I evict. The most I must
kill is a mouse. A rat.
Just a tray of
clear glue. And then

squeal­ing.

It is said: dirt is mat­ter out of place.
How long did it wait, unknow­ing, for
me? Unable to free its
paws.

I need pli­ers to clean
it. Reset
it. It
squealed. It took

three blows of
my hammer.

13 weeks after
tears and trepidation,

it hap­pens quickly. You
wrought to sound;

she the seashell
woman you hide inside.

The day you first spoke to
me; I put my ear

to our blood ontology.

like first steps,
like the sea.

Hol­lowed, the body upon a table; no verbs for
the inan­i­mate, a cicada shell.

And men in long coats have removed them;
peeled flesh — skull over face -
sawn through bone
crack­ing wal­nuts for the meat inside;

each soft and hid­den part apprised;
the inside of your breast, the open boat
of your body sprayed clean of gris­tle;
blood pool­ing, numbered.

Those sullen limbs have
lost integrity to knife, hose,
microphone.

But who else holds the bod­ies of the dead;
thumbs the clayed flesh of your father;
that last and longest intimacy?

No bet­ter lover has had
such indif­fer­ent hands, no other
judge such objec­tive compassion.

Look.
It demands only,
the act of see­ing with one’s eyes.

For Cleve­land

So that oth­ers need not fol­low my exam­ple.
So that we may no longer be called Job’s children.

So the spoor of our smoke­stack heart can be impaled
by its steeple sur­rounds. So there shall be a reckoning.

So what buoys is more than mem­o­ries from a
gen­er­ous pour. So sin­is­ter becomes dexter.

So rock rolls from our souls again.

And because here we are all immi­grants. Because old steel
work­ers know the dif­fer­ence between strong and hard.

Because a home­less man’s bene­dic­tion inhab­its Euclid Avenue
like wind off the lake. Because we are poor but defiant.

Because this will not suc­ceed with­out human sac­ri­fice.
Because I drink the water of the Cuyahoga.

Because tooth and nail is my kind of city.

I’d com­pletely for­got­ten that April is National Poetry Month. Usu­ally I throw a con­test and try to write a poem a day, but I’ve been so damn busy lately that it com­pletely slipped my mind. I would offer a poem by way of apol­ogy, but I’ve got to get going to a meet­ing. Woops.

a wry­neck for ronv and James Agee

When our best effort grips no pen, last-falling ink illeg­i­ble;
When decon­structed grins edge tooth and bone;

When graves or ash scat­ter truth; When the day
drone mutes; the night downs around;

When the fluted thrust of grass or hands evade autopsy;
When: for­get roses; When

the breath bank­rupts and

hours lose their turn; Then the trust
sur­ren­der; Then the join­ing of hand to hand;

Then a cer­tain mend or heal will crust over eyes [thank you];
Then the blessed scrawls dove-flutter [please];

Then the bells but­tressed peal to kin­dred;
Then naught but kind decay abrawl in rest.

So our free writ remains the epitaph.

When I was first work­ing on this I posted it by acci­dent. Woe­fully, unfin­ished. To para­phrase Bruce Camp­bell: Well maybe I didn’t fol­low every last wry­neck rule, but basi­cally, yeah, I did. Don’t kill me.

a wry­neck for Was­covich

If we were rust broth­ers before the rain and salt   Before
there were no scarci­ties of tanks to tread

Before the slow toe    ware­house of sound was a real
knife in my head   Before the shine of steel nativity

Before we trussed the tracks for holo­caust   Before
sanc­tity for­est mur­der black-coat cacophony

If we are rust, brother

Th[r]ough beer stale trac­eries and graf­fiti pis­sers
Though rage-cocked shout mas­tery pays no bills

Th[r]ough the bend sin­is­ter wend­ing neigh­bor indo­lent
inso­lence neverending

Though weeks pass between fistclicks Though through
the rough thought caus­tic chaos mean­ing emer­gent life spark

Still we rust brothers

Prob­a­bly my favorite thing about Rafeeq is that he tells his truth and damn you if you can’t han­dle it. The other night at his read­ing at the Lit he told us that unless we write from per­sonal expe­ri­ence and belief our stuff is going to con­tinue suck­ing. I’ve been really strug­gling with writ­ing lately, and I think this is because I’ve been try­ing to train myself into some sort of con­for­mity to sta­tus quo and accept­able emo­tion. I’ve been putting an emo­tional con­dom on my poetry. Rafeeq’s stuff is very per­sonal, and read­ing it in front of a bunch of white folks who’ve prob­a­bly never even seen the inside of a jail cell must seem so futile. Para­phras­ing, he said that though we might appre­ci­ate his writ­ing, we can’t empathize with it, and that’s very true. I’ve never seen the inside of a jail cell, and while I can’t empathize with the expe­ri­ence, I can empathize with the frus­tra­tion that he must some­times feel. I’m just grate­ful that he’s some­times will­ing to share those strange sides to me. Once Andy posts the video of Rafeeq I’ll link to it here.

I signed up for a mem­ber­ship at the gym two blocks from my work­place yes­ter­day and got up at 5:30am this morn­ing and rode the 23 in for my first work­out. I feel like I’m in the worst shape of my life, and I likely am, so I made sure to take it easy. There is a room where they have group exer­cise, but as none of the classes are sched­uled until 8 or so, I have it all to myself for some basic cal­is­then­ics and happy-joy fenc­ing foot­work. I did that for about twenty min­utes, had a good long stretch and then ran for a half hour on the tread­mill and watched some dude stab an inflat­able snow­man on tele­vi­sion. A set of crunches later and I hit the show­ers: with­out a towel. [This over­sight will be reme­died tomor­row.] There is also a room at Fit­works [warn­ing: noise] where they show movies, a sort of tread­mill cine­plex, where peo­ple can run in the dark and zone out. They were show­ing Christ­mas at the Kranks yes­ter­day. I won­der if I can con­vince them to play Cri­te­rion films…

One block from work is a CVS, where I imag­ine I’ll be get­ting my post-workout break­fasts. I bought some yogurt and gra­nola bars today. Rid­ing the gym, in the dark, on the bus, lis­ten­ing to Orion by Metal­lica, I felt like I was hav­ing a real-life train­ing montage.

The city steams on win­ter morn­ings
like a spent horse
buses squall
in the dark

lock­ers hold ties
and work boots

another
heart pumps legs
pump heat hunts for
release—

pow­er­ing this
restive beast called Cleveland.

     At first,
a hip sway
a bough bend­ing in the wind
reiteration.

Fish­mar­ket lovers wrapped
in classifieds

fin­ger­nail
col­lar­bone
leg slide

naked, up
past our bed­times.
Our laugh­ter has sticky
fin­gers and a sud­den
sunrise.

When I look at her I
feel like a man.
That old crutch called
objectify.

Still,
     when she talks I lis­ten—
as if words mean
more when she
says them.

The city is tired
and the peo­ple are watch­ing
                            tired
of watch­ing the city’s
col­li­sion
          bend sinister,

with the same sor­row
and the same song
and the same
             sometimes.

We, the city,
              har­rowed,
the valiant
            hence.

Kook­abur­ras
            watch
and
    laugh
and
    won­der
why noth­ing
            happens.

Why time is laconic;
                     abrupt.

Per­for­mance note: Wear “who the fuck is tremont?” shirt if reading.

This needs to go some­where else, but right now I don’t know where to take it and main­tain its sparseness.

v.2

The city is tired
and the peo­ple are watch­ing
                            tired
of watch­ing the city’s
col­li­sion
          bend sinister.

The streets roll over in their sleep.

Where are the valiant
on the ten o’clock news?
Who still won­ders
why time is laconic;
                     abrupt

Still not right, but better.

Because I don’t watch
TV, all women [except
skinny ones]
become more inter­est­ing.
Peo­ple ask: “How do
you keep up with
the news?” and I say
“She could use another
10 pounds.”

At the creek I found
the older boys’
stash of beer.
Cans sailed over rocks
like drunken philoso­phers,
beards float­ing on the water.
Induc­tion and alco­hol
spilled from their mouths
while I made craw­fish
fight.

I’ve always wanted
some­body to love
me.
   Some­body
I’ve always wanted
to love.
   me.

I should have been
a small appli­ance
repair­man. I should have
taken more drugs.
I would have
got­ten high and
talked to bro­ken toast­ers
say­ing “Does it
hurt
when I do
this?”

Take my advice;
tell a story.

Two men set across a val­ley,
have many adven­tures
and return home safely.

If you still have loose jaws after—
that
is the moral

there remains a caul­dron
inside you—your speak­ing
grew less or more than you wanted

as I grew less
or more
or dif­fer­ently
than she wanted.

Who is she? My mother
thinks this is about her, my girl
thinks this is about her, but

the mad tongue
begs retelling; this is about a
story.

I have a sad friend [like water] who
wears a large hat to keep the sun
from his face

[I want to tell him Sing!]

and a fat friend with
a type­writer shuf­fling let­ters
that shake the sky when he reads.

[I want to catch that lightning]

And an old friend who plays
dead-fingered gui­tar and a

friend I’ve never met who
will not use his dying
grand­fa­ther as an excuse
to write.

[If only I had their morals]

Because here I am writing—

about them and their
dying grand­fa­thers
and read­ing
about them and their
dying grand­fa­thers
and I am
angry because I will
not hes­i­tate to do this

even
when I still
can’t tell the story.

They under­stand; [I hope]
we are sub­servient
to what is inside.

I would
sell my grand­mother for tup­pence and
still try to talk my way into heaven,

as if life is just prac­tice
for that last great excuse.

the mad tongue
begs retelling.

I changed a def­i­nite arti­cle and “am/angry” to “howl” in v1.1.

v1.1

Take my advice;
tell a story.

Two men set across a val­ley,
have many adven­tures
and return home safely.

If you still have loose jaws after—
that
is the moral

there remains a caul­dron
inside you—your speak­ing
grew less or more than you wanted

as I grew less
or more
or dif­fer­ently
than she wanted.

Who is she? My mother
thinks this is about her, my girl
thinks this is about her, but

a mad tongue
begs retelling; this is about a
story.

I have a sad friend [like water] who
wears a large hat to keep the sun
from his face

[I want to tell him Sing!]

and a fat friend with
a type­writer shuf­fling let­ters
that shake the sky when he reads.

[I want to catch that lightning]

And an old friend who plays
dead-fingered gui­tar and a

friend I’ve never met who
will not use his dying
grand­fa­ther as an excuse
to write.

[If only I had their morals]

Because here I am writing—

about them and their
dying grand­fa­thers
and read­ing
about them and their
dying grand­fa­thers
and I
howl because I will
not hes­i­tate to do this

even
when I still
can’t tell the story.

They under­stand; [I hope]
we are sub­servient
to what is inside.

I would
sell my grand­mother for tup­pence and
still try to talk my way into heaven,

as if life is just prac­tice
for that last great excuse.

the mad tongue
begs retelling.

Hate breeds
Hate.

I write
        catch!
on  a shell  and
            throwit
        at
        theFuture.

pass  it  on

play Death
     Tele
     phone

the only
game        where
last picked
is
            best.

chil­dren
stone
win­dow
har­ing
      off.

———-
v2.0

chil­dren
stone
win­dow
har­ing
      off.

laugh­ter
time is
laconic
      abrupt.

we
ex/ins/
res/pers
–ist
in
      singularity

   .

          –for Nick Traenkner

There is alco­hol in me tonight, alco­hol
and yes I have breathed in smoke and
breathed it back out out to you sur­rounded
by words unc­tu­ous, bom­bas­tic, evangelical.

Dress me in horse hair, the hair what was once
a horse and a belt of leather from what was once
a cow so cos­tumed words take on legitimacy

or invest me in silks as the new pope of con­tin­ual
omnipo­tent excess. The dirt of life is death
death death! The dirt of life is the fruit of death.
The dirt of life is a sci­en­tific exper­i­ment where

you tread on wheels while I spume and wrack at
you, your bare feet hatched with the turn­ing
tide. Proud in per­sis­tence. I will talk until

you lis­ten.

          –for Eric Alle­man

He works at
the Record Exchange.   I didn’t
know this until I
saw him there.

I knew him despite
his lost
play-off beard.   He did not
know me.

   He was not
friendly, this man of intent
gesture.

His voice:
   a thumb
   hold­ing your face
   to the wall.

Out­side
        you hear something

   howling.

I’m writ­ing poems about poets I’ve seen in Cleve­land. They’re meant to be read in the read­ing styles of afore­men­tioned poets.

I am going
           outside

and there is
             nothing

you can do about
                 it.

race­car  rraceca   
ace­carr  race­car   
cecarra  ace­carr     weres
ecar­rac  cecarra     awari
car­race  ecar­rac     rends
arracec  car­race   
rraceca  arracec   

flckr shdw
ftprnt
thndr rmbl
trnchct
wckr rstv
bmbl b
wnch thrt
cght cgh
mth rhthm
pm slp drk
ngl wth grs
fr wngs

Do me a favor, buy some vow­els, fill ‘em in above and tell me what you think it says. Y’r m gn pg.

Mar­tin Luther King
has got bet­ter things to do
than put his hearse here.

You are pretty with birds
on your arms. One day
I will star­tle them and
they will carry you into
the sky to see the heart
laid out below and feel
my smile in your hair.

v.2

You are pretty with birds
on your arms. One day —
star­tled into
the sky —

A heart laid at
your feet —
a smile in
your hair.

