we’ll call glossolalia. But we heard the true story before the wake whose skeleton, preserved in lucite on three continents, is a beacon for the new converts
Category: Prose Poems
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some cloudy mornings it’s the feel of the favorite pen in your hand you charge off not caring about a cracked phone screen the band-aid covering bone the stomp of the neighbor through the ceiling hope and calm caught in little chunks we string together to make a necklace though perhaps even that was a way to dig down to the level of the excavation you needed to see with its as yet untranslated script and inscrutable editorial cartoons which they say
the flowers this year will be late and unequivocal
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My device displays the estimated time it will take to finish this chapter 29 minutes to 32 to 43 minutes a minute later. I see the children of my children’s children and the joy on their faces as they finish the prologue.
Saturn at dawn on the wind could be my voice as a child
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morning clean a free breeze bruises still there but in soft light something about omelets better coffee perhaps a walk in that park we’ve been meaning all through the day carry a small splinter that sparkles later in the meeting we easily talk about our supposed subject matter though the shadow of the looms large we still laugh cobble jokes from horrible headlines and yes I saw your post and clicked the appropriate button but tomorrow I will unfollow you
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a fish through the hands will write a list of future accomplishments gulp the last tepid tea and remember I’m somehow the narrator though my training is in watch repair once a thriving industry in days when many people were killed by and these days you don’t know who to believe when you take your pants off but that’s the way it’s always been at least when you climb that tree to look at the moon you can just remember the sound of the first sparrow through her curls
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build a little temple in the well of the clavicle golden light honey fig bread wine maybe this book will run through the clouds we see tending to the is it only animals who live on the mountain
storm in the forecast & all these chapped lips for the best adverbs to fry up this or any other burger so why does it have to fill up the whole page ants build cities with mouths as small as we could wish for
where a tooth unrecognized as rotten should worms long to chew as though a star covered in gauze in the forest shout what from the shadow of a younger life of a beneath centipedes cry and yes still these empty hands in the snow
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just the normal kind of socially sanctioned stupid. Nothing vicious. Just someone who’s looking for. Sure, I could give you some advice, but you’d never take me seriously with this haircut and the auction’s about to end. That’s the thing about our planet at this late stage—outbid again—damn. What’s a person have to do to—what was I saying? Something about how it sticks in your eye and can sometimes catch the light just right & a rainbow—what’s that? No, you’d never make it. They watch our every move
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Fruitless Investigation
With the light fading, you need to know how shallow it is.
Some limbs grow back if cut and stars paint the black with exuberant death but here it’s squirrels eating pizza.
The wet grass between your toes may produce a giggle, but water up to your knees?
The trick is to keep biting the rope as they pull you from the volcano, rather than laugh, which will be your first impulse.
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early morning planning wind scurries waiting for coffee to kick the air to clear on the lookout for the best conjugations the cut is healing nicely as violets and others I can’t name invade the running commentary in moments of quiet the thought makes it all crumble so we remain vigilant it takes years to articulate at least that’s what it says on the business card we hand out a little too freely though after all why not what was buried looks quite different when they show up with the picks and shovels and yes I hear it too the whole house about to speak some long-abandoned language
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of course no one believes you when you say it’s over through the familiar bird sound and I don’t feel like it yet stop interrupting me though it is what I pay you for
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There is no time to stretch but plenty of time to ache today Bowie’s birthday longing for those bonus tracks now lost to eternity but once freely given with the purchase of The Man Who Sold the World or Scary Monsters and I think that if we slow down so we’re just crawling through the toothpaste of our days then just maybe we’d notice the truly strange small things disappearing around the corner with that look in their eyes daring us to follow
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I tried to be two things but the paper kept curling and I couldn’t get a straight line so I decided to move to the next town where I met someone who reminded me of a girl I once knew whose name I never learned as we only ever joked about certain forbidden vegetables while we were in school together though it was more of a forced labor camp but when those ghostly blue flowers came again in the spring we were allowed a minute of silence to think of the photos we once had pinned up by our cots now long eaten by moths
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After the Layoffs
against such odds as we now face. We will all have to screw our heads to the floorboards and hang our intangibles from the light fixtures as the sun sets on the legitimate spoils of this empire, and, for the future of our privileged and somewhat damp, though not without merit or beauty, where was I, lives, yes, which, wriggling away and leaving a trail not so much slug-like as composed of a kind of radiant petroleum product, must look ahead over the mountain ranges of the current difficulties and try to imagine a kind of future without the interference of the mechanical flies and their predators that we have so blithely come to accept as we once in the style of some indiscreetly imagined past took tea on the lawn, though, to sum up, it is not the past or the present that matters, but the small screws that hold up the iron pants of this great nation, which we have and will continue to sell at a reasonable markup.
