The new guest

Rocket utility
to a closed room
brings sensitive
luncheon meats
we lure flies
and wanton boys
delight in our noise
in the street below

outrunning hydras
sentimentally
inside eyes adapt
other colleges swear
the cure's electricity
decency, passion
a spanking, fresh air
mouthwash ration

somebody clones
an explanation it
becomes a phenomenon
series or quit
it justice fled
your gorgeous mouth
I adore you bled
catch the peanuts

missing the high aim
of luxury plain
handholding in sandals
on the backtrack green
enough and never
fall our own arrows
random as rain
and meaning assembled

piercing from six sides
sways the systems downriver
I love them don't ruin
them now and forever
nice white teeth
say such sings
even when lips
eclipse them

2 buy the book (v.c. via n.d.)

CHOREA

Certain allergies bark hot tea
Handshook each to scramble
Our proprioceptive power
Remaining on the patio
Even after the peach
Amiably swallowed the pony-tailed lunatic



SHALL WE

Probable son only
Enrobed in sunrinse
Rack and roof sail
Crags and question rill
Your remorseless shape
But to speak or hatch
Your desperate heavens

Sweet-talking oracle
Shakes dew to extinguish
Her only son's
Extemporaneous repentances
Strange notes on an alabaster day
Hang timelessly in granges ebb

Early archivists monthly
Lozenge suck at the bow's arc
Low end of a loco motivator
Even I know and acknowledge
Yes, dearest Lady, I sometimes forget to weep

Loose ends of a loose week

He is the boy wonder
with his water-colour
Diluting misery
until it flows down mountains.
A mood becomes a landscape
in the oral tradtion
drifitng
the arm that screamed on the toboggan
around him now's a lullabye.

*

Through plastic like - Watteau? -
A tree, nature's watery brain
Murky like love, thing I get nervous
just thinking of
or Brown grown green

ONE
CENT
CANADA
-
1915
gorgeous Rex next door with the Indian Empress
buzzwire bee chases me indoors to kiss your trenchant knee

*

There's somebody here & then there's somebody there
A sketch for definition
An act of the imagination and hands
hand me the same body
Is it the same person

*

"A jailbreak is different from"
A sit in the park
Denuded of names & mythologies
Free to be atheclectic, jugular, dog-wrestling
Tennis-popping embolizer
A lunge away from them
The jerking mad boys or
The zombified tree

Leads to where - "is there a doctor in the park"
("dealing here" or "on the dale")
Keep your stories in a black sack
Gag your mouth - a fly sneaks out
Snapped flat in the shuttered black book

Itys aid us to swallow our cooks
backwash of breakfast, want ads, merciful apologies

*

impovere
breakfast of clover

guard my daughter but none too close
& not in my house where she was
minted & roseprinted
& knew no evil but our own

now you scramble your stinkbugs in her eggs
as well tattoo the devil on your beater

impatient impressions of the self
on the world's meat flowers

gone my tongue
my dong my my

*

It's the two-world duplexer
past the booth-centred centennial celestial snooze centre
above & below, in air & water
too late to send out for a sunset
moontwaddle confessions
run & flee & turn into a weed
wind blows out your nose
with a new awareness
flares of point of view
epistolary peregrinations
words spread on wafers
dry out by day break
green provocative gardening
is work so worthwhile
even though a bucketful of raspberries
each morning yield their hundred-and-one
red-meaty drupelets to your tongue
not beguiled by oblivion
the obvious
lust or
the arrows of advertising


*

plant as brick
a wreathe of sirens
flung through the window
a neck
a regular ambassador
sung a sassy nation
hung potted meat
3 bottles shot
box under her arm
strapped in over a controlled bomb
mysteries of worship known to initiates
under inspection with a good lawyer
read the cement lines
talk spacetime
& to your friend
the end
in arctic cylinders crashing


*

He walks down the long walkway
a man in a suit
gray hair and hands that sneer
while his lips smirk
Eyes empathic and creased
with vanishing points a long throw down
the lawn to the periphery
He has a plan in his briefcase to plunder the garden
and the influence and strategy to pull it off
He has returend from exile
If you met him, you'd like him
Even his filthy habits
Even as you starve

*

Beautiful Music

Handel soundlessly throught the hoop
as a shrivelled flower in bromo-seltzer
The bubbles in the glass popping
to car alarms & starlight
is sunshine shattering windows
This dream is an abandoned building
side-slung and flesh-feeding
This story is fruit-fly oratory
A moratorium on the Roman in you
Jesu Christu who I knew as a Jew
Philosophy a rat's allegory
To chew through - like Art
or Cages - the building of moments or
The shattering of monuments

*
Plenitude

Newton's roasted quince in winter
a bee diddling the asters
compute eclectic amputations for my scrapbook
wildflower worship a manhole beyond the sea
why every flower wants to drown
is beyond me

The sidewalk's black with mulberries
a rich street
Sunday morning prickup
stick up and wilt
minds like leaves or shed petals
we're going to a poetry party
if we get these grants we can eat
out and save money

Outside his house I don't call John because I'd rather watch
couples get out of new cars in new clothes
and eat eggs and talk about babies
I'm not jealous or impatient though right now alone
The engine's off they keep biking by
through ingenuous odors and landscaping
where we could go
oh
Won't it freeze or at least slow down a while

Caterpillar Butts

CATERPILLAR BUTTS

Advance ego
ikea dirt pig
into the honda surf, sir

vomit black
on the see-saw
from your brain-barrel

error of mother-love
and fear begets
cannibalism

rapine's little brother
pick-a-neck sandpit
drowned

100-ft apocalypso presently
our dark places
are emptied out

Voluminous Presence (8+10)

VOLUMINOUS PRESENCE (10 + 8)

The rain beats the world into voluminous presence
a garbage bag's chime & dangle
palette of a littered stoop
obscurely but certainly
churning out the window
hey Joe — where to?
grim brine
the half life of cancer
Mary Lincoln's vicarious lobotomy
early enticements to stay dead

Instead I dreamed we had a baby
early warning metastatized
like a thing swallowed
into a Lima Ohio jail
beckoned through the bars to
Uncle Art
insisting we
are born free
A gutshot
into natural reality

Where prison everywhere plays its part
it had your eyes and my tremulous heart
twitching green leaf
or Rudaki's bright teeth
liquid and suddenly gone
gripless digging in the garden
ending up on display
like the day
of marriage-mirth of your mother's son
you burned your breasts you stood so long

To the full flush of an alley rose
gingerly
invented for you in memory
the organ of the departed swells
over your blue swimsuit and the sand
drifts here on the backyard's creaking balcony
the leaves hang like laundry the wind bodies
the nine winds stationary
as a cup of coffee
on a dead man's library desk

Catalogues of comprehensive complacencies
like endlessly tiling desires run out
I guess at the tiring house
there are rats in the roof and immense
stone tigers on the pediments
If they could move or even meow
or help you dress
to clothe the emptiness
of everything blue because one thing gone
Now the pin you sleep on

wavers, breaks without harm or worry
beneath your still unblemished face
variegated flowers, strewn pentimento
rain fragrantly, blatantly
warming the mint sheets
breeding huckleberries and barefoot backwoods
balladeers
to fill your ears
with adopted songs, old & then
& only of an imagined innocence

i.e. "The moon shone murderously ..."
Afternoon lamp on
God & His monsters groaned in the church
an act or worse
an abstract pattern
as the bells rung
"you will be considered pirates and killed
... in the rushes of the windless moon"
Ed Dorn sang of matrimony
and our genetic lunacy

is conquered as a planet forbidden
who turns upon the self
in collapse like society
our bed fell
impaled on a board
I was evil and dumb
the whole time I knew her
she kept her gun wrapped in paper
turn away from the edge &
toward the horizon

Places and Spaces

PLACES AND SPACES

Places and spaces fill the dream
Like blood clots or curdling cream
You sleep stentorianly
I scream and you scream back silently
The clone army celebrating
Their limbs' several severings
Freedoms civis romanus has won on the radio
Free flyovers, silent Philomel, plucked the slow
Tongues and swallowed the fast
Baked in sick-sweet dentifrice, gassed
With a gothic cherry blast. They fell
From the tree next door in the shell
Wilted Walter gathered them for his late
Wife, a blathering medium. We penetrate
Our darknesses as they stream out and surround us.
Our breezy brains walk or take the bus.

So ... Busting Out

So ... Busting Out

June 2009









SO

So this is how you spend your days
Sucking the syrup of pure existence
I'm so happy I could dive
And fall fall fall
It's the shaking of the knees that burrows
Beyond the soccer ball
Big-fisted babies boozing up a size
To collar the outlaw on his tricycle.
Squeegee queen of vivid vision—
Forgive my cooing like a pigeon.

Is it possible not to worm the bird?
Discipline's a dis - ease.
Nothing moves until it's buried.
On afternoon strolls along the border
A bricked-up sunset strikes each post on time.
A puppy squats in a port-o-pottie
Stiff-backed, sour, balder than its master
A customs doctor of stickered vintage
Transacting commerce and revisions
in a plot to fuck all comers. One provision

Leads to another, and then
Today becomes tomorrow again.
Each morning to rise and realize the position
Salutations of a black sun wind-up doll
Having a wonderful life in the anatomies
Of antinomies, old and new. It seems the skies
Will darken, then a new one comes true
Disgorged from an armpit, sweet breath from a false orifice
Give us a rest. What artifice demands, or office, may be, but
Someone said once — unmoored by nightingales? —
"Stand up, friend, with me."








WESTWARD GONE (A-HISTORICAL DRAMA)

Act 1.

Shook a blunderbuss wanderlust
at wheedling death —
Took thin thunder. Beneath the blowing blanket
Weeds harmed each other. In my mind
Weeds of every order strove sunward
Bursting through my glass-eyed smile.
& outside weeds allied with time
metred out a while.

A criminal minister
grimly knew —
Whistle blew. Blue-sky sundered
Deeds clammered over each other. Dockets shuddered
To the hammer, decision click,
and tripped on his dick
But none the worse for tear.
Broke out in dust, my burden buried
with moneybags of rust.

A red-skinned
copper minor.
Sat down beside her.
Nearly swallowed my tie.
There is a time for fertilizer
For tents and sowing
and open crowing
bare to air ...
Somewhere over there.


Act 2.

Two weeks spur-sitting. I
have nearly soiled a lie
but "Carved myself a new
asshole" isn't quite my style.

To be blunt, cunt
I have wandered out of lust.
Who can't trust the compass
of his loins? Lost

In the caverns of desire
Wanting no expression
or succession — avert
my heart from the natives & postmen.


Act 3.

Wonder which of the women
the general killed today. The men
dance and howl so. It's getting so
I don't want to go.

Took a pony down the gully till
the hills blocked out the sky.
Crawled under a rock with a bottle
till I'd waited out their rain.

A scorpion met my boots in a
    passionate ambuscado.
Don't ask who won
Or why, or if I learned to sting.


Act 4.

Down the gullyside from heaven
in a rockslide
the ghosts toboggan


Act 5.

Blasted a road through the rockface — day
turned on like an old TV — one dot then
everything blew
Dug a hole, rigged a shack
Sell postcards candy gasoline
Live alone
If you drain the tank
you might find the bones.