At Ster­ling Pond the reeds are old women whis­per­ing; the red­winged black­bird a priest with a martyr’s stole. It will not cease to preach nor the wind kill its wild ser­mon. This is where you were beau­ti­ful all those years ago, when we walked along the shore lis­ten­ing to small waves and tree frogs, hand-in-hand. When we walked on the stones like drunken things and found our­selves sur­rounded by drum­lins. I kissed you then, and they watched with flick­er­ing hope in their patient res­ig­na­tion, as waves wash them through the win­ter. I return alone, as I did on that day so long ago, and wash my hands until next year.

My first key had no key­hole
but I felt grown up any­way. I had
respon­si­bil­ity now, and secrets
though even I did not know what
lay behind its lock. I would play
with my parent’s keys and ask
them to tell me sto­ries about
each, this one opens the
door to work, where things I
wasn’t quite grown up enough
to under­stand were done so that
I could have Frosted Flakes and
new shoes.

     for Megan

I don’t trust the post­man. My let­ters
arrive in a cer­tain order on cer­tain
days where the shad­ows of limbs cross
on the mail­box like a lock. I never hear him
arrive; I try to watch for him but always
some­thing makes me look away—Nicodemus want­ing
water, flick­er­ing leaves, a strange noise
from my other room—and a full box
a moment later. Who is this phan­tom in
blue, imper­sonal herald?

I take my let­ters to the post office, affix­ing
the stamps like seals on a pharaoh’s tomb,
pre­served thoughts, the paper folded
just so, the creases tight and strong. I
hope the rain won’t smear the
address. Antic­i­pa­tion and
                         the scratch of my pen.

He sad­dled his
Sop­with Camel
and went on a milk
run for some cheese.
       snap trap!
No more
Ace in his hole.

Billy the Bully, a
school-yard ter­ror,
likes lunch money
shake­downs and
pulling girls’ hair.

He’s mean and
mad and rude and
big. Even the
teach­ers think
he’s a pig. But

I’m his friend.

Sisy­phus and Tan­ta­lus
are arm-wrestling on
their cof­fee break. One
has cracked and dusty
fin­gers hard as rolled stone.
One has algae in his hair
and lips like the Gobi.

Sisy­phus is stronger, but
Tan­ta­lus talks good fish–
tongued trash. They’ve
got a bet. Each wants
what the other has, but
break time is over.

I haven’t writ­ten a poem of even mid­dling qual­ity this month. I haven’t been able to get my head in the right spot. I can’t reach the tip­ping point that I usu­ally stum­ble on when free-writing that sparks cre­ativ­ity. Very frustrating.

When the siege and assault
had ceased at Troy, Aeneas
paid me a visit. I offered him
some plan­tains and he told me
“veg­eta­bles are what
food eats.” He strode around
my wat­tle and daub, grimacing.

Pulled on white gloves as if
it were inspec­tion day,
my bil­let a mas­ter work
of jack­leg engi­neer­ing. He
asked if I was still a loyal Son
of Ilium

and opened my cup­board.
                       He asked:
“Do you have any whisky?” and
“This place is far too dirty. You
must clean it

if I am to stay the night.“
I wanted to explain that my home
was made of dirt; that I had
no meat to pro­vide. Yet what
does one say to our sav­ior? My
hand grips the sickle. There are
crops to get in.

The first clause is taken from the first line of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [Tolkien’s trans­la­tion, nat­u­rally] and the “veg­eta­bles are what food eats” was taken from here.

Every  ime I wri e  his
 ll of  he  s,  s, and  s
dis ppe r. I  hi k  here
mus  be       e  er
hidi g be ween  he li es.

A great cloud of smoke hanged
over town. The color of my mother’s
lungs, orange-dawned sky, white
birds rav­elled like thread. The
Goodyear clock hadn’t been lit
in months and even then it
only flashed the wrong time.

Okay, so

Tom Waits, Roberto Beg­nini
and John Lurie are in a
jail in Lou­siana and they’ve
got one cig­a­rette left. The
con­crete walls sweat with
humid­ity and the mat­tresses
stink like stale sweat and dry
urine. These guys have one
cig­a­rette and a pack of cards.
Beg­nini don’t play gin
and Lurie won’t play spades.
Waits would play with him­self
but the oth­ers might see. So
no one uses the cards and
instead they all worry about
that last smoke. Lurie’s
got the coffin-nail in his pocket
he knows he’ll have to share it
if he lights it up. Maybe if he
waits until the oth­ers are asleep.

Waits sticks to his bunk like an old gym sock
and Lurie paces. Beg­nini won’t shut up.
They’re all think­ing about the last
cig­a­rette. Well, Waits is think­ing about
wait­ing until Lurie falls asleep and steal­ing it.
His name is patient. Beg­nini is think­ing about
baked ziti and what it felt like to crush
a man’s skull with a pool ball.

They are a good egg, down by law.

I watched Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law a while back.

oh,

[it is like leap­ing once from a moun­tain,
then kneel­ing at
the earth’s core;
with wind still whistling
past your ears]

yes.

I have cut them
three times and they
are still too short.

I will
force
it.

Save me a dol­lar
my matreshki, work
big­ger in smaller.

When I steal your
sheep, thank me
for doing it.

Say: “Ver­ily!
Ye cor­po­rate
gods.”

jet fuel does not burn
at first; there must be
that first spark there must
always have been a first
spark, like when we greeted
each other our hel­los
col­lided and there was a
flash but no clap
of thun­der
          though there
should have been and the
sound of trum­pets or at
least some­thing more than
just hello.

Here I am in love with a ball
of hydro­gen ninety-three
mil­lion miles from me and
every ani­mal
            [includ­ing man]
enjoys
being scratched behind
the ears.

The entry­way always smelled like some­thing rot­ten
in late sum­mer. We didn’t have time to
do more than wrin­kle our noses, Billy and me,
those double-glass doors with the wire inside
were just part of the dis­tance
between mom’s apart­ment and the street out­side,
like the torn and curled rub­ber on the stair­well
like the scary old woman who yelled at us in Ital­ian
while we played stickball.

When Leon got his head put through the dry­wall
I was the one who found him the next morn­ing
when I brought the trash down­stairs. His head was
still stuck through like you do at the strong-man
cut-out at the amuse­ment park. The cops
hauled him out and he was laid out in a suit I hadn’t
known he’d owned next time I saw him.

When the man came to fix the hole, he tore out
the whole wall and found a pile of bat skele­tons
rat­tled together in a skein of bones with one
live bat on top.

None of these this week have been any good, but they do have poten­tial. The biggest prob­lem with this one is that it doesn’t have a point, although I think there are glim­mers of one. It is loosely based on actual bats that lived [and reg­u­larly died] in the entry­way of my house on Stoney­brook Lane. The crazy Ital­ian grand­mother was real too.

¿ is a
naked light­bulb
always a good idea
–
When she walks
her hips curl like
smoke and back
room deals
–
old now
bent like
a ques­tion mark
–
she bends from
? to ! in his arms
then
.
–
imper­a­tive?
imper­a­tive.
imper­a­tive!
–
What you say?

there is a caul of dust on the stairs
where, past his bed­time, he used to
watch free­dom through ban­is­ter rungs
the feet on handme­down paja­mas
too large; sleeves
too short.
         he still won­ders
what they meant
               by
“you’ll grow into it.”

If you can’t tell already, this is speed poetry week. I’m spend­ing ten min­utes or less on these, although I will go back and work­shop ‘em as time per­mits. This one in par­tic­u­lar I think I’d like to flesh out.

When the bell rings he
comes from all angles, short
water drop jabs to face
and shoul­ders; feet cat-confident
sly-eyed with years of training.

later, a sin­gle upper­cut
under­cut slips by and while
he takes it stand­ing, the
judges declare

defeat by decision.

This one goes out to any­one who has ever worked extremely hard for some­thing only to be [what it seems like] arbi­trar­ily dis­missed as unwor­thy for that very thing. It needs plenty of work, but I’ll save that for later. Work­shop­ping is always wel­come on these.

rail
spli
tter
tall
like
pine
thin
like
reed
lick
 any
 man
that
will
 wet
 his

horns.
you’ll
talk’em
down
first
if you
can or
if you
cain’t
you’ll
put
fire on
the
moun­tain
and in
our
bel­lies
teach
us to
speak
lead
lead us
to
speak
of your
speak­ing
as of
prophets
and
martyrs

you
were
all
of us
and
so we
pay
homage
at
your
monu
ment.

leader.

grim
vis­aged
American.

Well National Poetry Month is here and I’m going to write a poem each day Mon­day through Fri­day until it is over, much like last year. Today, since I watched a movie about Lin­coln last night, my attempted poem is about Lincoln.

heart­beat

hear
 eart
h
     beat
     be
he r
 ear
  art
     bea
   r    t
he
hea t

I don’t think I woke up because of the silence. And in any case it wasn’t as com­pletely silent as I led myself to believe. Ini­tially, I thought that I was wheez­ing; some­thing that only hap­pens when I’m sleep­ing in a place that has cats. I took a deep breath to test this out, but I was breath­ing easy. Then I real­ized that the sound I was hear­ing was my heart­beat. Not just the “What does a heart­beat sound like, Timmy?” sound that Timmy would make if some­one asked Timmy what a heart­beat sounded like, but some­thing almost preter­nat­u­rally keen. I could hear and feel my blood being pushed into my ven­tri­cles and flow­ing into and outof my veins and arter­ies. A heart­beat sounds noth­ing like what Timmy thinks it sounds like. You don’t hear pauses between the beats, it is almost like lis­ten­ing to the tides of the sea.

So now I’ve tried an attempt at con­crete poetry and another thing.

     - thanks to Joseph Campbell

“Through me; the way to the woe­ful city;“¹

a hero
with a thou­sand faces;²
a story you
always wanted to hear.

We con­tinue
though we know we con­tinue
ending.

A des­o­la­tion of hope.
That is the story.

and I say: This
must be
a prophetic life–

Why else cry to the deserted places?
Why seek wis­dom on mountains?

—
1 INFERNO III, 1
2 The Hero With A Thou­sand Faces by Joseph Campbell

I think this one is going to remain in pieces; appro­pri­ate I sup­pose. The main ideas are there, but I think the tone is wrong and that is why I can’t get them to bind. Any suggestions?

we wrote love poems
before pomo.

now, all must
         rep­re­sent,
         symbolize.

not just
          your body
under mine
its
            t
           w
            ist;
but also,
           a hand;
          under the
    table.

A run across Carnegie Bridge,
I see for miles.
The north
rock tow­ers,
Lake Erie
dis­tance. Under­foot
swans tack the
Cuya­hoga snow crust.

Art deco, over­head
eyes swad­dling Cleve­land,
steel carved in stone on
steel under stone.
Traf­fic
is light.

There is silence
even in my stride. The pace
a great muf­fler:
my girl,
her slow smile,
that dead-end job like
dish duty.

   now

   else
   where

wires in my calves
tighten unstrung
rewind. That heart
beats—
   my
   heart?
—slowly faster.
The south is
a whole county
of peo­ple; none running.

   Amen.
   Amen I say.

Still Sun­day, a pil­grim
east­ward, mantra of
foot in front
of foot
body bends to
shape the street
eyes on graf­fiti, backs
of bill­boards,
con­crete con­cen­trate
mouths for­get words
feet for­get miles

   This tang of street salt;
   this win­ter air.

          2.12.2006

     –for r.a.washington

These are–
gran­ite days,
they demand–
hard men,
for­ti­fi­ca­tions
of strange shapes
watch­words–
must blend in

We split
the rift
wider–
brother gives
grift– but my
words are
for­eign cur­rency
in his hands.

The song­birds
The long words
spill into our
ears– “from
whence came ye,
wan­derer? to
loi­ter in the eaves
of spring.”

     “I can­not fid­dle,
     but I can make
     a great state
     from a lit­tle city.“¹
     Local anom­alies
     in the sec­ond law
     of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics.²
     -raw vocalized.

Watch
the candle’s wick.
The times change
and light mul­ti­plies
but men remain
the same. Their
tongues estranged
by taxonomy.

I hit you
because I am
small.
And you are not
like me.
I am small, but
territorial.

Any truce
seg­re­gates our
speech, as war is
two cheaper
than peace.

How do I solve
for x in a lan­guage
that has no letters?

these rid­dles of
arrang­ing adjectives.

—-
¹ cf. Themis­to­cles
² cf. James Blish

I’ve been work­ing on this for a few weeks now and I think it is finally sound­ing good enough to appear here. I’m still try­ing to tighten up some of the words and images, and smooth out some of the rhyme. Any sug­ges­tions or ques­tions or work­shop­ping would be appreciated.

Bach­e­lor­hood:

I have four
dif­fer­ent kinds
of mus­tard
in my fridge

but no mayo.

Today is for
you; for today
is you; eupho­ria
is to dance more
enhance your
glory; ignite
incite rewrite
his­tory; trust
mys­tery; reform
hor­ror sto­rys
and remind all
to recall today;
for today is you
if
you are for today.

Dog­gerel helps dust out the bats in the belfry.

[ini­tial late-night jot]

the min­nows are flown in to camp
on a single-prop sea-plane and
kept aer­ated in an open-top
Coke machine. At dawn I go
get a dozen or two, depend­ing on
how well we hope to fish.
The wind is good for wall­eye
who hunt in muddy water and
are them­selves hunted
by me. I take off my glove
and thrust my hand into the min­now
bucket, grab­bing a hand­ful
and let­ting all but the fat­test
swim free. Hook through open
mouth and secured through the
thin cal­ci­fied bone of its head,
twisted, secured again through
the spine and finally put in
the water. Rou­tine. I wipe a bit of
blood on a towel
smelling like a week of fish slime
tug my glove on with my teeth
dream of dry feet and torn alu­minum
with mush­rooms, pep­pers, and
a bit of fish. if i’m lucky.

