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