I get the point sometimes in the old push and pull when the spaces are too small and squeaking
bloody lungs beat flatly against living glass all full of holes, the rolling and ripping out
blade to blade, grassy matte-black in preparation so tunnel-visioned that you don't see the
dandelions pray as you walk over them. Next year your yard will be filled with the triumph of
those seeds you're scattering now and you will press them down, lay each airy head down to the
womb it can't get out of. One day we will fall drunk, whining of heat in a field of ripened
angels ready to float, seeking the rise of the other end that started with our thud and fell
like soft, warm snow hesitating on our bodies. They will sleep and never take root in concrete
when we have gone.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Bank on Tourism
Numbered from the first off-white brand that came
Smoking for a good few seconds that must have been
Hell! For an eternity of bubbling, popping, sizzle...
And off again soaked in steam from the head up.
Breathes good, clean lightly here, high on fingertips
Once princely, these cragged frosty peaks supplicated
Like statues but can choke a Chinese monkey in a prank's length
Wearing ink so heavy it forged mountains out of skin.
It was spiderwebs of fog spinning into the trees that day.
They rode on down in frigid air farted out by a bronze Buddha
Whose shit was speckled with jade and gold and bled
All the peoples of the world onto the pyramid beneath.
Smoking for a good few seconds that must have been
Hell! For an eternity of bubbling, popping, sizzle...
And off again soaked in steam from the head up.
Breathes good, clean lightly here, high on fingertips
Once princely, these cragged frosty peaks supplicated
Like statues but can choke a Chinese monkey in a prank's length
Wearing ink so heavy it forged mountains out of skin.
It was spiderwebs of fog spinning into the trees that day.
They rode on down in frigid air farted out by a bronze Buddha
Whose shit was speckled with jade and gold and bled
All the peoples of the world onto the pyramid beneath.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
A Narrative Poem
Why does it begin?
Here, I say, because it’s me,
I’m the one doing this.
Let’s start now.
It’s heavy and cold,
Needy, clinging desperately
All over, I shake –
We haven’t even started.
Last look at the frozen paint
Of God’s creation melting away,
Last look into the rain at
The smell of earthbound tears.
Blackness and lights.
The world is filled to bursting.
Shadowsturntored.
Blood dripping from torn skin.
I look sightless on:
Flames of hell burning bright
as the graceful nature of the divine.
This will end when I close my eyes again.
Amen.
Here, I say, because it’s me,
I’m the one doing this.
Let’s start now.
It’s heavy and cold,
Needy, clinging desperately
All over, I shake –
We haven’t even started.
Last look at the frozen paint
Of God’s creation melting away,
Last look into the rain at
The smell of earthbound tears.
Blackness and lights.
The world is filled to bursting.
Shadowsturntored.
Blood dripping from torn skin.
I look sightless on:
Flames of hell burning bright
as the graceful nature of the divine.
This will end when I close my eyes again.
Amen.
We Didn't Have a Real Winter
Smells of fuck the spring of averages,
All summer days and winter nights and
Meanness slimming in laundry buckets.
Sharp and hollow salted seas, underspiced
The trade and public transit to market
Hawked molasses, tobacco and weed spit,
The signs point upriver and it’s buy, buy, bye
Spun riches in so much blasted air,
Come easy, go easy, any time
To duck the sun and skirt the sky,
Pessimistic sweating the good return,
Smells of fuck the spring of averages.
All summer days and winter nights and
Meanness slimming in laundry buckets.
Sharp and hollow salted seas, underspiced
The trade and public transit to market
Hawked molasses, tobacco and weed spit,
The signs point upriver and it’s buy, buy, bye
Spun riches in so much blasted air,
Come easy, go easy, any time
To duck the sun and skirt the sky,
Pessimistic sweating the good return,
Smells of fuck the spring of averages.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
A Haibun About Acid Snow
A Haibun About Acid Snow
Slightly glassy-eyed, envision these frames trapping trees dissolving into ash. Frigid pyres stream in the wind – where there is smoke there is fire but with this pale, ghostly echo there is only a mournful howling rising over snow-covered tracks. The sky is falling in increments, soft static dancing along blackly iron rails. They run perpendicular to us: we walk away without a second glance. Conversations were never given a chance to live and wander, we kept closed the entire time wrapped in warm layers, seeking comfort and finding it only when speaking through facades and recycled words. Open doors hurt. Darkness and faded red bricks – sometimes golden – these are familiar and distant. Every home passed houses another dreaming demon. But when the mouth swings open there is a world inside breathing and reaching out and the shadows crawl in insidiously with a biting wintry inhale. Shut that gaping, wooden wound and look at me. I never leave the ground. White snow stains the concrete brown sometimes and I wonder what twisted plants would take root in such bitter soil. Salt the earth in one practiced motion. Dead oceans crackle underfoot. And we shook, but at that point when the unrelenting wind deafens the world with its demanding susurrations, and blinds eyes wide as windows lying open and forgotten with frozen tears, you have to throw yourself into exposure and smell the chemical twang in the air. And for a little bit it’s so warm this could be the dust from every cigarette we smoked down to the filter tonight.
