who can bear more wailing about
hundreds of afternoons slumped on a
mound of sand with a single palm
tree tall and straight & quick home to
my mother the microwave quick
Gilligan’s Monkees Dream of What’s Diff’rent
Happening!! The Jeannie I Favorite
Strokes My Martian Island all better than
me cornered with their oh so funny
no escape Flintstones or fucking
Scooby-Doo, I do hate you but
I kept it shut as instructed
and when old enough for the key, you see
it’s more cheap food and laughter, canned
Category: Sonnet
-
-
What do we make of our song-free Orpheus
fumbling Odysseus almost Lucifer with
fingers of flame Perhaps he remembers the light
from that distant place and justice so a gift of
grain and cocoa for the amazing muses ofthe mountain top and the other women, dead
imprisoned tunneling, then old Ouranos grows
a pair and loses them and him in waves with no—
Though our Prometheus believes no one of theunderworld and darkens his face before they lie
about his friend not yet dead—they don’t get the joke
but the shadow brother did break the rule so thesea again and driving back half a Eurydice
reversed—so eyes forward or you’re back in it, baby.
-
I decided I would give up
writing the musical about
Charles Guiteau and the prose-poem book,
Twice as Nice as Mice on Ice. Who
knows what’s best and what’s a mistakenearly every bit of gold I’ve
chased has curled to a brown leaf in
my little claw but I’ll give those
old groans some sound and rough shapes andpadding for their feet as they find a place
and sing them to sleep if they let me and
maybe after years of shufflingwe’ll have a little machine that
sweetly encircles it all
-
with luck and a sweet incept the rest may
flow just don’t get too obscure or you may
trip in your light and don’t worry if the
end comes first or pay too much heed to that
needy voice from the middle or convinceyourself that you know about conclusions
though yes each belch is yours and yours
alone as a clutch of eggs or
the slowly unfurling limb of a pre-or post-historic forest the
teeth of which I have long loved and
please accept this apologyI never meant to and never cared to
make puzzles though I play one on TV
-
I mostly agree, but think they
could use a nudge. The idea
that whatever we may be may be
subject of some study is sound
but to say those old scientists are justin it for the publishing rites is more
than I will digest so let me suggest
the potentiality of
a labyrinth of secondary liteentertainment based on the primary
data. I think it’s naïve to imagine our keepers failing to laughat our low tragedies or exude no
small sigh as we toddle off to what’s next
-
try to write a face the eyes aren’t
right teeth crooked the wrong way the
night cold the flame hidden I make
another cut so long but too
late across the blue ink sounds of[inaudible] but leave it there
even if it barks all night will
never invade the earnestness
of tiny drinks while the bright blackso tight we thought the stones in our pockets
might help us too with a few tweaks
it could be the scene of your first triumphbut let’s not crack the old door anymore
those dreams are grand but I wake a headache
-
Once you’re reasonably seasoned
I want to complain about my
hands and the where and what that they
have failed to do no matter which
precipice certain delicatepapers have been balanced upon
today which way they flail is of no
grey matter for any of us
as the storm threatens from each point ofthe compass rescued from the bright
dust at the bottom of a mound
of sticky surreal boxeson the outskirts of a
once-distinguished suburb
-
that sentimental day we recite our
atrocities a la mode which at the
time rhymed though less in retrospect
which we hope may serve as a warning
to any newcomers peddling deweygospels though we had not calculated
all that this strange gravity would inquire
of our ancient components which
likely will take weeks to tweak butif you’re around we can descend
the canyon and investigate the
rumors of this miraculous vegetablethey say it’s like drawing your hand
with the hand that’s like drawing your hand
-
he heard a tink and thought of his wish and
where his hand didn’t want to go
and went there and there it was a
perfect miniature aureate
boulder so thanks were given and soon asystem—spray bottles, a special
strainer, fresh hand towels, a glass
container for storage and sometimes the
irregular borders brought bloodwhen they slit but he learned to love
fingers in filth for those gleaming nuggets
and later he’d have such elaboratebut fundamental stuff made most of which
was melted down in the end or, after
-
I can see their unwillingness
to laugh and let go of that loud
restless voice that caused so much
trouble but which way if I want
oh never mind I’ll stay here andply the wildflowers with
ever more restless names
