Hello Mountains, Goodbye Mountains

Adios

2010-03-24T13:41:00.003-04:00

So I'm shutting the faucet here, figuratively, though the tap dried up a while back. These are the poems of a time that I'm not in any more, so this blog is more like a museum of a happier, sappier time than anything else. Whatever new poems i might write are over at http://certainlymountains.blogspot.com/ so check it out if you so desire

later on

what is the moon, really?

2009-10-06T23:52:00.001-04:00

what is the moon?

no one really knows,

but I have some ideas.

maybe it's a felt circle

stuck to a woolen blanket

or a breath of light

the night sky takes

swelling with whiteness,

and then exhaled.

it is the night’s drain

the starlight circles.

the accretion of the glow

given off like pollen

from each humming streetlight.

maybe it’s an eye-hole

cut in the fabric of the night.

it could be a pearl, I suppose

flawed and dusty.

what is the moon?

no one really knows.

everything

2009-07-24T10:53:00.002-04:00

everything is not you, recently I’ve noticed
because like the dog I raise my head to look
whenever something might be you.

I look for you mostly in lists these days
lists of names, lists of numbers
messages left, missed calls, letters received

my friend Emily told me this is what she believes
that a dog will miss you all the time that you are gone
but when you are back, he’ll forget you ever were

I could learn to think like that, is what I think
it actually makes a lot of sense to me, the forgetting
when you’re around, that everything is not you.

two cans and a string

2009-07-16T00:32:00.002-04:00

I have been living here now
for about one year
where there are mountains
and rivers
(without end)
and now everything is green,
like it was when I arrived -
though I feel sometimes
I am only just now
really arriving

once, then
everything was orange (yellow)
and people came up
in buses
from the city you lived in

soon though that ended
and the trees, bare
were revealed as wood
hard and grey

wind poured through
and cold, it was
sweaters on,
hat on

this winter
was like no other
the diagrams of weather,
air thin, but not like before
not full of wires

combinations of snow,
white/grey possibilities
those
were the mathematics of winter
unlike any other winter
any other place

window panes
woven in frost

the trees were glass
sunlight fastened
to their limbs and branches

but , slowly though
it vanished

by then
you were further away
and I wrote poems
about distance

they were two cans
and a string

and came the mud
wet black wood

some curious softness
a down, like pasture
green and brown
more colors than one

everything loosened
and I sat by a river
as it tumbled over rocks

I have been living here now
about one year
going into the forest, into
stores and houses,
riding rarely in cars
and kneeling in my garden
to pick radishes

now it’s almost
goodbye mountains,
hello not mountains

but it’s also
goodbye distance,
hello you.

Lucky

2009-07-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

walking to the bar
I found a penny
on the sidewalk
heads up,
shining

I put it in my pocket
and wondered if it meant
I’d talk to you tonight

untitled

2009-04-08T11:58:00.004-04:00

on a good day

when I get home from work

the sun has not set all the way

and light still comes in

there is some bread

in the silver breadbox

some homemade jam

and water in the kettle

the heat is working well

i can take off my wool socks

put on an old record

slow dance to my desk

on a good day

you might be in any

number of places

in the mood to talk

if not, I can still smile

I understand that too

so I find the words

you leave behind

I read them slowly

with tea and toast

listening to an old record

as the light dims

it's slow dance enough,

for a night like this

untitled

2009-04-01T16:25:00.002-04:00

there is something more, here -

more than the other half of the bed,

than the space next to me on the sofa

at the party I feel uncomfortable at,

bigger than the frying pan

being used to make only

one portion of pancakes

the second space in the toothbrush holder,

room on the bench by the river,

just instances,

of something

more.

heavier than the pile of records

bought with you in mind,

taller than the shelves

to hold all our poetry.

there is something more, here -

and for now, I sit with it

like these mountains

waiting out the weather

dreaming during the day,

because I never do at night

This is My Plan to Help You Deal With Your Worrying Nature

2009-01-19T23:56:00.004-05:00

step one
I will arrive presently,
with my robin egg suitcase
the lavender interior filled
basic necessities,
sweaters and flannels.

You will probably
have to collect me
at the bus station.

step two
I will put my suitcase in your trunk
and completely surround you
with my arms

totally surrounded,
we will go back
to your house.

There is no step three.

This Is a Poem I Wrote, If You Wanted To Know What Was New With Me.

2008-12-17T23:19:00.000-05:00

let me explain
what I mean when I say
that I feel these days like I have found my voice,
or a voice that could be
mine, for now.

the way in which these things are said
gives me great comfort
a feeling of well-being
because something is wrong
inside my brain
that causes me to feel this way.

I have images still,
and know about the crumpled flyer
for the happy hour special
with the chewing gun wadded inside its folds
resting between two rails
on the gutter
grate
in the lamp-light that hums
loud enough to hear from one block away

it is impossible
that I have forgotten
the sound of the water as it moves under the rocks
and over the rocks
past low hanging trees
bowing down to dip their branches in
and cool their trunks

all of this remains,
but it is like
a tightly wound box now
and it is harder to find space
for such large pieces

From the Weapons Department of My Heart

2008-12-16T14:20:00.002-05:00

I am writing a completely new poem now
and it is unlike any that you have read
for a number of reasons including
but not limited to the fact that
upon reading this poem you have fallen
hopelessly in love with me.

Apparently it was all a question
of intention, the force of willpower
and my poem is stretched like a skin
across the drum-head, and you
getting close enough to read it
are surprised when I burst through.

Having taken up in both hands now
every sweet thing I would have told you
since the moment that we met,
I have loaded this poem like a cannon,
and surely when the fuse reaches the
emotions it will explode outwards
and leave a hole in your chest,
with the light shining through
where your heart used to be.

A Relatively Short Poem About a Long Distance

2008-12-16T14:15:00.001-05:00

what is this new softness, as fingertips search
for the seam between then and here.

Dense and wooded, the distance between us, farther than
the most distant mountain I can see from my rooftop.

I cannot imagine how we have arrived here, me
who can imagine anything, and you, of whom I’ve dreamed.

Can you hope for an opening of the earth, like a sinkhole
that closes itself, bringing your house next to mine?

Then of course we would be neighbors, and you would be
the girl next door, and I? Silly boy, frozen in my yard.

Romantical Pastoral

2008-11-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

My deep concern for you is like a river
and my continuing admiration is like a canoe
on that river.
In that canoe are two men, and
they are my fears about success.
Each of these men has a new pack of cigarettes,
they are forty of my character flaws.
On the banks of the river are many
Low hanging trees, which are weighted with my doubts.
In one of these trees is a small bird
Representing our hopes for the future.
The worm in the stomach of this bird
Is your sordid past.
There are seven rocks in a pile
By an upturned stump
A few feet from the tree with the bird
And this arrangement of objects
Has all the qualities of my ability
To make strangers feel at ease.
Less than a mile from the river is a cabin
That stands in for financial security.
There is the sound of banjo music coming
From an unspecified place between the cabin
And the riverbank and it represents
Your preferences in bed.
Beneath the water there is a variety of aquatic life
Known also as possibility.
These are just a few of the ways
In which my deep concern for you
Is like a river.