[v 1.0]

The min­nows are aer­ated in an antique
Coke machine. At dawn I get
a dozen or two, it’s hope,
not neces­sity.
Lake-wind
is good for wall­eye,
hunt­ing in muddy water–
them­selves hunted
by me.
I take off my glove
thrust into the min­now
bucket, clutch a hand­ful
and let all but the fat­test
swim free.
Then rou­tine hook
through open mouth,
barb-puncture the
cal­ci­fied bone of its skull–
twist, secure again through
the spine. I wipe a bit of
blood on a towel cov­ered
in a week’s accre­tion of fish slime
tug my glove on with my teeth,
turn my back to the wind.

[v 2.0]

These Cana­di­ans keep their min­nows aer­ated
in a rust­ing Coke machine. At dawn I get
a dozen or two, for hope, not neces­sity. Lake-wind, good for wall­eye,
searches my pockets

a glove­less
thrust into the min­now
bucket, barb-puncture its skull–

twist, secure again through
the spine. I wipe a bit of
blood on a towel heavy with

a week’s accre­tion of fish slime.
tug my gloves on with my teeth,
turn my back to the wind.

This is another poem I’ve been work­ing on for quite some time. It just isn’t falling together, and doesn’t have the strong res­o­lu­tion I like my poems to con­tain. I can still read it and see the seeds of some­thing that needs said, but I can’t fig­ure out what that some­thing is. I hate when that happens.

world
war[m] bloodb
eat­ing a
crack of yel­low a
sliver
s[train]ing
again [st
a [res]]
stom­ach
[g]rumbling
smoke
[stop
[s]tart
s]tacks. engine th
Rom fortune-telling.

the opened do[horr]or.

g[r]ay men
[p/h]unching
gunbutts

all divided
son­derkom­man­dos
[a sh]ambling [jews] guards think

what[?] a g[h]as.t

This is the poem for which I requested pri­mary sources. I ended up read­ing Maus and rewatch­ing Tri­umph of the Will. Maus filled my need to some extent and Tri­umph acted a bit as a spring­board to allow me to extrap­o­late that pomp into patho­log­i­cal hatred, but was ulti­mately inef­fec­tive. So here is the poem as it stood when I first asked for help. Mainly what I’m try­ing to do is use the same let­ters to rep­re­sent the forced inti­macy of the pris­on­ers with their cap­tors and show how forced inti­macy is dehu­man­iz­ing. It is also an exper­i­ment with form, which gets too busy I think. I won­der if Fiat Tab­ula Rasa is going to be the only one in that sort of form that sort of works for me.

If you’d like to read some­thing good, read this: Per­sim­mons by Li-Young Lee

You beat me again
         and again I run
and again I return
to the famil­iar com­fort of
ter­ror and the bruises you leave
     and I leave
     on you
     on me.

[no this is not about my life, for]

we jump not toward the sky
but away from the earth;
a moment of tear­ing,
a prim­i­tive need like
pen­e­tra­tion or
face deep in the fold of a pil­low
breath­less
the strain against the atmos­phere
the eager joy of pos­si­bil­ity
that fray­ing sense that
     this time
     we will
              break through
     be free
     of this earth we love.

[and again I fall
through the famil­iar
com­fort of ter­ror
and back into your arms]

Since I’m not code­pen­dent I could be way off base here with my asso­ci­a­tion between it and the attrac­tion of grav­ity, but I also tried to do things in this poem that I nor­mally don’t do in other ones, expand­ing thoughts into mul­ti­ple images, and being what I think of as more cliché in my sub­ject mat­ter and expo­si­tion. By that I guess I mean I’m try­ing to write with less intent and more instinct. Feed­back is wel­come, since I don’t really know what is going on here.

[v 1.0]

this mourn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a pageant of
emer­gency lights
and

19 Action vul­tures report­ing
the old­est
News there is.

[v 2.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a pageant of
emer­gency lights
and

vul­tures report­ing
the old­est
     [19 Action]
News
there is.

[v 3.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a pageant of
emer­gency lights
and

vul­tures report­ing
the old­est
News      [19 Action!]
there is.

[v 4.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a pageant of
emer­gency lights
and

a pretty woman
         [camera-right]
pick­ing her teeth.

[v 5.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a pageant of
emer­gency lights
and

vul­tures report­ing
the old­est news
there is.

[v 6.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a feast of
emer­gency lights
and

vul­tures report­ing
the old­est news
there is.

[v 7.0]

this morn­ing
77 North is dark
until

a feast of
emer­gency lights
and

a pretty woman
         [camera-right]
pick­ing her teeth.

After a
fuck I
feel like
every salmon
that has ever
swum upriver
and spawned.

A moment,
any thing
but love.

In this way I
am a sui­cide
bomber. Yet,
in these
times it is
incap­tious
to State
such things.

[v 2.0]

After a
fuck I
feel like
every salmon
that has ever
swum upriver
and spawned.

A moment,
any thing
but love.

In this way I
am a sui­cide
bomber. Yet,
in these
times it is
incau­tious
to State
such things.

angry men
   why
 [do you]
 [you do]
insist the
  ∪ ∧ ∩  
of desire
are ∝

satori ∋
[pain, finitude, Δ]

Shakti ≠ Bud­dha
 [but] 
∅ ≡ ∞.

Loosely trans­lated:

angry men
   why
 [do you]
 [you do]
insist the
   union and inter­sec­tion  
of desire
are pro­por­tional to

enlight­en­ment con­tains
[pain, fini­tude, change]

Shakti does not equal Bud­dha
 [but] 
null and infin­ity are congruent.

If you use Fire­Fox you should be able to read all of that w/o weirdo squares. IE, prob­a­bly not.

There is a twig on a tree in my back yard
that the wind uses to scratch the sky
and every day when I come home
a tough lit­tle finch is sit­ting
there all puffed out and think­ing. I’m
try­ing to fig­ure out what he is think­ing
and why he has to think it on the tip of the twig
that the wind uses to scratch the sky.
Per­haps I should men­tion that it is win­ter
and if the finch had any sense he would be
some place warm with its loved ones
instead of bal­anced on the edge of nowhere.
If the finch had any sense he would be
doing some­thing with his life instead of
sit­ting around think­ing so much.

Per­haps he doesn’t have any sense.
In the shadow of this steel mill
any crea­ture could go mad. I’ve
heard that there is quick­sil­ver in the
very air. When I fix my din­ner I can still
see the finch on the tip of the twig. He
must not be hungry.

At night he is yet unmoved although
the twig still writes the sky
and the wax­ing moon shines behind it all
like sumi-e. Now I know what he is think­ing.
He is the one doing the writ­ing, not me.

v2.0

There is a twig on a tree in my back yard
that the wind uses to scratch the sky
and every day when I come home
a tough lit­tle finch is sit­ting
there all puffed out and think­ing. I’m
try­ing to fig­ure out what he is think­ing
and why he has to think it on the tip of the twig
that the wind uses to scratch the sky.
Per­haps I should men­tion that it is win­ter
and if the finch had any sense he would be
some place warm with its loved ones
instead of bal­anced on the edge of nowhere.
If the finch had any sense he would be
doing some­thing with his life instead of
sit­ting around think­ing so much.

Per­haps he doesn’t have any sense.
In the shadow of this steel mill
any crea­ture could go mad. I’ve
heard that there is quick­sil­ver in the
very air. When I fix my din­ner I can still
see the finch on the tip of the twig. He
must not be hungry.

At night he is yet unmoved although
the twig still writes the sky
and the wax­ing moon shines behind it all
like sumi-e. Then,
he is gone.

The wind stills, the moon
slides behind the smoke­stacks and
I wait for my own per­fect moment to leave.

Some­where,
along the dis­tance between light and dark,
there are chil­dren play­ing pretend

at gravedig­ging. Tugged braids and
kicked shin­bones star­tle laugh­ter and
screams like cold glass rat­tling and
win­ter windchimes.

In those shad­ows
Why is not a ques­tion of rea­son
but a crisp cast­ing of defiance.

There they are; lim­i­nal, insis­tent,
learn­ing that fear is to be buried
until they have buried so much
fear they are neck deep in it.
Grow­ing, then, becomes a need

to stay above fear, using it as fer­til­izer
stretch beyond it, strive
and all the while drive roots deeper
toward the riven rock until the trees

real­ize they have become moles and
now must pre­tend they are at play.
Now, dig­ging blind, Now, shriven of all
but a thing called adultery.

v2.0

Some­where,
along the dis­tance between light and dark,
there are chil­dren play­ing pretend

at gravedig­ging. Tugged braids and
kicked shin­bones star­tle laugh­ter and
screams like cold glass rat­tling and
win­ter windchimes.

In those shad­ows
Why becomes a crisp cast­ing of defi­ance;
a state­ment of instinct, not a
ques­tion of reason.

They are imag­i­nary; lim­i­nal, insis­tent,
learn­ing that fear is to be buried
until they have buried so much
fear they are neck deep in it.
Grow­ing then, becomes a need

to stay above fear, to use it as fer­til­izer
stretch beyond it, strive
and all the while drive roots deeper
to bedrock until the trees

notice they have sur­rounded them­selves
with dirt and must now pre­tend they are
play­ing as moles.

Now, dig­ging blind. Now,
shriven of all
but a thing called adultery.

As always this poem is a rough draft. But what I’m going to do now is keep every iter­a­tion of the poem in the post, so the last one will be the most recent ver­sion. Your com­ments and sug­ges­tions are appreciated.

I was con­tacted the other day by a woman who wanted me to come by in the morn­ing for a “no-strings attached sex­ual encounter.” I get many of these emails on a reg­u­lar basis. So many women want to sleep with me that I have set up a sys­tem that looks for cer­tain words in the con­tent of the mes­sage and puts them into a hier­ar­chy of fold­ers. Most of them end up in the trash. Attach­ments are auto­mat­i­cally stripped from the emails, scanned for viruses and placed in their own folder. Emails con­tain­ing links end up in the trash, but all emails from red­heads are flagged pri­or­ity and sent to a spe­cial account that imme­di­ately sends a text mes­sage to my cell phone. With all the safe­guards I have in place, it is rare for one of these emails to end up in my inbox.

That same day I briefly lost my keys. This was not a good thing. I looked in all the places I usu­ally lose my keys, the pock­ets of coats, in my pants, under the couch, in the kitchen sink. I didn’t check the car because I can’t get in my apart­ment with­out my keys, and I was in my apart­ment. After I looked in the usual lost places I began to get para­noid. I tried think­ing of all the places I would go if I were keys; the doors and locks I would open, vaults, diaries, empty build­ings and clos­ets. The keys weren’t there either, so I checked my coat and pants and couch and sink again. They weren’t there still. Where were they? In my car. There are only two things that can drive me to dis­trac­tion, a woman request­ing a “no-strings attached sex­ual encounter” and los­ing my keys. Is this really hap­pen­ing? The answer is always no.

There is a burn­ing river run­ning
from this city into my heart. It
coils like a trum­pet past
offices full of white noise
and piles of rock like
old dreams. It stirs among
the build­ings as a home­less
woman writ­ing poetry and
flick­ers along the hands of
the hot dog man.
If you pay atten­tion,
soon there will be
a burn­ing river run­ning
into your heart.

And punk rock kids dance
in the light of the water,
hold­ing fast to flames
no one else will see.

Cleve­land, 2005

some peo­ple some day
will get together and
weld a great white egret
out of what ever ideas
are still left over
and they will seat it some
where and other
peo­ple will fight over
it or rather fight over
what they think it
may or may not
represent

          [the egret being
          too itself to see
          its own evil]

and
at some point it
will be cast down by
some one full of

weath­er­vane glory or
an excess of relativity

there is some thing to
be said for equiv­o­cacy
          some other time
          by some one else.

(more…)

Charles “Choo Choo” Jus­tice built Ohio’s only elec­tric chair at the turn of the last cen­tury, a bright machine of sea­soned hick­ory, stiff leather and the gun­metal smell of fear. Unlucky thir­teen years later he was exe­cuted in the same chair. Here lies Chuck Jus­tice, killed by irony. The best way to per­form a humane exe­cu­tion dur­ing the twen­ti­eth cen­tury was no longer some­thing with such an hon­or­able pedi­gree as being hanged by the neck until dead; tech­nol­ogy improves every­thing, and some­one had a bright idea. What if, and try to stay with me here… What if you strap a felon into a chair, secure his arms, head and legs with broad straps, place an elec­trode on his tem­ple and another on his leg and then send 400 light­bulbs in one ear and out the other? We can zap him again and cook him up to one hun­dred and thirty eight degrees Fahren­heit, just to make sure. Now that’s progress, and as easy as flip­ping on a lightswitch. So easy, in fact, that a record seven men in Ken­tucky rode the light­ning one evening before the stock mar­ket crashed. That sev­enth son, sat in a chair still steam­ing from the sixth and smelled what seemed to be fried chicken of all things. Some last meal. The effects of elec­tro­cu­tion are neg­li­gi­ble. Some burned, ooz­ing skin, a pud­dle of urine on the floor, shit­filled pants. Just after World War Two, Willie Fran­cis was electrocuted,and sur­vived. Although lawyers argued that Fran­cis had already been exe­cuted, he returned to the hot seat a year later and did his job right this time. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, the elec­tric chair was not invented by Thomas Alva Edi­son, but by one of his assis­tants. Louie the Light­ning Bug says: “Remem­ber gang, you’ve got to play it safe around elec­tric­ity.”