AT SADAVOY'S COTTAGE

What's a plowman's wake to a black fly?
Expendable insect impassive to handclaps
then a stain on a sweater, then more
A sunset, fever, the applause of a steel hull
Out of the pines a paddler
Green nylon ropes drip but never moulder
In the hull, what water brought
Rough dinner conversion
News from abroad
Who dives into water
Which water shivers
Entered by a toxic cloud
Of fever falling & the big bugs move in

*

Citizen dagger
Zooms by in his big boat
His worm-free dog dodges
The big killing hook
Our noses cut
The nylon drift wood

to the dark side of the island
where
bears
swat the stars
& sniff the black bugs

*

Something is moving on the hook
It is still light, but soon
The barbie and I will be
thirty hungry
The bar
Who needs open water

*

Thunder threatened
But never came around the island
We couldn've floated out & sat like stumps
Free from weevils & the wet rot

Bring me a theme
Congealed like a jelly bean
Marched in from town by the ants for their Queen

*

Let me be free of parasites
The body's integrity would be so nice
When I go to that heaven
Wherever it may be, paradise or
home, worm-free

*

Over the water the violins
drifted, thinning, for nine days
Then boiled away
In the brain of a black humming
Bird
When it fell beneath the waves
Gentle and inland, a paste half-digested
Its eyes saw only blue

*

Two loons greener than truth
Swim happily through scum
Somebody said
Their thoughts move them when instinct fails
And this is learning
The word "bird"

Bankside
    We were grumpy with travail
The artichokes were stale

Idea of home, hexagonal, stable
Send water before daisies









ENGINE BRACKET

Engine bracket
Secure obscure
Absurdly throttled through the folded smoke
Rope played out devoutly
A hope for rain
In the world that was the same
From noon
To the wife's bedroom

Hello morning — derided by fraud and rain
Grey cataract apostrophes
Feeling sinking into the garden
ONE WET MIND     WITLESS
WITNESS   Wistful for the big cabinet radio
chez Neptune    tubes in the music room
transported breakfast    symphonies    crackling
it's simple, hear

Here Neil Young howling on university radio

*

Jets phase the cello
A ladder teeters in its grip
in the slick air / vapour
On the Wuthering cover, the belle-martyr
Breasts soiled by air looks down
Her eyes seem lazy, her lips candy
Gritted square-jawed martyr to the art
of Publishing

Thunder or jets — quiver wild roses
Conjure the cornball of September

The old soloist
The glass pelvis
The dismembered telco

Schemes for the airport electrocution
of Rimsky-Korsakoff — who sleep off your thousandth night
Miss, all this.









DREAM

You come home, vagrant, and the world has come around.
A compact train of cosmos, wreaths or tires
Familiar more to earthly lovers.
They roll in shadowy orders
Diffusing sweet and smokey odors, atoms ablaze
Exemplary allegorical pilgrims, all.
You refresh yourself in the kitchen sink
While they attend from off the balcony
Arrayed in anxious azimuthal panoply, asking
Where will you go, now, without us? Into that cave, with him, alone?
You arrange your clothes for them in a circle on the kitchen floor.
In the housebound vegetable morning, both are gone.








THE SADNESS AFTER

That sadness comes after a leader of fashion
Such as that pirate Sam Roth
Praise him
Or a yellow miscellaneous insect
Accuses itself on the glow screen
Of being only the catch that the net drug in

This year or next year the castle will rise
The king will understand he is inflatable
But being inflatable, suck it in
Rather than scatter the blown ones, us
On winds of efflatus

And a slow leak will drain into in his brain
And he'll sink eventually into rich carpets.

*

Who makes the instinctual monster
Politics? Each multi-headed monster of self interest
Original good bent sinister
A border drawn on a rolling rock
Scampering out of the torch-mob's path

Throwing cellphones and rubble
Pleading unity
Issuing provocative statements
Of illegal acusations of illegality

What a mess. Holy Messiah. Of Law
Of Morals Of the Human Mind Of Taste Of
English Grammar & Polite Economy

Mainly the main chance is the hand-grab
Visualized as lines of force
from those who have it, to those that don't,
conventionally but not exclusively
on the North-South axis

& The best visualizers are those like Leonardo
(said Valéry) who can see themselves
working both sides of the border.

*

That said there are those who don't like anyone to say it








CHAPMANS

clothesline or
skeleton of umbrella
happiness in outline
yes contraption
cut short
your desert wandering
it's simple they
say sometimes

magic shortcut I can't believe in
to ride a three-legged horse up to the third floor
three times
27    no shit    these are last year's blues
methods & attitudes    defunct
nobly noted an attempt at empathy
Cuba or Cubism
is when I eat your food with you
I care at least a bit

A horizon opens and siphons off those bad thoughts
        spit
there the sea is vertical
no shit
you get up    "this is exhausting"

I know    I've been sitting here my whole life








BONES

canvas frame shape of a wing
parasols whirling infinity frocked
petty mattered around the chain
banging the corn barren lusty
mind and everything husk in
umber askance autumn asking
whether weather sure or walnut
why not the Italian oh hollow








SKIN

steel stolen ounces dreamless creak
rivets cartoons pink cartesian vacuums
shuttering virtue imperial altitudes tick
taut in tucked conversion tempted erect
deferred down to murk swivel
elapsed obtuse cosines drift parallel
in dark fore-feeling phenomenal breakfast
gently insensible parabola plum lead








MEAT

short burrow slander of brine
said ignorance or confidence lapsed
avowal long week at shaving
strong boots etc. will you
or never steel sutures etc.
carnivore or not the rules
etc. shall we walk bear
the spirit beer hatchery spin








NEW STRATEGY

packed cubits and spoke
sneeringly a mentality
scent offensive others
tissue swap the orange word

turned off at day-gap
shot heat a blind wrapper
rug absorbed in needless ink
air contrasted to resin bowl

washbasin with no exit
the lillies grow and moulder
wave theory immersion
10th grade Novosibirsk

is bursting with sentiment
gilt flowers roseate still captures
of the scheduled death stunt
jade passed the examination

flint flicked the bulb nose
dialed red cipher arrow bled
to the streets X
next slide please as you see

an uncertain calm fell
over the capital Are
you with us you
are with us are

you us
stroll to depository
our late great principle
invariance on strike








POWER INVERTER

flower-struck     market bound to
culottes    cut grass
even a genius prospecter
fakes his chances
sylvan sourlings
kline black and brown exteriors
to thief a rusty tin three
not me

cut glass       a virus drips
down as trained roses climb
depress button    blue jay walks
into cut linoleum    cool air glare
chunk tuna grey lumps rusky tea
checkout quiz show
won't be beat

day protection squad
guarding the grass
you're not the boss
says the six year old from
gladstone ps








REBEL CONTINENT

raised on an island
rounded by release
open world
& die book
(again) of dropsy

bells can't set precedence
and let you in
studied faith of fur
rat skitter berry
crab pinch briar

where hackles & voyages
discovered economy
delayed for one month
ashore to be married
or diverted to barbary

where muslin invaders
flattered sketches strained
inked sheets strung to pervert the wind
diversion from drums
of local complainsong

at home peace was the end
of dining & dancing
foot over merry money-grabbing fists
the theatre insists
tonight's the siege's last performance

rounded by worms     storms
tinkle of dinner parties
the necessary wardrobe awaits
though the roads are safer in winter
out dragging your musket

& cannonical balls

*

sixteen & yawning
at the fifth meal
still
already a fine
preparer of puddings

adequate if narrow
one-storey frame
servings ample
and according to custom
each guest runs his own reconnaissance

conversation in character
cosmopolitan
embroidered waterways french trade
plans to picket the pigs
who slipped ino a soiree

grammatical
a condemned criminal
equipped with
two pair sheets
a stiff pin & six towels

prosperity the service of a fish in a gabardine
rounded by forest
he'll castle his queen
knot her in
its highest branchings

rounded by forms
mast-high maraudings
defense
steaming out
and back in

the seams of clouds

*

rebellion swum
from sweet brine to sour
abjure censor
tender philosopher
the sergeant knows his due

pantaloons
when they've swung
seigneur
banished from his foyers
luxuriant prisoner

to read proust
perdition rheums
with axe-handles
irregular divisions
by race to confess

more than the numbers
out for a packet
rounded by cigarettes
thrown in the harbour
dead letter     urine

you have become
rival urban snobs
breathe their feudal breaths
last fashionable straw
in the garbage summer

cholera blue bottoms
out six years later
waybill way strayed
young emigrant
grounded pen in pocket

celebrate - you're a free man








BUSTING OUT

the weather speaks for
a kind of relativism
in the pure colour
the unities that keep you in
& draw you out after the rain

marionette drowned
in a pool of marinade
what luck open sesame
toasted I am afraid
it's a silent movie

but the wind blows
& the sprockets click
as schemes assert
expected dessert
prickly paraded

past the sensibility
string hung slackly
got a text message with a recipe
ceinture dripping
down silvered legs

now pale in
house light's shroud
you flex taut around your stride
it's like dying again
the ghosts have become our friends

SPRINGinging

SPRINGinging

may 2009








IN SERAGLIO

In seraglio the new life
wearing holes through the pillowcases

Dust scalp & the hall
eating tiny fishes

Each time I open my mouth
a small furry mammal scampers in

Clear eroticism / on the couch
under the bed spread

Oblivious to the lotus
enfolding the house like a net

And gathering up around a neck, an amulet
dangling the magus

Closets festooned with stolen glassware
potions to fill it

Each individual atom plugged in
A nimbus of pins

Bloodlessly whirled in a trance, unfurling
the insurgence behind the thick curtains






A PREFACE TO PARADISE

It is of course the furious moon
A beef side suspended
arms out falling / as uncertain words
spatter from the vent
transverse to light
on the pebbled surface





HERALDS BEFORE YOU GET THERE

You fuck the big asshole & start moving away from them
one leg in the pothole
stretched out like a gutter
under the eyes of the opera singer
with the spanish guitar
Before the snake in the grass
bit and all that
A rime of lemons
The freedom of foresight glitters
Filiated & immutable, like the period
Some big brown spot on the sun
The act among the intentions






THE FULL FIVE FINGERS

Called to the couch, we avoid the benchings
laboured in an original tongue. Remade
like a million-a-day egg, like sugary crispness

diacritical furrows span the ignorant nose
Extended through air, or indexed correctness.
Failing, to assume this has happened to us

and also to them. That happiness, this happy
Circumstance understood - and if not accepted
The facts will reject the revamped son. We fused

the British invasion to Hilbilly thorn-tone
trash. Refused the strum but took the cash.
An abject lesson in twang, sang the chorus of the melon

Knowing the first borne were first gone.
It was the price of possession, the new deal done
The red we fled and spread after us.







INFLUENZAS

1.
That golden garden furrows his front
Hat hit high by arrow
Mothers like unstitched shadows
drag out days of dull knife stays
Salt doused the beach fires
Waves runaground to sound
rocking sand –
Whetstone man retires.
Truck rusts.
South gusts blister its guts
His mouth goes white and brittle
Old spare inflates the sparrow whistle
Hoops it out over the wet and wide and lolls and waits.
The hooting fates and looting tides call.

2.
Who relies on a spy, satellite enemy?
Son, said the father, tie it tight
Tide bothered the pier
Been years since he borrowed it
With a night-light, amphibious emissions
The rod relents against documentary evidence
Hell, the sink-hole of the senses trussed
To wake the sentry, none
But the stung, moneyed bee
Hunting the big one
Cough, gargle, spit, start it – invented, inverted
As circling they cross
Typology amok, wakes first
And last lost, away.

3.
Woke early
Adrift in space
Into the dark would drip
A salvage solfeggio
splish splash
unaware
Love enters the room in her underwear
The mower of tongues sows weeds of inspiration
Totally clueless where I go, blind
Though love invent to seek
I fold my affinities with my meat
Propose mystical marriage, find
The song carried on the cloud
Til carrion sound on ethnic and furious ground.

4.
Wicker through wind. The teetering aspire.
A wall-eyed heathen measures ratio, word,
reason. Death the penalty imposed upon.
The cedar tiles burn
As Venus unbosoms from the tar-paper urn
The endless ova of the gold-feathered roofs.
The chimneys speak in smoke
Til spring’s soft stroke relents insensible again.
We take what piles and dump it in the bay
The gulls screaming interruptus
Refuse
The wet brick shines. A word kissed
And sunk in windy orifices
In here, out there, phantasm-us.

