More Poetry!

grace & wildness [2nd edition w/ new introduction] [edited & abridged] (2011)
(e e cummings)

I hereby banish Apollonian and Dionysian from my kingdom.
Here are two new words.
Grace & wildness, not Mutually Exclusive Meta-Categories of All Ultra-Aesthetic Being-Ing
Just two pretty words
That make more pretty words

grace: there is holy grace for the lovers of a
god
or
goddess,
but there is a private, secular grace in the delicate hands of a
prince
or
princess.
Grace is a pristine, fluid order, sheer and crystalline but not brittle.
Grace the song wraps back into the beginning, playing itself,
grace the
perfectly documented,
perfectly executed experiment, establishing
perfect certainty of
perfect truth,
grace the epithet of the dancer,
and the pianist,
and the mother,
and the well-oiled machine.
A pyramid in
a sphere in
a cube in
a dodecahedron.
Falling from the clouds into a pair of slippers.

wildness: nothing merely destructive or dismal like
chaos or
discord or
anarchy,
not base and savage, but
sublimely inscrutable.
The wildness of
   love
&
   nature
&
   pathos
&
   drenched dreams
&
   muddy inebriation,
that is the surrender to the whims of every possible future.
Wild the windy whirl of leaves,
melodic gibberish of the baby,
dogs barking at walls.
Voluntary blindness,
bargaining with invisible currents,
roar
     ing
roar
     ing
roar
     ing
tirades
passionate about their own
passion,
directed in every
direction,
testing the patience of heaven and earth.
Worms ravishing peaches,
peaches swallowing worms.

flimsy fable (2011)
(Cy Twombly)

ha          ha          ha          ha          ha          ha
      ha          ha          ha          ha          ha          ha
ha          ha          ha          ha          ha          ha          ha!

Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand.

Ladies and lords, hoho this
This most sacroficiosanctual
Nine o-clock no-news o-boy
But this Friday night couch confuzed
Is Best this time
Better even than before
Black oil in his veins
Eyes glazed in angry fumes
Let's hate some being
Little Hitler noggin
Mohawk vigilante
Rocking on a couch
Rocking the fine making of
Powertypes in exciting directions
Prototype for a much larger system
Ten o-clock where-now what-boy
Burning meat and lightning sudoku
Make me a mannikin decoy dynamite
Always thinking thinking thinking
Logistics heuristics hermeneutics
Fantastically reintegrating mighty mighty microdata
Internalize synthesize stranger faces
Innocuous nanomotions
Hyperconstruct metacosmo-paranoiamatrix
Schizomanufact terror-narrative
Imploding falling into preconceived
Archetypal plot points
Constricting constructing
Retroactive retcon
Sad sad persecution story
Sad sad coconspirocomplex
Long long story stretching backwards and forwards
Perfect perfect story making every sense to story un
til deconstructo striketo maindown
unberavelsome nightweave
chockock full of swiss holes
silly frilly neurosystem
many meetings talkdown takedown
stepdown thinknow waitnow
hate?--no!
let go
sit slow
brain-know
eleven o-clock row-row po-boy
river river quite contriver
down the slowly lilting slumbing
inplace selfsame wherefrom whatfor
sake of make from
intown deep cold
makeshift complex
womb-talk tough box
downdowndowning
roundroundroundand
story seeding weeping rooting
deeper & deeper &
creeper & creeper &
wetty-mold cave of
cramped unconscious
unbecoming undertow
here we row
twelve o-clock down-side deep-boy
and...
and.......
and-and-and..............
nothing, bumboy.
toys & tales &
puppy-wails but
no great mis'ry,
mys'try,
blis'try badness,
madness,
proof of sadness;
boy got nothing
no excuse and
no excitement,
not exceptional
ineffectual
empty glassful
hot air foment
angsty ambiance
no-cause, yes-chalance,
everybody say humdrumly
"oh, oh... well now"
pack up homenow
one o-clock new-day bore-boy
plays with toys
steps on tails
hammers nails
in coffee tables.
Mostly stable.
(flimsy fable)

                                       Arete (2011)

                             If nature should curse one
                             And thus reimburse one
                             She'd burden one under a wonderful yoke:

                             To glow one and only!
                             A noble and lonely
                             Long road; such an honor, this onerous joke.