Yellow.

2008-10-21T14:56:00.001-04:00

Somewhere in America, this afternoon
there is someone who believes
in the pure wonder of possibility,
seeing the yellow leaves around white trees
through the fogged window.

There is something on the mountains
either fog or smoke, between us
you who believes and I
who knows.

Recently I have fallen in love with demolition,
the smoke rises from the earth and separates.
It has proven everything to me
about forgetting, and how we can.

Every length of time that is possible,
less then the time I have been alive –
I have lived them all.

At twenty-two years old,
in between my day job and
the parts I save for you, and you, and you
I am a person and a poet
always knowing how to say words
when I am quiet,
what to say when I can’t find how.

The Most Dangerous Game

2008-10-11T12:06:00.001-04:00

The most dangerous game I think
is not what you’d expect
it is in fact monopoly, played by men with knives
and bad intentions.
These men were released
from one hundred institutions
just only yesterday in fact that one is still
wearing his gray jumpsuit
which gives him a measure of order the others lack
except of course they are all holding knives.
You are exempt from seeing
All the knives they are holding
For the purposes of this game
in order to make it interesting
and also because part of playing
the most dangerous game
I think is that you don’t know
you are.
The advantage of that is
without the nervous tension,
knife-based mostly,
you’ll probably win this game of monopoly
in which case the knives may or may not
become an issue.
Emotions run high
In hidden-knife monopoly
For reasons known and unknown
but it doesn’t change the price of hotels
or the fact that you’ll trade the Electric Company
for Reading Railroad,
and that consistency should afford you
a measure of peace in an otherwise
wildly dangerous, albeit secretly,
game at least
as far as you’re concerned.

Poem for Wang Wei

2008-10-11T12:05:00.001-04:00

Living alone now in my bare rooms in Onion-River valley,
Waiting for a visitor at my green gate who never arrives.

Sitting by my window I watch as the forest changes colors,
each morning more and more of the trees have gone yellow.

I drink cold tea all day long and read old master Wang Wei
wondering at similarities between our rivers and mountains.

Service has brought me to this wild valley, between peaks
I think it funny that the old master had it quite the opposite.

I Have Been To Las Vegas

2008-10-11T12:03:00.001-04:00

I have been to Las Vegas
And on the whole, it was not a good experience.
But all the red dirt and plastic
Helped me to get to know America
In the way you can only get to know someone
Making love in a car, someone you normally
Limit your love-making with to a bed.
Faced with new difficulties,
Creative problem solving is required,
And you bear witness while trying
To get your pants off.

These parked cars and driving cars
Everywhere now and they leave that out
When they talk lovingly about the past
That there were cars parked on the streets
Back then as well, maybe fewer but equally
Insidious.

Once they were all machines, metal beasts
We could understand, it was like riding a horse
Or riding inside a horse I suppose,
But less bloody – the point is the
Muscles were mechanical
And everybody could relate.

Now we have digital cars, I think
And the thing about them is
Everything in unobservable,
All quiet on the western front.
You put in a quarter and they go,
And fuck man they go.

Somewhere in America children are howling
At the moon and breathing the dirt kicked up
By passing south-east Asian cars speeding
Through the noonish, electric nighttime
And it’s all our fault.

second train song

2008-08-07T12:17:00.001-04:00

Train-Song # 2 08/05/08

Rectangles of corn standing stick straight beside the train tracks,
green mourners watching the procession as it rolls out of town.
The river, red with dirt from between the rows of drowning crops
drowns its banks and falls with a wet flop under the tracks
snail-sliming its red way off into the horizon that changes always.

The dark green of trees, soggy and smeared, is like a paper chain,
a fence of men in damp green raincoats holding hands and frowning.
They guards the distance from the train, whose whistle finds the cracks
and slips through the wall of trees and homes and telephone poles
howling out towards the mountains to the east across the grassy space.

At every station the train grinds to a halt, like cold sandpaper from the shed
dragged across waterlogged wood brought in by the tides of an ocean
so far from here that no familiar gulls circle down to compete
With the local pigeons for brown cores of apples and white crusts of bread.

Beside these tracks only the homes of the poor sit now, alone and tired
leaning this way and that, sinking down to meet the ground that buckles
and cracks the boards of the porch, pulling the sheds into their terrible slouch.

Burnt orange flashes of rust and decay mark the walls and doors now
of these houses once new and straight, standing square beside the tracks
and built from the wood of the trees that stand beside the corn plants.
Houses filled with people, fed by the corn, who watched the trains go by.

Train Song.

2008-07-12T02:34:00.000-04:00

The window slides along the landscape
Like a lost man dragging a picture frame
Across the green heart of the north east

I am sitting, facing backwards
And as a result I can only think about
What has happened.

Tomorrow there might be loud discussions,
I might go and buy pots and pans.
I might sleep in all day.

I can’t decide, it’s not my decision.

But wait, there’s more:

Two nights ago I confessed a love
And was ashamed.
Last night I was ashamed.
Today I am ashamed.
I might be ashamed tomorrow,
I can’t decide.
It’s not my decision.

But wait, there’s more:

There is a blonde girl on the train, but she is no help.
There are two boys on the train, but they are no help.
The train and its tracks help me some,
With the space they put between my shame and me.

That is the space sadness fills, but there is only so much sadness.
It will be stretched thin and there will be space for happiness.

But wait, there’s more:

There are spaces between the trees outside the window.
Maybe there are trees between the spaces, and sadness only between the spaces.

I have called her three times.
Maybe she is with another man.
Maybe she is crying.
I don’t want that, but I can’t help thinking about it.
I will call her again before I am done writing.

But wait, there’s more:
I have seen one thousand houses and I will see one thousand more.
None of them are my house, none of them are her house.

But wait, there’s more:

I am a man with a face of great concern.
I am a picture of shame in a steel frame,
Shooting across the green heart of the northeast.

It is a traveling exhibit,
The fastest in history.

But wait, there’s more:

When I go to sleep they will build a museum around me.
It will be all the explanation I can manage.
They will build it next to the other ones,
Whose frames are now empty,
Because I am on permanent loan.

In Response to a Prompt

2008-06-27T03:02:00.000-04:00

like a still life in motion
or: a clock, if you prefer
its case, so perfectly still
surrounds the whirring
each and every little part
some of them are animals,
the rest vegetables (fruit)
or minerals, stone solid
points, and around them
the flesh things spin,
though only fine oscillation.
Somewhere between
An instance and an instant
you’ve trained your eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, heart.

and last one tonight.