It’s so beautiful
When it’s not us under it
And when it is – ouch.
Slightly glassy-eyed, envision these frames trapping trees dissolving into ash. Frigid pyres stream in the wind – where there is smoke there is fire but with this pale, ghostly echo there is only a mournful howling rising over snow-covered tracks. The sky is falling in increments, soft static dancing along blackly iron rails. They run perpendicular to us: we walk away without a second glance. Conversations were never given a chance to live and wander, we kept closed the entire time wrapped in warm layers, seeking comfort and finding it only when speaking through facades and recycled words. Open doors hurt. Darkness and faded red bricks – sometimes golden – these are familiar and distant. Every home passed houses another dreaming demon. But when the mouth swings open there is a world inside breathing and reaching out and the shadows crawl in insidiously with a biting wintry inhale. Shut that gaping, wooden wound and look at me. I never leave the ground. White snow stains the concrete brown sometimes and I wonder what twisted plants would take root in such bitter soil. Salt the earth in one practiced motion. Dead oceans crackle underfoot. And we shook, but at that point when the unrelenting wind deafens the world with its demanding susurrations, and blinds eyes wide as windows lying open and forgotten with frozen tears, you have to throw yourself into exposure and smell the chemical twang in the air. And for a little bit it’s so warm this could be the dust from every cigarette we smoked down to the filter tonight.
It’s so beautiful
When it’s not us under it
And when it is – ouch.
Shining A Light on Dilated Pupils
These ancient, stony silhouettes
seem too soggy to burn in the
early dusk of wintery rains,
But torches drive the suns to set
farther from our cold wet shoulders
on a smaller horizon every day.
We are magpies with pitch black eyes
that drink in greedily all the
dull and lustrous lights in the trees,
Chirping powerless words that die
with ephemeral plumes of smoke
far too scattered to defy extropy.
Turn back on the road so traveled
and worn that rotted logs appear
to be the corpse of fallen gods,
Barren limbs become unraveled
collecting all the failing snow
into an earth-bound comet as it drops.
seem too soggy to burn in the
early dusk of wintery rains,
But torches drive the suns to set
farther from our cold wet shoulders
on a smaller horizon every day.
We are magpies with pitch black eyes
that drink in greedily all the
dull and lustrous lights in the trees,
Chirping powerless words that die
with ephemeral plumes of smoke
far too scattered to defy extropy.
Turn back on the road so traveled
and worn that rotted logs appear
to be the corpse of fallen gods,
Barren limbs become unraveled
collecting all the failing snow
into an earth-bound comet as it drops.
April 4 Freewrite
Thursday a whale swam at the sea
And the biggest wave rolled back to me,
Green yesterday but too gray now
A-daze, not hearing a sound.
Smells of mucus and pesticide
Now these cracked glass shells’ve no way to hide
Fire awoke in a blooded choke,
Cloaked in a stilled, shivering joke.
Call me Ahab in my own tongue,
I’ll crunch young bones as blood fills my lungs,
And crack black ribs around a pounding heart
Unzipping skin to look the part.
And the biggest wave rolled back to me,
Green yesterday but too gray now
A-daze, not hearing a sound.
Smells of mucus and pesticide
Now these cracked glass shells’ve no way to hide
Fire awoke in a blooded choke,
Cloaked in a stilled, shivering joke.
Call me Ahab in my own tongue,
I’ll crunch young bones as blood fills my lungs,
And crack black ribs around a pounding heart
Unzipping skin to look the part.
Printer Sheet Blanket
The clouds storm in to blacken me,
Darken me with thunder, muted
Lightning: one bolt consumes the sky.
When did night fall blood red,
Speckled with shifting oblivion
Closer? Uncomfortable proximity.
Morning dawns, a hidden sunshine
Frozen inside burning shivers,
Outside turning, beseeching the blizzard,
Twilight a blurred line, uneven
Burned in season, foreign dreams
Of summer melting into autumn.
Life will break one day slow,
Eating frost greedy and dripping
On the lifeless below.
Darken me with thunder, muted
Lightning: one bolt consumes the sky.
When did night fall blood red,
Speckled with shifting oblivion
Closer? Uncomfortable proximity.