Samson Delilah Sestina (2011)
(Elizabeth Bishop)

Samson slowly, sadly stroked his hair.
Delilah lay broken on the barren earth.
Like weak memory hung a cotton fog.
His upward eyes found no trace of God.
He cast her body in a shallow grave.
Heavy feet carried him an uncertain distance.

Forever they had held pain at an uncertain distance.
With grateful fingers they braided each other's hair.
Unnatural satisfaction sprang as a ghost from a grave.
Bare feet bore them rhythmically in waltzes across the earth.
Everything they had, they gave in fires to God.
The wish-bearing smoke rose thick like a murky fog.

He was dizzy in her heavy breath, an intoxicating fog.
He was not mindful of the storm in the uncertain distance.
Their future wound around the fingers of a silent God
Like Delilah's sweetly tangled hands in Samson's hair.
But the distant storm tore a wound in the earth
That gaped patiently like a ready grave.

Delilah spoke first and her voice was grave.
Like a cyclone her harsh words whipped away the fog
And they clearly saw the worms in the ugly earth.
Her cries followed the fleeing Samson an uncertain distance.
When he could no longer hear her, he wept in his hair,
Sheared it off, burned it, offered it to God.

But Samson found numb succor in time, not in God,
Time that entombed his sorrow in a shallow grave;
And the years returned to him his fabled flowing hair,
And the cooler seasons lifted soft seas of fog
That shrouded and clouded the uncertain distance
Between each and each as each waltzed alone across the earth.

But every path meets that crosses the earth
And earth and path and cross meet in God
Whose gaze knows no uncertain distance
From sea to star and from womb to grave.
With rage He dampened Samson's lingering love in fog,
Measured, severed Delilah's lifeline like a lock of hair.

Her lover's fresh hair flashed like lightning as he broke her on the earth.
Like weak memory, a cotton fog hid the heavy-lidded eyes of God.
Limply she tumbled into her grave, as her soul flew an uncertain distance.

Haikus From Under an Aluminum Sun (2011)
(Jack Kerouac)

1.
The question is there---
Do I dare to eat a peach?
---is there in her thighs.

2.
No man's an isle;
and yet I delude myself
autotrophically.

3.
I broke every bone
of this ragdoll body I
threw against the wall.

4.
The world's tallest man
can look right over my head
and see my shadow.

5.
In the gym I find
pain brings me closer to God;
close to a mad god.

6.
With his scarf he hides
bite marks all over his face;
she loves him fiercely.

7.
Kiss me--- kiss me now---
I go to do the business
you would fain look on.

8.
An eight-point compass
merits this odd distinction:
it spins without ways.

9.
Watch with amusement
as the stumped economists
climb their burning rope!

10.
What desperate hope lies
at the bottom of the box?
A decoder ring.

11.
There are no angels;
only wild, impatient eyes
and feverish minds.

12.
Here's the flower pot
where he keeps his power tools
and feeds them sawdust.

13.
Be wary of clues---
they host infectious motives
and lurk everywhere.

14.
The feast is boundless---
these days barren, empty plates
are rare as blue food.

15.
On a rainy day---
How many haikus begin
on a rainy day?

16.
On a rainy day
you're either alone with warmth
or only alone.

17.
Try as I might, I---
bitter I can't do justice
to a rainy day.

18.
You can say a lot
buried in your weird haikus
while smiling smugly.

19.
This one's for Kerouac
to read in his boyish voice;
They're all for Kerouac.

20.
Ladies and laddies,
you've been tolerable gracious!
Good night! Dream grandly.

Open Letter to Everyone (2010- from the archives)
(Allen Ginsberg)

"I wish that I had spoken only of it all."
         -Gertrude Stein, "Stanzas in Meditation: Stanza LXIII"

I don't get to talk to you enough and I don't get to see you enough and that's a damn shame because you Fascinate me.