2008-04-25T01:35:00.000-04:00

Morton’s Fork

This is the way in which I proceed.
This much madness is too much madness, I think.
Thinking this, I am here about the revolution.
Because I am here about the revolution,
and building a small cabin
I have found a reason to write a comprehensive almanac.
When I am not here about the revolution,
and I am not building a small cabin,
I am writing a comprehensive almanac.
The almanac includes or doesn’t include a section on each subject.
When I write my comprehensive almanac,
either thinking or not thinking about madness
and the amounts of madness there are and aren’t,
but not building a small cabin,
though perhaps thinking or not thinking
about building a small cabin,
I write a section in the almanac on each subject.
In or not in each section I include or don’t include
a section that is either about or not about each subject.
When I am or am not writing or not writing a section about each subject
or not about each thing I am building or not building a small cabin.
When I am building or not building a small cabin,
while I am thinking or not thinking about whether this much madness
is or isn’t too much madness,
and I am writing or not writing a comprehensive almanac,
I am always or not always thinking about the revolution,
or not the revolution.
In this way I proceed.

Saw my first concert there.

2008-04-25T01:34:00.001-04:00

Jones Beach State Park

The grey wooden walkway floats damply over the grasping fingers of salt water:
Its pilings silent, clogged with must and clamped heavily with marine life.

The music is questionable: the question is immaterial 
Over the roar of the sea: there is only the occasional gull.

What aren’t they thinking, sitting alone or in twos and threes?
Each one contains one bird-brain, and two hollow-boned wings.

Without any guidepost I would pace down the pier
Dividing up all the debris: some flotsam and some jetsam.

This uneasy and tired night, settled firmly over the sea-side landscape
A space reaching to be filled, like interlocking parts of a whole portrait.

Some darkness is like a winter, thin and full of wires
And the lights reflect on the surfaces of the water, moving back and forth.

Three flags wildly flapping and clapping loudly in the midnight breeze:  
I am casually rolling home wearing a garland of garbage and leaves 

The pavement along side the pier, cracked and holding back
The earth’s final cataclysmic stretch outwards towards the stars.

A list

2008-04-25T01:33:00.000-04:00

A List of Things That Cannot Be Described in Words

1. The taste of peanut butter.

2. The feeling of laying awake in bed on a weekday morning.

3. The sound of the D string on an acoustic guitar.

4. Wind that blows the front of your flannel shirt open and cools your hair.

5. The interior of pancakes.

6. The first instant of sexual intercourse.

7. Snow on the soles of bare feet.

8. Pine resin between your thumb and index finger.

9. The smell of bacon in a hallway.

10. The smell of old paperback books.

11. Soup in the moustache.

12. Headache.

13. The cold side of the pillow

14. The moment of inevitability between the trip and the fall.

15. Vomiting.

16. Just the lips (and the tip of the nose) in an icy creek.

17. Owing money all around.

18. The smell of grass.

19. Rock and Roll.

20. A pink sunset through grey windows on a yellow day.

Sailors

2007-10-17T23:35:00.000-04:00

All along the concrete sea wall the tide breaks restlessly in measured frenzy
Sensing its domination of earth is approaching and coveting its destination

The rude boardwalk floats damply over the grasping fingers of salt water
Its pilings silent, clogged with must and clamped heavily with a fertile scent

On every bench some child’s hero sleeps off their fearless traipses sonorously
Their cacophony beneath the throaty moans of fog-rich air frosted with salt

Everything lost on the other shore journeys here with purposeless determination
And rejoined with its waterlogged brethren assaults the sea wall on the downbeats.

Burial

2007-10-17T20:17:00.000-04:00

down beside the road-edge I waited, sitting in the yellow of the sun
I divided that yellow from the green beneath me, under my hands.

Smoothing it all out, pushing the wrinkles off this American lawn
when it is ready I will rest my head, and I will pull it up over me

How many things, neither yours nor mine, are still slumbering here
where there are no traces of melody, only damp persistent rhythm

in the somnolent mounds of this country there remains for all days
an entire America, which was long ago discovered and forgotten.

Flotsam/Jetsam

2007-10-16T22:47:00.001-04:00

The music is questionable: the question is immaterial
Over the roar of the sea: there is only the occasional gull.

A raw squawk breaks time: I have forgotten some memory
That frightens me: it is possible to erase anything, then.

Without any guidepost: I walk up and down the strand
Dividing up all the debris: some flotsam and some jetsam.

Time recedes all around me: soon it rushes back to my feet
Though: this certain ebb and flow dissolves the footprints.

a LOVE poem

2007-08-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

I find an urging,
circumspect but sturdy - a heart murmur
growing into a heart-shout.
Feeling this feeling,
this feeling about you
feels to me somehow
like an admirable quality.

I want to find,
(after baffling through thickets
and thickening baffles)
myself at your front door
the front door of you
with probably some warm
orange lamp-glow.

I should like to come inside
and rest awhile
while the snow melts off my pants
in front of your fire

Hats

2007-07-09T21:18:00.000-04:00

Some old poems I found,
I found in one of them a line about
words
and what they mean to us,
we who use them
so easily,
like some hat we wear.
But I wear silly hats
these days.

I have long ago hung up
anything that might attract you,
now I am left with only
those hats that repulse you.

When I wear them out in public,
I breathe deeply.
I don't wonder if you'll be looking at me today.

Order

2007-07-09T21:16:00.001-04:00

I arrange things a certain way,
no empiricism can quantify
the mathematics of these arrangements.
They are beyond mathematics,
alone in the hall with pseudoscience
and raw compulsion.

Tallest to smallest,
over and again.

You cannot possibly hope
to translate this language,
to become fluent.
You know this,
I know this too.

But still you seem willing
to try.
Like books running
tallest to smallest,
that makes me feel right,
and seems beautiful.

Fort

2007-07-09T21:13:00.000-04:00

I have built a small fort of silence,
and all that is good.

There is a moat of expectation,
and if you are willing to get wet
you can come
live in this fort
with me.

There are rich tapestries on the walls,
scenes of my greatest embarrassments.
There are fresh flowers
in every room.

The table is set
with such a fine repast,
you wouldn't believe.

Suburbia Grand

2007-05-06T14:42:00.001-04:00

Suburbia Grand

“Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised?”

- William Cullen Bryant, from “A Forest Hymn”

"It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way."

- Christopher Morley, from “The Haunted Bookshop”

I

So, here we are in America,
full of stuff.
This poem will be suburban, pedestrian,
you name it.
This poem will have a lot to do
with television.
We are long past realizing
the author will never die.
We won’t let him, but
we’d like to.
So – we keep him on life-support.
Some of us, like lampreys
grasp the conduits of nature
but perhaps we are just
redistributing our own nature.
Isn’t that deep? Let’s discuss it -
over dinner.
Dinners over and we forget to discuss it.
We’re too full to talk.
Let’s just rest a while,
let’s watch some T.V.

I’m trying to write this poem for the rest of us.
You sure as hell won’t.
Who writes poetry anymore?
We read poetry now.
Maybe, if you’re lucky,
or trying
to get lucky.
Who writes in this sad-bastard
with sarcastic apathy
tone of voice
anymore?

