - unless
you keep breathing

Poem-A-Day #331 : Letter of Discovery (after Columbus)

Letter of Discovery (after Columbus)

you - will be pleased - you
will learn how

I found very many - have taken

I gave the name - in honor
gave a new name

so extensive and nothing of importance

Poem-A-Day #330 : When I Am King You Will Be First Against The Wall

When I Am King You Will Be First Against The Wall

I sleep in linen vestments - break
all bread at a bloodwood table - a chair made of silver
in my mind - it is so gleaming -

The crown has thorns - God - does not allow this image room to expand -

Under these robes - a terrier warms my ankles is
a dust mop of a thing - I want to tell you about the letting go -

At some point you have to unhinge
your mind - make it a door - a chest that opens warily
it will only house curtains - a dead moth but it will house
these things well -

But you have to allow it to be emptied - God - the room that is needed
an economy of space - a sort of draining swamp -

Nothing is my own - everything is my own - my Voice
and my Fear are my own - and those things build themselves a castle
that becomes entrenched immediately in vine -

You will plant the seeds - someone
else will eat that bread and be nourished - or poisoned -

That rule is necessary and necessity is rule - well - everyone
loves a fascist until they are the one getting the rod -

Here - I will show you the interior rooms of my mind - gore - all the way down -

Poem-A-Day #329 : [Cornmeal on the hands - a burn - a polish -]

[Cornmeal on the hands - a burn - a polish -]

Cornmeal on the hands - a burn - a polish -
that becomes the glue sealing the broken ceramic bowl -
that lived on grandmas shelf -

It is like a gymnast at the double bars -
this bread making - it is an act for the cameras - will be scored -

Perhaps the fingerprints will vanish in it -
give way to rising and lowering tides - it would fit -
a buttered flesh for a buttered flesh -

Poem-A-Day #328 : The Gay Looks Like Snow

The Gay Looks Like Snow

I set my gay on the table, it spills
napkins only spread it around

A gay comes on that reminds me of the 90s

Working on my gay becomes a problem
when the wifi goes out

All the heads look up, turn to the counter
watch as they gay the router

Outside, on the phone, I hear reports
on the gay of my grandfather

He was gay then out of the hospital
grumpy but well

The gay looks like snow

Poem-A-Day #326 : Broken Poem

Broken Poem

Your zoology is confusing
A tongue on your skin - mine - in the creases of your arm
Let the broken blood be the broken glass
A light comes into the room - it is a ghost expressing discomfort with limes
Trees become fish for you
Scales leaf and collapse - they make a paste - they pop
Animals on our bodies and our mouths and our left parts
It spills and spills and spills
Cages erupt around the world - they fill and open - they burn
A missed connections ad on Craigslist mentions the figure of Orion
The arrows land in the yard
We chase the Chinese New Year and try to name the puddles
Squeeze citrus - squeeze eggs
There are things we can build and not build - nothing else

Poem-A-Day #325 : On the Evening Before the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States

On the Evening Before the Inauguration of the 45th President of the United States

The cold has sat on my face - holed up
in the caves of my sinuses

I sleep - wake
sit with the cat
an endless stream of movies runs by

I feel as though I am waiting for someone to come home

I have strange sentimental thoughts about an ex-boyfriend
and almost text him
but do not - and this proves something

I fall asleep and miss the sunset - it is the night and it is cold outside
the snow from last week melts and turns into mud

I found a patch of rust on the hood of my car this morning
a pock or orange-red amid the green - it is rough to the touch
it is probably spreading - I think about ways to patch it

Are there patches

I noticed that the cat is walking stiffly - that
age is creeping in him

Age is creeping everywhere

I math - I will be 39 in 2020 - the cat will be 17
will possibly not be here - will have turned into glass

On the eve of my 40th birthday will I know where I am

There is a progression of things - I told my class today
write towards the future
because whatever you write will date the second it is done
and the future needs you in ways the present does not

A moment of folding occurs

Tonight the world will go to sleep and I will not set an alarm
at 9:30 in the morning things will occur that I will not see
paths before us will have quietly lessened - and multiplied

Poem-A-Day #324 : To My Sick Body

To My Sick Body

It is difficult to think with congestion in your face
you can f e e l the styrofoam thickness of the tubes within you
your heartbeat thrumping on the pillow

This is your blood in your veins and it is making sound

We are so resilient
our bodies take the endless radiation of days
manage to up and down stairs and cycle our habits like whoa

But when things fall apart          they do so spectacularly

They crystallize every mistake ever made and cough
them into a mirror at 3 AM
our bodies turn on us so quickly that they cannot make the turn fully

And they will crash in their haste

Will erupt into fever and pitch and fall into a depth of exhaustion
that will leave them in a state of need that only we ourselves can deal with

Poem-A-Day #323 : Amber Alert

Amber Alert

Across the restaurant phones begin to siren
a child has been kidnapped
people glance          silence
               some read

A woman mumbles
she thought she had turned it off
she shows her friends how to turn it off

White sedan with New Mexico license plates
tinted windows

The child is 5          was wearing red
               shoes that light up

Normalcy returns
near immediate
a few moments and a single phone
repeats the sound

A muffle in someone's bag
embarrassed to be there
               no one looks up

And it must be ok
because within 8 hours they find them
they arrest the man
               the child goes home

It must be
because despite no one helping
everything went well

Poem-A-Day #322 : After Joseph Charles MacKenzie

This "poem" went viral for a reason. The reason is that it is bad. And everyone can see that. I fixed it.