Morning dawns, a hidden sunshine
Frozen inside burning shivers,
Outside turning, beseeching the blizzard,
Twilight a blurred line, uneven
Burned in season, foreign dreams
Of summer melting into autumn.
Life will break one day slow,
Eating frost greedy and dripping
On the lifeless below.
Scrabble
They’re playing it like a numbers game
Or chess: one move and two hundred responses
Air-conditioned, with no room to breathe
The rush of tension, brief suspension,
Think for moment – the spurred plans
Never made will live like burning forests
Fenced in concrete and glass.
We language in the fall out of put-downs,
Musical from the ground up to a pointed lie
Of a land heavy, unsaid with creation
and tectonic rulings, perpetual quakes
In the perceptual shaken head: imagine
Potential unbound, spinning cloud-ward
And following the directionless storm through empty space.
I’m going to force the game, hands where I can see them.
We will shake. We will laugh. We will say
The things we’ve all heard before and we,
We will not think, we will not judge, and we,
We will pretend we’ve never heard it before.
Or chess: one move and two hundred responses
Air-conditioned, with no room to breathe
The rush of tension, brief suspension,
Think for moment – the spurred plans
Never made will live like burning forests
Fenced in concrete and glass.
We language in the fall out of put-downs,
Musical from the ground up to a pointed lie
Of a land heavy, unsaid with creation
and tectonic rulings, perpetual quakes
In the perceptual shaken head: imagine
Potential unbound, spinning cloud-ward
And following the directionless storm through empty space.
I’m going to force the game, hands where I can see them.
We will shake. We will laugh. We will say
The things we’ve all heard before and we,
We will not think, we will not judge, and we,
We will pretend we’ve never heard it before.
Synedoche
We’ve only ever made it as far as the gift-shop:
The best museums in the world
Discount me at face value
Saying “Well, aren’t we the best people?”
It’s like someone died or something:
An awkward two-step to the door
All false cheer like this were a funeral,
Stop worrying about the kids and let yourself feel something.
Every vacation is a spectacle:
While I’m chafing at the comfort, we keep
A steady hold on our baggage
And pretend we’ve done more than stare at cheap exhibits.
The best museums in the world
Discount me at face value
Saying “Well, aren’t we the best people?”
It’s like someone died or something:
An awkward two-step to the door
All false cheer like this were a funeral,
Stop worrying about the kids and let yourself feel something.
Every vacation is a spectacle:
While I’m chafing at the comfort, we keep
A steady hold on our baggage
And pretend we’ve done more than stare at cheap exhibits.
Horror Vacui (Or Hopefully One Day I'll Stop Being Terrible at Writing)
I meditate on an empty parking space
With wide, bored holes in my face
That the light streams in. From the darkness
I drink to smooth over the starkness
Of a dry mouth, I drink to feel numb
From the coldness and dumb –
Unable to split apart these clenched teeth
Afraid of what might spill out onto the street.
I close my eyes on the gaping vacuum
Watching brilliant flaming flowers bloom
In my blindness, I remember to dream
Of the emptiness tempered, of the vacant scene
That I’m no longer sure still remains,
But guitars strum softly outside my brain
And voices sing of angels to my blocked-up ears,
And when I look up again I find a parked car sitting
Here.
With wide, bored holes in my face
That the light streams in. From the darkness
I drink to smooth over the starkness
Of a dry mouth, I drink to feel numb
From the coldness and dumb –
Unable to split apart these clenched teeth
Afraid of what might spill out onto the street.
I close my eyes on the gaping vacuum
Watching brilliant flaming flowers bloom
In my blindness, I remember to dream
Of the emptiness tempered, of the vacant scene
That I’m no longer sure still remains,
But guitars strum softly outside my brain
And voices sing of angels to my blocked-up ears,
And when I look up again I find a parked car sitting
Here.
Frame By Frame
Tick quietly, soft clock,
Talk small those big words,
Hollow voice echoing nothing at all.
I’m mashing electric gears
inside you, too excited
to find you worth listening to,
This egocentric dialogue
becomes a monologue in time.
I’m drowning.
Coughing up wet laughter,
My lungs on fire, my heart beats
brittle. It’s simple economics:
Abandon ship, shop around,
Find a new organ at a discount,
But the comforting stutter
of sinking convenience.
Throw everything at it,
Throw it all overboard until it goes away.
Don’t watch the slight off hands
No, they’re wings in the corner of my eye.
Ready to fly?
Talk small those big words,
Hollow voice echoing nothing at all.
I’m mashing electric gears
inside you, too excited
to find you worth listening to,
This egocentric dialogue
becomes a monologue in time.
I’m drowning.