You are an Enigma,
a beautiful Enigma
like a thousand-piece puzzle set
and each piece is painted by a famous painter,
by Van Gogh,
Monet,
Manet,
Kandinsky,
Dali,
Renoir,
Picasso,
Gauguin,
Matisse,
and yet they all fit together according to a Great Design of some Architect I cannot fathom

but they're a bitch to put together
because each tiny piece is its own independent work of art
and there's no picture on the box showing what the finished work will look like
and I cannot fathom what it will look like
and the edges are all flowy and harsh and non-Euclidean and Omnidimensional
and I don't even have all the pieces,
they drop out of the faucet occasionally once in a very great time
or a handful may or may not be at the bottom of the cereal box
or I may wrestle with a hobo who found a piece stuck to his shoe
or I may bid outrageous prices at auction for these tiny masterpieces
or I may feel sick one morning and cough up a puzzle piece
or roll my eye back into my head so far I find a piece stuck to my eyeball and I have to pry it off with a clawed hammer
or I have to synthesize a piece by combining two parts chlorine with seven parts spaghetti sauce
or I have to write a song to find three pieces hanging off the highest note
or I have to die and rise again to find ten puzzle pieces shoved deep underneath my fingernails
and still I am so far away from having the one thousand puzzle pieces
and cannot fathom what I will have to put myself through,
what I will have to accomplish and fabricate and suffer to acquire them all

and then what will I have but a great big pile of art that refuses to be put together
but I can't even ask you,
I can't even ask you what you are because your own eyes are puzzle pieces,
the left one is an elegant and precise sketch by Leonardo da Vinci
and the right one is a cartoon from the New Yorker, a dry satirical depiction of an eye drawn on an Eyelid
and you cannot see yourself with these eyes because they are part of the puzzle,
they look out instead of in and they see right through mirrors
and you have no idea what you look like, do you,
you have no idea what you are and you cannot fathom what you will become when I have completed you,
all you can do is blink and tell me about the insides of your eyelids
which is Fascinating but it doesn't help me a damn bit
because I'm talking about the Bigger Picture here,
I'm sick of the damn Details,
any fool can get lost in your beautiful Details
but what's the point of taunting me with this notion
that somehow these multifarious works of art come together into a Grand Design that I cannot Fathom
and then insisting that I abandon this project for Even a second
to linger on some subtle shade that Vermeer casts
on what Might Be a cheek
or a ripe peach
or a bishop's hat
or a thick gasp of fog
or a thigh
or a bulb
or the neuron clouds in the brain of a young Gardener
or a toasted bun
or Jupiter
or a soft proton
or a dollop of cream or--
what does it matter, damnable distraction, in all your meanings and suggestions you are empty,
reaffirming your Confusion with beautiful excuses,
like the circuits of a computer you are complicated and cold and empty

until exactly the right assortment and arrangement causes lightning to arc
through every cable,
every membrane,
every node
and take the shape of a Divine Fire
that we didn't have until we absolutely Had it,
a Program,
a Rendering,
a Function,
a gorgeous ghost leaping out of a sculpture who puts every sculptor to shame,
a ghost whose Face I cannot Fathom no matter how long I ponder this or that piece,
though I do confess I've wasted more minutes than I care to confess getting lost in your beautiful Details,
and sometimes when I climb a lightning bolt to grasp some piece in the heavens
I kiss it and want to love it wholly
and whole centuries have gone by like this
so do not Judge me a Philistine when I finally shove it in my back pocket and slide back down the lightning bolt,
I have lingered on the subtlest shades that a ghost can cast,
and when I pry up the seventh fingernail,
the eighth fingernail,
the ninth fingernail,
the Final Fingernail,
with raw bloody fingertips and infinite patience,
I do not do it for the love of some crumb of the Great Cake that is promised me,
no I promise you I do not tear myself to pieces for the love of some crumb,
I tear myself to pieces
to find the thousand pieces
wrought by the thousand artists
to complete the One masterpiece
who will leap from my artifice like a ghost from a cold body
and laugh the most sublime Laugh of sincere congratulation
and take my hand as I freeze with bliss
and fall twenty thousand Fathoms
into a dark place
with pleasant smells
and No Wind.

Yes! That is what you remind me of! You remind me of Life!

Waiting Calls the Macabre Macaw (2011)
(E.A. Poe)

"Don't believe in yourself,
Don't deceive with belief;
Knowledge comes with death's release..."
         -David Bowie, "Quicksand"

Waiting calls the macabre macaw
         to rest on the breast of the cold un-quick;
         the wary woman's extinguished wick
         smolders against his feathered craw.
"Watch me," calls the macabre macaw
         as his wings flap broadly across a sky
         unraveled by her dewy cry
         of tears that smear the light un-drawn.
Waving, she calls the macabre macaw:
         "Watch me," she weeps into the air,
         until her stare is carried there,
         and traces the arcs of his swoops and yaws.
"Weary?" calls the macabre macaw,
         to her weak eyes flying far behind.
         "Weary," she answers his query in kind,
         unwinding a sigh from her yawning jaws.
Whisper-winds call the macabre macaw
         along an un-seeable sky-wise road,
         winding toward his upward abode;
         at last he points a curving claw.
"Wondrous!" calls the macabre macaw
         as her gaze is swallowed in the sun;
         "Wondrous," she murmurs, her questions un-spun,
         her glacial memory graciously thawed.