After Joseph Charles MacKenzie

Ye proud tyrant - snatch

ill-gotten reigns

Solid - self-righteous
plump on forgetting

He's enriched gladly
off the migrant - the worthy

A murderous norm - lives
and nation deformed

The black man - the poor man
the sick man - the soldier - the young
hapless - defenseless - but born

O! - ye tyrant - a great crowd arounds
that you might lay down

Poem-A-Day #321 : January

January

The aloes are growing -
it is cold - but - they shoot themselves at the windows
dark green - moving - outside the snow becomes fog - becomes breath

Poem-A-Day #320 : It Is Hard Not To Think Of Gods As White Men

It Is Hard Not To Think Of Gods As White Men

I want Michael Fassbender to come in the room

right now - carrying a bunch of balloons - pink ones

It's important because it's January 14th and sometimes this is how these days go

The man who killed those two 30-year-olds has been charged with homicide - it -

I didn't know them and it isn't my pain - they were friends of people I know

And someone should talk about death today - all days - I wear my skull necklace

and pay for a painting of a canyon and it feels like a Turner storm and that is why I want it

I will never own Turner storms so -

Why Fassbender though - he came in first - I asked the universe

who should deliver January 14th balloons and it was him

We can talk about his choices of film if he is - in real life - this into comic books and video games

I often imagine being hit by a car as I cross an intersection - T-boned

is what they call it and it feels too graphic to discuss

But I imagine my body passing through showers of glass

swimming in a way I cannot in water - and I imagine what it would feel like

the rendering of bone and flesh and the images burned into retina that will never see again

In my head it is a jumble - like a screwdriver - a sort of whirl

An indecipherable - though maybe if you stare long enough but there is only a few seconds before the eye will hit the pavement - it is a cloud of brown colors washing over everything

A pop of sudden pink in the corner - the sun somehow still there

The face of a very European person taking souls out of the world

Michael Fassbender
Esquire Russia Sept. 2012

Poem-A-Day #319 : Oracle 1990s

Oracle 1990s

In the 90s - a sense of end times - the fall
of airplane engines from the sky

We would hoard water until we had no place to sleep -

There was that drill - under your desk - hands
up and over your head - head
down and in your lap

The same thing for tornadoes - useless -

A sense that oral sex could only occur in the Oval Office - that
everything was going to get worse before it got Star Trek -

You used to be able to see the horizon - now. . .

Poem-A-Day #318 : It Is What The Brain Does In Response That Causes Concern

It Is What The Brain Does In Response That Causes Concern

In the stark light of January it is hard to predict where it will come from
the broken man missing all of his teeth or the men in their "nice" clothes
coming out of the diner

Conversation in the parking lot our gayness on display by virtue of existence
the voices may come harsh and faggoting or they will whisper followed
by laughter and stares and cackling as doors to cars open and shut

And in that moment everyone who is a target will be hushed and silenced
and kept from being as loud and real as those people who get to drive
out of the accident that just occurred

A cell phone may go off the ringtone a Tina Turner song and someone will
have to decide to answer it the cars will move silently by the small pressed
selves and eyes will lock

On the phone a parent or friend or sibling and they will be asking what's up
the moment will elongate time stopping a hung phrase looping itself to death
there could be a fire in that rubbing second

"Fine" will be the answer because there is nothing finer than coming through
the micro without a fat lip or a worse screeching of tires or blood on the snow
there is only fine here

Poem-A-Day #317 : Insomnia

Insomnia

Peace over night - quiet          obvious

But some days the night refuses to rest

It howls - not well - dying cackles

Poem-A-Day #316 : Insta

Insta

My self worth is on 4chan
getting buried under piss takes

I pop all the bubble wrap I can find

A sense of cat emojis comes over me
and I want to have a night in

Draw the bath then draw
the orgasming face of St Teresa

Salt the water check your likes

Ask people on WeChat
how they feel about your self

Poem-A-Day #315 : Romance #201

Romance #201

                    Blah
     Blah
               Blah

Sound of hearts pretending they're disinterested

The music of an anime getting started

I want to tell you I will hold you until you bleed
and that this will make you take your clothes off

The tongue is stupid
                                      yellow
                                                       a lie in a bath of goo

I will tell you a joke and you will laugh it off
and no one will pretend that it isn't a kind of sex

We fall down a well do we get news papers noticing us

Maybe if we profess in front of the temple

Maybe if the notes rupture like bubbles