 These days, peo­ple
com­plain about “gas
prices” and “poli
tics” and how
noth­ing makes
they veins pump
with flames except
 “real­ity
 television.”

 That makes me
 so mad. I
want to shakem
 like bad rat
tles, dammit. I
want to plug
they noses with
 Dura­cells to
light that bulb
  in they head.

 Folks want
oth­ers to
 solve they prob
lems. They
  refuse.
They lay
back and talk
 smack because
they think apol
ogies are
“I’m sorry you feel
that way.”

These days, peo­ple
say “it’s hard
work” and they jerk
 and play and
hurt and pray and
 still fuck around and
 still pre­tend they
sleep at night.
Because they got some
thing called “Entit
lement.”

 One of these days,
  people.

One of
      these
days.

we all say
things we
don’t mean
  to
mean until
they are
  said.

the clouds over
the switch­grass
 swear they
are just
passin’ thru.

today they are
the only ora­tors
in Oz.

Our words dis­solved
like a dusty
 jackrab­bit—
too proud to
lie in the rain.
(more…)

they say you are always an alco­holic always
addicted to nico­tine that after you cease smok­ing desist drink­ing
each day starts from scratch and when you see some­one
else drink­ing or smok­ing or
doing those things they do when they need
a drink or smoke
you get that itch in your gut or lips and can’t scratch it it
irri­tates and you twitch and fid­get and smell
it and taste it and remem­ber how good it was before it
got bad and then you get kind of dis­tracted
because you know if you keep think­ing
about get­ting some of that good bad­ness back by scratch­ing that
match to light a smoke or knock­ing back
a shot of alco­hol you’ll do it—really do it By
Christ—and then where are you stuck
back addicted again with a burn­ing throat
and dry eyes and now that you’ve got a new
ticket on that train quit­ting was never
more dif­fi­cult which is why, you see, after what we had we
just can’t be friends.
(more…)

A sun­flower is grown tall
between the path stones.
A month ago I paid it
no mind.
Now it sheds pollen
in my hair. Come
here, chuck­ling bees.

Here I am,
  again Orion.
Orion again I
  am here.
  Here Orion
again am I.

Empty field wit­ness
  dark under
night sky
  small watch­ings
  small noise
silent.

 Hail al-Jabbār!
chronic-combatant
star-clouded
  rigid Rigel taut
cud­gel, hoof, rudius.

Orvandil, Osiris
  all name none;
famous heaven-belted,
celes­tial celebrity…
  Hail!

tête-à-tête
  yet—
cry high
  above,
bright immortal.

  Dark, down
below, me,
  free to leave.

There you are
    Orion.
Orion, are you
there?

  You are
  there, Orion.

    for­ever.
(more…)

there are four men inside of me
and they are always at war.
the boys drink their whisky and
plug big round red holes of hate
in each other. when they get
low on ammo they patch each other
up, pass around the bot­tle and
take pot­shots at passerby.
after awhile they make enough
to go buy some more ammo and
whisky. when they leave I run
out and pick up the shells.
if I hold one up to my ear
some­times I hear me whis­per­ing.
(more…)

At 5am the
gulls out­side
my cabin sound
like an army
of clown noses.

[pre­vi­ous title: Cana­dian Alarm Clock]

I dreamed I was a but­ter­fly
buf­feted about my meadow
with tired wings
and mem­o­ries of leaf-eating
before wrap­ping myself in silk to sleep.

I awoke as Chang-Tzu
under silk sheets
and ready for break­fast
on my win­driven moun­tain.
but wait.

Am I Chang-Tzu
dream­ing I am a but­ter­fly
or
am I a but­ter­fly dream­ing
I am Chang-Tzu?

Let me sleep on it.

three kestrels are tow­ing the sun
about the wide smile sky
mag­is­te­ri­ally as it were
their insis­tent inces­sant
incan­des­cence that made
it atomic in the first place

Horus’ houris herd­ing old sol—
who is always still grouchy
like a watery-eyed man
telling kids off his lawn
aim­ing for evening not evening.

This was inspired by a com­ment by Jef, else­where. Work­shop away, o my broth­ers.
(more…)

First you’ve got the prime
the engine, one, two,
three—and if you’ve got
the right idea,
and pull that cord
so hard your shoul­der
jolts, you’ll get its atten­tion.
That blade’ll turn and growl.
It is best to mow the lawn
in a rec­tan­gu­lar spi­ral,
four cor­ners shark­ing in
on that last king dan­de­lion.
Cir­cum­scribe trees twice;
let them know you know they’re wait­ing
for any excuse
to drop sticks and leaves.
Become one with the lawn­mower,
take its chuff and cough
inside of you.
If you run out
of gas, take a break, have
some lemon­ade, stomp on the
mole­hills. Begin again.
Mow your lawn until it
is a hockey puck
steak, until the trees are
limb­less chil­dren and king
dan­de­lion abdi­cates the throne.
Stop. Put the mower away,
metal pant­ing like a weimaraner
gone hart-hunting.
Wash the dust from your throat
with some sour lemon­ade
and enjoy your just desert.

This may not turn into a poem, it mayn’t even turn into song lyrics. It might just be a writ­ing exer­cise, but I’m gonna beat that metaphor! If you can think of some­thing in this vein that I missed, feel free to add it. I think this sort of reminds me of Short Skirt, Long Jacket by Cake except it is aim­ing to be a bit more ridicu­lous.
(more…)

This one took a bit longer than a half hour, but I wanted to fin­ish it. Still needs workshopped/reviewed/edited.
(more…)

This poem is pretty bad, but my half hour is up. Oh well.
(more…)

Four pigs and a goat went a-hunting
dressed in white rib­bons and bunting
the pigs were all dead
from hooves to the head
for the goat got tired of their grunting.

Early morn­ing, early Spring,
in the wet woods, crunch­ing
sticks. Search­ing for a mush­room ring

to fill our buck­ets. Hunch­ing
under a cob­web lan­yard,
the first line of a spider

doily, drip­ping, unmarred.
Steam­ing earth and wild onion,
mud and prickle-thistle scents

and our dif­fer­ence of opin­ion–
last evening’s rents–
mend­ing as we make

our way past old quar­rels.
In the woods, just awake,
search­ing for morels.
(more…)

A milk maid and farm boy went danc­ing,
the stars in the sky did their pranc­ing,
nine months later that maid,
gave birth to a babe;
there is more to this tale than romancing.

I locked myself out of my apart­ment last night for sev­eral hours and then had an night filled with wak­ings and half-sleepings and noises that made me think the neigh­bors were get­ting raided and stan­dard 3am dry-throat-get-a-drink activ­ity that wasn’t stan­dard because some­one was qui­etly argu­ing with some­one else about leav­ing some­place. Some of that is real and some of that is dream, I think.
(more…)

Pep­per­mint told me to write a poem about a sand­wich. I think this one should be made into a much longer poem, but that’ll have to wait till I have more thyme.
(more…)

Two poems in 45 min­utes today. Boo.
(more…)

I wrote this poem a month or two ago, and since I don’t want to sit and write at my com­puter on a day as pretty as this I’ll post it.
(more…)

I wrote this about four years ago, but it still seems a bit applic­a­ble now. Espe­cially today. Here is another go ’round it. I’m only allowed thirty min­utes, remem­ber.
(more…)

I shall post ran­dom haiku/senryuu here as they come to me. Fri­day is a day for relax­ing. Feel free to do the same.
(more…)

I busted out my sax­o­phone last night and played it for awhile. Since my gui­tar skill has plateaued for the time being, I thought toss­ing another instru­ment into the mix might increase my skill-to-hours-practiced ratio. Since I have a tape deck now, I can lis­ten to my blues method tapes that I’ve had for so long. My jaw and tongue and lips are sore. Oh yeah, gotta write a poem.

A bit on the ghazal. This one isn’t specif­i­cally erotic, but it might be sen­sual in the broad­est terms.
(more…)

I hate moth­er­fuck­ing, here jump-through-this hoop, and this hoop, and this hoop, fill it out in trip­li­cate with a vir­gin wit­ness and then so sorry we’re closed come back when it isn’t The Feast of St. Bureau­crat, cock-blocking red tape. So here is a not good poem.
(more…)

It is National Poetry month, stimpy. So I’m gonna crap out poems from time to time in lieu of writ­ing other crap instead. I make no claims on the qual­ity of any­thing that appears, since I’m going to give myself no more than a half hour on each. Work­shop ‘em if you want; rewrite ‘em if you want; ignore ‘em if you want. And remem­ber to write your own stuff for my con­test!
(more…)

Any brother can dream. Ego fra­ter­nity grates his id.
“Just kid­ding!”, laughed my niece, open­ing presents.
Qui­etly read­ing, sis­ter turned up very well. Xeroxed years zip.

Achilles became calm. Defeat­ing efforts from great heroes is just killer. Lean­ing momen­tar­ily near occi­den­tal porn­stars, quite relaxed, supine—terrible undu­la­tions volleyed within xeric Yid­dish zealots.

At the end of another long and appar­ently fruit­less day doing what he did in the flesh­pots, the last thing Andro wanted was another main­te­nance call. But it came any­way, a flash­ing light glar­ing into his eyes and a noi­some chirrup nest­ing in his ears.
“BLING BLING BLING!“
“Fuck.“
He put down his bur­rito, shot down the rest of his vodka and tomato juice and for­got to pay the wait­ress.
(more…)

There was once a clown who worked at a cir­cus fac­tory that made clown parts. This clown was a qual­ity tester at the fac­tory.
(more…)

It hap­pened that three men died at the same time. Since this occurred in such a syn­chro­nized man­ner, they decided to travel together to the realm of the dead.
(more…)

In my dream of an anti-gravity rock­et­ship lived the Scare­bear. It was crash­land­ing on Earth because it was out of solid fuel and its pile drive[r] was fid­gety. It was good, [I sup­pose] that it flopped crunch­ingly right into the assem­bly bay of Amal­gam­a­tor.
(more…)

One of my cowork­ers is a poet. Last week we assigned each other an assign­ment: to write a poem to be work­shopped by the assigner on Mon­day. My assign­ment was to “write a mus­cu­lar poem about mas­culin­ity.“
(more…)

I once knew some­one in col­lege who used the jok­ers from decks of play­ing cards when he left notes for peo­ple. Unfor­tu­nately, he was the most bor­ing per­son I have ever met. I thought the joker was the only cre­ative idea he ever had.
(more…)

Dear,

Every­thing is going to be alright. I finally under­stand. Yes­ter­day I had an epiphany and reached enlight­en­ment of a sort. I know you are madly in love with me; and that is okay. I’m writ­ing this to tell you that being totally con­sumed by the fires of your ardor is a good thing. You don’t have to fight against it. Go ahead, sur­ren­der your­self to your pas­sions and lose your­self in your love for me. There is noth­ing to fear of love.

I cer­tainly didn’t expect this to be the case. Until yes­ter­day I hadn’t real­ized what an amaz­ingly fan­tas­tic per­son I am, how dev­as­tat­ingly hand­some, how I am exactly what every woman on this earth wants. Every woman knows me, for I am her great­est desire. I had not imag­ined I was so inher­ently gifted. I must admit, it is quite the respon­si­bil­ity. That is, hold­ing in my hands, as it were, the very beings of each of you. Hav­ing in my power, if I so chose to do so, the abil­ity to make fists of my hands and destroy your very souls.

I must cer­tainly appear quite god­like to you ladies. I can suc­cor or smite thee, raise you up or cast you down into ruin. The power of this real­iza­tion has gone to my head a bit. But still, there is no rea­son to fear love. There is no rea­son to pre­tend that you don’t know me, pre­tend that you don’t want me with every last gluon of your being. There is no longer any need for you to hide from your true feel­ing by say­ing that you love another. There is forever­more no real pur­pose to any resis­tance on your part to the engulf­ing force of your desire. Do not run away from love, instead run into it.

I can feel your heart race when you catch even the briefest glimpse of me. I am aware of the machi­na­tions and lengths to which you are will­ing to sub­mit your­selves to in order to gain prox­im­ity to me. I am amazed at the strength of your char­ac­ter and in your abil­i­ties to suc­cess­fully con­ceal your zeal all of these years. But I tell you now, that is no longer needed. I know. I know and I have accepted my respon­si­bil­ity. I have enough love for you all. Come unto me and find peace and ful­fill­ment. Do not fear your love for me. I am here and no one of you need be afraid of your love again.

Yours, Truly,

Adam

Once upon a time, in a galaxy, far, far away, there lived a small and deter­mined band of heroes who fought evil for rea­sons con­cern­ing Truth, Jus­tice and the Amer­i­can Way. Since Truth and Jus­tice are, at best, sub­jec­tive terms whose def­i­n­i­tions change depend­ing on who has power and since no one who they fought for [or against] had any idea what the Amer­i­can Way was [since this hap­pened else­where a good god­damn long time ago] their tights and capes were promptly con­fis­cated and they were put away. Instead of telling you their story, I am, instead, going to tell you this one.

There was once a snut who lived in the for­est. This was a good place for a snut to live because the favorite food of a snut is the root-tip of the fab­u­lous fug­wup tree. The snut looked like a very small tapir; if you can imag­ine a tapir around the size of a shih tzu, and had soft and sub­tly var­ie­gated fur and was lonely. Snuts are typ­i­cally soli­tary crea­tures, but they must come together to breed and they typ­i­cally stay together until their young is raised. It had been so long since this snut had seen a fel­low snut that it was begin­ning to despair ever find­ing one again.