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like an ancient carved alphabet or breakfast free from human hands while this spark lasts whistle past new double glazing fit for middle management
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always wondering where to start but I’m always here so what was the question again some escape to range out over the hills note cannot even imagine mountains some people the fields and squares with manikins so realistic you almost see little clouds of smoke on a cold morning but the world is flat and without much detail apart from this pen and the shuffling of the dog occasional whiff of that cup of coffee and see I’ve fallen into my own trap and all the sudden there are things here in the world around this black hole
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sometimes you just want to let the poem glide away but you’re afraid of what it might say about you though you know everyone knows already but that’s hardly the point of all the wasted nights developing bad tastes into the tender and pastel dawn with who can remember at this point all the lives you meant to live the expeditions and raids the ballads campfires recitals karaoke bars and I forget where I was going with this though that leads us full circle down some drain
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no matter how many pages, this, sitting in your chest and tomorrow, well, we can’t leave it here, not with his allergies, and like the art of conquered people, the distant clouds, what’s the word for a menacing sound in the distance, of course this is hardly a proper sendoff, still, the heart, and in his pockets the crumbs have pockets, though listening to these books won’t put groceries on the table, and the trees stopped blooming so suddenly, as if tipped off about the whole affair, sitting in the corner drinking water, as the poets of the anthology warned us about, and suddenly deer on the edge of downtown, this humid air and itch, and I lose interest in the delicate structure of the pastries, will you just open your mouth and say maybe
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My eyes burn from that screen and the brilliance they seek why do you smirk when I say that like you’ve never let the air out of someone’s balloon just to see and yes my arms are asleep again but it’s the third night in a row hearing that strange rondel in the woods and though we try to ignore it there’s something familiar if not quite comforting there like when you can finally take off those wet clothes close the door and sit down to a nice hot cup of what it would be like to finally start that immense project on the sea floor
. [pauses to examine a small blood-smeared stack of index cards]
the rumble of dump trucks recycle part of the dream where I rush into the heart of this subterranean distillery because my feet are cold no matter what my ears itch where I can’t scratch I wonder why they say snow is coming it’s always the case so what do we do if the insects really are gone is there a new equilibrium for this house of cards all this time growing smaller and needing reading glasses to see what my hands are up to but these different wails who might be butchered for their oils and in the end the meat washed out to sea but you don’t need me to tell you
. [drinking a small glass of green liquid that smells vaguely of bandages]
those stale dreams discarding seeds into my nest if I try to remember to remember by dawn when I will find a pen that can stand the weight this season nearly over so how small can you make yourself when the new fall lineup means sure destruction for the likes of us who never knew the touch of an industrial mother or even a decent chocolate chip cookie though with this small and responsible lunch I’ll speed my way past new apartment’s skeleton frames and these tiny parks built for squirrels and what is this cramp in my hand has the timer ended and I missed it or hasn’t any of it started yet
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When the woodpecker stops we long for the woodpecker in the smashed cups maybe a clue to someone’s mood but you could learn as much with the simplest PhD course of course it comes in a matte finish though you really should shower if you’re going yes I agree that the smallest movements of hand and eyelid give away what we would keep hidden though they say billions of years ago we were all part of the same supermassive star so how much are any of these secrets really worth
but that’s how it is with the old suns dying new worlds being built wash repeat flies finding their way and the song losing its magic the meal you once loved so you try some new devotion a different mountain but if that spark is gone there are still ads for medicines we can’t afford and terrible news every day where was I going with all this I guess what I’m trying to say is that the patina gave the piece most of its value and all that went away when you cleaned it
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Letter in Which I Break Up With My Imaginary Girlfriend
I’m not even sure sometimes why I open the notebook in the cicada-littered summer dumpster-diving raccoons running out
of hyphens at least the morning cool decent coffee the old stump finally yanked out but this bad egg I have to swallow this ache I can’t attach a story to and where do you break
off but that’s the default I suppose if we know the well is running dry we feel guilty about every sip but forget about the rain
and sure it’s my own dumb fault drowning on land unsure how to shout for help so
what I want to say is that I’m glad you stayed on the track I couldn’t find and maybe someday you may think of me and laugh but in a good way
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Echolocation
But it’s good. A place to start. Drips on the sill. Stop. Inward. Not out. If possible. Where we are. What to sacrifice. To cultivate. Sometime. The work gets done. And you don’t even realize. Which streams will lead to the ocean. Hard to concentrate. With. This. Silence. In her travel journal. The dance books of bees. The work of decades. Thousands of millions of minuscule parts. When it rains one way. Drips here. Drips there. This hat won’t do. For a deluge. But my new favorite ink. Finally this life back in stock. Through smudges. Hard to account for the grown-ups. So few. The grass grows long. The doctor appointment. Your signature. And here. To drill down to this moist moment. Forget about the moment. Breathe more drink less. You’re nearly arrived. That sound in your ears. Can be safely ignored. Stars are stunning. In the other room. A silver fish already knows. The weight of his decision. After tea. Which ones need question marks. And maybe if this season’s colors suit you. Forever and a couple of days. Don’t say it’s nonsense before you read it. The hair clipped just so. Forwards and prefaces were her specialty. And behind the couch. Where the mandolin was stored. A clear or colored gem. Which was built to the specifications. But ultimately
one day maybe we can breathe in this smoke