and try to see in the crazing
of frost on the landing two hoursbefore dawn some message or hope
for a few more steps before the beeping
and surveying on all sides asI sit and think of some tasty hasty
something for the some bit of some sentence
-
Some mornings I feel bad for those who had
to die for me to waste away
Anatolian and Achaean
Andorian and Orion
all due to the creep of those firstwounds we fight hard to not turn brittle
or snap and for a while I wondered
if it was all some psycho-sexual
game fueled by the misery of othersor perhaps the two were
really one troll who knows
maybe it was a badday that happened every day in
all caps I can’t say but I will
-
And these long pauses when no one
asked but then did I I think maybe from
time to time but no not enough you
see I wanted it all yesterday and
never learned to let my liquor dripnot that I wanted to learn I wanted
to complain I was unfound though
that complaint is unfounded after
decades of this and more of this athumbs up or heart renews no lease while
that scab-picking goblin prince longs
to turn away once-adored faces whenand if but of course I would grow new
arms despite these keenly sharpened teeth
-
Is it to quiet those sounds from above
that won’t leave me alone or to drown the
noise of the dog’s desperate licking where
does the source hide itself but such thoughts are
not really for me I get too excitedrest badly and when the excursion starts
I’d rather stay in bed but mostly I
want to write about something besides an
ugly bag mostly filled with water thoughit holds some moderate pleasure toothsome
despair and thick clotted rumination,
which may not be to everyone’s taste buthelps exercise the moist gray maze when
I would have had little else but sleep
-
Ten more pounds as you breath this air in
while small flying things establish more
colonies on a significant
portion of your disregarded
land mass while an occasional stormbrings no relief to little Tom
in his prospect of geraniums
thumbing in peace far from the noise of bones
being broken for the amusements of childrendays grow too dark under the broiler
strange birds visit for a moment and
fly back as one of my fatherssaid those wandering clouds at least
are worth a couple careful words
-
I’ve Been Reading
Ada Rae Merwin, T. S. Coleman,
Allen Louise Eliot, Edna
Limón, Geoffrey D. Graham, Anne Glück,
John Kalytiak Davis, Emily
Gay, Joshua Sexton Cummings,Jorie Whitman, Gertrude Stein, John
Armantrout, William Aimee Wordsworth,
Tracy K. Marvel, E. E. Ashbery,
Wanda Joy Ginsburg, Kimiko Bennett,W. S. Dickinson, John Rich Smith,
Ross Berryman, Andrew Keats, Walt
Nezhukumatathil, H. HarjoHahn, Adrienne Chaucer,
Olena St. Vincent Millay,
-
it’s often the way when days are
less generous with their light and
walking the dog in trees furry
scents and a noise near or far you
choose to ignore those little hopesfor the weekend with green softness
over the lawn insects float or
dart the breeze that might keep me up
tonight I know it’s not your faultyou know the darkness catches up before
summer gets going I should stop
saying you know you know anywhoo thelast time we met you were spitting
in the eye of some hurricane
-
other people’s postcards and the
problems you carried from home but
with new hats from the shop they said
you must visit after some mountain
muttering about air some vistaback and forth in brightening dark
cold coffee chirps though later and
once the music mercifully
stopped and after the little chapel’soily beams were whittled into
pencils for disappointed tourists
the sound of the little fountaintook us though we didn’t know how to go
in the small blue shell or its cold shadow
-
But we’re not in that desert anymore
honeysuckle on the breeze bad news
finds us dead nettle stork’s bill what else
did she teach me as we barrel toward
the base please remember your trainingand try to finish your letters though
not every editorial will
be published we have done what we could
to spread word of this once-in-a-millennium sales event we
wouldn’t want them to miss but we must
carry on or deal with that peskyvoice talking about time and something
jogging though as long as we keep busy
-
It’s the way though innit the muse leaves
and your mouth aches for more song, but
the veins are filled with foul air and
dust muscles do not move So what
do we wait like house cats why notas long as we’re in service we
must serve and hope the mistress one
day deigns to lay down a circle
of honey no, of course we’re notworthy but keep the pen handy and with
any luck we’ll find some lunch and
sell a few things and maybe tipthat dusty bottle from the snow-capped
shelf where the third expedition failed
-
But how can I talk about it my
images veiled and the word I want
grows small in a mouth while no one waits.