II

what do you do
when you were raised so far from livestock
that you cannot remember blood or milk?
do you cower at the stench of birth,
or can you learn to be born again
in the other America?
I am holding out hope that I was wrong,
that the vindication of my generation fast approaches,
and we will be set free of all machinery.
I am trying to write the great American poem,
but not from what I’ve sensed –
from the other America.

I’ve lost sleep, waiting
for the rebirth of wonder not in new, wonderful things
but a passionate scenic view
coming up on our right.
when I look over the cliff I see the water tower,
and the closed down mill.
I see a hundred stories I can never write.

so, I wait, and wonder –
will it all shift so heavy?
am I living in the other America?

III

this uneasy and tired night,
settled firmly into the ground
like interlocking parts
of a whole portrait.

the story of our lives
displayed monochromatically.
the lights of every living room
abolish the stars.

the darkness is like winter,
thin and built of wires, like
saying hello to your uncle
at a funeral

alone in every bedroom
we wait impatient for
our due diligence to
pay off in the long run

every back to a television set
we are bound together in
our communal ignorance of
the soft blue-green light emitted.

this year we have begun to read
all the books we want to have read
not for us, but for how they look
creased and annotated on our shelves

we have impeccable taste in music
it’s cultivation, a scar
here between the rolling hills
all we have is depth.

Writing our poems after midnight,
smoking cigarettes like in our dreams.
we are the poets of suburbia –
we’ve learned to ignore the TV.

IV

Directions Distance
Total Est. Time: 35 minutes Total Est. Distance: 22.28 miles
1: Start out going SOUTHEAST on KENMARE ST toward BOWERY. <0.1 miles
2: KENMARE ST becomes DELANCEY ST. 0.4 miles
3: Turn SLIGHT LEFT onto WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE. 1.9 miles
4: Take I-278 E / BROOKLYN QUEENS EXPY. 1.9 miles
5: Take the I-495 / L I EXPWY exit- EXIT 35- toward MIDTOWN TUN. 0.1 miles
6: Merge onto I-495 E via EXIT 35E toward EASTERN LONG IS. 15.5 miles
7: Take EXIT 37 toward WILLIS AVE / ROSLYN / MINEOLA. 0.1 miles
8: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto POWERHOUSE RD. 0.5 miles
9: Turn LEFT onto ROSLYN RD. 0.6 miles
10: Turn RIGHT onto HARBOR HILL RD. 0.5 miles
11: Turn LEFT onto CHESTNUT DR. 0.2 miles
12: End at Chestnut Dr
Roslyn, NY 11576-2338, US
Total Est. Time: 35 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 22.28 miles

V

The car glides through
scenery that is only an anagram of
scenery from five, ten, two hundred miles behind.

I see my reflection in the constant brown rocks on the roadside
in their blue-grey icicles
I see:
the ever-present yearn downwards,
an eternity of failure.

Each road sign that waxes and wanes is a reminder
a mirror image of all other testaments to highway safety
another reminder of the vast rolling sameness of New England.

Like a bullet, our journey has no plot arc,
we are only the straight line, dashed, from point A to point B.

I roll down the window/, -

The
world
is
colors
now,

and on the wind comes molecules of dust and scents rural and right,
the smokes from chimney tops are a hundred rude exclamation marks to my
discovery of America.
I am the new Christopher Columbus, sailed the ocean blue-
me big man now in history books.

Instantaneously I am the world’s foremost expert on apple pie.
narrating this tour with fireworks of gesticulation,
peals of sound over the roar of the wind in through the
window.

I have inborn knowledge now awakened of the secret lives of trees
from inception to destruction
I want to pull over and commute my sentence in favor of
a thick-booted and face burning run through the forest so much nearer now.

VI

Roslyn, NY

Some things you should know:
1. Population: 2,750
2. Median Resident Age: 43.9 yrs
3. Estimated Mean Household Income in 2005: $80,700
4. Races in Roslyn:
* White Non-Hispanic (83.3%)
* Hispanic (6.3%)
* Chinese (2.6%)
* Two or more races (2.6%)
* Black (2.3%)
* Other race (2.0%)
* Asian Indian (1.6%)
* Korean (1.3%)

VII

This now-ended delirium
a vast gash across America
the defeat of boundaries.
Suffocated in black Indiana heat
begin again to dream your night away
and see if you can breathe at all
without a lovable mystery to hold.

Red car,
the lightning bolt of perfect wisdom that cuts through the void
marks the history of this movement incrementally
with no end in sigh beyond the horizon
which even in sweaty earnest we cannot conquer.

at night, as if a light through the webbing of your fingers,
we see the red and white veins of American are glowing with the comings and
goings hither and yon beneath the watchful eye of the moon.

worried about America,
we are worried about ourselves.

VIII

I have seen a vision mighty, made me shake
and I kid you not friend, you would shiver to
stand in its presence is to know who you are
and are not, and what you are built of inside.

There is no place to hide when it comes up
screaming up your spine and explodes upon
the insides of your eye-lids, no blanket built
yet strong enough to hide beneath successfully

standing foot frozen and frightened I (you)
found no comfort in mankind’s history in fact
it was detrimental to the whole experience but
also it was the whole experience, somehow.

IX

Dearest mother, American night,
I am deathly afraid:
of losing myself in the folds of your bosom.
Driving so far form the lights of men
that there is no reference left for
direction and in all the blackness
I am forever in some residential community.

It's Science.

2007-05-05T03:22:00.001-04:00

Confound my attempt to flat-out disregard science and parallel
your every move with one more cleverly staged and my own.

Deny my spiritual advice and risk disintegration of emotion
but reflect on the positive results of total mechanical integration.

Circumspect and sophistic but clearly some kind of valiant push
towards the geography of your slumber, unassailable and down.

An Old Favorite

2007-05-03T01:25:00.003-04:00

Monument

Uncle Tom’s cabin is the Rosenberg’s vacation home,
Packed with people until the walls, the whole thing, swells like a waterbed.
Flubbing on the otherwise paperish landscape,
The landscape that rustles slightly in the wind and has no depth to the intrepid eraser.
Gandhi’s rags were burned with the trash,
Lincoln’s last shaving razor was launched by his houseboy into the wastebasket,
A post-mortem precursor to the American Basketball Association.

Another one from the Archives

2007-05-03T01:23:00.001-04:00

He walks lines narrow waiting ledge
Fear the great white a-coming in wind.

The night time is like plum pudding and
When he tries to tell her that he wants to see other people
His mouth gets clogged and he only
Tells her he wants to see.

Above them the fireworks are a Bruce Springsteen song
Twice repeated from the horizon
The ex navy-men sit in folding chairs with Schlitz
And they quote the tide as it comes and,
Like their libido, recedes.

Here on the shore he brought her
Here he walked out on the pier
Here he was ringing a dinner bell out across empty fields

A newer poem about an older friend

2007-05-03T01:19:00.001-04:00

all the sweaters and tea cups in new england couldn’t remind me enough of you
to break my heart all over again just for the fun of it
and try and close my eyes and tighten my face
to forget that you ever breathed
right next to my face
when the frost
was on the
window.

driving
east on 495
with the top down
and the radio way, way up
winding our way to your house
far from the town we grew up in
and learned what it meant to love and
forgot everything we ever knew about hearts.
all the sweaters and tea cups in new england couldn’t remind me enough of you.