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we waited but no one came so we went back to work which was engaging but your shirtsleeves tended to snag on the machinery which could cause a cascade of failures and then you had to set it all up again but this was fairly rare and at least the terrible coffee was free though in summer you couldn’t help but look out over the green tree tops and long to be a bird catching flies which of course we all said at predetermined times and had a little laugh like a moth escaping a musty closet but in the end but well we’re not there yet we were repeatedly told to keep specific limbs straight and noses somewhere slightly dangerous but you don’t really take these things to heart climbing the ladder though when it rains the special boots made us all feel like we were typing a letter in a dream in which we wove all of our secret thoughts but woke before we could mail it and so another year began
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How many weeks have I wished away for what? A few steps closer to saving Zelda the weekend blur and mid-range scotch laughing at a show that ended decades ago on my fourth run through and what, should I pine for the tall pines, the crumbling sunset ruins a flight away or look microscopically and find the hidden gem of my days between the legs of hungry mites who live and die in a forest of eyebrows or is rarefied complaining enough to drop another Wednesday into the scrapbook no one reads high on the shelf to be thrown away the instant I am ash
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the utter breath of new morning flowers in undiscovered optimism in the left side the word wasting a pain keeping up with the right twilight with astral orchestrations the forced merriment continues too many pains in the fan noise creak moon glow of the painting of Jesus and his personal trainer on the final rep my heart in my thumbs swiping sweating 39th floor cool breeze black bug holding on out in the sky propping this mood up with some part of a whale
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failed conjugations chafe crumbling stone typing with one finger the rain slowing blossoms outside inside blossoms rocks in the chest maybe black coffee offices crumbling in the grey sea o western wind this flower breaks a mountain of glass and steel my words of praise and broken teeth
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And this right now sure no one told you or even made a joke how were you to know that it would crumble in your hand as you woke and made another attempt to gather supplies for the journey from reluctant and somewhat distant relatives who all day would sit by their fires and wait for her to arrive and read once more from the voluminous pamphlet that detailed the triumphs of an ever-increasing number whose names were lost
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In Which the Lover Complains Bitterly While Crossing a Desert
How to get it flowing again? I tried to ask my neighbor but he was on his way to prison and couldn’t help. Later, no one showed up to the game despite a lack of bombardment. You start to feel like you can’t even rely on your own fingernails. And these scars don’t even get me a small discount.
As if you found a penguin on your balcony in the middle of summer but before you could open your mouth it’s swept away by a hawk. All the same, the vegetable patch managed to wither again this year, much like
When I can’t remember how to spell a word I make a small, approximate scribble and hope I’ll never have to go back. Anyway, by the time anyone checks we should be long gone.
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while the computer is updating I dare to go outside where I am immediately swarmed by a cloud of cicada who clumsily ram into me causing many small bruises and the neighborhood cats gather to investigate the mounds of insects at my feet who have collapsed from exhaustion and finding it all boring the cats wander off to practice their Latin which ensures that they will be in a terrible mood at least until dinner time
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and again nothing to say says the head and the fingers forget that and run out on their own what good has this head done lately anyway and blossoms hang on the trees so briefly as birds sing courtship songs skyward in the weakening dark make ready this short but wide song for an empty page hungering for music
-from Talking Too Fast.
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and gone as the pen comes out what word might have soothed this scrap of paper holding on to the last light of the week & summer almost over & our throats sore from shouting over the endless waves of strangers exploring the shading of the short video format in the pauses between what the deadline wants of you & again into the kitchen with tea made from scraps of memories of all those birthdays with the one whose name you won’t say
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what then. this dark place. whirl of wings somewhere away. a web walked into. dust in what little light. following something. the sound of the mud. and for an ending this sweat this. a day or maybe more.
turn the other side of this coin gold and ribbons
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with the rain set in and flashes in the distance we all settle down to an old board game this is the one he always cheats at with that little smile on his face like he’s pulling one over on us and after a couple of drinks he’s the only one who really cares about it after all we’re just here for the conversation and these delightful appetizers reconstructed from an ancient Mesopotamian cookbook thought lost for at least a couple of millennia
but then the evening turns and we talk about the dark times when even finding a nickel on the sidewalk made your heart beat faster but of course we exaggerate all the old wounds for our audience even though they were all there and suffered as much or as little as we did you know you can’t really fool your friends like that then as fast as it came the storm passes though we had long ago stopped paying it any mind
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which way to start to get what I want instead of fiddling with knobs and buttons lost in mush and the aftermath of failed experiments but then without the experiments the birds don’t sing and we all sink sometime over the rooftops a siren or ice cream truck bringing something extra into the long and humid evening in which you reconstruct the crime scene for your dinner guests who have long since stopped being amused but somehow it escapes your mind
the right way to say certain things and you turn to the left for the light switch instead of to the right where it is and brush off the whole thing as a symptom of not enough sleep or coffee and meanwhile the worms are digging under our feet and so many skeletons slowly breaking down before the archaeologists can dig them up and brush them off you know some might be quite important to someone in a very different line of work but we can talk about that tomorrow with tea and lemon squares if the other appointment falls through you’ll call right
other animals 