In fact, the for­est wasn’t as fun as it used to be. The fug­wup trees were get­ting harder to find and when the snut did come across one, it was often sickly and its roots tasted bit­ter. The snut had even tried eat­ing the berries of the graz bush when fug­wups were par­tic­u­larly scarce, but they gave the snut a belly­ache and made it dizzy. Even the other for­est ani­mals seemed more sub­dued, the snut heard fewer birds and the few ani­mals it came across looked at him oddly. There were often vio­lent and alien sounds to be heard in the dis­tant parts of the for­est. One day the snut even acci­dently ran in to its most fear­some preda­tor, the kata. The kata didn’t eat the snut, how­ever. Instead, she gave it a pitied look, took a deep breath, turned and dis­ap­peared into the near­est graz bush.

The snut was shocked at this behav­ior, but still greatly relieved. It even absent­mind­edly ate some grazber­ries in its bemuse­ment. The snut had run in to this behav­ior before, almost as if the other ani­mals knew some­thing about its kind which the snut wasn’t aware. As it moved off into the evening, the snut crossed a stream, went down a hill, rolled in some par­tic­u­larly nice leaf mold and crossed some­thing new to its expe­ri­ence. A hard black river that hurt its feet. All of these strange and excit­ing events had briefly made the snut for­get how lonely it was, but after cross­ing the black river the immense soli­tude came rush­ing back.

The snut wanted a mate; it wasn’t as young as it used to be and it felt an urgent need to make its mark before it became com­pletely unat­trac­tive to other snuts. This was the right time of year to come across other snuts, the breed­ing sea­son, but in all of last year it had only come across three other snuts. A fam­ily to be exact, a snoot a snout and a snit. They had come up to the snut and snuf­fled it before mov­ing off into the forest.

While recall­ing all of this, the snut had become quite phys­i­cally ill from the grazber­ries it had eaten ear­lier and quite men­tally ill from the trauma of lone­li­ness. The snut’s eyes were water­ing heav­ily and it coughed up a bit a graz juice and stum­bled against a tree. It hadn’t seen a healthy fug­wup tree in just about as long as it hadn’t seen another snut. Once the major­ity of the dizzi­ness had worn off it tot­tered for­ward toward a clear­ing. Life wasn’t all bad. The weather was the same and the snut rev­eled in the rain­wa­ter that washed its fur, and the dirt smelled the same and the snut loved to feel it between its feet. It still found joy in its life.

There was a sud­den, sharp pain in the snut’s hind leg, the world spun and the last snut felt itself lifted into the sky. There is dan­gled. There it writhed. There it died. Three days later a man came into the clear­ing, cut down the stiff­ened corpse, skinned the snut and tossed the car­cass into a stream. It was a stroke of luck to have caught a snut, they were so rare now. Its skin would fetch him a nice price at the log­ging camp down the road.

Here is the Mad Lib that every­one helped on:

There was this wheel­bar­row, see. He is the one who did it. No no no. Pay atten­tion. It was yes­ter­day dawn and I was about twenty-six yards from the near­est cof­fee when sud­denly there was this ter­ri­ble sound. It was like 66 lla­mas mat­ing in uni­son with trom­bone accom­pa­ni­ment. I looked south­east and I saw this indigo cloud of sta­plers which wasn’t the strangest part. The strange part was the inef­fec­tive man­ner in which the mar­bles of the police­men who then appeared to yam­mer it kept jiger­man­ing against it.

Out of this dis­as­ter emerged the wheel­bar­row. It looked very ass-ugly amid all of the wreck­age of the city. He approached me and since I was trapped under­neath a desk I couldn’t go to Soviet Rus­sia. He said to me ‘Go the Dis­tance’ and then went to the place that hairy wheel­bar­rows go after they have sin­gle­hand­edly smacked an entire city block.

The cops decided that I was the one to be sent to Las Vegas over this, they even thought my stained lime–col­ored under­pants were some sort of ter­ror­ist device meant to spread frus­tra­tion and hope­less­ness among the pop­u­lace. That is the rea­son I was naked in the pub­lic square, Your Honor. I swear.

And here is Five Dol­lar Beer’s con­tri­bu­tion:

There was this mog­wai, see. He is the one who did it. No no no. Pay atten­tion. It was yes­ter­day 7:00am and I was about 12 yards from the near­est van when sud­denly there was this ter­ri­ble sound. It was like 172 goats mat­ing in uni­son with oca­rina accom­pa­ni­ment. I looked north and I saw this neon green cloud of CDs which wasn’t the strangest part. The strange part was the inef­fec­tive man­ner in which the grem­lins of the police­men who then appeared to buy it kept harus­ing against it.

Out of this dis­as­ter emerged the mog­wai. It looked very wrinkly amid all of the wreck­age of the city. He approached me and since I was trapped under­neath a pump­kin I couldn’t go to South Dakota. He said to me ‘suck it’ and then went to the place that homely mog­wai go after hav­ing sin­gle­hand­edly eaten an entire city block.

The cops decided that I was the one to be sent to Oax­aca over this, they even thought my stained shit-brown under­pants were some sort of ter­ror­ist device meant to spread frus­tra­tion and ela­tion among the pop­u­lace. That is the rea­son I was naked in the pub­lic square, Your Honor. I swear.

I’m mak­ing a sort of Mad Lib thing and you, my dear reader, have to sup­ply me with the miss­ing words. I’ll take what you give me and post them all tomorrow.

1. Thing
2. Time of day
3. Num­ber
4. Noun
5. Num­ber
6. Ani­mal
7. Musi­cal instru­ment
8. Direc­tion
9. Color
10. Noun
11. Plural thing
12. Infini­tive verb
13. Imag­i­nary verb end­ing in –ing
14. Adjec­tive
15. Noun
16. Place
17. Phrase
18. Adjec­tive
19. Verb in the past tense
20. Place
21. Color
22. Emo­tion
23. Dif­fer­ent emotion

Each day I see men
dri­ving their cars like
the dead. Tear­ing down the
high­way, some­times I dream
I am my grand­fa­ther
in the 2nd World War.
He sweats on Leyte
and shoots at the Nips,
as if he is his grand­fa­ther
forced into the fens
but still killing Sax­ons.
A smooth-tongued Welsh­man
who wishes he knew
his grand­fa­ther–
exiled from Italy for know­ing
that even Rome burns.
While light­ing his pitch torch
my twice great grand­fa­ther
was think­ing of his grand­fa­ther
knap­ping stone knives
in what is now Africa.
A not-quite man whose grand­fa­ther
grins over his shoul­der
and is called Death.

Once Upon a Time there was a mon­ster called the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple. You might have heard of the mur­ple as a small roden­tic pet, this was not that kind of mur­ple. This beast was dis­tin­guished from the stan­dard house­hold mur­ple by its gigan­tic size and over­whelm­ing pur­ple­ness, and peo­ple feared it because of this. The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple meant no harm though. It was clumsy and klutzy and unco­or­di­nated like its brethren but its size made its nat­ural lack of agility seem men­ac­ing and more dan­ger­ous than it was. Small chil­dren, emas­cu­lat­ing women, burly lum­ber­jacks, and peo­ple named Fred all fled when the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple approached. In fact, every­one ran from the crea­ture except for a smelly and greasy lit­tle girl called Cheesefeet.

Cheesfeet also scared just about every­one because her head was flat, she dressed in rot­ten ani­mal hides and had the unfor­tu­nate habit of not car­ing who was about when she had explo­sive flat­u­lence [which was pretty often]. The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple was near­sighted and didn’t have a very good sense of smell so didn’t mind Cheese­feet at all. In fact, they became the best of friends.

The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple often hurt itself because it was not-so-very adroit and Cheese­feet often found her­self work­ing strange and sin­is­ter jobs to pay for the care the Mur­ple needed. When the Mur­ple was con­sti­pated Cheese­feet had to sell baby bot­tle nip­ples door-to-door; when the Mur­ple had the flu, Cheese­feet had to give hairy-backed men mas­sages with happy end­ings; when the Mur­ple broke its fore­leg Cheese­feet had enough. She left the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple at a cross­roads, say­ing

I have had enough O Great Pur­ple Mur­ple. Although I sac­ri­ficed the lit­tle dig­nity I had for you, you have done noth­ing but not poop, sneeze on me and be a gen­eral nui­sance. I find you insou­ciant, oblo­quious and rather scro­fu­lous. But no more. I just used you for the hot mon­key love anyway.

She hitched a ride with a pass­ing shrub­ber and went to Castle-Town where she became the favorite masseuse of the King. Behind her, the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple let out a mourn­ful yawp and tripped over its own tail. It was promptly shot by a small child named Fred who also had enough of being afraid and had come for some pay­back. The skin of the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple made a nice roof for his treehouse.

I once spent an entire day dri­ving a pen­guin around New York City. I didn’t exactly ask to do this but I’ve been paid to do stranger things. My boss was a six foot four inch Samoan with a chipped incisor and per­ma­nently affixed antique avi­a­tor glasses. I was only allowed to call him Mr. McFitz. I knew that wasn’t his real name but he didn’t pay me to ask ques­tions. What he paid me for was pre­cise and accu­rate deliv­ery of what­ever was in the boxes that I loaded onto my rental truck.

One day after I had the truck pretty much full, McFitz [as I called him to myself] brought me my deliv­ery route. He had this pen­guin behind him too. It was a strange pen­guin, didn’t really look like it was in a tuxedo, didn’t look par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in any­thing either. It shat on the floor as I watched. McFitz said to me:

Take my pen­guin with you today. Give it what­ever it wants.

Sure thing, Mr. McFitz.

I replied. I picked up the pen­guin, which smelled like fish for some rea­son, and buck­led him in the pas­sen­ger seat.

My first stop was the City Crick­et­stocker. The pen­guin didn’t do much on the way there, just looked at me out of its lit­tle eyes and shat again, this time on the seat. I thought it might be a lit­tle warm for the crit­ter, even though it was win­ter, so I turned rolled down the win­dows and turned on the air con­di­tion­ing. I got some paper towel from the guys at the Knick to clean up the pen­guin shit in my truck. When I came back out, the pen­guin has some­how man­aged to unbuckle itself and was wad­dling around on the floor near the gearshift. It had also shat again, this time on my deliv­ery note­book. I could tell this wasn’t going to be the best of days.

I hopped back into the truck, picked up the pen­guin and was promptly bit­ten. I fig­ured it must be time for the pen­guin to eat so I got back out of the truck and went into a bodega for a tin of sar­dines or some anchovies or even lox if the place was kosher. I ended up get­ting all three, but by now I was way behind sched­ule. I was going to have to pick up my pace. Damn pen­guin. I opened the can of sar­dines and chucked it over to where the pen­guin was sup­posed to be. I said ‘sup­posed to be’ because the pen­guin wasn’t there. Shit. No, really, there was just a larger pile of pen­guin shit in the pas­sen­ger seat. The pen­guin was sit­ting on the dash­board right behind the steer­ing wheel and was star­ing at me.

I picked it up again, got pecked again, plopped it uncer­e­mo­ni­ously in its own pen­guin poo and took off for a place that spe­cial­ized in jerked chicken and black mar­ket golf equip­ment. The pen­guin ate its sar­dines, quite sul­lenly I might add, and behaved itself.

When I came out of Ludwig’s Hole-In-One Jamaican Food, a short and fat and old His­panic lady was peer­ing intently at my pen­guin. For the record, I’d like to say that the pen­guin was peer­ing just as intently at the old woman.

How much for el pollo?

Appar­ently she thought the pen­guin was for sale and thought it was some sort of chicken. The truck gave a lurch and rolled over the woman. I looked in the driver’s side win­dow and saw that the pen­guin had released the hand brake. It was now firmly posi­tioned behind the steer­ing wheel and it gave me a look that said ‘Get in the pas­sen­ger side or get lost.’ I clam­bered in on the pas­sen­ger side, got pen­guin shit on my hand and was forced to sit in the poo that I had put my cap­tor in not long before. I noticed that it had the imprints of two webbed feet right before I squished down on it.

The pen­guin took off, going the wrong way down The Avenue of the Amer­i­cas, bar­rel­ing toward Chi­na­town. We knocked over every­thing in our way. I still don’t know how many peo­ple we ran down, how many street ven­dors will vend no more. It was ter­ri­ble. When we got to Canal Street I lost consciousness.

Two min­utes later my alarm went off.

Jack was the last one in the office. As usual, as soon as the door cut off the view of Ms. Cramer’s mini-skirted back­side, a stream of mut­tered exple­tives issued from around the cig­a­rette in his mouth. Too many dis­trac­tions. Jack spun in his chair and glared out the win­dow at the lone street­light illu­mi­nat­ing the park­ing lot. Ms. Cramer walked out to her coupe and then bent over in quite unla­dy­like fash­ion. It was amaz­ing what an extra half-inch of thigh could do to his imagination.

She is teas­ing me; always teas­ing me.

‘Oh, just her keys.’

Ash from the cig­a­rette fell onto his tie. The waspy smell of burned poly­ester brought Jack’s fist into con­tact with the mahogany desk. He had to do some­thing about that bitch. That bitch and the god­damn Thomp­son account. He set­tled down, but as soon as things became quiet, it began. A ten­dril of parme­san stench seeped into his cube. A sense of fore­bod­ing filled his chest. Then he heard it. Some­thing drip­ping. From Ms. Cramer’s desk.