                                                                                                                                                               Electron Clouds

Bearing God
(2011)                              

(Greg Williamson)                    

                                                                                                                                                               The material of

God is

                                                                                                                                                               my mind:

the author of

                                                                                                                                                               primal causes,

some scrupulous order

                                                                                                                                                               guiding every piece

of the messages

                                                                                                                                                               that I receive,

and the memories

                                                                                                                                                               that I keep,

and the motives

                                                                                                                                                               that I follow,

filling the world with

                                                                                                                                                               some invisible

providence

         
                                                                                                                                                               , some manifest

and inexorable direction.

Confessional Medley (Useless)
(Wallace Stevens)

Two bottles rest on the end table.
One is full of sweat and raw eggs.
The other is dark and murky.
         Did I say it wrong?
This one is hungry,
That one is tired.
The thirsty throat throbs in between gulps.

Carelessly we wander, wondering about him.
He meticulously ignores us
With his metric march to private motives.

                                       No, I
                             Pack the hours with sawdust
                   Craving exhaustion and endless accomplishment.
         The brink of death is closest to the House of God.

Let me tune the public radio
From time to time; let me
Finish what I am about to say,
What I would never let myself hear myself say.
         I won't lay these things out to dry.

Better this than listen mute to
The public radio with an awkward, aimless face:
         Slice the moment in abrupt retreat,
         Leap into the broadening gap and retire.

Worse than molten metal in my ears,
Whispers drip slowly, drop lowly
Forcing a new duet with my thoughts.

It is as if
Looking into a mirror the face you see is
Subtly perverted,
Strange to your shoulders,
Buts you cannot remember the way
It used to be.

Am I wrong to dine alone
On the sausage stuffed with memories and neuroses
At a table set for two?
This diet of fear
Has my skin sticking to my ribs.
I am a vain hunger artist.
I despise satisfaction.

The beast that scrambles in circles
Cannot lift a finger in the right direction.
I have left out but little.

I Hate You Prufrock (2011)
(Allen Ginsberg)

Like tearing down the road at three a.m.
         so boozed up my thoughts run in a strange loop
Like ghost of a possum slick dark whatever
         and my ribs are all over the dashboard
Like clawed out of a smoking clusterfuck with a punctured lung
          car and tree all twisted together in angry sex
Like months getting fat and sleepy on a sterile cot
         with a stale feeling in my throat
Like miracle all the king's men stitch back together
         what all the king's horses drawn and quartered
Like new and healthy six million dollars
         but shivering flawless delusional
Like phantom retching throbbing the perfect body
         still wracked in a perpetual wreck
Like psychological pulpy bleeding on a bursting day
         drowned in sunny silky golden
Like that I bark at walls and snap the hands that pet me.

I'm a broken dog
         and I don't take well to leashes
                   and I'm no "woman's best friend"
                             and I run omega lonely and feral.

I hear a gunshot when I see a sweet smile.

Frozen in the headlights and I can already see myself all over the road.                              

I tease the way a child waves a gun like a toy

I cook the stew and pour it all down the sink with a shudder                              

God, I won't even try a bite but my mouth waters but I'm sick and gagging

I'm a will'o'wisp I lead women into empty alleys and disappear in a trashcan                              

I'm an accidental misogynist

I'm an accident waiting to happen                              

I'm the weakest I'm the freakest

Even when I'm sweetest and dazzling I can't help it and I don't know what I want                              

So maybe I was born to love tender

But I died in a crash and I died chaste and burning and resentful in every direction                              

Bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter bitter

The word drives nail after nail into my tongue                              

And when the occasion rolls together

I choke on old blood                              

I choke on that bitter bitter blood oh the sour stew

And a wet wild fear like a rabid ape biting my back.                              