God.

2007-05-03T00:55:00.000-04:00

I have seen a vision mighty, made me shake
and I kid you not friend, you would shiver to
stand in its presence is to know who you are
and are not, and what you are built of inside.

There is no place to hide when it comes up
screaming up your spine and explodes upon
the insides of your eye-lids, no blanket built
yet strong enough to hide beneath successfully

standing foot frozen and frightened I (you)
found no comfort in mankind’s history in fact
it was detrimental to the whole experience but
also it was the whole experience, somehow.

Falling

2007-05-02T11:57:00.000-04:00

From out of the sky, falling there came a piece of something
that was not of this our world, neither mine nor yours besides.

We cautiously approached the smoking crater like two gazelles
and twitching with alarm and sweating we inched our necks out.

What we saw is not to be said but when we left we left slowly
ambling towards the edge of the clearing, no longer afraid.

No Title Yet

2007-05-02T01:28:00.000-04:00

I don’t suppose I can write
a love poem well enough
yet to turn the tide from
receding to approaching.
Still I try to stop and can’t.

Wanting to write a poem
is not the same as writing
a poem, which is different
still from reaching you.
There are lines between.

I put on Dylan’s record,
“New Morning” now and
then and when he sings I
wish I had a phonograph
built into my throat.

Opening my mouth you
would hear and know how
I felt, and you might feel
the same way, when the
drums came in you’d know.

Poems of Days

2007-05-01T15:33:00.000-04:00

Saturday

On Saturday morning, feeling slack
a loose arrangement of limbs
suspended in this borrowed bed.
In defiance of the sun’s ascent
seek out the shady corner of the porch
to sit awhile and read a book.
Eat a bite and make small talk
before you return to your bungalow
to fetch your typewriter out of your case
and try to retrace steps between
a temporary desk and a temporary pillow.
I wonder will today be
the day I write a fine poem
and remember the words of my teacher
about forgetting.
In an all pink room with zebra rug,
morning comes,
a welcome rotation
from the dark.

so, yeah - this is a bit odd I suppose

2007-04-30T18:55:00.001-04:00

His Angels

"And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb;
his writings are the linen clothes folded up."

-William Blake

From within the earth, out of the dust and stone
a man was issued forth, and he was finely hewn
he sought to know the word, and with the word
the royal we he entertained, he showed the lord

And though for failing to find he turned away
so this a falling soft vessel shaped of clay
did claim to know the courses one ought live
blood of Christ, body of Christ, a gift to give

For this his crimes and his dissenting mind
he was charged a danger, blind leading blind
And yet from this dangerous home departed
a chosen child born to die, broken-hearted

Learned and traveled, so farther and wider
did he in his way encompass all like a gyre
and being somewhat proud and younger still
he poured out his mind before it might fill

pages of books and scraps of worn paper
occupied by thoughts which never taper
until in full pride and science brought
he dreamed men where they are naught

though time enough and world he had
it was not for these pursuits he was bred
perhaps it was he a labyrinth desired
that the Nordic Deadelus required

yet there grew within the man
a slow cry slowly growing to fullness
from which no academic chair might cease
and leave him think as he might please

he sensed a division, yet not wide enough
to slide his hand gently between elements
so close though they must be he thought
but beyond each other’s grasp, never caught

seeking to find he went abroad again
and looked under every rock and man
to find the place where soul and flesh
walk silently onward hand in hand

but something still was in retreat
his science failing and dying now
he found himself alone with Him
whom he sought to please most

but which shall take the throne and
which shall know Him best of all
a gilded mirror, framed in flesh
or a sallow painting, burning with love?

over dinner, it was and ought to have been
as he took into him all the flesh and meat
provided by Him, and of Him taken forth
did the man find an answer waiting in the dark

so it came and was no more a questioning
there was in all his rooms no longer a silence
but from this maw into which he had sobbing gazed
now issued forth companions to walk beside him.

for years that followed the man did walk with they
who were first-loved, who knew him best
and in those dark places and high places
he saw all he sought reflected in their faces

what followed is a library, built upon madness
supported by volumes sung in sing-song at night
and though in death he was still alone, faithful –
he cried to the darkness as it came up to meet him

Empty Your Bowl

2007-04-24T01:00:00.000-04:00

three flags wildly flapping and clapping loudly in the midnight breeze
I am casually rolling home wearing a garland of garbage and leaves
there is a dull wet stink of life and
it is pierced by the breeze that gesticulates the flags fiercely
and scattered it
like a snow globe
is a terrible ordeal which blinds you like a swarm of locusts
until it finally settles down.

there is righteousness tonight in each place I put my shoe
I am the saint of this boulevard

stooping low I reach out my hairy hand and pinch between my thumb and my forefinger
a lowly worm
fleeing the flooding of his home
but the flooding is abated
and he is a blind man in the desert with: a very limited supply of water
I pick him up and bring him home,
like a child running away from home and this time it’s real
but it’s also a mistake
and I’m saving the day.

the original "what poetry is, to me"

2007-02-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

Poetry, for me, seems to be several things all at once; and intersection of various points in time, space, and emotional expanse that coexist in the arrangement of units (letters, numbers, signs, words, etc) on the face of a page. There is a tension in poetry that is the result of multiple presences, diametric opposites even, maintaining a tenuous balance – what I mean to say is, poetry needs to have both levity and gravity in each individual moment, so that each component can float up into your mind, then fall like a piano down into your heart and soul. Poetry pulls both ways, and while it pulls it also pushes, lifts and crushes, builds and destroys, illuminates and confuses, ad infinitum, et cetera, et cetera.
Like all art, it is something like a cross between demonic possession and cabinetry. It is eagles falling from heaven, but more importantly it’s also the memories of your childhood. It’s memories you haven’t made yet. Poetry is the recipe for nostalgia, even for places you have not been. Lightning bolt-nighttime razor blade multifaceted diamond wheel of infinity. The perfect wisdom that cuts through the void. Poetry is the difficulties of metacognition. It is the wall we build. It is also the sledgehammer.
This is a poem for you.

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

Gary Snyder

when you awake you will remember everything.

2007-02-11T13:11:00.000-05:00

What is a Sunday poem?
a Sunday poem is an annotated map,
a history of a weekend
vague remembrance
compounded by some white light moments -
conversational pleasure that left you reeling.
silence that left you reeling.

You wrote all these lines the night before
racing tomorrow to your bed,
and yet, nothing falls out right in the morning.

SO - I've changed to a new template, this one is more austere I think. If you're wondering where the archives are - Scroll to the bottom.