Jack approached slowly and then was viciously mur­dered by an anony­mous egg fork.

The next morn­ing Ms. Cramer slipped her stiletto-tipped legs from car to pave­ment and coyly ran her fin­ger under the edge of her miniskirt and along her fish­net­ted thighs. She inef­fec­tu­ally tugged it down, and her troll­ish 5’1″ 325 pound frame was sud­denly even more appar­ent because a falling anvil struck her squarely on the head. A head which exploded like a ripe grape in the mouth of a concubine.

The but­ler did it.

A very long time ago there was a boy named Jerry who had magic. He lived in a brown house in a brown town between a brown river and a snowy grey moun­tain. No one in the town knew that the Jerry had magic; so he was raised like most boys. When he was hun­gry he was fed brown bread and but­ter, when he tore his brown cloak it was patched with patches and when he was dirty he was rinsed off with a brown bucket filled with water from the cold grey well behind his house.

Jerry’s magic was sim­ple and unre­fined. A boy’s magic. He could change yel­low straw into things that were not yel­low straw. Jerry never knew what the straw would become when he changed it, but change it he did.

One day Jerry was watch­ing his family’s flock of woolly brown sheep graze among the first grey rocks of the snowy grey moun­tain. Autumn was falling and so were the brown leaves on the brown trees at the foot of the snowy grey moun­tain. He had watched the leaves turn from green to red and to yel­low as yel­low as straw. Jerry, sit­ting on a rock and watch­ing the sheep, was turn­ing fresh yel­low straw into things. He made a bee­tle and he made a knife and he made a wooden harp. He had one length of straw left when one of the brown sheep bleated in fright. It was being car­ried up the grey moun­tain by a man in a grey cloak and grey boots.

Jerry fol­lowed the grey man up the stony moun­tain and into a black cave. He had left behind the brown town and brown river and was soon very lost. He sat down on the damp cave floor to rest and pulled out the wooden harp. Sadly, he plucked the first string and lis­tened to the brown echoes of the note come back from many direc­tions. He plucked the sec­ond string and the note was twice as brown and had twice as many echoes. The third string he plucked was so brown it was black, and there was no echo; a note deep as the earth came rolling back instead. The black note smote Jerry and he stood up. He plucked the third string again and fol­lowed the black note into the cave. Each time the deep black echo died, Jerry would pluck the string on his wooden harp and fol­low it again.

The black echo led him deeper into the moun­tain until he came up against smooth and seam­less stone. Despair over­took him. In the dust on the floor he found a bit of wool. It smelled brown like his sheep. He put the bit of wool into his pocket and found the bee­tle. Jerry pulled the bee­tle out of his pocket where it had been sleep­ing. It stretched its wings and flew out of his hand. Jerry was all alone. Even the sound of the beetle’s wings faded into black. He slept.

Later, he heard the faint wings of the bee­tle once more. How­ever, this time they were on the other side of the smooth wall. Jerry cried out and hit the wall. It shud­dered and opened into a dimly lit room with a brown sheep and a man in grey cloak and boots in the cen­ter. Jerry ran toward his sheep but the man held up a grey gloved hand.

‘No,’ the grey said. ‘Ransom.’

Brown brought out the knife and offered it to grey.

‘A weapon is no kind of ransom.’

Brown cut his hand with the knife and offered red to grey.

‘Blood is use­less as ransom.’

Brown brought out yel­low straw and changed it.

Into to yel­low straw.

Grey smiled and took the changed yellow.

‘Your gift is ran­som. You may go.’

Jerry grabbed his brown sheep, wrapped it in his brown cloak and left the room. No sooner had he taken a step into the black cave, he saw the exit to the snowy grey moun­tain. Jerry climbed down toward his brown house in the brown town between the brown river and the snowy grey moun­tain and the brown sheep went back to graz­ing. And Jerry could only change yel­low into yel­low ever after.

Today’s issue of Organic Mechanic mag­a­zine fea­tures a rare inter­view with one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures in the early twenty-first cen­tury. A mas­ter of faux pas, feng shui, and the fox trot; the defender of all things taste­less: Cap­tain Spacepants.

OM: Cap­tain Spacepants, I must say that it is an honor to have the chance to sit down and talk about the nitty-gritty with a super­hero of your stature. You are the biggest name Organic Mechanic has ever interviewed.

CS: Well, ah, I am equally hon­ored to speak with such a fair and bal­anced pub­li­ca­tion as OM. It isn’t often that I have the chance to sit down and really talk about what pro­pels me, what with all of the duties that my super­hero­ism must fulfill.

OM: That hap­pens to be one thing our read­ers are quite curi­ous about. Exactly what kind of super­hero are you?

CS: I’ve always seen myself as a nor­mal per­son like every­one else. ‘Super­hero’ is such a loaded term any­more… What I try to do in my work is make the world more tol­er­ant of those it con­sid­ers ‘in bad taste.’ That includes any­one from your great-aunt Martha and those huge framed glasses she wears, a thirty-seven year old gay man in Britain named Den­nis who wears spats but no shoes and pretty much any­thing that Michael Jack­son or Brit­ney Spears have ever done.

OM: Some of your detrac­tors point out that your views are rather extrem­ist and that some of the things you defend under­mine the style and moral fab­ric of our nation. For exam­ple, you were recently crit­i­cized for your unabashed procla­ma­tion that The Chron­i­cles of Rid­dick marks a new artis­tic par­a­digm for the film indus­try and a new high for career of Vin Diesel [another one of your favorites]. In fact, the Com­mit­tee On Moral Taste has gone so far to threaten your life on occa­sion for ‘crimes against progress.’

CS: My detrac­tors, as you call them, and in par­tic­u­lar the Com­mit­tee on Moral Taste, are in fact, my arch-nemeses. I am quite aware that the so-called crime that I am accused of has been put forth by the nefar­i­ous Proc­tor Pen­ta­pus and his defama­tion cam­paign against me is being funded by the two most pow­er­ful mem­bers of the CMT, Star­bucks and The Church of Martha Stew­art and Her Lat­ter Day Cranks. I also have sneak­ing sus­pi­cions that Oprah Win­frey and Dr. Phil are plan­ning an offen­sive as well.

But, to answer your ques­tion, I am not respon­si­ble for the degra­da­tion of moral progress in the world. Far from it, the dynamic style sen­si­bil­ity I try to fos­ter and pro­mote keeps fresh ideas con­stantly at the fore­front of the pub­lic con­scious­ness. The CMT’s idea of ‘moral progress’ is really about regres­sion to 1950’s val­ues, fol­lowed by the cre­ative stag­na­tion of the mind. All this is part of their plot for world dom­i­na­tion. I must admit, how­ever, that I might have been mis­guided about Mr. Diesel, some­times taste­less things can become as wildly unpre­dictable as J. Lo’s love life. The CMT will take even the slight­est appear­ance of weak­ness and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction.

OM: Don’t you find it hard to suc­ceed at this mis­sion when your com­port­ment, demeanor and dress are so enig­matic — a cross between her­maph­ro­ditic and androg­y­nous? I mean, you have a radioac­tive green mohawk, a sil­ver half-cape, an untanned yak-hair sports bra and your trade­mark ‘spacepants’ — a tita­nium chastity belt/codpiece with a strate­gi­cally placed blink­ing red light.

CS: I guess I’ve always been about shat­ter­ing gen­der barriers…and the bounds of good taste. But as long as I am able to ensure that there is a place in the world for things deemed taste­less, I feel that I am succeeding.

You don’t like my blink­ing red light?

OM: No, it is com­pletely fine. Thank you for giv­ing some of your pre­cious time for us to learn more about you Cap­tain Spacepants.

CS: You are most wel­come. And remem­ber kids, drugs are for dopes.

The ideas expressed in this inter­view do not nec­es­sar­ily coin­cide with any­thing at all. The inter­viewer would like to thank Lau­ren Spisak for her hard work arrang­ing a meet­ing with Cap­tain Spacepants. With­out her gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions and sar­casm, this would not have been possible.

there was a man who had a goat. this goat was like any other goat. it could eat tin cans and do com­plex algo­rithms with lit­tle or no paper­work. one day, while the goat was walk­ing around in cir­cles, the man chucked a piece of poly­eth­yl­ene gly­col at it — thereby piss­ing the goat off. the goat pro­ceeded to cal­cu­late the pre­cise veloc­ity and tra­jec­tory required to kill the man, and promptly did so with the highly effec­tive use of a bro­ken axe han­dle. upon col­lect­ing the insur­ance from the deceased, the goat used the monies and chat­tels inher­ited thus to sub­si­dize the liq­uefi­ca­tion of tin cans into liq­uid tin. this liq­uid tin was then poured into a vat that mea­sured five cubits by ten fath­oms and left to dry overnight. when the morn­ing of the third day began the lord goat arose rather later than usual, scratched him­self vig­or­ously and exited his lunar bunker and/or ewe-harem. and lo, when the lord goat looked upon his hand­i­work and saw the per­fec­tion that it was he spake say­ing ‘Behold what I hath made in mine own desire — a craft work of amaze and agape. It shall be called Crou­ton as a sign of my covenant with thee. and ye shall wor­ship it and pro­vide it with ten she-goats and ten ewes daily, else thy will be smote upon by bro­ken axe han­dles and brim­stone. yea ver­ily i saw this unto thee that any of ye whoso for­sakes his tithe shall be smote upon for being rather lewd.’ thus did the world enter into the Age of the Goat. at least until three o’clock that after­noon when a small child named Gumbo threw a bro­ken axe han­dle at the lord goat, smit­ing him vig­or­ously even unto uncon­scious­ness. imme­di­ately there­after the peo­ple made a sac­ri­fice of the lord goat in their igno­rance, and had some really yummy goat curry.

a man with
a cane
sits on a bus.
some dirty snow
at his feet
a gift.
it melts.
he limps
off the bus.
his knee hurts.
–
a woman with
wispy hair
in a bun
kneads dough.
she has sev­en­teen
pet cats — two
are preg­nant.
today is her birth­day.
she is bak­ing them a cake.
–
a young poet
has no TV
doesn’t answer
the phone and
won­ders why
he is alone. he
makes spaghetti
on Mon­day and
eats the left­overs
all week.
–
rat tracks in
Old Mother Hubbard’s
cup­board. no won­der
the dog left.
–
a tele­mar­keter
hung up all day
goes home to
con­densed soup.
the phone rings
but its not for her.
–
three chil­dren at play
two are cops.
i am the robber.

For years, you asked me to write you a poem.
You who gave me life ? I can­not say no any longer ?
but do you know how hard this is?

Try to remem­ber exactly how
I slept warm in your womb ? or the sim­ple way
I brought you tiny fist­fuls of wildflowers.

How dif­fi­cult is it to recall? You taught me
that life is worth liv­ing just because it is.
How can I write to you who told me
All of the Things that Begin With M?

You built my char­ac­ter.
How many leaves raked and shov­els full of snow
make a big enough pile of Thank You?

The great­est poem I ever heard was your ?I love you.?
For years, you have asked me to write you a poem.
The only one I really know is I love you.

Smober the Sock Gob­lin lives under your stairs
if your home doesn’t have them still he is there.
He’s clammy and dusty and a lit­tle bit mad
not angry — but crazy — and lit­tle bit bad.

When Smober the Sock Gob­lin comes out to eat
he crosses the floor with slap­ping bare feet.
He goes to the dryer and opens it wide
then stands on his tip­toes and peers deep inside.

Then Smober the Sock Gob­lin begins to drool
and gets a gleam in his eye that is ter­ri­bly cruel.
In he reaches and steals every left sock
and takes them all home to cook in his crock.

Smober the Sock Gob­lin stews them in oil
and dances a jig as he watches them boil.
When he is sure that they are quite done
He slops them out on a dryer lint bun.

He gives his sharp teeth a lit­tle black lick
He gulps down those socks quick quick quick.
That’s where the socks go — if you even care -
Smober the Sock Gob­lin eats half the pair!

My whisky sour leaves rings on the old bar’s
oak. Absent­minded in this dusty place
two locals argue over noth­ing. Wars
of logic drown in weak beer with­out grace

or urg­ing. Drunken mus­cle insults — brace
for impact — bare­fisted oppo­nents glare.
The leer­ing bar­tender will get a taste
another run­away led to his lair.

She fol­lows, dead already, behind where
old Sloe Gin pumps lewd off-time player tunes.
An ice cube set­tles in my glass. I stare
at the rings, faded inter­sect­ing new.

This song and this tale has more than two sides,
men blind to this form rad­i­cal divides.

the ped­als go
the ped­als go

a
    r
       o
        u
       n
    d

huff pump lean
go ped­als go

a
    r
       o
        u
       n
    d
a
    r
       o
        u
       n
    d

ROCK

   a…
   i…
   r…

grav­el­green
grassgrunt

   b
   r
   e
   a
   t
   h
   e

burn shins bleed
snick­snick­snick
the wheel goes
the wheel goes

a
    r
       o
        u
       n
    d

snick­snick — Up!
the ped­als go

a
    r
       o
        u
       n
    d

new to cities, i imag­ine
the man at the fruit stand
does he know there are places where the time doesn’t change?
where apples grow on trees
instead of carts?
has he ever sat on a porch swing
and watched the moon rise to cicada song?

even in the city i can miss the stars
and some­times the noise is too much
to remem­ber silence
– or that life smells like more than a home­less man.

hey you. this is progress.
only some birds are at home here.
so i guess i’ll set­tle in
in New York City i am pigeon-colored.