5. (“sore by guslight”)
Sleep-dream of container gardening
As the halo grows to sombrero —
On ektagraphic, old work, he laughs now
And lives under lake phenol
where the ghosts whistle still
Clair water as the moon
Diffuses opportune lies. Sky’s marble cage
He hung in, the spangled jays peck
to the cardiac jet ecstatic
Fat fowl on a svelte string. Spinning
Checks choking the err of belief back in
Aim pays — as it crumbles, a corpse spitting red
He’ll choose or rosette it alone.
All turns to white with a minor strain (groan).

6.
“Her gentle limbs did she undress /
And lay down in her loveliness”
Blue sky bending its bow as to a bed
It, her beauty, is not her flesh or blood
Even as towers burn for it
Chased Jets
Cleave to the penetralia
As a cigarette once blooded the blowhole
on the abstract street outside her parents home
A spot of hesitating fantasy stuck in the eyes
in the afterglow of a sentimental movie
(That heaven protects — with botanical extracts – oopsie)
But for fifteen miles around the fire-blossom
neither an odour nor a livid soul stirred.

7.
A sailor, a scientist, and a brokerage priest
Met on the street where the torn pages blew.
The sailor, gastronomic, said “My belly’s atomic —
it burns through my purchased putrescent salt stew.”
The scientist, optical believer, said “I’d leave her,”
(reflecting, then added) “If I glowed like you.”
But the brokerage priest stayed the course, but looked sicker
As the ticker veered downward and the clicker croaked thicker
A tinted-crystal forest a-glossing out the sun.
Ray-banned, he stared at the Arabian horizon,
Mouthing azimuths and prayers to him and himself
Alone. Alone, a moth or a muttering murtherer
Could hardly have under-plumbed his corruption.






A ROSE ATE THE DEWS

A rose ate the dews
stained the other
leg of his pants
Breasts amorphous
save the nubs
which sensed the air like
a web-like veil of lace
framing as if
an accident / a cross / a fix
awarded not for merit
but as merely bathing in
the black and grayer
grace of nature








TRANSPLANTATIONS

They pop up like paparazzi
Bloom-day, dear lips, fine creased folds
Of deepening red amid lesser blades — mere
Grossness, old trash — tacky dust
Scraped crust of cold flesh

And all. A manuscript neglected
was disturbed. Yellow vermin pages
Squirm from the balconies, surge over the hedges
Some drift sweetly, some fall in strife,
All land. Bending to put in a box a life.






PENETRALIA

The clear image of the hall-light
The moon, the way I am looking,
In. Star-eaten spots on eyeballs
Staring at spots on walls
Behind which, other eyes,
Closed. The jade-plant’s flesh
Never unfurls but must be penetrated.








INTERROGATION CLASS

Milk husk and banana-fed
Wholesome, the whole self wanders
The racecourse, magnetic sped-up core
Of apple
The seeming-knot unravels
As the red bush rose

Who made this soft and blue-streaked lump
Of glass?
Wire
Can it neither pierce nor close
In darkness, wound tight
As a body-builder’s clothes

After boxes
Rivals in fierce balance.
And the roof leaks mildly, like a skin
A long way from the edge of the weather
In the bells and surge of the street
Cars exist and carry
Signs and symbols in those they carry.






SHAW

Our Scottish Aeneas
served his Queen, proclaimed
On the peeled lawn
To benches rotted after winter.
Traveller’s duty
To squat when necessary.
An army guy built a house
Fought back the yanks who pay no taxes
Then
died. A happy ending
Rumbles above the earth.
“Son, take a seat on the grass
and listen - it’s your heritage.”
Twee twee twee hiss
Yellow spangles of cowardice
Spirits unsettled by worms
Damp as my ass.
Despite the visitation of our feathery friends
who with star sepals
announce (dig a hole, fill it up) as nonce
the governing of a thing like love
or a child’s birth.






ONE GOOD MAN

Ran home to pee
to close him in our empathy
All were troubled by the same question
The assets (liar) flopping in wind
as the pearls ran down his cheek
And what they thought of him
Who had taught his catechism
He was afeared of, and thus their thoughts
Became his own.
Wrung upon them, his progress was less than
“excellent news”
(A thumb-sized bee bumbles athwart the plastic)
It was one more rung
Up to the bald balcony






PRINCIPLES

A poet with no principles
Leaves no prints

A poet with no prince
Heaves no pints







MAY HAW

Weave as we hail them amours burning rain
downbent anxious as to a bed's cold fabric
heat kept by cambric in cadaverous clay
where the lye lay spread to all nozzes, biting
ambiguous eyelids with infamy

And they do they come swinging through us
seaweed smothering winds
each step pounding the doorhinge
thin-as-piss paint ground to lips
recusing all idolators, vitiating softness

like a big powerful nasty man and a cheek—

Out the window the growling green trees
limp through their limberness
A low chitter chaffers over the balcony
Deliquescent empathy clothes us in
the dripping canvas

& the horrid devil bristles a dense dance
& the ants hid in pock from the buzzard blitz
& inbit all twists the tongue into effigy —

A sunset's blazer thrill
splitting even the original trilobite
though rational
of the stair's shadow and the curlypod plant

ah hem it short
says the chirrupping olive jocket of Babylon

Serious interpretations

1.


2.


3.

fridgepo: biomass swap

  BIOMASS SWAP
 A BORED TUG HELLO
   I SAW THEM BUD UNDER
MY TINY MUD PILLOW

20-29 Jan

20 Jan

Deeply disturbed by vermin in his sleep
    An arid forgetful and arrogant ear
Abstracting the feathers with a snap of his finger
   He falls, a pansy freaked with jet
     upon the bosom of the air
Boundless depth of the infinite    at 10x lightspeed
“Too flattering-sweet to be substantial -
If schoolboy tassles speak out airy echoes
that they assume a body too he must allow.
In the sallow brine    mine ancient leathery skill
was dipped in silver, and now a bell
claps in it, mauling my greens.”
Sprouting from flint back pleasure
new wings of leather     bound
unwieldy, slow, heavy, pale as lead.
One raised in a cage
will grasp the force of his voice's scorching diary
happily craving night till it be morrow.

21 Jan

The exact match
retracted from touch
didactic or fantastic
the prejudice of lunch
space filling
red tufts
wrinkled like the sea
feet, four, teak
broadly parting
when she sat up
dreamed an emperor
ass to air
floating downriver
concealing her identity
from the ceiling
vivid green collar turned up
& asleep to her check
evening transpired
behind a turned-away duck
o de oaten reed rush
parlayed with wonderful feeling

*

Leafing the catalague "See -
a reservoir of feelings
lumped in with the ology
some grass just stands still
he's very concerned with love
& smirked at milky memories
can't multiply but retains some ambition
is kind as you are human
or not Beelzebub
it's the volume of the sleeve
or the flatness of the horse in the lightning
Who can afford these masterpieces,
thieves?
The Decorated Duke with the soft face
breathed a sigh of relief
pax purchased or bequeathed
chimney-piece
prime tiles birds on the threshold
a few books a bronze bowl hanging shawl
lion in his robes
Tall shadows

22 Jan

Some ungiven progress swells the lungs
& walks us down the street
The entire dinner structure of red meat & green beens
His daily activity from 1868-1940
Beard-growing
All self-portraits relegated to black-and-white
impossible to judge the colour of his hair
The heir of a soldier-turned-tax collector
Success improbable
but this type of support provided absorbent qualities
   and a base for colour harmonies
Droning martially from the bedroom down the hallway
The meaning of "secular' impossible to measure
on this background
At this obscure place
in the development of the human race


[edouard vuillard comes home]

27 Jan

(Bitching at Critchley)

The sensation of contraction
brought on by the gleam in his eyes
upturned, teeth sharply optimistic
"We can only rejoice"
Each of the smaller outfits across the country
receives a bigger garbage truck
One territory expands at the expense of another
The gourmet taste of their labor
stinging the lips of simplicimus
Elephants at the watering hole suck
driven to the mystical jungle
Says the voice: colour your choice

Sunday retiring into
machinations of the wrapper
an indefinite distance across the border
reflection line
overtaking the roughish edges of the air
The amulet you wrap me in
House arrest & care
"If you can't blame a guy for trying
cut a hole in my head & pour the love in"

*

Twin spear of light
revising your seascape painting
cracking across the red fibrous ejectamenta
at the current's turn
The lipstick splits in two
the air in the bathroom wears
an inside out sweater
Each individual crucible

despoiled with a blush
a winking blinking crush
"If you didn't do it, you were whacked"
I remember
the bulb over the moth’s nest
protoplasmic connection
explosive doses
rhythm of beating
Get a sense of the web's extent?
Whirpool tour through the
phantasmagoria
would not endure
ventriloquism
thought it merely a bleak superstition
sexless heretics
the house shakes
the water & my ear clicks
sincerity stretched doglike & unexamined
Unlike the tongue
the grass grows back


28 Jan

Politics of zither
50% plus one
who steps up
as the car stops
some other doppelganger
grades the reflexion
extraordinary companions
lovely, real, tired on the way to drugs and society
redundant in rubber / as foam
aristocratic rat-catchers
working at making something
of our snowbound hours
the organization of a difficult position
is reality satire
No ink-blots anymore
Loud neon outline of clouds

*

                      Everyone started wearing

                      ratty sweaters &

                      worrying about money
poisonous noises
forced & boiled air

                      our hair fell out

                      overnight

her back to the highway


                      the saucers accumulated more chips

we ate less and less endlessly for dinner

                      boiled parsnip & pair of M&Ms
clothes did not suit us
          our bared gums

“chinks in the china” / “jews in my gym bag”

it'll work out
         stalk tips
    dusting the sandwich
mustard gas after beer

bleak night of a leafless tree
     to one in rain who finds
        their house in it


29 Jan

The end which wends thoughtlessly through
the skin & bones

*

Sand enveloping the flesh
ashes into the urn, urn into the sea
who waits at the end of the hall
smoking a cigarette, checking a text message
   especially the pool of melted snow he stands in
expanding to touch your toe
whether you go or no
the stupid prejudice of originality
twitching wire
sagging under the snow-covered evergreen

*

Bird-motion between window and brick wall
who builds with it
motion of wave
under the growing icicle

plunging down the stairs
felt through the couch
extra scarves draped colour everything
the natural rattling

stitching of the marginal
three open-mouthed Belgian brothers
(white still) in short pants, eyes waffling
on the snail-track, enduring the arrows

screwed on tight as to not evaporate
then opened the door
to a kind of superstition
a cantaloupe sectioned on brown paper

who bares the gash to air
gathering in still places
blotting out the face
whiteness fluttering above the collar

*

Shedding feathers till the end of the weather
A stain that looks like a face
A beast drives by
Its engines whine
It has six trunks and no teeth
The tactile experience of the pigments
Solvent stripped
among the earth-toned coats & slush
smack on her lips, the mauve lipstick
an amber cure for one grisly gray day
pigeon shaped & rustling breast
A strong nude made of stone, that would fade into the stew, if blue

Enchantments & regret
Burned every atom with radiation
I have wrapped my head now and am ready to

Romeo and Juliet Unwind

Dead ahead         rude & remissly
slurring over personal experiences
she kissed me         a giraffe working over a shrub
       said "I need a bath"
Holy Moly!
Inventively conventional and all to his liking
An apple-print bib stained with brown liquid
A workable fixitive in the face of no parking
Kids clambering pitifully over the drifts
& the mothers limbs languish
in the coolness
over the rim of the tub
       surfing the bubbles
Ankle-deep carpets & goose-bumps

*

After expending energies each
   in the most delightful way
exquisite white wildernesses where she lay
waste of middle winter
Where
for dinner? What fray
of April
spray of fennel
falling upon my face
I should live a thousand years
Seek happy nights to happy days
Wash dry swoons with salted tears
Muffled still be hoodwinked with a drill
Measured and be gone      being heavy
and not for this rambling

*

Breaches, blades       ambuscadoes in steerage
And sleeps again. On, lusty gentlemen
To the angry frozen bosom
that puffs unwasted over marzipan
good manners foul
and uncalled for
March brisk at the bouts
the tug of our dancing days
strikes dead the semblance of solemnity
to lead on on by the palm
      such as would please
a craved aubergine       in the dull earth turns
The dead ape, purblind, protests desert
Some spite, some invocation
            meddling only to raise him

Soldier Knees, Part 1

Flowed down the stairs in the evening
light of stars beheld
in an immortal cramp        the gathering
authority of the conversation
bergamot biscuits
sans frontières
looked out
saw the mountain and the work to be done
steam wreathing the icy skyscrapers
the sound of rubbing
two doors fused together when he went in
& found nothing moving

*

Devout knee-bend at the checkout
my own clerical shadow
straight from Clark St.

the man who illuminates
is lit up     in the concrete
illegible
archive
             of rarity!

