Unlikeness

I'm back from England. I took a day to relax. This is yesterday's poem.

A woman came into my cafe one morning at 8:00 and started drinking wine. She had 3 glasses and kept talking about her husband who would be there in a moment. A little over an hour passed and she began to talk about how he had said he was parking the car.

She left and never came back.


Unlikeness 7/7

Ju-just calm down
he’s coming

Watching her like you do
Waiting for the angries to begin – shake
up her spine like a tingle of winter
Some cold metal on your inner thigh – a gun
or maybe a knife

He’s ju- just parking
we had a fight

Streets empty – you know how it is
it’s early in the morning – the wine
looks like cranberry juice
Half of two glasses – swirling in
There’s that sound of AC and fans

Loo-ook I
need a cigarette

Door open – shut – it’s hot outside
only 8 in the morning
I’m just saying that I’m not drinking this early
not that I wouldn’t
or that I haven’t thought about it

Slander

Slander 7/6

The fans are passing overhead and he's talking about the time he arranged for the trip to the movies to go perfectly wonderfully well and there's that girlfriend mentioned and he's going to the Hamptons he says and he needs to arrange for the perfectly wonderful weekend off of work and then he's going on about the movie but of course only she went...

Phason

I am back from England tomorrow. So that poem may be late.


Phason 7/5

Beyond the window of the plane
                        the clouds are a sheet of cotton - thickly
blanketing - we are descending -

                                                Resting our belly
on the quilt of vapor

It is dividing itself and we are falling -

                        A rush of blue
and the sudden wheels -

Meter

Meter 7/4

I want to let the measure talk about itself
Tell a story of what it does in the quiet times
Let it stretch itself out and dust the shelf

So to speak - play out its story on the tines
Of some old fork spinning in a drain
Caught all whirlpool like a nice rhythm and rhyme

I want to give voice to the concept of rain
The expanse of the valley - of space
Of time - I want to give voice to pain

Open mouthed and screaming encased
In the paper cage of harrowing that can only be torn
And never erased

I want to speak the sounds of the just born
Let the voice of the fields be mine
Let it flow from the page weathered - worn

I want to let the measure sing about time
Let each moment tell about another

Drollery

Drollery 7/3

At the back of the eye - pulsing
            crimson splash of headache
            bursting slo-mo vein
            stretching the length of a lifetime

There's the feeling that this has to be manageable
            that you have to - keep the demons on the page
            trapped between the mark here - and the
            one traveling off the margins

Labyrinthitis - sudden vortex suck
            this is the pain of leaves in the eusophogus
            crunching catching - the mildew
            of thinking

Then what becomes of the life
            that attempts to take the paper
            fold it into a houseboat and sail - headlong
            into coming storms - make it reality

What inner Minotaur searches - inner
            catacombs and oubliettes
            What inner Minos
            rolls up all trace of thread

Enforcement

Enforcement 7/2

A man in a long coat loads the business end of a yawning musket He points it to the tree-line I am crouching in the tree-line naked He points and the uneven metal drifts through air some sort of breaking of waves The smoke drifts up through his face he is and is not Rough metal at skin breaking limbs of pine there is a falling of cones a needle rain A thousand pricked chest blooming like roses in a pocket A sudden pocking over everything Sap over holes emptying...

Non-smoking

Non-smoking 7/1

The haze over the city blinks pink
and the pink is masking lightening
The pop of the green fireworks
ignites the air around lower Manhattan
I walk through the thickness
a light wet on my arm slicking me
I'm knifing down Sterling Place
and watching the booming in the clouds
So like war tapes on the news
and I imagine that I'm in a terrified future
that the streets are blackened
by tire tracks and glue
The gunmen stalk alleyways and disappear
the mothers and sisters in hoods
At night when I am asleep
the vampires of this future come into
my room and splinter the edges of
my door frame
They rub it down to smooth and
create reflection in the roundness
They unhinge the battlements of dreaming
and cannon until morning