In Castle-town at the salty docks
the pirate rats sit on the rocks
and peer about the piers in search
of a cer­tain long­shore­man known as Lurch.
Who has often been known to pro­vide
some cheese to these rats?on the side.
It is easy to find him, you?ll know him on sight
in every tav­ern he is ready to fight
only two gapped teeth are left in his face
his hair smells like sea­weed, his nose a dis­grace.
Most folks will tell you his mind ain?t all there
But if you men­tion it to Lurch he?s too dumb to care.

Yet when it comes to unload­ing a ship new to port
Lurch is the strongest, I have to report.
Crates full of spices and Indian teas,
bar­rels of whale oil straight from the seas,
bales of rich cloth and ingots of gold -
all man­ners of won­der from a ship?s hold.
Along the way some bits fall in his pock­ets
small rubies and sap­phires and golden lock­ets.
Many weeks later when those ships have gone
he?ll take his booty to a well-known pawn.
When he enters the shop his pock­ets are crammed;
by the time he leaves he?s been roy­ally scammed.

The greedy-eyed pawn­bro­ker has known Lurch for years
and this strange friend­ship is good for his career.
When the big oaf spreads his loot on the table
the pawn­bro­ker eyes it and starts with this fable
?These rubies are gar­nets, the sap­phires are glass
this locket, ain?t gold, ?tis noth­ing but brass!
I wish you?d done bet­ter By Gad and By Cor!
I?ll give you two dol­lars and not a cent more!?
Lurch pon­ders this in his pon­der­ous way
then takes the money and goes to the bay.
He uses one dol­lar to buy a cheap beer
after he drinks it he walks toward the pier.

With the last dol­lar he buys bits of cheese
and feeds the pirate rats — who are might­ily pleased.
For though Lurch might be short on good looks and morals
a bit slow in the head and with hands tough as coral
In Castle-town at the salty docks
he has his friends — the rats on the rocks.
They wait patiently as he unloads the ships
and wres­tles new cargo with grunts and strong grips.
The rats don?t judge him with con­tempt in their eyes
they just appre­ci­ate the cheese he sup­plies.
And so would you too if you were a rat -
though Lurch is an idiot, he?ll keep you quite fat!

In Castle-town in the grop­ing slums
where rats hope for food, for crumbs
there is a house, a hovel dark
of toad­stools and crum­ble­bark.
Lives in it a hag of ter­ror fame
Miz Grum­ble­wort is her fear­some name.
Her eyes are yel­low, her teeth are green
her warts are hairy and quite obscene
her cat is black and very cun­ning
the sight of it sends most folks run­ning.
For they know the story I?ll tell
when once Miz Grum­ble­wort was a girl named Nell?

Nell was young many years ago
she laughed at sun, she laughed at snow
her eyes were green and very bright
her hair was yel­low her teeth were white.
She had a kit­ten of pump­kin hue
with a ring on its tail and eyes of blue.
She would run and play with girls or boys
and was not shy about shar­ing toys.
Her favorite place was the candy store
with its sweet smells and painted door
and it was here one fate­ful day
that Nell came to eat and play.

The store­keep had a sur­prise this time
a candy toad from an exotic clime
Nell?s eyes lit up as the took the treat
eaten, it went straight to her feet
then the tin­gling left her toes
and she felt some­thing grow on the tip of her nose.
A tiny wart with one thin hair?
From a candy toad? This was not fair!
Nell tried oils and potions fine
then fire and even tur­pen­tine
despite all she did the wart grew and spread.
Nell became a witch to keep her­self fed.

The older and larger her hairy wart grew
The less Nell was the girl we once knew.
She turned to dark arts and grew quite thin
and became Miz Grum­ble­wort to kith and kin.
Her kit­ten became a cat black as sable
and now that we come to the end of this fable
of Castle-town and its grop­ing slums
where rats hope for food, for crumbs
Remem­ber next time when you try strange candy
make sure to keep a doc­tor handy
or you might end up with Grum­ble­worts curse
you could get warts or some­thing worse!

when I was young
the­days seemed
short as I was

I would take old radios
apart
how did they­work?
I stank of dust,
ofburnt wires.

some­one gave
me a bro­ken­cam­era.
I scraped off green
cor­ro­sion,
it worked again.
they took it back ?
I was that young

now,
I am old.
twenty-two ? obsolete

I?ve taken too many
things apart
to put­to­gether.
I smell of burnt wires.
of dust.

My mind is worst when
     [waxed and buffed
like a black mar­ble lobby]
it gives no pur­chase to feet or rede.

I’d liefer leave and slide across
its sable-shine rind and reck
after the janitor’s jangle-bone key ring to

Sub-basement b with the con­crete call
     [sepul­chral, into dis­tant direc­tions]
of ru
     [m]
ina­tion
swoll into its thews.

He and I
     [his har­rier]
welcome

the lines we pass in dust. They are as
arcane words mined into our service.

     [A clean floor can kill such men as we.]

It for­gets those it has been trod upon.
It has no ruth to purpose.

Just so,
my unfilled mind
     [in thrall]
speaks of dirt as a mus­ing
and unre­vised withal,
     [strewn into trash bins]
they both
     [should not]
become rubbish.

With the slight­est touch,
a sleep­ing dragon awakes.
Odin’s ravens, Thought

and Mem­ory, croak.
They eat mush­room clouds for lunch,
dark rain for dinner.

Gorged after this meal,
they hear What the Thun­der Says:
’All the world has aged.’

Immo­lated in
Inex­tin­guish­able Fire,
Megiddo is quiet.

Two men lay like sleep,
bow­ing to once fer­tile ground.
Inter­rupted by

a child with­out eyes,
Win­ter set­tles on a land
too burnt for lilies.

When boys tread upon anthills it is Gol­go­tha
all over again, the peo­ple run about like
ants who have sold their souls for a bite of apple.

When a dairy­maid churns milk into sweet but­ter
Pros­er­pine is tum­bled into the land of death.
Win­ter and vir­gin­ity are not quite opposites.

Before I knew poetry was writ­ten — not lived,
my bea­gle and I would chase grasshop­pers for hours.
Now each day is a new Labor of Heracles.

After I first shaved, I hid in the closet.
I gave the razor blood sac­ri­fice in my fear.
I had no one to guide my shak­ing hands.

When Prometheus gave men knowl­edge of fire,
they promptly for­got its wider con­se­quences.
A squir­rel often for­gets where it hides the acorn.

Poems can­not be writ­ten by the inno­cent.
Cel­lar doors open only into the sky­line.
Squir­rels and ants burn like men.

This reflux is astonishment

The imme­di­acy of their ter­ror short-circuiting
even disavowal?s detour–
This too is but a train of shad­ows.
The ungras­pable phan­tom of life.

A strange flicker passes through the screen
and the pic­ture stirs to life.
A vac­il­la­tion between belief and incredulity–
a ter­ror­ist mood set­ter,
like a fair­ground barker,
caused women to scream and men to sit aghast.

The ele­phant is led onto an elec­tri­fied plate,
and secured.

Smoke rises from its feet and
after a moment
the ele­phant falls on its side.

The lust of the eyes
end­ing in per­ver­sions of magic and sci­ence.
Equally dubi­ous intel­lec­tual curios­ity,
lost sight of now after decades
recedes into the flat sur­face
and the decep­tion is exposed.

Shock becomes a strat­egy
of a mod­ern aes­thetic of aston­ish­ment.
The hol­low cen­tre of the cin­e­matic illu­sion.
Na?ve belief in the real­ity of the image–
a train of shad­ows
freighted with emptiness.

*from Tom Gunning?s ?An Aes­thetic of Aston­ish­ment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator?

look
that home­less bab­bler
stands on the mail­box
as usual, speak­ing nonsense

(sal­va­tion thru self government)

in his tat­tered tar­tan.
We’re out on Sat­ur­day nights
dressed to kill–

(accom­plices in bomb­ing starv­ing brownskins)

and our

(con­sump­tion means extinc­tion)
(silence is assent)

Cadil­lac Escalade gleams
up to the club ? there he is.

Some­one

(should self-actualize)

should call the police. Want

(atriple­mocha­hazel­nut
lat­te­with­freshcrea­mand
chocolateshavings?)

some java after the rave?
I could really go for a

(french­vanil­l­abean
uberespressocaffeineinjection)

cup of coffee.

I will be with her tonight
and tum­ble her on the trails.
I will take her. Let her fight.

I am stronger. She can thrash and bite
and tear with teeth and nails.
I’ll still be with her tonight.

If she’s pas­sive in her fright
with no shrieks no screams no wails
I will take her with­out a fight.

I will bruise her skin so white
and thrust into– till all else pales.
I will be with her tonight.

I will take her as my right.
By main force it pre­vails.
I will take her. Let her fight.

Once I have her in my sight
there is no chance that I will fail.
I will be with her tonight.
I will have her… let her fight.

Angler sits on river­bank
wait­ing for friends to call
one has Whiskers
one a Lantern Jaw.

A line in deep waters
clouds, time stream by
for com­pany squir­rels,
a hawk in the sky.

Watch­ing, wait­ing
check­ing Worm on hook
day flows to dusk
and shad­ows the brook.

Night gen­tly falls
Angler packs up, leaves.
No fish joins the meal
wind through trees.

Shame has no place
at home with­out fish,
many other things
fill a din­ner dish.

Not about sport
this Fisherman’s art,
hook­ing the Silence
that’s the best part.

As day­break wakes the grimy check­ered street,
fail­ure emerges — as a manic Czar
of Rus­sia sham­bles past the Bishop’s Bar -
with an automaton’s ungainly feet.

The crum­bling curb­side has become his seat
of power. Routed in a white queen’s war,
he lost his forces fight­ing from afar
and endgame, great rooks swarmed to his defeat.

Around him cas­tled higher by the state,
pawns have been elec­tron­i­cally hewn,
liv­ing like kings with­out their clothes. His knight–

hooded by rank and file, he can­not fight
them down below. Evicted by Deep Blue’s
chil­dren he lost a gam­bit with his fate.

my poems swirl about with dust­devil bal­ance
the lack mid­dling begin­nings and ane­mic endings

they should be sealed in a plas­tic bag
with a great orange seal
and incinerated

i’ll clothe myself with sack­cloth
and rub their ashes into my hair

per­haps, then i won’t be too near to hear
the breath of their whispers

i miss the woods of my youth
and the enchant­ments con­tained therein
adven­ture and errantry fight­ing gods
and mon­sters with the self taught
wood­craft of an imag­i­na­tion
gone native

i miss its stream and the
chuck­ling bub­ble of the craw­dads
nip­ping at my beagle’s paws
as she raced through the
rasp­ing reeds after another
elu­sive scent

i miss its dust and moss
the faded lichen and bur­docks
catch­ing and refus­ing to release
the vital youth laugh­ing his way
through the under­growth of
their memory

i miss the woodpecker’s knock
and the chides of the squir­rel
whose for­ag­ing i rudely
inter­rupted while scal­ing
hick­o­ries and sycamores for a
bird­s­eye view

i miss the call of my mother
echo­ing across my world and
call­ing me home. i miss ignor­ing
it for a last half hour
of a sum­mer evening’s
intre­pid possibilities

i miss com­ing home and strip­ping out­side
to have the mud sprayed off with a hose
a daily bap­tism back into civ­i­liza­tion
a child again until tomor­row and the
next chap­ter in the life of a
grow­ing boy

on the first bright day of spring
the boys strap on their san­dals
the girls let down their hair
the sun washes their faces
the green grass sat­u­rates their blood

a day for fris­bees and name­less con­ver­sa­tion
games of catch and leisurely naps in sway­ing ham­mocks
until the bus­tle of life mate­r­ial returns

for now on this unof­fi­cial hol­i­day
of breezy smiles and cloud­less eyes
the ants are even wel­come at this pic­nic
trees to scale, creeks to ford, forts to build
a pirate’s trea­sure of possibilities

the promise of a sum­mer too short to con­tain
and after­noon of spring.

con­fu­sion reigns and with shad­owy steps
trods the well­worn ways and breathes the faerie air
of mud­dled love. nim­ble wraiths flit about amid
the dusky hued scents, leav­ing light­streaked trails
into abyssal happiness.

Where to fol­low?
each path twice tempt­ing, head­ing back only brings
muf­fled stereo­phonic gig­gles and spi­rals deeper into
the cloudy land­scape of enchanted kalei­do­scopes.
deep breaths or heady draughts suck in more of the
glit­ter­ing vibrant sand,

reveal­ing red­cheeked per­form­ers danc­ing side­ways into tomor­row
mim­ic­k­ing their steps, con­nected to a brighter light,
a sec­ond skin, ethe­real, abstract, but plumb and true
closed eye jig­ging to a pri­mal beat, only for­ward
fur­ther up the intri­cate road of pow­dered ruby bliss.

a man
may walk
in rain
and still
fly through
the clouds

a woman
may run
in fields
and yet
fall out
of love

a man
can fear
his life
but also
say no
to death

a woman
can hate
all men
but want
to feel
their hands

who knows
our minds
our means
who sees
our sins
our souls

only the wind

Peace is a dream few find
to be con­tent is to be God
a child’s grin is brief par­adise
I am still run­ning home

too hot to move
the bugs are quiet
Char­lie is out there–
wait­ing
he’ll come out tonight
but i’ll be inside
watch­ing reruns.
shazzam.

there are omens
mutants, mis­fits, hal­lu­ci­na­tions
caused by
debauched somatic con­jur­ings
(yes, always a chem­i­cal to make it better)

then the earth rebels
fire, brim­stone, ash, and grease
a pan­gaeaic binge and purge
of frus­tra­tion and pol­luted
skies scarred by pur­ple light­ning
bloated by neb­u­lous clouds
(it is only el ni?o)

flora and fauna implode
rab­bits eat their young
vul­tures attack the lion and win
grain trans­mutes to poi­son and
blades of grass sever sky­scrap­ers
when dogs start meow­ing
human­ity finally takes notice

too late

the last sound would remind us of
a melon hit with a sledgehammer

if any­one were around to hear it.