*

El dreado time sequence in crystal sleet
mostly brick out the window
descending cold day

a rumbling underness

romance of purpose
root of critique
after a week of wateriness
from texas a bulb
turns on & shoots
four blooms           dead       & brillo

*

Strict classroom dubiety
the stars stigmata
happily plucking flowers & ignoring the spheres
piercing rays of correspondence
down to the dried fig of a bellybutton

one remembers
dismemberment by number
the hand goes south & the toes north, far
beyond the boreal bells

Face to face with the inquisitive devil
rusty sword through the lungs
growling weeping groin

a Jesuit flayed coming out of his cave
seeking succour
for to save

North, far north
& beyond the trials
unspeakable numbness


*

Blew off the peace bridge or skyway
had to get out of bed sometime
Aeolian winds
but passed through only two circles
the border and the faceless tolls
discounting the lines at the duty free
my interexecutor in the front seat
said don't stop for coffee keep driving
sans frontières? Where you die is everywhere
skyscrapers & steam around the tops
cloud invisibly drawing nearer
the shell above & its soapy pearl
Massive mandibles!
& hauberk of millions of miniature men

Ask me no question, then

& button up your coffin
cause it's cold way down there

*

The streetcars submarine & sinister
from the level of the rooftops slide

but how oft do they their silver bowers leave?
I do not think they sing

one should like to avoid the
icebergs of necessity

diplomatic cafe talk           engaging no
frozen batteries            lifted him up

one hand grasped
arm around his modesty      one leg shorter
by 6 inches        should stay indoors in winter
but the library keeps expanding

Sliding along the golden chain
by ferry born
lay flat by fiat
& both destinations in all equality

“not innocence into the world
we bring impurity
trial by contrary”
but perhaps not purity
as solution said our alloy

forming the golden chain      sparking as we go
to assay the purity of birth       used bronze & lightning
hitched to the classroom seats
while we waded out the window
teabagging in reality      of the in-the-middle universe

Though loathe, are yet constrained to obey, and soon
As above, so below the clouds & moon
Snow falling
Steam rising

*

Unmindful of his wound, of his fate ignorant
empierced on the rays        star
of light, circumference inferred, wise
diagnostics of the magi

Cruel passage made quite through his brain
breathed out the ghost on the sidewalk after
the show          a cigarette goodnight
under the smokestack sightline

"my german brother"     who is the past
slight resemblance
craving the endless
without reason or regard
for the focused glare off the glass
violet        lips printed on concrete

Turbine
golden pinions wrinkling through the azure
arms thrice-majestic cleaving turn
on purple beams
the rosy sky from violet
Such regard which at centre is
of a flashing eye
all for guidance        in a stower
love’s warning

Evening eventually violet covers white
plum bounty of her mind        sparks points & sour
to devour the flower of now
  a frozen sultana       pop the
granite skin      back in
scraping      a newborn      reversed
& without remorse

Darkness now     bluejeans draped
over city & sky        & all the faces
reflected thrills & highrise
pecadillos
of other watchers eyes

eek the brightness of her cheek
The library's drowning in the lees the leaky loos
seep

Dribble hunched & cold outside
walking around in it
yellow crystal
crotchety crunch
when you lay the body down as to
a bed

the boy fetching scrolls
in a chamber ruinous and old
one shadowy protein on an
immense and menacing virus

the realm one higher
lensed through blue triangles of fire

This was the third sphere
we passed through

*

Washed out in a wave of urination
denaturing the education
to a fine wash of inkspray
embroidered on a napkin

& things started to warm up slightly

of course, the Brown House stands still nightly
its sheets left stains
on their hands anyway

This was the risk of promiscuity
& the advantage too strenuous for
subsisting on
collegial cake & tea

who eat in restaurants to see the news on TV
over the bar
the plate padded with lettuce, peanuts
& parsley

On TV: camped out for the crowning glory
the end of a war
might be just a freezer-burned baby
but he’ll twinkle in their spheres till they return
to the mostly gory weather

*

Somehow ended up at a party
up an upscale alley
warmed the toes
while they drummed and turned
barefoot 10 months of each year

Someone played a banjo like a sitar
moaned
strummed the hamstrung piano blue
& winged me a star for my nose, saying
Lick it and stick it. I
like you …

Holy shit said C.J. dried kiwis
I had two
but any more would be retreat
droned the soul
not yet starved dehydrated burned or in fear

& strolled home through more of the coldness and darkness.

Solitary & poor

Strict classroom dubiety
of contract theory
each body of impact
arthritic fasteners
receiving assault
palate saviour
figuring a motion
reversal of fancy
beavering acorn
in a king's library
sensory relation
of valor & calory
via string winding
undervaluing the portrait
opine over recipe
simply a preference
for a mature enemy
juice of the covenants
wrung from the laity
a rumbling underness
taker & giver of moments

Soft philosophy

Difficult or easy or door-open and armed as usual
An assiduous host delightfully
drunk out doors after the fact of typology
fatty and enthusiastic open-chestedly
to the snow or the burning sole
plastic wrapped in electricity from the pole
blue-coated crotcheted lapsed stubborn
and demure frosty permanence
no where to run to but
back to the village avoid the voltage

*

Mowers and snowblowers perm a nonce do
hair residual I was cleaning up for a party
Then you waved at me with your toes
Slightly neurotic down to
the soul of hello & choosing activity
over indecision or restraint
We get up & use ferocious terror
Speak for the other high-strung
through knocked-down walls
The flyers fall like white eyelashes
phosphorous and magnesium fuses and fortifications

*

The gods of the rec-room
basically kissing cousins
ruthlessly elevated to status of
anti-personnel weapons
matter eating matter or
the great beach-ball swallowing
the pigmy who danced
to amuse the king
and survived both voyages
in a manner of sailing
one feeding the stone
bread, the other rapt inside
dense transfiguration of papyrii
between culture and anarchy
lying taking turns
we rise after banishing
by exhalation signal intelligence

Hard intelligence

A of her habit
plug ugly & pugilist lipstick
"the centre fixed
the frame expanding"
thus the rack
of the Afghan army
virtue of mercy
in the armed society
mettle conducting both
the sun's heat & the winter's rages
refroze in mist
into a plump incestuous palimpsest
of bootprints
long standing snore
outside the wrong door
turned to the street’s cheap luxury
where all meet who are sufficiently moral
densely "but what's the offence?"
the cleric's on the trail
a synthetic bulwark arouses
“springinging
in the world of dancing coincidences”
up where the other birds go
edge of a roof or side of a road
in the vast city of mostly houses
the disclosing ark unrobed
"threw him out, you know, in the cold"
the bulldog with the underbite under the table
growled but was not sufficiently rational
to cut up the vegetable
though son & seed of one father
for spare parts

Neck year out

Recklessly swallowing the new year
a million acquaintances and I
fall off our chair
ding / dong speared
on a mountain top
the moon impeeccably toasted
filtered through the pores
snores
thick redolent and boasted
the host
ghosted through with a gory spear
ethics following fur two
abandon here all rope
dope and nose it on snow
next year shadeless morning

Hollow isotope theory
from where we all come
front wall sheared off into
plaster dust despair and smoldering
the idea first seen
as the waters went down
crackling sun
opens each day unless
it's cold and snowless
not today under the heavenly cow
held up by prurient
four-poster separation
and the spray said “I'm here” now
down the line ahead either side “Thou”
window washers stranger mountains

Looming cooperative existence
prevarication suits us and precedes
philosophy ecology equity
indifference because
it's neat tidy impossibly
enough like two guitars
big muff vocal vibrato
who's better
boned if I know the whole
or what the ark disclosed
who needs to eat more swoons
to holy of holies balls and boxes
pompey’s view or palliative treasures

On the privileged edge
of the jamming centre
no really safe behind the frontier
preordered the self composting pleasure
heaps of great books ferocious
lateral page
dug out six weeks later
the bone white
blank surface of his architecture
revealed cooling and crisper
after the bomb-drop brought
a kind of matured permanence of hate
internalized operation by scissor
snipped out the old still going green

From high office cried out
won't repent or retire
too late the centre spent
on arbitrage of introspection
kind of self-serving
fat-squirrel gobble weasel love
dribbling with dignity at the event
a preordained style become seizure
your mother with a bad man
chose the humane trap
best wishes and big ideas
the sea-shell clack
of thy word anew
muffled in the big beard
become master of a name

Blame blind but not eyeless
unless the rocket got him
evincing again
the powerful relation of
random flagellation
to purposeful emotion
embodied in the bacterium
aided and abjected by
an efficient postal service
national paranoia yogurt and
tuna fish for lunch
washed down with
green appeasement said the crack
investigator in the name of
our stated aims of
harmony or armlessness
or stasis or and less so harm reduction

Falsies

On the premises
a false head
expanding to pop
the resurrection belated
until corrective measures
corralled the indifference
to advancement
maturity
and related concerns
outside the corpus given
calls returned
through concentration barriers
enduring travel
and spongiform degeneration
nozzling the area responsible
for warming and fences
red finger painted
shade of the error
by the treeline
under the deerpath wire
noose sordid wallpaper
dusting the irregularity
where nothing meets exactly
snow crusted orange loaf
left and swallowed over
murmur of revisions

0 to thirty-x and mas

Too much to dig out
Too cold to stay in
I stop looking at the mirror
Foundation sets alarm systems
Wound hose iced tight as the pianist
fingerless nails set to ivory
from the car hammered
we puzzled out a start
to German soprano love songs of spring

*

Too fat for the highway
or the AM transponder
presents for strangers beatific surrender
green world around the skill
grown now and shovels or froze
of Christmas past sprayed on the windshield
Wishing you well in an empty field

*

Looking for love "went down to the cemetery"
saw it in the lips
dusting of concrete powder
real fear something to look for
lion's wages
that old sign no different
trespass over the water fall
an engraved translation

*

everywhere we drove the anxious dream
"music to wrap mummies by"
always changing clothes
must get money
to stay warm
and avoid disappointing

*

colour of asphyxiation
his pen technique
on her skin
then and thirsty
some years later
lumpier yellow
but same strokes

Quads 3

scandalous imports convey themselves nightly
my dorsal cramp & hanging pants
no relief til you get back sprightly
from nowhere ribbonless alive first-place

sauerkraut dogkiss life better-than-ever
sell more rubber a tub drubber
sizeable bends little exacerbates shoe-struck
dodged landed secretly floats in a flood

austere fears but acceptance on TV
would meet if introduced postprandially
drunk feeling good trapped congenitally
desert island mile long arm clasp

historical ontology used-to-be He
raincoat surquidry keeps dry circuitry
read or heard it add infinity
to infirmity under the rug a rat

Quads 2

first branded a wood sword
then kneeled on his knees
study of rope burn romance
talked a log at them

originial thin wraps bearing canapés
envy grass the devil & money
bark-biting perched over the whiplash search
no broader spectrum than bookbinding

deny possession opinion bulb adjustment
continuous green hooded legs pantless
justice informs us when deciding
what-to-wear flayed one man made this

forgiveness splayed on the radiator
ice chuckles down from his chin
(absolutely level) finders erase seekers
miracle abrasion never been here

Quads 1

self-portrait as podiatrist's daughter
an inordinate faith in signs
contextualized affection in everyday talking
or an emery tongue. It's Different in France.