The waves haven’t stopped for a minute but
amidst the churn there’s a still bubblereserved for you and one other though
there have been so many lost packages
and delays in dreams in which you slowly
suffocate while delivering the speechthat could have saved you and in the back
of the room that talk that you wanted to
have with her maybe just a few words mightdissolve the dam but I think too much
of the poison hows the light escapes
-
But first into the palanquin don’t
worry it’s all above-board and just
a little indulgence for the weekend
when certain leaves are likely to
fall or stay though we find it’s nothalf as bright or sweet as we had
hoped so underground for a few
rounds and yes we would rather be
back at the dig where we hope toconfirm our suspicion that the
dinosaurs were really quite small
and by means of a process unique tothe ancient earth over barely
countable aeons grew enormous
-
You think you know the way, but two turns past
those thick oaks and you feel you’re rushing
boldly into some imaginary
battle without reading the instruction
manuals all the while calmly writingbut too calm shouldn’t there be a thousand
lightning strikes each second but
maybe this is the gray way
far from those warm golden fields wherewith the first crocus we try to
place the best bits next to each other
and hope some small energy maypass but the experiment has not been
successful so I may try to breathe again
-
You see, since we escaped I’ve had the odd
liberty of thought and this cogitation
has uncovered several quite serious
plot holes which I’ll fill you in on later
but first where is that golden bottle whoseessence you say rhymes with late summer
which too many have claimed is our only
commodity but I never
studied such things and fear I speak out ofseason and if so beg the courts’ pardon
and would happily, instantly, return
to my cell to scratch out what remains witha few favorite books I dreamed about
as a boy in the bough of a tree
-
I couldn’t see the myth in my
early rising and had to rely on
this box with a badly worn recording
device and a failed maze which would
with any luck add some seasoning tothe tedious reading of the
will which leads me back to the original
problem (art, rime) though fathers’ words
about not quitting ring in theholes that once (I think) were ears and what’s so
terrible about quitting when
they expect you to speak nose-deep in asewer but this rain will not ruin our
picnic and yes it’s rude to mention it
-
hoping for something chocolate covered
hurry up wait what was I saying the
shoreline shortens birds gone from the sky due
to a lack of how’s it with you those headaches
back I have just the oil and volcanoesfor it though maybe the coasts blame the
center and vice versus our scattered
poems may stitch it but we’re in it
now did you hear what the finalbutterfly whispered as your phone
oh I’m no better I just like
to fly and sting so maybe youshould check out the dog filter
that clown one does nothing for you
-
it then sails over that hill like hot oil
down your leg but you need to get dressed for
the evening execution though since our
cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll
to the river past the perimeterguards and through the rubble passage in the
southwest corner where hopefully
our stash of obscene poetry journals
is still intact in rooms so completelysimilar to this dusty light we may
have been poor and by god we will be so
again but where was I goingwith this nearly full skin the sky
is getting dark the bushes full of feet
-
in an age when close and distant cloud
I make what you won’t want to eat and wait
for the snow scrape and salt that wakes us too
early or too late little mountains pen
in sugared cars I try to lift this snowwith homemade rhythm into clouds
like berries almost black but how
long do I have to long for long-lasting
mud and birds who stay a bit and fly backa breath that leaves green leaves to shake
so let’s finish the crackers and
call them cookies we can watch amovie through the neighbor’s window
just balance on this pile of skulls
-
three kinds of salty licorice
a sweatshirt with an immense kitten
some more maple almond cashew
butter a disc of aged white tea
cardamom seeds in their own grindera multipack of Sugru a
Kaweco Lilliput fountain pen
click lick click but is it too late to pluck
the prized moon-blooming oh you’re back already—what did you say about the lack of laurels
in the breezy storage space—perhaps we
should look instead through an Olympic screenthat obscures high and low so the worm may
spare my stomach on a warm winter day