Messy Manifesto: The Riddle of Gratitude (this is not a poem) (2011)
(Aristotle)

         It is impossible to feel fear and gratitude at the same time. I was told this twice by a man who was told this twice. I did not understand it until one morning when I felt fear and I remembered what he said. As soon as it began to sink in, I wanted to apologize for being rude and uncaring when I was afraid. I knew this apologetic sentiment, this remorse, was intimately connected to gratitude, but I couldn't understand how it followed. So I explored gratitude.
         Fear is the anticipation of bad. But everything ultimately moves towards the good. The future holds the good, and the present is separated from the contemplation of the past by being imbued with this potentiality. Whatever the past, (for the past has no potential, it only is, [or was,]) the present always contains the potency of good. Human beings, (or rather experiential, feeling beings,) have the capacity to recognize that potentiality, and this is imagination. Imagination is so truly ubiquitous because it is an ingredient of action. Every action contains the conception of the goal. Joy may be derived from the potentiality of good; this joy we all can tap into, no matter how far we are from the good. It is a "window", a "postcard" from the final destination. Imagination is a window into the final destination. But the potential should not be confused with the actual. Contemplating potency gives one the strength, the potency, to act. That's very important.
         Fear is the absence of gratitude. But this means it is imbued with the potential for gratitude. One need merely be grateful for that potential, and then follow that potential to learn to be grateful for the outcome of the fear-causing circumstance, both the actual outcome and the opportunities, the potentialities latent in the outcome, and in the latter case, one need earnestly pursue the potentialities and not merely give them lip service, and this is how to conquer fear. Fear is a puzzle-wrapped package containing gratitude.
         There is much gratitude in the act of apologizing. The easiest way to deduce this is that apologizing is scary, and fear is the absence of gratitude, and the only way to overcome that fear and apologize, is to fill up that space with gratitude, or to actualize that potential gratitude. Quod erat demonstrandum. But more precisely, apologizing is a wonderful power whereby one can recognize an existing situation and bring it closer to the good by pronouncing it, by declaring the intent to correct it, and by demonstrating compassion through remorse. To love is to be so grateful for someone's happiness that it hurts to see them suffer. Apology is the cry of pain that attests to love. It is not the pain, the pain is there with or without the cry, but the cry salves the pain, advances the potential to knit the mutual wound.
         Aristotle says there are levels of potentiality. The man who knows how to farm is a latent farmer, but the man who is farming is an actual farmer. Technically, anyone is a latent farmer, as only time stands between them and successful farming. But actually, the knowing farmer is much further along his potential to actually farm. Likewise, recognizing potential is not the same as actualizing potential. But recognized potential is much closer to actuality than unrecognized potential. If, then, gratitude is the secret of happiness, let it be clear that it is not the open door but the key. It is the beginning of happiness. To master the Riddle of Gratitude is to have the general principle, the know-how of happiness, the recognized potential of happiness. Let the exercise emanate from the tools and the will and the power.

Counter-Sermon (2011)
(James Joyce)

"Sickness will surely take the mind
where minds can't usually go..."
         -The Who, "Amazing Journey"

"In desolation boldness lies,"
the puffy-breasted mystics said;
"in sickness we will find our eyes."
With platitudes they ape the wise,
these charlatans who mock our dread.
In desolation boldness lies:
and by our boldness will we rise
and tame the torturous tides? And when
in sickness we will find our eyes,
will we guffaw and slap our thighs
and see the fountain in the fen?
"In desolation boldness--" Lies!
They hide abuse in crude disguise
while blaming us for feeling dead.
In sickness we will find our eyes
grow bleary, tears metastasize
like tumors, but they'll turn their heads
and chant, "In all this, boldness lies..."
while we're left with the sickened eyes.

love is like a lump (2011)
(Frank O'Hara)

love is like a lump
it hurts a bit
and you're nervous
it might be infected
but you can't help
but touch it
and pick it apart
so it swells
and inflames
and it hurts
now it's bleeding
and weeping
and you knew
it would get bad
but stubbornly
tensely ignored it
while absently
nursing it
worriedly waiting
til it started
killing you
and by the time
they tore it open
and drained it all
and drugged you silly
you spoke in tongues
your eyelids fluttered
it was close
and you were left
with a pulpy scar
and a dull vestige
that flares up sometimes
when you feel weak
and now you know
these things linger
invisibly all over
and seep in through
tiny wounds
so you scrub
and sterilize
and terrified
you wait
for the next
outbreak

child finding Magic losing (2011)
(e e cummings)

realful settled placid lay the
child swathed in dawny sheets as
cloudly motes of drowsy dust be-
specked the air and mottled hung. the

sharpness dreary present Being
slipped in slowly like a scalpel
Saturday and clumsy hunger
settled on him as a mist un-

til a splash of feeling lashed him:
massive dumbing tall unrightness--
followed by a staggering knowing:
nothing old was sure this morning!