"Medieval without knowing it" Yeah
full force on the rib
woman's touch pumpkin caved in
sprouted weeds fed an army

silverly echoing cups drop some
night error into downstairs air
schism between us like radiators
let's exchange heat our compartments

to be general is generally to be
wrong but material equality screens
much moonlight in green light
musty needs be turned off now

Qua evening

Mechanical hat-trick in green brocade
knit-of-refugee or a song alley
since a being perhaps intends harm
to sweep or sleep under-weave skull
broke as kennedy the water urn full

eye movement displays intent attention
is monitered irrevocably a small
sigh the screen glows the fan
turns the lamb cancans as it can
is our moment splayed across
all territory alterity a cone of light

austerity asleep is surrogate
the world eater snores
belligerent particles stream
in vital tedious orbits
action entreats entity
optics here unknown
shades as compacts fall
like blankets from
your nude repose

Recess

In the end
I begin by petitioning the nostril
because it's mine

The edge of sensibility
(nonsense) between the white sky
and the white rooftop

cleanness, patience
& frère reverie

collided at the checkout
gestured toward family

at the table talking about talking
rarely remembered the words
when it came time to relate
& envied the insurance
of a cross-
words incommensurable
long things
dried iced spiced hung & thought
a privilege in the packaging

or, truthful father, it may be
less the kiss of death than an ecstacy
the stabbing street
you vault across
"consider the comittee
's epistemology"
"please police me"
or "accost! accost!" umm, oh,
bones of ivory
each letter for letter
coming out of her mouth
when she coughed
like a jade fish (icthys, T'ang Dynasty)
An eccentricity
a salt-waste

Two for the Bounteous Mother

Dipped her finger in the glass
maybe not today
the spheres rose
the plumbing thawed
painted her home in a picture frame
cow behind the barn in the trash
the milking machine hums “shoobee-doo”
& the nun-shaped mountains go
“there was a lover & his lass”
all up & through the passes
orbs resonating
The door swings in the empty chalet
On a rocking horse against the state
one who is nobody accepts hospitality.

*

Orchid eyes. These were extracted
Never fucked the same but could lead the lyre
& swallowed each scrap
with a "hey-nonny-no” for the ear
His topic was everything — and the JEW in the moon
QED melted down to a
rubber hairtrigger contraption
of Vulcan mooncalf extraction
Still born, dreary, but still here
in the university
Observing me grow slack, sticky-fingered
George Herbert buttoned his collar
& stopped masturbating.

Sunday morning

Sunday morning is modelling its mothcoat
I sniff, pedal backwards
then out come the flowers

lamp post crows nest
& land between the buildings

little brown birds become leaves

"do you know where the bathroom is?"
"no
                 I don't piss"

gassing up at the seven eleven
squatting on the edge of heaven

finding loves little loaves
left out in the rain
praises unto the pillow
& pass the ammo

"oh
he's no cowboy

he's just a man on a horse with a funny hat"

Walk

the apartment is dark because it's that kind of day
dark

all morning I've felt kind of dizzy
is it the skipping-off
   the unpaid bills

I go outside, then come back in and put on a coat in case I collapse
it's wet

and this stretch of sidewalk is from 1962
where I know
somebody

X O

Bellringer morning
crosses waist

dressed like an old man
classy & subdued
dirty clothes & whiff of decay
garbage day
cold water
flat tire

there goes my hero
rush & ambition
on the ground
with great regularity

& shall we this day meet
with none but ghostly fathers?

square convictions
laugh at sin & maladies

& free in idle wildness
I weep      a bit, then eat
& with them sweep the street

Sept 26 08

"Last Test"

Insomnia makes me brave
I lunge at my shadow
buy ice-cream for everyone

September 2008

Sept 5

"Standing Up"

Trying to unwind
sitting on the couch naked eating ice cream
soon I'll go out, eat take out
get caught in the rain
of an art movie
shake my brain
say hi to Mark
meet my girl
if she calls
at a party with people, new
faces to say hello to
read a book, some old words
made new and wonder
when I'll lie down again

Sept 7

vast flaming sky                    who didn't meet
night gone by                    may meet again
over brick houses
                                     rumble of winter
history shivers                    a rushing train
in summer clothes
                                     steps underground
rings the email                    w/mouse-tacky feet
blows nose
                                     the centre is fixed
who soon wakes                    the frame expanding
to share this day
                                     unravelling & winding up
the rough-worn floor                    lukewarm cuisine
outside of the door
                                     jealous knob
said the dog                    "touch me and see"
& barked with substantial air


Sept 10

with a
great firing                    the oval epoch
                                     peeps in/out
eyes of a roll-top desk
                                     an air above air
which is ceremony
                                     & concealment
heavenly eggs
                                     easily done
from up here
                                     finding embodiment
to corrupt the scheme       block the ear
                                     the knot in the chain
being Nature
                   beetle crossing highway
bug      in the ice-cream


Sept 15
"facts about fiction"

wooly stars
her hair
I put an arm around her while she reads

on sweet slime slides the mind
   a crushed snail stung by bees

flocking texts
O, pastoral loneliness    - flung
in the 3rd floor hallway
of the moral of
the teeming univers-       ity


18 Sept
"insomnia poems"

under the lips of paint
we derided       a soldier sang
sundry anythings    not bad
a diplomat too
and could see into your closet
with x-ray eyes    closed
Her majesty's train
Saran Wrap of India
preserved her parts
in decadent phrases

in the event of evening, the ice
poured in as a powder
we stirred & by a stick
a feeling was felt, evidence the waving lariats
galloping loaves & plummeting fishes
sneaking along the disordered string
we arrived alive
which might have been otherwise
night engines bay and day
is an opaque pill

pitches the capsule perilously
Coconut-National-Milk
   & blood in the ditches
The mud preserved the
notebook's date
I had a guess but came too late
Sun dries etc.   A silken bird
However smooth
is unlettered junkmail
& 100% truth

*

Night presides, yes. Where is she?
In the cool air.
And I, in my scholarly dimension
small & mute.
Mice crawl in the walls
and miss my traps.
Nothing works, but I work.
A car horn toots.
When you want me, I'll be there
So says my windy muse.
So strains the wind to amuse.

*

if
the words grow like weeds in the drab darkness of the gut 's need
or spring in the clear-cut schedule
well, i don't mind

22 Sept

Sweet in the morning, dust at noon

Sleep on its bicycle seeks you

Grinding sand from its chain

In its lane     I'm able     sweaty    and late

Custodial blues / house rules / back at school

Screwed in the basement bathrooms

Abandon       Tradition

& do it again

7 Aug 08

Here in the house sat
but never ate bread
(a loof, then lo, a loaf)
sticks & suffrage through the roof
"don't get carried away" the young girl said
"the worms are my index too"
employed for the year
on a sturdy review
the aerial he clung to
violet & red pipe-ticklers
"go on, in the bucket
& dredge the sloop too"
whither the fair child
the slack wire tedium
Need to know
eat a tomato
touch your toes
if you can seem em
consider octave chanute
eighth hope for the missus
said pa chanute
and the wrong brother

The Republic Can (23 Aug 08)

The house hid him
The explosions came closer
He was safe
on the blast radius
each point the same
to the Cannibals
frozen digits of pain
going green
his affection
raped a small accordion

A sigh and straw
wind and restrictions
the golden grass
consumed by unhuman envelopes
plastic gas
slyly exponential unravelling
the tape reversed
hung out the window
did not reach the earth
& swung in precession

Did seasons change?
Evidence of wrongs
bronze bayonets
in the ditches
where the songs strained
the accordion pitch
of plans going green
moss in the ashes
travel at night
fear of open air

brazil (july 08)

"Slipping down the streets of the city"
symmetry of the broad apartment block with

new-groomed lawns and bachelorette aspirations
Brazilian-wax'd sky

& Alaric rides in from the suburbs, singing
"if you loved me, loved me, love, why did you ever leave me girl?"

"everyone knows it's windy", rip
you wouldn't understand with your limited grasp of psychology

With you it's all a mythical drippy happy hour
kibble on the beach & poetic strangulation

Hello, I've explained it to you & I won't again
Alaric goes home with his beard sweeping the sand

he's so ashamed and confused
and partial to the pancakes of his pappy

Evidence at this point fades, like a stain with repeated flushing
but I believe he became a reviewer for the New York Times

Morse Tupping (July 08)

July 4
Love’s gasoline & Arby’s
        welcome you to flag city

ox-sweat poured over nature-lover pancakes

We blew in like a glass tornedo, or a bowlero
over rest-stops & weather-stations of the great gassy plains

Ignoring the signs advertising comfortable, sedate or
        “quiet and reasonable” motel manners

we meet the pig, halfway to pork

I mean, we’re white
and we meet at, on, or under the table

The big blue garbage truck is my favourite truck

   “Christ is the Answer /
   Unites States Plastic Corp”

‘s
licked blue


July 13

A name from the old country
but who remembers?

Garland of birdsnest
aura of tumor & radiation

Daylight and dreary hotels
where apricots soften in baskets

The exits invisibly increment
at some receptions you’re recognized
as someone else or his brother

there is nothing to traverse, no border to cross
each exit aggrandizes the other in its sameness

his story was remembered
but who’d believe it? It was too strange

food for predators
       stains on his face. His clean suit.
Alien
His toad face.      That
was a long time ago.

July 18–21
Dailyness preoccupies
      with its pleasant emptiness
Oddly egged on, I read about the past
Much murder, deception & happiness
it may rain. The sky is bleakly white
I hear it’s getting hotter tonight
where we live – far from the bone & sinew
but not that far. Pink flesh sweats
so what else is new?
Pleasing vacancies at the BBQ
shit-on-a-stick, but it was just a theory
then he died. No one reads him anymore.
I measure my motives until I’m weary.


*

echo of law        argument in ancient philosophy
                  we fought
ague anew
heart throb
echo in tow         I made a hamburger
                   read & eat & praise
                   the inventor of the Sandwich
things always known, or from a young age
           elude some days

interlocking brick       our moods        rain all day
       every day         it’s the principle of everything
we can’t live without

stoic syllogisms
“little deductions”
the bipartite heart
thirst and caution
          wearing us down like the sound of the rain


*

kids in little plastic canopies
white dresses in rain
pooling on the tables & bicycle seats
while the unconcerned diners eat
french fries under beer umbrellas
Each of us who carries an umbrella
           carries a flower
whose odour diffuses the fear of death
waist-in-arm   as     a trusted chauffeur
guided, warm, asleep & moving

On the bike, pants wet, I think
           “so this is self-reliance”


*

Late afternoon on the 21st day
she spreads a blanket on grass that is mostly
damp dirt
there are bicycles & robot dogs & breezes
she thinks about philosophy & dance music &
           liberation movements
and libraries – let us unbutton our blouses – a dead art
I feel like nothing will grow, then look
   mould on the nectarines

and a day might as well be a century
& we’ve come so far we don’t remember whence or
             hence
like the joggers & their photosynthetic hair
             dyed an empyrean brown

& like the birds in the musty book
            habitat, habiliment, & sandy tongue

She sniffs at the ground, rolls up a ball, round, eats.