-
Perhaps there is something more, but with
the pressure of an undigestible
chicken knuckle cartilage nugget
pressing perhaps a breathless sip of
weed killer with lime, but no, that’s notthe monster I want to feed though a
look at my neglected hooves shows me I
have made the usual mistake of
trying to coin a word thatmeans checking to see if the dog wants
to learn to dance as a small way to
lengthen my displeasure with this workwhich is far from interesting, but
keeps me flush with fresh digital badges
-
More errors squashed found squashed
then more of more of the same and by this
point in the story you’re looking
for the restroom while nodding politely
but this little fire you’ve changed theflint kept her fueled and ready but hope to
of course the yoke left a deep mark
the fingers then got confused wrong
words stumble out needing mendingand you no longer yearn for that
historic restaurant where once
your teeth ground through a heavy sky butit has air conditioning and is not
affiliated with many poor choices
-
I was never sure which were jokes
which mistakes it all happened so
fast as I was thinking of some
thing else so I’m sure I missed a
lot of context but learned to be careful openingcabinets as those stuck stacks of dishes might unstick
and whitewater down at other times they
may test your eyesight on a small silver
splinter of moon but by next summer wewill move on to new games and leave
the unfinished trilogy in
some still closet across town butwe only bring it up if enough
have shared equally trying things
-
And this question of how leans into the
darkness inside our attempts to start a
fire, this apple, this bamboo in a pot.
How far can we trust it when we turn our
backs? How red is my red, really? And doand do you notice it in the brochure
you couldn’t put down and kept hidden so
or was it this squirming dream of again
unwittingly shared though months passwithout anyone mentioning it
anyway, the event was full of sweet
words gentle smiles from about five paceswe knew we would likely never see each
each other again on any timeline
-
After the storm left cool air and a snack
of peanut butter and a fig now I’m
hungry again just thinking of it now
where was I going with no plan nothing
to wrap in some rhythmic finery orwhat passes for such yes I’m now running
out the clock as you guessed though we could turn
this thing around if we had the will to
reach into the bush braving blood forsmall berries that might by now be ripe
though hard experience has taught us that
turns around the old neighborhood turn nothings around and the last bump that kept you
up still lurks in the cold sweat of your back
-
This contraption over which I crookedly crane
my contorted collection of calcium see
caps lock control and command the castoff caret
and the clever with this collection could construct
a colonnade a colophon or the kee keekoo of the critter whose call we couldn’t confirm
conscript a comrade to crystallize our cozy
canals of consciousness and claim a cult center
of concrete comforts to commend cunning cornerscraving a clarion crow call
for a clean coronation of
cacophony while circling comelycool cantaloupes close to consumables
of cress conspicuous for consumption
-
It’s hard to focus on blankness
at day’s end or read my scrawl or
tell if I’ve said any thing at
all—go faster maybe it will
work when they pack up their cornholegear and move back to the converted
garage where the mildewed rent is still
too high. I want to spend some minutes
staring at the lawn in the lingeringlight and write something you might want to
read with a flashlight at two or
three—something just a little bitdesperate but with clear honey
for lips covered in cuts and small wings
-
Why can’t I just say it
plain why are there so many
modifiers on this bright
morning of single digits the
dog imitates a restless seaat various locales as she
wishes while darkness sparkles and
each is questioned and crumbles
my fingers slowly covered inspots will lunch be any good is
it too early to give up and
have a smoke too late to burn mystuff and start again too late blinded
by the icicle’s gleaming drop
-
To go to bed and churn through the night folded
and rent by the sharp lines of half-boiling
dreams as we try our best to imagine
we can forget what we might have had to
make yesterday once the anger of themorning has faded and our clothes are once
again dry though who would have bet against
the successful failure of the unabridged
chronicles of that self-made hermit whosehedge maze was never real but the feeling
of being in it turning right or left