yesterday trickled piecemeal driply
cat suspended in the air; that
cat that dangled in the air had
mangled every certain science. and

then it sauntered through the air and
licked its legs and chased a bird and
as it pounced and snapped the neck the
feathers fell a half a mile and

as it hung and mocked the air while
gorging on its startled catch the
child knew a new Begin and
counted all the unfound things; for

what all history once had found was
lost in quiet simple brilliance
as a cat with magic hung a-
bove a powerless patch of ground and

child leapt and slammed his shoes on
dashed against the humble morning
looking for some glowing tree, some
fecklessly enchanted thing. he

tore the day apart and counted
every piece from every angle
everything was as the setting
sun had left it lifeless docile. he

sobbed and shook with all his matter
kicked the trees until his feet bled
climbed their every leafy peak and
finding only naked science

screamed and barked and filled the air with
only wiggling air and knew that
everything was as it was and
airborne cats and dreams no more but

every morning underneath the
dawny sheets he wakes and knows that
magic had been hanging there like
drying clothes lost in a storm. it

does not slip in like the scalpel
Memory that bears facts and names; the
day that Being dreamed Beginning
pounces like a mocking cat

An Overdue Thank-you To the Musicians:
In Memory of Clarence Clemons (1942-2011)

When I wilt in loathing puddles,
splash them with your lively dance;
and when I slouch in dumb Nirvana,
kiss me with a second chance;
and if I find the silence grates upon my mystic sullen bones,
play a catching tune upon your brassy jazzy saxophone.

I don't want a Trojan fortress.
I don't want to haunt a peak.
I want to be a billion polyps
and the coral and the sea.
I want to be the clay you squeeze, mâché you moisten, glass you blow;
melt me in the melody of your brassy waxy saxophone.

But these nights I can't help but count
the "might be's" that I think I've lost,
and ponder all the bleaker "will be's"
creeping like the coming frost.
So while I pine for hair to hide in and I shiver, bald, alone,
sing me memories as you comb your brassy flaxen saxophone.

When memory resurrects the dead
it only shows me silhouettes,
fastidiously frozen moments,
dances sans the pirouettes.
And what if what I want to see is what I never will be shown?
Blind me, blind me, blight my eyes, you brassy dazzling saxophone!

Oh, don't let me go on like this
with my kaleidoscope laments
which tumble through this harping riff
that won't resolve and won't relent.
Please, if you ever tire of my selfish sappy bitch-and-moan,
slap me to my senses with your brassy sassy saxophone.

It's funny how I know my folly
yet I fully feel it bite,
as if I'm waiting for your fine
fortissimo to force its flight;
for though to other fingers I'm as mute as mud and stiff as stone,
yet you deftly play me like a brass elastic saxophone.

So when I wilt in loathing puddles,
splash them with your lively dance;
and when I slouch in dumb Nirvana,
kiss me with a second chance;
and if I find the silence grates upon my mystic sullen bones,
play a catching tune upon your brassy jazzy saxophone.

Found this in a Health journal from my freshman year in high school. (2007)

Assignment: write a poem entitled 'I Wish...'.

'I Wish...'

Curled up in a corner
Under a table
The wind smells of mice
Colors flash from the shelves
Like peonies and dandelions
In the corner of my eye,
100% organic marshmellows
Meet spilled milk and rise with yeast
In a sea of gently faded forget-me-nots.
Hard butter chafes my coat,
Studded with cheap diamonds, marred with dry rivers,
A rosewood stretches its branches above me;
Its scent mingles with the mice
To make Kroger-brand vanilla
Heavy on the kelp,
With Aspartame and sucralose substitutes.
A goat just sat down,
Squealing like a cut rope;
The tadpole reads a parts manual
For a Japanese car; maybe Toyota?
Two giant acorns,
One dipped in cheese,
Blood-cheese, with the Cheeto-powder,
The other suspended from a golf-lawn,
Hanging from the rusty telephone pole to dry.
There's a xylophone in the cheese,
And a ghost and an angel making love.
They do not like the xylophone.
The cymbals below them feel left out.
Little sacs of methane are pricked by the needles.
A water-tower rises from the cheese;
Lee J. Cobb sits in it
Like a Looney Tunes villain,
Surveying his once-domain;
The IRS seized his kingdom
After he refused to pay his respects
To the Don.
The flounder has forgotten how to breathe.
Flapping frantically, in slow motion,
He has fallen into a time-warp;
He will swish his right arm in a curve,
Upper right, partially following the side,
To bottom left, for all eternity.
Egads! The flaming, bubbling gnome
Has made his way into my back;
He just replaced my left thumb
With a wooden plank.
Arg!
The murder weapon lies
Untouched, unquestioned.
It is old; who has it killed?
Did the water bottle deserve it?
Cut down in his prime...
Bah. It was his time.
He was empty anyway.
There's a wormlike gopher with two heads
Emerging from my thumb;
He must have been hiding in the wood.
I wish that life was chiseled
From the same ice as my Kremlin.