July 23

We drove into the drive-in together
what I was trying to give you
with the garbage and the light on and
the wandering in the wilderness to find the bathroom
ethereal dopeheads cannot sit still
“we are scholars” sculling for jobs
you can choose your friends, but not your friends’ friends
& sometimes neither
We had a hypostatic encounter over dinner
I’ve felt sick all day, like my toes were in hot biting water
& my hands got the sasquatch-squeeze—
up above

the jet surges forward. Its watery waste
is love. To bathe in, not to drink.



August 2
(Wm. Kentridge - Felix in Exile)

Stripped in exile
of bread, of blood
the papers fall from an empty room
and cover him up.

The world enters the wounds.
The room fills up.
The words he rubbed
with his tongue dry up.

Under the floating moon
The weeds shoot up
The stars circle the wounds
& his eyes roll, up.


*

“Gum on my boots, I have come to steal your image”
much show & tell
   & sticky tracks on the ecliptic
the breadline of inspiration
       MU - SEE - UM

*

Frederick woke with a bespoke suit &
Questions about the nature of the universe.
Nude he strode out the window to the road
This is umbrageous! He quod:

sun is done from both ends
we dig and may not meet
many years have passed since the earth was dirty
eek the walls bow slowly in
the moon the sun all deep
in the or’fice we have won
all dun all dust all sleep


*

“friends like bugs”      to re collect
her brightness and daring, I dare not
conduct a re-vision    the long arms
of her ambassadors magistrates
her majesty stomps unchecked on the stage
gun memory clicking away

*

the neighbours are cursed with leaks & infestations
we hear them coming home & complaining
       & coming
he held her tight & imitated her veins
   & the generation of the worm
in the traffic of the middle universe

this is meagre bait, a returning
   down the drain    eyes burning
half the roof is devoted to inspiration
singing all night   / like to like
upstairs I am listening while the intended, deaf, sleeps
   & my intended is annoyed by the light on

I know deep down she’s a bobby
     for her loves move faster than the physician
admits
     leaving pamphlets & stains
   scratched paint & dents in the drainpipe

Each morning you’re my connect-the-dots
   which room I’m in, & where before
& giggle through the side-
   real parts of the story.

Mono Verse

An edifice built on a hypothesis
nobody you know
a fractional minge of incalculable influence
When we section the skull
The paws oppose the prose
& two-step around the evidence
on our backs we outlined the body
          of poetry


*

some days I feel like it
some days I don’t
too much striving & seriousness
     of the wrong kind
Super Smooth. she is studying
       Business Administration
“we kill our selves to propagate”
   the wrong kinde

Buckeye

      (w/Rebecca Houwer)

after the bomb drop and stained with the news
                                                                  wheeling east to green mountains and blues

the roadkill masses, sings, and re-deploys
                     you breathed real scary but were only breathing


                                                            thin-walled morning
                           stalking “miles, money, hometime” honey: a bee’s pretty penance

& has each bite become a kind of self-embalming?
               the sweet delight of the night light, hopelessly faint…

                                                                     a wildfire BBQ across the chicken-fried plain
                                                                     (hoppy, poppy, put that jaeger bomb away)

a foreigner’s lusty eyes surveyed the rusty skies and found it rude and bootyful

but we just killed a butterfly (its wings went good on toast)

oh! ohio, how are you?
                   buckeyed and bushy, big and broad
                                                                                                                                 tall and long
                                        what would it take to steak and shake you up?

                                                 memories of french silk pie and nutbuster parfait?


( if you find this monument to be obscene,
please call the cleaning contractor

who is rassling roaches in the bible cellar )
THE LARD’S DECLARATION
“occupy, occupy, occupy, till I come”
drive smart ride safe
a street-sweeping dragon dreams a tailpipe suite

... a story
about smoke and marbles, steady whittling
junebug gasping

and CASH MONEY

Two shorts

I spies

They keep the spies alive, twisting and twisting
each secret a seed suspended in paper, as in a pomegranate
or documents pulped in their waterproof cabinet

The bell rings again for a reprieve
each to his corner, where cucumber sandwiches
and Fritos are laid out for the eyes

Spying of course is a bad habit
but so is beating up people you love, and
whose hands haven't stung like a hand-baller, at least once, at court or in an alley?

The moon, a fresh-faced country, which has been rocked, socked, bruised
and abused so many times and for so long
that its blue eyes shine with what? Character?

*

Through the passes

In our mountain kingdom our mothers kissed us goodnight each night
and the sun rose very early and set at 3 in the afternoon
and hair-growth was a hieratic pastime, like musical theatre
and bad humours were dispelled by ostrich feather
and rose-red rubies fell from their lips
and their hips were pitted like the ancient fortresses scattered across the passes
and life was not empty with hurrying but rich with serenity
and restrictions on foreign currency had an average breadth of a smile-and-a-half
and you and me were plenty
and we weren't worried about our futures or pasts or what we had or hadn't yet done

and the devil-dancer's skirt flew skyward as he spun, and
we could see his armpits through his sleeves, which were billowing
like pajamas hung on a clothesline, or a full and righteous life.

Yesterday and Today, 2

The sharks of the clothesline run you down
loneliness lets its lovely lips linger on the rim-around-your-eyes
in "the boot" a two-four of Blue
brought in through the back yard from the alley

If island fantasies have come to this, it's
pretty far for a white girl to fly, and why should she?
It's tedious, a meat scene, and accelerated senescence
under the sun with her crystal-ball earrings

The bearings fall out of my improvised explosive device
& are forever lost (with a harmless handclap and a sneeze)

I don't want to be wise, that's dumb and for old guys
I'm clueless as everyone.



*


After the party, morning's fiery tundra
slides off the neighbour's roof, falls through the window
and into the bedroom. Hello brightness! Stark light!
Whiteness shaming the sheets & the languid
mess of stranded flesh

Who looks in, which horny ornery beast of the city
considers his next move, whether aggression
is in some circumstances justified
or whether the rent forbids this of us.

Yesterday and Today

We sail away in the smallest boat, on
the tide of a dripping faucet

& who hasn't been drunk on the other guy's wine?

A Great Vision for small print
A snatch in conversation
               and is this really me
quite possibly, ten big toes and a grasping reflex
miraculously side-stepped brutality
      (for now)
grey rain of every day and
the private lining of a crowd

who's seen the inside of his mind
beautiful, fine, but the scene has changed to wild
frozen waste on the membrane
(trampoline)        between sitting on the sidewalk
and the oily wake of legs, never walking
always striding
to appointments with instinct and flair
brutal, human, and irreproachable.


*

Rip the wild vine
off the house — vicious morning
gardening, mental and necessary
Hanging out the window like a gargoyle
& the mourning squabs reach out terrified and blind

Because there's no music? because
it's shrill, echoey, cold? Engines
idling ignominiously?

The green light sneaks through the window
no more, and no more will it violate the violets

In a pile on the floor, its sweetness
mixes dust and dew
and the day dissolves
like icing sugar in your pocket.

June 20-22

Finally
        again    the hour to submit
the soccer crowd's pulled on cardigans
& the empty lot is barking & the sapling's
dead, or a dead weed

Remember November when you feel unhappy
Recall correspondence, ponder a collect call

Some wore suspenders & like potted plants
tottered at their windows

Going up the chimney was easy
one carbon         one oxygen
met the stiff standard


*

New things become old
Sunday's parrot sat on the panel
while I watched the cat in the bushes
Feathers blue blew into the mew
cadence of billy-club-behind-the-back

The next day at breakfast it was only the two of them
Fred said "hush now" and kicked the dog

*

An incipient species of alligator
a five hour drive from water
Forever, shards of brown bone
a gunbelt, desperate men, blood tea
Wanting to crawl under the alligator
who's wanting to curl up to me
And high up on the rugged ridge, at home
a moth-eaten moonbeam aggravates the rear
Seditious soldiers wear bananas on their shoulders
(I keep some brown stuff under my nose)
Wanting to lip-gloss the alligator, alas
the moon sets its glass gently down on the grass.
It's an underdog kind of a story.

*


  Saturday, early noises     & comminglings
below
    her parents are coming, so
   I take out the compost. Down the   side
stairs, past the neighbours fly-
   covered turd     truly appalling
noises     roofers & groaning
   grounds & wilted leaves bequeathed
   to the ground

Then out for mayonnaise in the lovely
    fly-covered morning.

    Hello,     have a minute? I live up at

 HAND-PACKED LUNCH BOXES    get a paper
with my may-o     covered in miniature
     mental cases
         Thank You, no onions
(she is a large Korean woman with small breasts)

roofers with expansive chests, but at home
   no groaning

a hiccuping bird fans its ass for balance

           she's in the shower
the counter's clean    & the bed is made
      for mom & dad

*


    no man can race a base
ball

"what's his game? not baseball"


they eat a watermelon with a couple of forks

$25 haircut seems like    a lot   but     she said ok
       & now I'm waiting

the sky
      dribbles      out     of    a    g     l    o ve

   I know it's not that much, even cheap

cool
    afternoon alone       ticket girl cries "I'm looking for Tim!"

  "a hole where the rain comes in"

  he strides casually to the bag and waits

here she comes
    big    S    L    I       D     E

 under the big tree, where the rough
       dudes sit

well, just below it     me on the grass
                  & my green-skirted girl

*

Sure, it's romantic
   an apartment with piles of books
   two patchy blue spruce
& socks on the floor

In the drawers
           ammunition!

   the pun is
   stripped, stretched
over my head

red cheeks & grandmotherly giggles

turns away, fake out
    burning desire
scratch   the grass
knees     chock full
   of wanting      guys on a hill

and    this my     discipline
   birdsnest and wind     through
needles the new roof blows
    o   ff - she wants to fuck
me while I'm writing - who?

   it's delicious - but    into
the scrambling    pan - we made
  burgers     lifts her skirt, slides
me in     green     skirt

Bad Days

Today is a blue day & I feel gray
Long lines down the road,
her face, but she's not old
No pillar of cloud to mark the way

amphibious dread

unbound by conventions or sanity
Red is covering your voice.

*

A blowing bush on a dandelion hill
over a game of baseball

bored of trying, I go home
running, I'm snarled in vascular weeds

I know the house is empty
each red brick.

*

I'd like to stop feeling like a guest on daytime TV

I shrink hard when pressed. I stink when I'm sad.
Injustice is bigger than this, even than this apartment

Even than storied disputes, oh lawd

Our books and paintings lean against walls
The walls win, as usual.

*

Brine weather
it's a reflection in an old TV
on a purple chair you painted
I see the lamplight which I know
illuminates your hair
but your face isn't reflected
in the TV      on the chair
you painted.

Sleep and fake plans.    We wake up
and study our purple areas.

*

You see someone on the street and decide not to say hi.
At the moment of encounter
an acupuncture needle connects both brains.
Probes and discovers what the change will be.

Some nights I feel thin, like ten of
me could fit on one mattress.

*


Clothesline tapestry manure, peat, loam
hardly hidden behind the arras
Beetle bubbles. Pop.    A tank top.

*

On the floor, covered with rain, I lay
with a hole in my head
Moving bakes the blood flow, so I don't.

*

White bucket
of ice
flesh in it
opposite of
the dancing chicken.

*

Skin and bones, hard to drag around
the persona

"careful - you'll turn out like me"
the clown on the caboose

he swallowed, then followed
the works

should the road that takes us take us now
(silly pajamas, whiskey open)

He checked his watch, embarrassed by the precision
of the questions, questioning

"I alone digested half of Goliath?"

*

Whirligig on a truck
overlooked by
carnival of
balcony umbrellas
eyelashes & makeup

Festive Explosions

Festive explosions as in a popcorn city
headaches, languor, my home aisle
has coffee beans, chocolate, oranges, tylenol
a bucket & a mop. I feel ill,
may spill. We come home, scream for
the neighbours, are tired, then
sales of fireworks are 40% down
Down is the direction of going
A gong is a kind of cymbal that hangs
A symbol hangs over a door
which you may enter, the thick walls
blue stone and improbability of others
who are not your imaginings, in rooms
and the inner ear chambers —
Echoes and visions, said the sister
of the state he was in, but the children starved.