New Project, Successive Haiku

2007-02-01T00:38:00.001-05:00

Working at night
we are all alone –
all of us together

a comission

2007-01-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

The blueness of water
at night and in between
the damp stoicism of the dock pilings
plays a memory-game with sea-captains
born too late.

the other blueness of water
is not on our palettes
we can only make art
to facilitate its memory.

the blueness of water
against the stark white wall
in the silent light and foot-shuffling:
near enough
to make the captain shake.

the mastery of the ten thousand words

2006-09-05T08:01:00.000-04:00

Sunday’s symphony.

Across from me we have a cacophony of light bulb
a proliferation of exclamation, of “I love you’s”
but there is no love lost, no opportunity cost.

Frozen peas can’t replace mommy’s love, no doubt I have
but your cleavage is making a commendable effort.
You reek like beer and three day old underwear and I don’t mind.

I’m mostly thinking about the waking up anyhow.
“How now, brown cow,” you say to me, and I’m disinclined to
disagree. I’m fully armed and you’re one foot in the grave.

Let’s mince words, lets burn the farmhouse of conventional love to the ground
we don’t have to stop for anyone, we don’t need no emergency break.
You and I we can run it forever if we want but sometimes you got to sleep.

Don’t pull off the highway here there are no johns in Lynchburg
only these bizarrely inviting arboreal apparitions begging for justice
of a kind un-balanced before the blindfolded momma of America.

The knowledge of a thousand and ten strong-minded men held back by only
a simple push and twist plastic saves lives bottle to prevent the dissemination
of possible destructive factual explosives and other secrets of the literate.

Spastic clay-faced clowns parade their balloon dog men across the crosshairs
while patriotism sits in the witness stand swearing left and right wearing the flag
like a diaper and holding a sack of bald eagles in one hand and saluting with the other.

Neo-Geo liberalism invokes clauses of old Eastern European bloc traditional contracts
that obligates the proletariat to activate their escape pods and blow the porcelain seals off
into the far reaches of turned-off televisionscape and simultaneously hide in the closet.

Deep cover deep throat deep chasms in Kentucky serve as illustrations of the nature of the landscape of the politico, inc. methodology, warning signs facing backwards so we can revel in our own mistakes as we repeat them like high fives on a merry-go-round.

Fat lard filled egg-o-tron 5000 prepackaged breakfast love shot down like a bolt from above while we read the death toll ticker that relates to no disaster in particular as it
floats off towards the network insignia into the land of forgotten trivia and bad dreams.

sometimes we find them under rocks in the forest

2006-09-04T22:46:00.000-04:00

Andrew S)iskind

Poetry, for me, seems to be several things all at once; an

intersection of various points in time, space, and emotional expanse

that coexist in the arrangement of units (as here (letters, numbers, handsigns,

words, etc) on the face of a page. There is a tension in poetry that is

the result of multiple presences, diametric opposites even,

maintaining a tenuous balance – what I mean to say is, poetry needs

to have both levity and gravity in each individual moment, so that

each component can float up into your mind, then fall (or rather

plummet like a cartoon piano) down into your heart and soul.

Poetry pulls both ways, and(rew d(raws living
sketches)) while it pulls it also

pushes, lifts and crushes, builds and destroys, illuminates and confuses,

ad infinitum, et cetera, et cetera, Amen et goodnight.

Like all art, it is something like a cross between demonic possession

and cabinetry. It is eagles falling from heaven, but more importantly

it’s also the memories of your childhood. It’s memories you

haven’t made yet. Poetry is the (crockery in the) recipe for

nostalgia, even for places you have not been. Lightning bolt-nighttime

razor blade multifaceted diamond wheel of infinity. The perfect un-

wisdom that cuts through the void. Poetry is the difficulties of

metacognition. It is the wall we build. It is also the sledgehammer.

This is a poem for you.

Winter

2006-07-29T02:12:00.000-04:00

The snow is piled up against the woodshed,
the woodshed is piled up against the house,
and we are all sitting around the table
the table is thick with maple-flavored syrup.

There is a cast-iron stove sulking behind you
on top of the stove is the last of the wheat bread
and it’s becoming the last of the wheat toast.
in the fridge is the butter-packets from the restaurant.

Today we are supposed to finish this coffee
and zip up our parkas and stomp around the house
picking up empty beer cans and bagging them all
to bring down to the store for the bottle deposit.

Man at the store doesn’t give us any money,
just credit for some more wheat bread, some
honey, some bologna, some more coffee,
and another case of canned domestic beer.

We give Man all our dollars and cents
from a weeks worth of painting and playing
at being working stiffs behind the counters
and at the workbenches of our town.

But today is Sunday and we have no work
To do and no toils to carry on our backs
So when we get home we will have a fire
And we will sit around it and laugh music.

Hex

2006-07-29T01:03:00.000-04:00

Repeat four times your incantation
it will make him vulnerable
his teeth will flash
that is your cue
this is your only chance
before it's camouflaged again.

Float

2006-07-29T01:02:00.000-04:00

You were refusing.
I sensed the deceptive cadence,
a hanging vapor
some small surrender.

It was this I stashed in a bladder,
the balloon of your doubt.
With some string
it pulls me upwards
through the stratosphere.

I survey some landmass,
a continent with no depth or shadow.

Conservation

2006-07-27T23:51:00.000-04:00

when, in winter, we paused
beneath the yawn of the cathedral’s door
for one whole, slow minute
to watch winter happen to our town
I could feel your skin,
damp and cold, through your wool
and my flannel –
I tugged you in closer,
so we only made one breath-cloud.

a new ethic

2006-07-08T01:57:00.000-04:00

this uneasy and tired night,
settled firmly into the ground
like interlocking parts
of a whole portrait.

the story of our lives
displayed monochromatically.
the lights of every living room
abolish the stars.

the darkness is like winter,
thin and built of wires, like
saying hello to your uncle
at a funeral

alone in every bedroom
we wait impatient for
our due diligence to
pay off in the long run

every back to a television set
we are bound together in
our communal ignorance of
the soft blue-green light emitted.

this year we have begun to read
all the books we want to have read
not for us, but for how they look
creased and annotated on our shelves

we have impeccable taste in music
it’s cultivation, a scar
here between the rolling hills
all we have is depth.

Writing our poems after midnight,
smoking cigarettes like in our dreams.
we are the poets of suburbia –
we’ve learned to ignore the TV.

And another

what do you do
when you were raised so far from livestock
that you cannot remember blood or milk?
do you cower at the stench of birth,
or can you learn to be born again
in the other America?
I am holding out hope that I was wrong,
that the vindication of my generation fast approaches,
and we will be set free of all machinery.
I am trying to write the great American poem,
but not from what I’ve sensed –
from the other America.

I’ve lost sleep, waiting
for the rebirth of wonder not in new, wonderful things
but a passionate scenic view
coming up on our right.
when I look over the cliff I see the water tower,
and the closed down mill.
I see a hundred stories I can never write.

so, I wait, and wonder –
will it all shift so heavy?
am I living in the other America?

After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang out.

2006-07-05T00:48:00.000-04:00

as soon as she told me, I knew
the ledge wouldn’t hold,
underneath my hand it would crumble
and away
into the void I could follow it
reach out and beckon
and clinging to the debris
like a comfort item
make my peace with the ravine.