Coughing up wet laughter,
My lungs on fire, my heart beats
brittle. It’s simple economics:
Abandon ship, shop around,
Find a new organ at a discount,
But the comforting stutter
of sinking convenience.
Throw everything at it,
Throw it all overboard until it goes away.
Don’t watch the slight off hands
No, they’re wings in the corner of my eye.
Ready to fly?
PAT
It’s clearer, you know? Twisted neck, broken, craned
Over shoulder overshadowed by your own silhouette,
Do you enjoy the regret like I suspect I do
Or do we just watch reflections in dirty, used windows,
Mistaking the outside for in, inside for passengers
Shuttled from their lives to the end stopped line?
Kill the driver, not you but your destination,
It keeps howling along in your ear no matter
How many times I bang my head off tremulous glass,
It never stops, it never stops. It never keeps going
For long unless abandoned by an outside force.
Simple physics applied to the world by us physicists.
The city you call home is a strange and craven blur.
Where the fuck do we get off on this?
Over shoulder overshadowed by your own silhouette,
Do you enjoy the regret like I suspect I do
Or do we just watch reflections in dirty, used windows,
Mistaking the outside for in, inside for passengers
Shuttled from their lives to the end stopped line?
Kill the driver, not you but your destination,
It keeps howling along in your ear no matter
How many times I bang my head off tremulous glass,
It never stops, it never stops. It never keeps going
For long unless abandoned by an outside force.
Simple physics applied to the world by us physicists.
The city you call home is a strange and craven blur.
Where the fuck do we get off on this?
Counting Mountain Tops
Half of the moon hangs heavy on the horizon,
Ground zero where the sublimated clouds drift
Apart from one: chicken shit little cartoon duck,
Two bleeding bullet holes for wings enslaved
Firing front-load impulses from stoned nerve endings
Three times singing silent swan songs in convulsions.
Cough blood, this low harmoniously untrained voice
Forced out from four black feet smells like burning life rafts
Reflected in eyes that drink the ocean, but can’t give five fucks
To extinguish the six sick silken fires, a candle
Streaming with every seventh wind that carved valleys
When every other weary artist slept in inspiration.
The other half of the moon waits to see how this will all turn out.
Eight small feathers touch down, soft as brushing fingers,
Heavy as judgment. Those bastards who scale regret
Touch down on the ninth piece of sky without a cloud
In their heads, breathing seems shallower – lungs smaller.
Bury them with formaldehyde dreams of paradise.
Ground zero where the sublimated clouds drift
Apart from one: chicken shit little cartoon duck,
Two bleeding bullet holes for wings enslaved
Firing front-load impulses from stoned nerve endings
Three times singing silent swan songs in convulsions.
Cough blood, this low harmoniously untrained voice
Forced out from four black feet smells like burning life rafts
Reflected in eyes that drink the ocean, but can’t give five fucks
To extinguish the six sick silken fires, a candle
Streaming with every seventh wind that carved valleys
When every other weary artist slept in inspiration.
The other half of the moon waits to see how this will all turn out.
Eight small feathers touch down, soft as brushing fingers,
Heavy as judgment. Those bastards who scale regret
Touch down on the ninth piece of sky without a cloud
In their heads, breathing seems shallower – lungs smaller.
Bury them with formaldehyde dreams of paradise.
The Streets Make This Sound
The streets make this sound as they go by, they whisper curses in tongues of smoke so that, though spoken softly, the warm breath of night rings loud enough between our silences. These pockmarked volcanic statues are adrift on a soot-blackened sea, let splashed salt and ash fill these holes: they’ll keep our heads above water. But for how long – to go unasked so many times is not just carelessness and disregard of opportunity, it’s deliberate fear of our reflected faces in the spilled glass and stilled oceans underfoot. You must hear the talking shadows watching without eyes, breathing in without mouths, feel the growing chill as I do. They wait and feed and grow louder in the vacuum. Eventually, what will be left is our universal bodies and disgust at the nucleus of every dying sun. We will be torn apart. Take a shuddering, hesitant breath but once and hold the first dying leaf – still green – to your lungs. Twice someone has tried to crack this open and free the toxicity everyone has slowly built resistance to, but every cough sounds like a choked confession, every time vomit is tasted it’s swallowed so that the hypochondriac doesn’t panic. Picked scabs reopen scars, but I want you to be hurt because I feel like I need to be the one to bandage your wounds, unwrap them to expose bloody sketches in a similar vein on myself so that hopefully we can watch them both one day fade – beauty is fleeting. Nothing is ever completely forgotten, but seen once is enough. Do we need to always remember the dreams we shared before we wake up?
Smoke in the distance
Flares once but when you’re turning
You see nothing there.
Smoke in the distance
Flares once but when you’re turning
You see nothing there.
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