faster then much slower has never leftno matter which season finds us deciding
once and evermore to learn how to knit
-
Our parents were fine but not really
up to the task though neither were theirs
and so on back to darkness and so
what more backache more allergies more
stuff you don’t know how to get rid ofthe closet has been full since we moved
in and the water reaches only
so far as leaves tightly spin up a
bit and then a small spiral down butdon’t worry about these discarded
takeout containers from the cheapest
places someone will clean up laterafter all look at the precisely
folded mountains the peaceful cold lake
-
After crawling on 95 after
a salty meal after recycling the
last ideas pinned to the moldy cork
after snoozing some forced friends then after
humidly leafing through the museumof wasteful catalogs after walking
the dog and cleaning up after the dog
washing the towels plates and small forks of
our ritual dessert once the air iscleared of sulfur and mildew and the old
toilet is passably clean the new car
charged the simple altar dusted we mayfind a stick and throw it into the sea
and see what kind of tomorrow we can buy95, cork, forced friends, forks, mildew, museum, plates, ritual dessert, salty meal, sea, stick, sulfur, towels, wasteful catalogs
-
It’s just the little lighthouse keeper who
notices and tries to raise some kind kind
of alarm but with arms weak from bad and
bad sleep, cheap food, gives up & decides to
stroll those sentimental streets where gangs ofrival lawyers perform intricate
dances to win the most flavorsome of
clients though all the clouds here smell of sweat,
ketchup, and fermented fish but thesedays while dining we encounter
foul stained fingers in our pies as
markets grow cold and distant in the dawnI didn’t understand his last email
but did you see those girls who just walked by
-
No more fireworks just instructions
in a language in the shape
of a forgotten snake or
a hope for a better harvest
though with our dried plans nowburied how but I stood for far
too long the brittle hunger of
wind taking bits of the
but what exactly wentwrong and why did our words
fail to move it even an inch
when we were told to draw a lineunder the bubble inside the
stale loaf our last tooth would not bite
-
Put on sturdy gloves before you
handle history it may suddenly
ignite without warning which may
among other things tend to leave one with
out a date or eyebrows for the big dancebut maybe some message is still slowly
twining up some neglected balcony
sewing a subtle missive near
the color of the last clinging mapleleaves if only we knew how but
looking out the window or similar
is no use in this hallucinationmaybe don’t update me on the progress
until the streets are ripe the peaches clean
-
The cool morning clouds radio chatter
from nearby. This rough dark fabric with me
in air on ground through cruel layovers
now a wheel city
sidewalks half consumed must be replaced orthe last journey was the last journey my
sturdy friend so with hands clean and odd tools
a few small turns and off it pops but peek
inside look an unknown wound festered nowsharp shards of broken plastic slide smoothly
from the gap the room fills with perfume of
action figure trapper keeper childhoodtears trials in rough slivers and
the radio moans the dog licksaction figure, city streets, clouds, dog, fabric, journey, layovers, radio, slivers, tools, trapper keeper, wheel, wound
-
In January the tea on
my thin undusted desk as my
neighbor again starts to exercise
looked so stomp thud woozy stomp I
wanted to run to some mountainbut instead retreated upstairs
to a cool toilet and sat where
from the open window from the
courtyard come echos melodiessplash ring soar sink bouncing off white tile
on all sides of this cave to remind
but the dream broke when the crow saidit reminded him of a lost draft of
my novel destined for obscurity
-
But when you’re young and dream of
escaping narrow Westchester
for exotic New England. But
before summer was over we
were. I returned carrying somecigarettes, Sometimes I Wish I
Was a Pretty Girl, your hand-drawn
map to the clitoris, and when
I think of your face that one dayhair bright honey light your smile our
world holding your hand through the years
hoping something might fit like thatonly better. But the dusty
manuscripts, the unicycle,
-
The feel of cold river stones in the hand
on that one day when… Or, well, anyway,
maybe some music, some dinner, a tale
that turns on some jade pivot but the pen
drops and rolls towards that corner of myrusty cheese-grater head. So, tomorrow?