Another from July 3rd

2006-07-03T23:40:00.000-04:00

all the sweaters and tea cups in new england couldn’t remind me enough of you
to break my heart all over again just for the fun of it
and try and close my eyes and tighten my face
to forget that you ever breathed
right next to my face
when the rain
was on the
window.

driving
east on 495
with the top down
and the radio way, way up
winding our way to your house
far from the town we grew up in
and learned what it meant to love and
forgot everything we ever knew about hearts.
all the sweaters and tea cups in new england couldn’t remind me enough of you.

After the Fireworks

2006-07-03T23:32:00.000-04:00

I am the ghost of summers past
the kinetic reminder of sweat
and worship
the fearless explorer on Sunday afternoons
fueled by sunlight and teas.

the fearless explorer with
intrepid bookmarks
memories of a thousand chapters
the history of our language

secret jazz trumpeter
cannot tell a lie.

What the mountain told me

2006-06-06T22:15:00.000-04:00

There are no words is a lie
There are more words than we can hold
Than we can use

With a broad net there is no meaning
With a fine net we express

First work of Summer '06

2006-06-05T22:39:00.000-04:00

Turn the wheel
into infinity
from the grayness we evoke
a sunbeam explosion
the green of trees
Ten thousand yellow blossoms

There is no stillness
in the water
it breathes the life-breath
of all seas and lakes.

Our heart-song is softly growing
with the silence of summer
to eclipse each other
with an eternity of loving kindness

we become less-

In this season,
grow.

Revitalized

2006-06-04T11:36:00.000-04:00

What You Should Know To Be A Poet
by Gary Snyder

all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of planets
and the moon.
your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.
at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.
the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum'd and golden --

& then love the human: wives husbands and friends
children's games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and accepted
and lived with and finally loved. exhaustion,
hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles. and the edge of death.

Rationalization

2006-03-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

The reason why I haven't posted any new writing in months is that I've been furiously studying Post-Structuralism and reading Wallace Stevens. So get off my back.

Reckon (an internet original)

2006-02-27T12:12:00.000-05:00

I said, "What do you make of this?"
it was a round
it made a sound
it smelled a fruit
at night it hummed
it's middle was vast
it had no gripes
some days it waterskiied.

Vermont Work, pt. I (Opus)

2006-01-07T13:07:00.001-05:00

… …

The car glides through
scenery that is only an anagram of
scenery from five, ten, two-hundred miles behind.

I see my reflection in the constant brown rocks on the roadside
in their blue-grey icicles
I see my Grecian urn
the ever-present yearn downwards,
an eternity of failure.

Each road sign that waxes and wanes is a reminder
a mirror image of all other testaments to highway safety
another reminder of the vast rolling sameness of New England.

Like a bullet, our journey has no plot arc,
we are only the straight line, dashed, from point A to point B.

I roll down the window/, -

Paradigm Shift!

The word is colors now,
and on the wind comes molecules of dust and scents rural and right,
the smoke from chimney tops are a hundred rude exclamation marks to my
discovery of America.
I am the new Christopher Columbus, sailed the ocean blue-
me big man now in history books.

Instantaneously I am the world’s foremost expert on apple pie.
narrating this tour with fireworks or gesturing,
peals of laughter over the roar of the wind in through the
window.

I have inborn knowledge now awakened of the secret lives of trees
from inception to destruction
I want to pull over and commute my sentence in favor of
a thick-booted and face burning run through the forest so much nearer now.

Vermont Work, pt. II

2006-01-07T13:07:00.000-05:00

The light by which I work, transformed
now by windowpanes into a new character
on the page.
The remnant of all other unfinished works.

each thought a sonogram for a reader.

Here in uncontested delirium the poem is written.
Each letter pressed upon the page, a hideous mark.
Crude symbols of arcane witch-workings and prisons
built each day, coincidently. Byproducts of a law
left too frequently unrevised, paper bags for liquid
contents. Invisible caltrops expelled with plumes of
spittle from the mouth, the pen. To each his own
unbattened hatches and un-coiled lines, languishing in
silent menace across the desk.

One More.

2006-01-05T00:14:00.000-05:00

I see you now
As bug-in-amber
Ancient

What remains is to be seen,
fickle
I still remember

The word game
Hop-scotch
A remnant.

a Language

2006-01-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

A language

with accents in the eyes
the stiff boot insinuations
the well-creased reproach

I trace the history of each deep furrow
Remembrance like ice water
Eyes blinking wildly to regain focus

Interspersed the pocks
of hideous entanglements
now come frighteningly undone

subtle motions of the lower jaw
conveyance of an institution
the other descriptive mark on your felon.

Promised

2005-12-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

Pale smooth linoleum
gives a blurred reflection of the cold flourescent lights
and the fan that spins too slow to matter.

The mountain of butts in the ashtray
and the chipped brown mug of cold coffee
and the post-card you bought next door.

Behind the counter,
and old radio crackles between this world and the next,
playing both kinds of music.

The stale bread of your tuna melt
and your ratty overcoat make you feel like James Dean,
but he wouldn't be so lonely.

And you leave your money
and you take your postcard, and a clean ashtray for your pocket
to buy your next meal.

And you fill out your postcard on top of the mailbox outside
"Dear family, everything is swell, lots of love."
because you don't want them catching the fever of promise.

Epiphany

2005-12-21T09:59:00.000-05:00

There is a silver light on my paper,
right in the midst of this poem -
and there is a window,
cracked behind my shoulder.
And the warm spring is
dripping in.

I tried three times
to write this poem,
but none of the others
caught the sunlight.
None of them soaked up
the glow of solar love,
caught the catholic smile
beaming at us all.

So I enshrined the sunlight's kiss
on my paper
with these words
to trace its shape
and keep it
for you
even after the sun is set.

Sunday Night Magic.

2005-10-30T22:58:00.000-05:00

Interlude # 4

If you think
STOP
and consider how
disposable these
ruminations are.

Tomorrow you will
think contradictions
and Eliot will be
howling in your
Head-cave.

Everytime you
read this I
steal a little bit
more of your
life & you
feel inevitablity
worse than
ever.

Momentum!

2005-10-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

Interlude # 3

When I read Robert Bly
and wait for my father to call
I feel like I must choose
to half-exsist all the time
or to fully exsist,
half of the time.

If left alone long enough
I will boil over
and pour my wetness
all around the countertop,
pooling patiently like people at the DMV,
waiting to be absorbed.

I've always religiously hoped
that Hiesenberg was dead-on
and one day when I
Karate chop my Kitchen Table,
the blade-edge of my hand
will pass directly through.

Just found my notebook under my pizza.

2005-10-24T16:54:00.000-04:00

Interlude # 2

Between the columns
of daylight
and dark a
cat is sneaking.

I hate cats and
so I hunt this
spy cautiously
in case he is armed

I have the legs
just came: FedEx.
They are custommade
cat-hunting legs.

