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