Embassies 1-4

1.

Snooty booty on the barricades
the contents of your desk
& the bobblehead mayor
is master of some things
massive blocks of pink & green
chained to the facts & crawling with spiders
master of the open spaces
between the dwellings
where we came innocent, or seeming
with the missionary zest
of the copyist—

with a face of dried cherries
& a throat of pastry cream
webbed to the plaques & the interstices
"This town is a congealed yolk"
snoots to boot of the joke
we laughed at the discontented rest
on our walk that morning
The trace on the table
of the sprawling manure
showed it stripped on top, the rest in plaster
though the space ground up & fed through the speaker
spoke an illusion true as iron—

Lest all things vain point out the weather
hail mission of the copyist
through the pipes, with pleasure
and dreamy manure. The fields
I mean, surrounding the spy-tower
spoke a vision of youth spread out at the sea.
But he may err. Double-down the gatekeeper
the master of some spaces
the grayhair hogs the microphone—
He is such a queen—
stripped on the top, the mouth in plaster
played Hava Nagila at the hockey game
taking in the view
of the first-spit seeds on the breakfast plate
rinds of world music
ground up and fed to the geese—

Hiss, I am only nine
and wait by the door
for my keeper to come home.


2.

Hail, chemistry of smell,
fruit of the banana
blackening, the unseen scene
work of a familiar architect, lacking all sense
of scent & proportion.
A gobble-gobble mayor digs
plots on the increase
in the gaps between houses
laissez-faire, lazy carnival
a beggary pirate
he'll Punch and Judy for a cup of coffee
swallowing the consonants
for a cozy few, rare view
of sooty beauty and
the double-headed player—

Hee-haw and laughter
raking in the new
the hunted pest of the orifice
still at his desk, encased in plaster
A stubble-threaded layer
in the photograph
gaps on the increase
and the earth-dissolved iron—

Pigment and stain
a cloud with no centre
fissioned uncouthly over the sea
into each trough, some delusion
must cough
the leaves transpired against us
see-saw and thunder
held up at the border—

A testimonial for a place I'd been.
I have never seen my keeper.

3.

We moved into and out of the ivy
immersed in ivy
then emerging from ivy
hail, chivalry of fall
& the vines crawl across view
fell, endless sense of it all
the sooty barricades and the pantograph
in all the high places
master of some few
relented or slain
(the earthworks remain
& a shrouded dissenter)—

An image of an autograph
head thrown up on the plate
pawpaw, a blender
played We Will Rock You at the execution
I mean, lunch, then ablution—

Hold up, I’m well fed, Ed
said the little man hung on the pantograph
& Italian nudist tea¬
He likes butter and I like toast
dripped lightning down the spy-tower
and jammer the centre
smoked on the balustrade
in the great library
smutty pages and the potted player
foxed the guard-hole
he may have maybe got in—

If he’s gone could come again.

4.

Message for me—
Excuse the inattention
— you never know who’s listening —
— you never know who’ll call—
sold the restaurant last week
said thunder reminded him of anger
and grease of the slain
stained the trough
such are the whims of crowds
& who knows the ending of sing sing sing?

Time constraints and your writhing
standards not met
by the opportunity
Though we reviewed carefully
the impossibility
at this time
and the master of the standing cases
spilled pigment on the brain
while standing in line
& scratched up the polygraph—

the measure of a copyist
clearly is fear, I mean laughter
cemented or bossed
from atop the pilaster—

We greatly appreciate your interest
and if we could
would like to wish you
the best.

Five Shorts

Hair and Nails

Red pajamas on my mama, I mean
girl. Lights are dim, I'm in grey
legs bare and cold. Who waits in a robe in the road
knowing what she wants & who can get it.
Some speeches, some vanishing.
Terrible scarf. Lead deals
a rebel fracas, a five-toed
fricassee. Effervescent moss in my nose,
I sneeze, less to drag me down
to purity of worm trans-copulation.
Who stands on the corner, stunned
& studies the neon protein?
Windswept songs of nightingales
scratch and congregate in corners.
Abandoning the children
we go dancing.

*

Sundays

I feel outrageously contagious
Sundays in the park
the necrophiliac burlesque of
despair become worry

Educated people are the most sentimental.

It means never having to say
you're sorry.

*

Good byes

My former jaundiced farmer Juan
died far away across the sea.
He left in June. It was a month of anxiety
and black wheat. Harry Belafonte sang
Hava Nagila, but no one was celebrating.
We ate snakes and poutine.
I am not being weird. This was in Montreal.
Anyway, he was castrated as a teenager
and could hit those Marias.
Coo-coo-rococo as squalor goes.
Memories sold on the street
sparked with sweet-smelling chemistry.

But I had no money.
My dues were deep as a well.
When I thought of that wayfarer
set sail with no goodbyes—
beery winds swell
in that great heaven of morning
and water come to my eyes.

*

Nights in

His idea, that the concept is
the absence of iron
    — I stop for some tea & a soft nectarine —
a warrior missing a leg
helped by a patriotic gal named Olive Oil
over-wrought by muscles
not even a name, an address, or a recipe ...

Under the circumstances, the erection
of the Obelisk will take more than a capstan
politics & money, guns & talk
A night at the movies?

Eyes closed, nose sticking out
she lies on the couch under wool flowers.

*


The Finals

Holy men on ice-skates growl
now they're getting desperate
How can an intelligent, decent
otherwise human being, etc
you know how it ends &
I fall asleep. No,
dear beauty & her daughter
vanished & froze. Prayers & devotions.

The setbacks were only more evidence of our worth.
It's my second overtime. Hope endures
but if not, what's it to you, wet cherub?
Do you really understand
what may happen? (The shots
show you smiling. Insecure?)

He'll tenderize the goalie from the peppermint stripe.
There is so much sweat!
Has he peed or bled?

I've been staying up late
Someone's fuzzing up the picture
I can't tell the crowd from the ice
My luck from the puck

twothreefour

Laurel Reed Books

*presents*

"twothreefour"

poems by me

at the dread Toronto Small Press Book Fair

12 to 5 pm, June 6, Bloor & Spadina JCC

(Poems also on the blog, but WHICH ONES? Buy a copy and feed Kemeny's kids)

S.

Same old show

Something in the way she broods

Terrible with the wind, and cold. My drive drove me to drive faster through the driving dimples. Shivering in splinters, I thought, I like you better than my friends the butchers, though their barbecues are better. But you make me feel kicked wide of the net. Why would anybody do that? And upset. With all these innings and outings, I am engaging in avoiding engagements. Hoochie Henslow is my haberdasher and looks darling in a calabash. Snide sign by the roadside: If you ran faster, you'd live another week. Or: Youth is the secret to long life, the future. The rain came in spades and my focus squirmed like a worm evading a hook, or a book I tried not to put in my brain. Hoochie Henslow is my hairdresser and shnooks love her. I love her too, she's great! But you're cruel, and I pursue the foolish loop of runaways. Runways, roads from nowhere to nowhere, right up to the end — but sometimes I wonder about starting over. A henchman hunched on a bench with his lunch. A fidgety midget. A paper bag hag. An enraged sage. I want to get out and walk. We pull over and talk, bathing in happiness like a climbing vine of brown roses. We used to spend our days doing nothing, studying army barcodes, hoping for troop reductions. Then they gave us back our children whom we'd nursed from beyond the barricades. He handed them over. He was a man and wore a hat. I hated those spinning gates and how the world recedes behind spectacle. Like education leading to mass-produced pretention, a theatre that swallows as many as it saves. A perfect hedge planted in perfect bullshit. We walked along it, anticipating envelopes and envisioning antechambers, then pile-up in the pigpen. Oh the places we'd go if we could only jump over the fence ... an amazing suspension bridge dangling over the answer! You were right about those pants, you said after several moments of intimacy, goosebumps rippling, terribly cold without the legs, as we slithered on the grass tickled by leathery fragments, the leftover bats. Our caretakers were occupied. We could do whatever we liked.

*

"Did you know that Anthony Hopkins was Welsh?" "No."

It's Saturday and the trees are turgid and voluptuously leaved. Jumping from space he plans to break the sound-barrier, but the atmosphere huffs and puffs and the carriage returns with a headless driver, the reins tangled in your fingers, the spin, draw, and shear of the autopiloted lawnchair, under ballast and wind, fate. Clack Clack Clack. What did you say about the city of giant crustaceans? Where did you hear that, the bus? A McDonalds on the highway? Africa through YouTube? Acupuncture codex? Sitting and thinking is doing nothing at all unless you count the ripples on the waves. Worm death. Sperm breath. I count the places I could be right now and know that there are way too many. Dust on the parquet. Must in the carpet. Knowledge of good and food. Were we caught in the rain in the sculpture garden, or sprouted there, like beans? Were we sunning there on the balcony or breathing in the view? Sleeping or weeping? Conscious or blobbery? The minimalist seascape of today was painful and irritating, and now we're mindfully sinking — whatever it takes to feel just right — a warm breath coming in through the top of the head and softening the brain. And through the window, often, a dog barking or a neighbour's conversation.

*

Yes, but the sea swallows more sailors than it saves. And should we drain it? I've never seen a hummingbird at the feeder, but a blur? Maybe. And deep in the littoral, we have hummed, though thirsty, and walking around it for hours on ends. Our feet. The projects that can be summarized are summarily dismissed. We're informal here, and barely articulated. Distinct, the heart breaks. And recongeals. Like the face of an interloper surrounded by a ravenous mob ... scoundrels preying on the public nurse. People you may know? Hungry in Egypt? "We're not sure why, but it is so obvious!"

We hear moaning from somewhere near or far below us. Who can take all the bad with all the good, of a pet or a generic vegetable. I dream of vegetables, great technicolor acres, radishes of planetary radiuses, and flowers, hydroponic peonies. I've always thought they look fake, but they really smell plastic!

We tolerate the feeding frenzy. It passes like infancy, a propulsive wave of anxiety, then lush green lawns. Fantastic.

*

Lamentations. Like overwrought dental floss, grating and scritch. Hoochie Henslow on the balcony crying, ave, ave, ave. A saw B at H&M trying on shorts with his girlfriend but didn't say hello. His ass looked flat. She was someone I'd seen somewhere, at a bar, or rolling around a gasoline-filled tire. After the trampoline accident I asked her how many jumps she'd had, twenty or thirty at least, so it was okay. And now the vacancies haunt our billfolds. This house was everything I'd had. They wouldn't give us coverage because we'd burned down the place twice already. Anyway, we were just one of millions of corrugated safety-deposit boxes, easy to take back to the hideout and crack. They had so many heros. They were qualifying as they raced.

And us — we lunched in the canoe enjoying the view, men of questionable backgrounds and women with suspiciously large earrings. Yes, it is a nice dress, Max, but are you sure about it? As the interrogation continues, they sit knee to knee, practically. Bugs, I mean, microphones in the mattress! Boldly inventing our own restraints, the waves lash the oars, and the oars lash the waves.

*

A buffalo egg. Clumsy beetle calves. Our nation's grand destiny is underwater, and cold. Wouldn't it be funny if we were all on the same shelf? We'd have to share the dust and the bleaching. "To live off the earth - levitate." Now you've left, and I leave assymetrical wet footprints on the rug.

Blood pressure disaster, sugar overtaking all reason. Waves of invaders dragging behind their horses stupid jokes & bad recipes. It is not visionary, it's close your eyes & cross your fingers. The pitter patter of good conscience and inspiration. Milk on the table and adequate exercise, or a comfortable chair, to conjure whatever it is you like, my feisty deist.

It began to rain. We were over the mountains and under the weather. "Swim" I said. I was looking at him. "Do one thing right."