Clipper Ships and Woodchips

2005-10-21T07:47:00.000-04:00

Clipperships and Woodchips

Away the frantic Montana night,
our heaving tectonic sandpaper nation,
Happenstance ushers us into a bus-depot,
you in deep gasho to American Standard,
implausable urges magnetize my eyes towards your
plasticine lips agape to the bubbling.
Argue our lives for well-creased joints,
deep wagon tracks that gravity binds we to(o).
Oaxaca is calling us from this mundane witching hour,
are we to ever arrive there?
Oh my valise your sketches are competing with
drawn swords and dashed line emotions

Flea-Brained and Beautiful

2005-10-21T07:46:00.001-04:00

Flea-Brained and Beautiful

Sing a song of sixpence,
Secretly and soft,
Crouch in all the corners,
Sneak about the loft.

Munch a bunch of carrot-sticks,
Chomp and chew and grind,
Dig your fingers in your ears,
Sniff at what you find.

Soliloquize your monologues,
Roll them off your tongue,
Throw out all your underwear,
And sing what’s not been sung.

Dominoes and Staircases

2005-10-21T07:46:00.000-04:00

Dominoes and Staircases

Always falling all the way down re-introducing ourselves we bow
Entangling our possibilities for possible entanglements.
Broke-worded and baffled we claw at our throats,
Dredging out found words worth noting to bedazzle and rhinestone encrust.

Slinking winking while we wait and bait each other’s eyes with flesh bits,
Finger curved come hither implied with motions slow and viscous air.
Sweat that beads and drips and pleads for contact from another’s hand,
Sins that percolate like Sanka as we plot our positions on the map of our bed sheets.

We.

2005-10-21T07:45:00.000-04:00

We

I think about you and I and where we stand.
Holding beneath the unplumbable depths of the night sky.
On Mykonos they say you can see Orion especially well.
Standing, we are by the water all night long.
How blue can this water be before it stops being fishable?
The white crispness of the statues on the hill is staring down.
We could wander through the Paraportiani wearing only red.
The windmills turning in the distance face the autumn.
Change now, and we find ourselves buried alive but sheathed in night.
Petros the pelican watches our porch as the curtain breeze-ruffled breathes.

Devonshire, 1997

2005-10-21T07:43:00.000-04:00

Devonshire, 1997

Something is burning and it smells good,
like breakfast in south Kensington, or
touring the morning Fowey,
windy windy and your face is freezing.

Our van has the broke-down blues,
we are so severely cramped we are
rotating but undulating but ultimately,
ewe are trapped.

We have caused a traffic jam that you
cannot comprehend and skittles is out
of the question, as is leaving this beach
this black pool sands with our dignity.

I am only thirteen but I smell the severity,
mixed in with whatever the locals are
boiling and it’s probably those cows that
we saw on the road on our way out of town.

Our house is burning downs slowly from
all the excitement and our comforter has
exploded the washing machine beneath the
sink and I am swimming to the front door.

In the courtyard the sunlight is mortar for the
gravel and across the street the phone booth,
the only phone in town, is not ringing and
no one is really surprised, least of all me.

I’m going out back behind the neighbors
construction site of a homestead to wade
ankle deep and awkward in their creek and
collect newts and toads with both hands.

Two weeks ago I was in the Adirondack
mountains canoeing and who knows what
else but now I am in the south of England
loafing in a creek and it’s basically the same.

Can't Sleep.

2005-10-21T07:41:00.000-04:00

61*

The ghost of once is loitering
stalking the remnants of happiness
across the lines of your faceplace.

I am sleeping
with your mother
in the nighttime of your would’ve could’ve world.

Have you considered
a career in
show business
modeling surprised facial expressions?

So high,
is the trash piled on your lawn
that your children think it’s
Playskool.

I am pursuing a career
in chartering yachts on the seas of
your floppy droppings and misguiding rant squirtings.

We cannot chew the fat
or eat the bacon
because all the bacon was consumed by your obese girlfriend

Once I planted a patch of daffodils,
but you urinated in my miracle-grow
and now they are dandelions

I am commandeering your boat now
You have been relieved of command
And also, your scribblings, which I have taken and conflagrated.

Science

2005-10-20T11:09:00.000-04:00

Tree migration as a result of climate shift - Tree Migration.
Unable to fund anti-poaching efforts.
Department of Nephrology - Research Assistant
behavioral Studies.
Even with embedded roots, Migration is possible for trees. The migration time of trees varies based on the severity of changing conditions.
Law is Implemented
The Net-Cage
Maps the Genomes
Individual tree movement, as a result of weather. Leaning Flowers. Micro-climates.
African Elephant
The Salmon, atlantic and chinook
report Escapes.
Has the presence of escaped atlantic farm salmon impacted the fitness of pacific salmon.
Farm Salmon
Sockeye, Coho, Chinook - Possible Interaction with Atlantic
The Ivory Trade
Two Races of Salmon.
Revenue from tourism.
Superimposition
Hybridization
Behavioral Interaction
PROTECT THE ANIMALS
Aggressive Fish
Southern Countries, Inc.
New questions

more.

2005-10-20T11:07:00.000-04:00

I sea waves of light,
it looks like detergent flowing over linoleum when your cheek is pressed to the floor.
I
see c/a/s/c/a/d/i/n/g f\o\u\n\t\a\i\n\s\ of color,

it looks like the palace of Versailles, burning behind the curtain of my eyelids

I see garbage bags full of leaves,
slumping in their autumnal thrones, surveying lost kingdoms one last time.

I
see the arborvitaes, rapt like soldiers soldiers soldiers,
guarding the verdant sprawls and rolls of the Joneses back yard.

I see the pavement, cracked and holding
Back the earth’s final cataclysmic stretch outwards towards the stars.

"Hello Again, Again," said Beckett.

2005-10-20T11:05:00.000-04:00

Interlude # 1

We have momentum,
also distance is
continuous for us
and
expansion is inconquerable.
I might try
to locate your buttons,
but your genitals
are digital
now.

It is so dark
in here,
incomprehensible.
better to avoid at
all costs.

Note to self:
Stop your habit
of disposing of
the manuals,
assuming it will
be auto-matic
or better
magic.

Can the Klaxon
penetrate our
fortress of solitude,
and arouse our
heads like
tiny electric gazelles?

To begin you must end... to begin.

2005-10-20T11:04:00.000-04:00

For the Ages

In the washed-window street lamp-light,
Iambs of your heart’s beats
Like dallying sheep across the ceiling
Grazing into nothingness
While the negligent Shepard
Our father who art in heaven,
Guides our eyes behind our eyelids.

Wild, we wing away,
Bedding not restricting our flight,
Embarking to unknown places,
Far past the town park
As flies the crow
So let we and be not afraid
Though danger us surrounds
Eke the radio towers in the darkness.

But soon we will returning
Find ourselves entrenched again
And if you were awaking then
The fancy had been mine alone.
Though hand in mine you soared
Twixt clouds and arboreal spires
Also you slept onwards
Whilst sheep with iambs conspired.