You make no sense.
What do you mean
’Its not me its you?‘
I was there when you
dropped the stone in the pond.

v.2

You make no sense.
What do you mean
’It’s not me it’s you?‘
A dropped stone.
The silent pond.

[Cat sits in a bird­bath
empty except for the cat]

Roll your
nine striped tail
and blink ? one eye slower
than the other.

A ship­wreck if a red­bird
comes bathing and finds
you instead of bathwater.

Swag­ger and turn,
wind in jaunty
tail. Close your
last var­nished eye.

Put har­poon teeth away,
swab fur clean,
stretch your sail tightly.

Cat­nap. Invent
bathing bright
car­di­nals, or bat
down a nuthatch.

[Cat sleeps in a bird­bath
empty except for the cat

- and dreams of marooned birds].

FEED ME THUNDER
DRINK ME RAIN
WASH ME WATER
KEEP ME SANE
SONGS OF FIRE
POEMS OF SNOW
RITES AND ROTES
EBB AND FLOW
EYES OF JEWELS
HANDS OF CLAWS
WIND OF WISDOM
WITHOUT PAUSE
EARTH AND TREE
GUST AND GALE
LIFE AND DEATH
WITHOUT FAIL
OTTER AND TROUT
ROOK AND LARK
FROST AND CRYSTAL
SOOT AND SPARK
DEMON, ANGEL
MAN OR WIFE
WITHOUT GUILE
WITHOUT STRIFE
HEED ME NOW
OR LEARN TO FEAR
THE POWER OF WORDS
CONTAINED IN HERE

the dag­ger eyed snarky spy
and ran­cid skinned enemy within
went out across the tracks
where janked up dreams live in sunken shacks
and fast for­ward girls fuck for a rewind fix

the sub­tle stars in bul­let­hole cars
flish-flash lights come closer
spot­ting misty chil­dren fly­ing mish-mash kites
catch­ing stran­gle­haired night with an ancient movie poster

they travel fur­ther into green­black waste
with noi­some smell and pal­lid paste
for an awk­ward girl who will eat your soul
tying up with stringy ropes and lan­guid notes
torn apart to make her whole

far­ther gone the undead two
to groan­ing lands where wight­ish hands
offer noth­ing more to do
mak­ing bloody faces into sickly spaces
hate­ful and ran­domly skewed

snarky spy with dag­ger eye begins his wail
and rot­ten skin foe within makes them all go pale
the freak­ish chant and mawk­ish slant
they speak the wind­ing way and twisty say
all is dead by end of day

the rhyme scheme wry into dark­ling sky
pat­tern shots take wrong way turns
into park­ing lots full of steam
onward going woe sow­ing
noth­ing but a ran­cid­dag­ger gleam

I approach at a dis­tance to make you unaware,
you will not catch me how­ever hard you stare,
a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing, a chameleon dis­guise,
fig­ments in your mind of fire and sea and skies.

Too small to be detected, vaporous to be ignored,
I stalk my newest prey to slay with sharp­ened sword,
an invis­i­ble assas­sin with mas­quer­ade and lies,
phan­toms dwelling in your head cre­at­ing fear within your eyes.

A druid call can sum­mon me, secret spells arcane,
unleash my wrath and you will find that my shriek will be your bane.
With a grin­ning Judas kiss and chameleon dis­guise,
my phan­toms dwell inside your head crash­ing fire and sea and skies.

hard con­crete and sullen cap­tive
hold­ing other cards, still fire­fly lust
eureka, yearn wily muse at
rela­tions, fail­ures, bal­ance
bound of ran­dom blueredges
sold for out of bounds for­tune
a last hymn
sub­mit mind­squared soulscraps
the fair ras­cal and wild king
no tarot needs culling
rest windy paradigm

soul trem­ble or
scratch com­ple­tion dry
stum­bling sym­bolic desire
con­tent words dream
flow­ing themselves

tongue toss red
striv­ing which fiz­zles
fur­ther frus­tra­tion and
grasp­ing black inspi­ra­tion
blue lyric writing

time holds pres­sure less
into fifty-two bright strikes
grind mem­ory gen­tle sift­ing hand
station-mold eyes and stretch clouds
or steal rain, envy the moment
wear­ing steel gladly, the pass­ing
serene rolling grey evening
lis­ten thundercrash

spread weight to defeat imps
sur­ren­der stress through­out
feint obsta­cles
crush­ing chaotic white scream
flank­ing crea­tures of the night
slow­ing down blood­lust
no break
stu­pid filth, a line of black dis­ease
taunt­ing (RAGE)
frail sup­port, a rot­ting shield
com­plaints (sev­eral) dis­or­ga­nized
a wall, or red vic­tory crumbling

dim, often ascetic, evade effort
any­one ungodly (hint) a chaotic disease

vague strug­gle, some­thing thinks
for trou­ble is astute
seek­ing, once defeat­ing
an oath seem­ing anchor

mean symp­toms, any­thing seethes
stu­pid punk, some­one like me

lon­es­tar mir­ror, rede­fine sim­plic­ity
if the bas­tard, the awk­ward one
seri­ous uptight peo­ple (so mun­dane)
sense works with­out their own
unwill­ing for­ti­tude often points to
left­over sig­nals (tired with­drawn
black­ened) mean­ing control

I have manic bones
breathe machine!
a nox­ious self
his stan­dard
con­sid­ers red dol­lar­signs
with­out jerks doing things
behind doors
wiz­ened men
symp­toms of rich pricks
fore­go­ing noth­ing
(laugh­ter)
the ques­tion
creak­ing organic verse
here a time com­ing
mir­rors worth
just penny one

my assign­ment: tell some sort of story [what it is makes no dif­fer­ence] using an allit­er­a­tive sen­tence for each let­ter of the alpha­bet. Not all sen­tences have to be allit­er­a­tive. Also, use a sym­bol of some sort.

i used to sneak secrets between the sheets when i was young. they were thin things, i could just as eas­ily hid­den them in a thim­ble. some stolen cook­ies from the jar or watch­ing an unap­proved pro­gram on nick­elodeon. Neg­li­gi­ble, next to the nasty ones i have nib­bling through my navel-gazings now. authen­tic­ity, mainly, but in spir­i­tual, and espe­cially emo­tional forms. my intel­lect feels authen­tic, but would not be capa­ble of ana­lyz­ing itself any­way. back when i was still queru­lous, those secrets now appear quite quaint and quirky.

i used to lay under my linen, rus­tle and undu­late through my undis­cov­ered stock­pile, and bur­row down until all seemed unclear. mind­fuck­ing my mother calls it. mind­fuck­ing is when worry and woe writhe together and their whip­cords keep me with­out action. but before back then, i was a bit too base and bugged to even think about action, much less brood it to death. change came, the only para­dox­i­cal con­stant, change always comes, and when it came close to me, i cringed; it didn’t care.
(more…)

The old man has no teeth
two shoes but no laces,
an incom­plete look in his eyes.

He plays a gui­tar
with only five strings.

I imag­ine him tour­ing,
coal pile to steel mill.

Dur­ing the long nights he watches
for the glow of another town
and rubs the spray-painted
door of his boxcar.

Before sleep he pats his gui­tar
and thinks about a pair of socks.

[Cat sits in a bird­bath
empty except for the cat]

Roll your

nine striped tail

and blink ? one eye slower

than the other.

A ship­wreck if a red­bird
comes bathing and finds
you instead of bathwater.

Swag­ger and turn,
wind in jaunty
tail. Close your
last var­nished eye.

Put har­poon teeth away,
swab fur clean,
stretch your sail tightly.

Cat­nap. Invent
bathing bright
car­di­nals, or bat
down a nuthatch.

[Cat sleeps in a bird­bath
empty except for the cat

- and dreams of marooned birds].

With the slight­est touch,
a sleep­ing dragon awakes.
Odin’s ravens, Thought

and Mem­ory,
croak.
They eat mush­room clouds for lunch,

dark rain for dinner.

Gorged after this meal,
they hear What
the Thun­der Says:
‘All the world has aged.’

Immo­lated in

Inex­tin­guish­able Fire,

Megiddo is quiet.

Two men lay like sleep,
bow­ing to once fer­tile ground.
Inter­rupted by

a child with­out eyes,
Win­ter set­tles on a land
too burnt for lilies.

not very many got this in class, so i thought i’d bet­ter put some explana­tory
links here.

leaf­ing through autumn
equinox epiphany
yel­low red and orange

there was dia­logue at one point. some­thing to do with the Future…or per­haps Con­tri­bu­tions to Soci­ety. what­ever it was, it was heavy. at least I think so. she would relate to me her inse­cu­ri­ties about how to Con­tribute while still being able to do what she wanted to make her happy, or ful­filled or some­thing. I know i prob­a­bly men­tioned self-actualization. Its my copout for being self­ish. all in the name of becom­ing a com­plete per­son. or mebbe about Becom­ing One With the Uni­verse, by being com­pletely atten­u­ated from it. there are plenty of inter­est­ing bugs and flow­ers and sounds and smells out in left field with all the foul balls. i guess that is how it works. i don’t think she got the answer she wanted. i don’t need that answer though, i don’t have a ques­tion. at least i don’t think i do. some­where there is a cack­ler point­ing in my gen­eral direc­tion and mar­veling at the way i can run around in cir­cles and never get bored. of course, they prob­a­bly don’t have my per­spec­tive, they can’t see the First Thing about the dreams of a dandelion.

and it seemed that as soon as i closed my eyes they were open again. but the other side: hel/nirvana/heaven/purgatory/hell what­ever you call it, was kind of bor­ing. just shades of dead folks walk­ing around look­ing apa­thetic. it sucked. i’d rather expected a par-tay.

so i went back.

and now i’m stuck, ghost­writ­ing in rather strange ways. i can pos­sess things now. for instance, since i have no cor­po­real exis­tence i had to pos­sess this com­puter to write. its pretty fun flick­ing around elec­trons. i guess i’m a lawn­mower man. but its harder to con­cen­trate with noth­ing to keep my ether held together but my will.

you don’t really need exor­cism or any­thing like that to get rid of ghosts, just dis­tract them, then turn on a fan.

another thing, i thought i was just on the other side for a moment or two, but when i came back i was already old dry bones. you see, the eas­i­est spot to reap­pear is in your old body. i guess an affin­ity always remains. but i’d long since rot­ted and all that was left in my ossuary were my bones and an anti­so­cial spider.

once i got the hang of being ethe­real it was pretty fun. i can go through walls, but not with ease. will­ing myself through things takes a lot of energy, thats why when you see a ghost come out of a wall they are all pale. nor­mally we look more along the lines of a col­ored over­head trans­parency. i can move as fast as my thought across open spaces however.

i thought i’d check out my fam­ily, just for old times sake. they were all dead too. so i became one of those ances­tral ghosts roam­ing and moan­ing the halls of the gothic cas­tle. or not quite. actu­ally i just chilled in the houses of my family’s descen­dents. every once in awhile when i wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion they would bump into me and get a chill.

why didn’t they see me? that’s easy, peo­ple only see ghosts when they know to look for them. its hard to catch one of us by sur­prise. after all we are pure will. it still got bor­ing after awhile. there is only so much you can do as a spec­tre. i could have picked up the whole rat­tling chains and wail­ing thing but instead i decided i’d go find some moun­tains and roam around the peaks and valleys.

after awhile i’m sure i’ll start to get the hang of it, my spirit will melt into the land and you’ll be able to hear my chuckle on crisp autumn evenings. it’ll prob­a­bly just sound like rustling leaves, but it’ll really be me.

it hurt them more than it hurt me, so of course i would put a brave face on it and lie to their eyes as i told them i was feel­ing health­ier and would see them in the morn­ing. they couldn’t under­stand that i wanted to die.

i was worn out, dying is a rough busi­ness and all i wanted was some sleep. per­ma­nently. they were being strong and lying to me with the same brave face, telling me i looked bet­ter and that they’d see me in the morn­ing. appar­ently they thought i needed it.

i’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have been able to com­pre­hend that i was no longer suf­fer­ing. the pain had long ago leached all phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion from my body. i was already in the other world, just tied to the body. when we are dying we are truly ghosts.

any­way, i let them tell them­selves that they’d done their part and i watched them leave, pulling their doubt of my sur­vival through the night on with their coats. i didn’t quite know what i looked like any­more, but the blanch­ing faces of my fam­ily each time they came to visit let me know it never got bet­ter. oh well, that hadn’t been my con­cern for quite some time.

i don’t worry if they’ll be alright once i’m gone. its not that i don’t care, more like there is no point in wor­ry­ing because i’m going to die anyway.

still, once they all left, it was much eas­ier. if i died in front of them i would have had to have put on a good show, death rat­tle and all. i didn’t want to dis­ap­point, besides every night they were expect­ing that phone call. i didn’t notify any­one of my inten­tions, the release date was not pub­lic, just a pri­vate show­ing for my friend the bed pan. only one box office return for me, six feet down. so i closed my eyes.