It’s OK. He’s not a real doctor. Wait,
were we talking about you or me? No.
Something with zucchini, I suppose. Whenthose noises had stopped I felt I was just
about to remember a mineable
dream, and I don’t want to be a bore, soonce the cicadas have emerged we’ll leave
town for another dozen years or so
-
Do we have time to unlearn the
first frown and move on? I really
don’t want to bite your nose off. It’s
just that I haven’t slept well since
Reagan and like clockwork a blackooze rises to cover far too
much and did I mention my back
shoulder knee and oh I did well
we’ll leave that and look down at thesilver city where there may yet
be room as many claim and though
our souls are quite used to otherterrains we must try as each moment fails
to return or else another foul wind
-
If I can’t do it now, we’ll have our
answer, but I want you to know that
I am trying certain overly
specific methods most would agree
are not often exactly the mostoptimal though yes I clearly see
why I should not have told so many
extravagant lies to get into
that law firm and why I stayed as longas I did, but with those days done and
those shadow corporations dissolved
for now we are not liable toanyone and may leisurely plan our
next great work, charity, etc.
-
Why not a sonnet while the dog
sleeps her little sleep before bed
while I write a sonnet while the
dog sleeps before night in which we
might dream a scurry of squirrelsfree from bonnets and the snores of
little dogs resting before the
big sleep while I write what might one
day snore into a sonnet fora little whitening dog who
sleeps her little dog sleep here on
the sofa minutes before bedwhere a big sleep may creep unto
all sleeping dogs creeping to sleep
-
From as safe a distance as
possible and with the best
of what was left in those days
we stared into the center
for millennia blackholes combined coalesced
larger repeat larger
and the news sites with
a fresh hope each day butwe knew and couldn’t stop
staring into the all-
eating mouth where a fewstrands of light wove a final song
through empty stars already gone
-
despite our poorly thought out plan
for the ancestral garden gnomes
I can even without glasses
see what’s coming on this muddy
trail as we bear the insistenceof another infection a
brief pollen starscape as we stop for tea
any future tortures could have baguettes
bagels brioche bialys andbaskets of buns though we see our
most-ignored manifesto won’t
help to fill the syringe beforethe eggs from that red insect we forgot
about hatch and we lose more than our eyes
-
so hungry all day things falling out
of my shirt this cavern of a mouth
bitten raw again for what I want
to know now a game of second guess
ing that makes a tiny day night thenfollows me to the second bedroom
for a scratch I walk I try to read
maybe meditate a snack perchance
a book but nothing stills the thirst theburn of the sound of the chorus its
latest fine counterpoint while I pace
and hope for some end to this chokingmaybe soon some tuneful bird in
terrupts to tell me I have slept
-
you forget how peculiar
you get in deep space and if not
for the neglected maintenance
schedules we would not be in
such a childishly canceroustrap but for each recopied day
we still get one tepid shower
and food that will inspire no song
nevertheless the mattress isbetter than advertised so we
could drop one of the class-action
lawsuits and sink a little morebut instead let’s try again to
find those lights you’ll learn to call home
other animals 