Los Tres Maderos (2008)

Habia tres maderos, suave y plata
Venderón seguridad, libertad, y justicia
Su trabajo estuvieron rápido, fluido y tranquilo
Y siempre sonrieron, y a veces risaron
Pero nunca estuvieron bromistas

Habia cuatros ratas, viejo y cansado
Quien quisieron un último recuerdo inolvidable
Quien se tuvieron orgullo, y culpa, y asusto
Fueron a hacer su atraco ambicioso
Pero maderos tienen narizes astutos

Habia cincos monos, joven y tonto
Quien quisieron crecer como sus padres
Quien seguieron sus padres al banco
Ellos pensaron mirar el atraco y aclamaron
Pero no prepararon por tragedia

Habia seis disparos, fuerte y frio
No habia nada advertencia
Dispararon rápidamente, fluidamente y sin una palabra
Cuatros cadáveres caieron suavamente
Pero los monos miraron todos

Habia siete segundos, largo y doloroso
Los monos fijaron sus ojos en los maderos
Sus risas ásperos rasgaron los orejas
Vueltaron sus espaldas y caminaron al carro
Pero cinco monos huérfanos quisieron su sangre

Habia ochenta cuchilladas, frenético y despiadado
Entre los maderos muy muy muertos
La polícia fueron muy triste porque
Sus hermanos morieron en la linea de tarea
Pero nadie sabían que pasó ese noche.

Balder's Song (2010)
(James Joyce)

"I'll eat the moon with a wicked tune,
I'll swim through May to beach in June,
I'll chant in a gay way the names of Muses,
Enthused by the games of children in suits.

I've got the right eyes to find the prize,
I've got the mind that rhymes "sublime"
With "time" and "all time" like a million chimes
And I know this joy's not only mine.

I'm rolling up rhomboids and orphan tales,
Rorschach blots and polka-dots,
Rodents and dentists and Istanbul
Into a new tale with a favorite tool.

I know the fools are only alone,
But soon their tunes will collide in a song,
A thousand wrong bromides, a symphony one,
A story I'll read with my smile on.

And I'll find the prize where X marks the spot
With a map full of dots scattered all about
Like darters and blips and children and gods,
And I'll tip my crown to the journey--"

This is a poem about artists. It's called Perverts (2011) and it starts with a quote:

"...We find in children at a very early age manifestations of those instinctual components of sexual pleasure... which presuppose the taking of an extraneous person as an object. ... I may mention... the active and passive desire for looking, from the former of which curiosity branches off later on and from the latter the impulsion to artistic and theatrical display."

That's Sigmund Freud.

Monkeys monkeys monkeys parading in a glassbound corridor
Ferociously fapping monkeys breathing damply against the pane

Bubbling bursting dreams heaving into the horizon while
Ten thousand pine-cone idols burn under the sunset

Whispers that ooze back out of penetrated ear canals

Great burly dogs chained to a cradle

Light is a sexual medium

         watch me swim

It ripples around your hips when you're rocking on the train
And the monkeys breathing damply against the pane
Catch every undulant splash

         watch me swim

You might ask one of them,
What would you do with a million dollars?
And he'd say
Even heaven is a place where they line you up and shoot you
And there's everything to fear except myself
Because when the birds dance with the bees
One leads and one follows
         And they shoot you
                   so
         watch me swim in my sexual medium
and it might shine pale and feeble
But the light the light is ever so gentle
like
sickly puppies bound in burly chains

bursted dreams oozing out the nose

a monkey and a mirror trick and ninety-nine panes and a hundred monkeys
a gallery of fantastical costumes like the wardrobe of the Village People

a feeble light smothered in a monstrous bushel
a corner, a spotlight-- indulgent religion with a microphone

five faces like faces in the mud and contours in the sky (oh god I'm sorry)
and a quintet of vultures and a iron bell
that rings whenever I open my mouth