Starting Over

Sometimes I wonder about starting over.
It was just, I mean only
peeling paint in the mirror
This bill came from a Swiss printer
& the sounds of trucks blocking that thought
However, friends, we are made
of cracked plaster. I saw where
the Buddhas stood once
and dust. It was "rewind"
"last chapter" as we bumbled
backward over the border. The
mule was a drunk coolie.
I told him these hills
reminded me of home
after a bomb or a billion years ago.
Under my robe I thought about
shaving those legs, or waking him up
his beard spread over the bed,
blue eyes like diamond-trapped rain.
Shoot. Back to the grinder again.
Oh say, have you seen our man?

Summer on the beach

Summer on beach
in breakaway republique.
Come swim, is clean.
See my sophisticated weaponry?
We have command and control
SWIM! SIT!
The ones stayed bled
played soccer with heads
Now everything is okay.
Our enemies far away
No powers unafraid or not busy
I give her
sew machine. She live in cave.
Nice air. Plenty space.
After war, plenty dogs, we ate.
See coordination,
New cell tower going in. Foreign
took gold teeth
as capital
See command and control? Last night raid
Why they not leave us in peace?
Piss the barbarian
thrusting weapon
smell pit we smother him in
spit oil, his eyes,
Hear command and control
Come dance at barbecue
women salt meat
of our enemies
salt make things clean
man eat salt -- no disease
sophisticated suntanning
nation strong
birds sing anthem
Come see my weapon
We hike to mountain
no prisoners! all gone!
here are some teeth, and
relic of a saint
they have strange beliefs
pickled fingers! pale
ears, drained like candles
Hear command and control? No? HA!
Ah glorious children
study our history
clean weapon with salt, glorious victory
build satellite, come, I go state TV
people need their glorious president
in glory, new suit, pleasant
the streets are quiet, peasants
use horse or walk. Most glorious efficient.
No traffic. Look
their cemetery, now market
many pigeons. Plenty mess.
Some say here are problems
but you have tried sausages?

May 7 - 15

"Causality is a metaphysical concept not open to empirical demonstration."
        - John U. Marshall, "The Structure of Urban Systems", p. 127



Yes, it's too soon for suicide.
There are loud neighbours who talk
of it incessantly, & tea, & everything
hot.

Reeling from my recent adventures in the Recycling district
I failed to notice you bleeding.

We can look it up. To be a bee
abuzz with information & wings of honey ...

Is nothingness a powerful implement?
I've watched milkshakes shiver.

Your minimalism is the elbow of my eye.

*

Runaway tracks
end less
chain of
tu lips

needle potentialities

you come home, say nothing
you come home, want nothing

I have to pay for the things I like

A nut-brown wimple

You say it comes from the low country

downstairs

from the received economic wisdom

but I blame you. Wince. Talk?

"A question of need, decided by a uniformed populace"

strung with a shoelace, & tempered.

"Walk."

*

purity
currency
thwack
the managerial caste
the caste that dare not speak its name

"we were an idyllic mountain society
until the advent of the electric car
now our yak's udders are heavy without milking"

attention to the internal dimension
up-cycling      tripped

we talked about our problems & fell down laughing
"You are mezzing up my magnetz!"

*

There are big dogs in the park and little dogs
and babies who sit and babies who walk and
babies who ride bicycles and dogs who drink
coffee and babies who drink beer and dogs
who fly airplanes and babies who break
windows and dogs who make love and babies
who pee everywhere and dogs who eat garbage
and babies who eat dogs and fire hydrants covering
everybody in blood.

*

hey spent sincerity
show me your dog
Now that I'm naked in the park
I feel comfortable
truly and at last myself

Now listen: the birds go boppin'
& the joggers glisten

far away, the drive to acquisition
shoots up a humanitarian mission

& wears their skins

with authority

animals in-
vestments

*

the rise & fall of civilization
like the bumblebee
like a bored erection


dead words
black letter
laundry tabernacle
cabbage tackle
the essentially childish decision to abdicate oneself of all responsibility
I don't want to be your mother baby, don't want to be your boss
"helm the realm
& pass the bucket"

*

it's my brick, I baked it, and you smashed it back into the earth

*

Today was a regular day. I ate
some orgasms, buried some vegetables,
saw some chromosomes spread out
on the heavenly chrome (rustpaint blue)

I got a sunburn and a parking ticket.

a day of perfect magnolia happiness & ivy feet

I don't care about the price of gas
earthquakes, budgets, "butchers & monsters"

chiromancy to resolve all problems
wash your hands

sounds of clapping
a performative interaction

*

There's a man on a bench with no teeth
branches growing out of his knees
un-named constellations
swung the one arm left

there is grace in the city of giant crustaceans
clack clack clack

put the key in the middle of the forehead
nostalgia's easy for us shut-ins

who
in the inner ear, hear
the untestable hypothesis

"a prosperous society, but the streets are empty"
what is placed alone stands alone

*

Every morning, there are birds outside my window.
They are multiple
proliferate like small mammals
their droppings run down the brick
brick of ovens I would bake them in
come revolution

my neighbours, black wingtips,
on fire

hey any food is good food

anyway, I got it through the official channels.

apr 25-30

The tradition    I'm working in
as subtle as a ham sandwich
in the ivy    half dead half living
can't remember all the things
    you said
it is 1998 what was her name
Amanda     serving at the gala
hugged & kissed her     who brought her?
The vegetal identity
root mash with something special
just for you
froze his bones for the far future
big-eyed and green, he feared death -
ours, from the fix he was dangling
us in.    haul 'er up
the rope may go, or not
why am I cold
when the protesters are love
and May feels like November?
For reasons unknown the site was untouched
until the backward script bubbled up in a flood
I was your mover, I was not your lover
shove over
gang way gun whale
out of the business for better
lining up at the noodle bar someone familiar
oracular basket
woven glow     pine needles
& black birds perched on gutta-percha
gotta go some time & wing

tired old day says the tree
& the buzz saw indexical
"oh eidetic me" says the pointy finger
it scratches a knee
& the phone falls into the tea
ho hum
stumble bum
He may be your bandit, but he
   didn't call, see?

*

grass shadows
crackly speakers
legal matters
copious ice cream

"Opening Day"
post cards in the post
see what'll warsh up?
paint in the pot
out of which spring
flowers
the fans, you think
more sentimental than the pros
who pick their noses &
cough up their balls?

*

The conditions of success were cold & runny
and always hurried, one face to the next
we share a house, it's a mutual benefits society
the thing we don't talk much about
was passed off for fake, it died
on the porch, dried up in the light of
his savage mind

The next day I went up to the monkeys on the mountain

*

there is the tower
there are two lights
there is a door, opening

"drips in the bathroom & the vulgar tongue
under the blue treads my wandering one"

soaked in antifreeze
                    will not immolate or embarrass

"I like eating a bunch of hairy livers"
   or groping the angels

fat purple petal bombs
each step to the door to the outside

offerings to the lion     spelled

SHIT    so big you didn't see it

sad & foolish is truly how I feel

clearly deranged & kissing the tree
he shakes his arms for a bit
& goes back to it

apr 5-24

Hungry bird digs up Becca's bulb
hard work, nest-building
vines on the clothes line
fence line
next line
's "where've you been?"
"all your life?"
"last hour"     "flocking"
spring    st and ing
on the street, where you live
they drag race the alley
in their trucks and baggy pants
choke on a lollipop
a home built right on top of me
& I didn't even know it

time went fast without a balcony
frozent fast - no serious damage

*

The pine falls into the house
needles, glass
popped retainers
The man in the basement rolls over
babbles under her crazy covers
them & the frantic mice in the attic
reasonable among people
Believable? rats tales
cable's out, network's down
streetlights brighter than ever
"what you said"
The pine falls into the house

*

Day & the pine is standing around
swaying to the slow guitar on the stereo
in the front room in the stiff house
smoking a chimney    tied down
some kind of shelter   from
air planes plangent, staring stars, too much sky

wind needs a draft
(I'd like a beer)
to sleep    the end of a long pipeline
some squeeze

*

sit down    take a pill    how are you
he knew he was the twin because he sat on
                     the wrong side of the fridge
didn't know me, believed in the blood
guided him down the water shed
3 rings of fire tea in a gold-rimmed cup
we saw the movie, went to bed
wordy allergies
biked around in the wind

the corn's in the bed
it's warm
the fox has no sox
poor hen
so many little dead things in the garden
under the beat, addled "if you're like me"
who isn't?    sleepy cymbal
stand-in

*

The end of disappearance - it's a girl
sister of June bug, little Bean
no razzmatazz, a little Blue
daughter of sister, well-proportioned

white blobs

pigeons in the attic of my understanding
which is built, like a house

feet scuffing in the underworld
he has been walking on death
the back garden
wiggles, the super bug on multi-angle DVD
     onward, toward, & on
a constructed facade of wisdom

*

scaffold of worms
turbidity in the urine
shine the light over the neighbours roof
Russian humour
a nice day to stand in the bald street
bald, potato head smile
up every way you look at it
Three cheers for the orienteers
guides over the cracked ground
when self-control is not enough
& love is deemed extravagant
down the roots, up the shoots
spring & smog pattern the apartment

*

he's an ascetic cream-puff
always been simple
what are the higher desires?
big dumb car. look at it & feel proud
the human indexical
rollodex rover
& the skinny form that followed us home
fed on marzipan & grass
sugar burns & the cold breath of death
is shit-coloured caramel

the richness of a natural process
outside to weather

his thing
was small, elastic
improvised, collaborative
and appealing

*

rain in the retina
night sandpaper weather

*

corner
coroner
crooner
coronation

his shadow is planted
his shadow's a plant

heard spurs in the bedroom
clothes piled on the tasselled chair
tousled hair
window facing the brick wall
combustible neighbours

as soon slam the door as say hello
never help you with your groceries

put a rat up their drain pipe
windy

*

In the beginning, there was the beer shit

the fast lane through the tall trees
quickening
"rock-n-roll music is the best advertising"
roadkill is rubber    "sticks on to you"
petrolia!    river under the house
burning-star church    ass-track

rode to town in a purple taxi
amidst the insanity
I chose my restaurant, not my family
   (Hi Mom!)    Did me fine
& good enough anyway
to drive    lemon joy in the headlights
rubber roadkill
signal derricks you've known
   & the RV conception
amenity vittles    rusty stuttering gate
   of the temple    babies fast
in their blankets    like still life with fish
   pomegranate heads    & clustrous grapes

trill antenna
        Benvenidos!
to the tomato capitol of Canada

constant thumb-tapping

down a graceless side-road saw despair
polka-dot salve till buried
& then bells, & the big house, & bells


she turns on the light and asks
  me where to go
little baptist road
good pretenders
performance tender
promise     doll fingers

*

"when I'm with you I feel myself




                     evaporating"


bubble bursting in the belly
barking dog at work in the mind
found frozen in the morning

*

Bill writes "rushmore"
I say rush home
where I live

*

In the Stygian gloom, two vestigial stooges
"dig man - it's the big barren"
reflective hell in a deep wrecked well
defective bell
what the beast wants, the beast gets
the red dot floated in the wind
bloated in & out the window
she was across the moat & quite remote
a leech at the fountain of fun
we could hand out ham sandwiches at Auschwitz, but
& shall I compare thee to 1000 monkeys?
the simple simian sips, slips back

  to work.

*

that girl looks like Ramona Ramone

penetration rates in our white-walled community

the sun sate

named for the day of its discovery

the moon mawn'd

"laziness, to a large degree, forms my modus operandi"

cather for it or not at all

*

the yellow strip down the hallway wall
   contracts to a square

*

The committee was sad
They couldn't help everyone
They went for a swim

The mussels clacked their shells
    a million teeth gnashing

They ate them right up

I opened my eyes & saw you
   seeing me, with surprise