When it rings you can hear the summer of ninety-nine
As my cousins shoved me in the river and I couldn't swim
It clamors like that gargling child

You can hear the crackle of burning pines
In my lovehungry stomach

You can hear the undulant splashes
Of vomit striking the bowl

You can hear me kicking the bedframe in the predawn gloom
And fiery tears flying like thrashing limbs

But you can put any battered old bird to sleep
By throwing a blanket over its cage

You know, if you throw light obliquely against the river
It skips like a stone
And you'll never know how deep it goes

So don't let the streaker trick you
He's never really naked
And nevermind the eyes pressed against the glass
They only see reflections

Don't Believe Anything I Say I'm Only Here For a Good Time (2011)

"Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind. "
--Prospero, The Tempest (4:1)

At the northeast corner of 18th and Bishop
there's a sewer grate with the municipal stamp worn off
and if you lift with the legs
                                       not the back
                                                           or bring a friend
it goes right into the parlor of a pissneck old troll with a nosering in his lip
who sits at his easel all day painting impressions
of the cars passing overhead that he never sees only hears
and if you ever wondered what the sound of a car might look like
in the mind's eye of a troglodytic brushworker
I highly recommend the excursion

however I hasten to add the subterranean aesthetes of the city
         (and yes they do dine and dance together on Friday nights
                   beneath the old Clayton theater)
have grown increasingly enamored of surface dwellers in the dragging seasons of their exile
and I would not put it past them to strap you down in chairs and
draw your tongues out like taffy strips and
thumb your ears down to nubs and
mist your eyeballs with tinglish fungal juice and
other suchlike rude ways to transform a guest into
a bobbity old grouch of grottoskesque demeanor

though an unemployed peoplologist
might speculate whether such alienation
from a priori imperiosymmetrical banality
is such a tisk tisked thing all in all what with the
declining cohesion of the socio-systemic
                                patriosymbolic
                                sui generis
                                zeiten geisten scheiten
in our
post --- irregular rivets in the handhewn woodshed
post --- marshmallows over the crunchy fire
post --- two hundred words for dirt
post --- participatory construction of pig-locating rituals
post --- whirlwind of generous malice
post --- naked
post --- proud
post --- pre-production
postponed consumption lazy unfair et cetera et Saturna ad nauseum vomitum abstractum subtractum

but be that as it may

I'd say the idle commentationist has a smallish tongue
                                                                     intact ears and
                                                                               disinfected corneae and
has not perhaps submerged to the covens of the cavernous community in question
and my advice
if I may
if you please
should you show
show you will
is such as follows
that perhaps you might remain in the nest in the
penthouse in the
belfry of the
metropolitan mammoth of phallic infallibility
and perhaps buy a high-powered telescope
         with four hundred rosy colored lenses for palatable precision
and perhaps buy the book by Dr. Abel Rheingarten
         with glossy centerfolds of tattooed natives in tasteful and culturally relevant exploitative poses
and perhaps buy an ant farm and name this one Adam and that one Steve
         and extrapolate whatever habituosymbiolic systems you like from their insectile skitterings
         sui chelicerae sans patternae sub culturae some Saturday and write an abstract on Sunday
as perhaps titled "Is Ant to Man as Analogy is to Cogent Argument?"
and as
                   you
                             shake hands with your eminent colleagues
                   I
                             shall remain down here and play saxophone

In the savage society of these incognito
                                                 autocthonous
                                                           unwashed
                                                                     untamed
                                                                               undaunted
                                                                                         bohemians

And if at the dawn of the dusk of the day
Noone should understand anyone anybetter than yesterday
What of it?

The paint drys, the notes linger in the air, the cars roll by and everybody grumbles and mutters.

this one has not got a title (2011)

Every morning when I wake up one of two things happens:

either I glance at the clock
and yell FUCK SHIT and as I
bolt out the door I know
it's going to be a rough day

or

I find Death staring at me
and I don't have anything to show it,
so I lie there, staring back
until I can't bear to look at it any longer
and I crawl out of bed in the middle of the afternoon.