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Having darkened my hand with dark ink in
an age when close and
distant are cloudy unaided having
made so much that nobody wants to eat I wait for the latest
historic storm and the
scrape and salt that wakes us too early
or too latemodel mountains pen in
sugared cars I try tolift the snow with a wave
of homemade rhythm into
sky like berries almost blackbut do I fracture some rule with
this spell how many feet do I haveto long for long-lasting mud
and the birds whovisit though we won’t learn
their names this yeareither but the tracks lead
to a curve turningback on itself with a smile
the breath leavesgreen leaves shake
so let’s finish off the crackers
and call them
cookies we can watch
a movie through the neighbor’s
window just
balance on this skull
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abandoned on the icy shore the poem I was sure would turn me into the man who is never asked to wear the gorilla suit at team-building events
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as I write with one foot
stuck in dark mud the otherunresponsive for reasons
I can’t discover lightsflicker throughout the day I’m
more full of fewer thoughts withair enough for me to ascend
the brilliant sharp mountainI have kept my pockets empty for
I have kept my back straight against throughyears of small work and I
see the check on its waybefore I’ve ordered it’s my fault
I should have gotten here as soon asthe neighbors finished dancing
on our ceiling and the skychanged to business casual blue so with
my knuckles sore I crack another nutbut what if one thought survives
somehow the pressure of spaceas the small stones crawl from the sea
wall after the grey is goneand we work into the overhyped
night sponsored by what you would ratherremember a castle visited
through a dream that always asks too much
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the secret decoder ring she was buried in the meadow where she first was offered the crown and its dangerously circuitous instruction manual and the peculiar delicacies that only appear once the night is nearly gone to birdsong
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what would it sound like
to walk out on the soundgulls chase
gulls for a bitthat sound
breathing
needlesso I hope for green
through the still black
door to see color to
burst into bloom into
color burst and burstwhat thoughts I would have liked
putting them on a shelf orbut what would it sound like
opening my mouth the waythe white heron hides its neck
am I too latedo I keep
taking notes on sheets of ice
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with our top ten favorite escape routes
blocked by the Wal-Taco Bellrizon
Forest Fire we need a self-care momentso ask the app politely not to track
my suicidal cycles yes you’re right
about the screams and the force of friction
that grinds momentum to athough officially we did enjoy and
positively review his album of dogs
snoring once the spring had lost its youthfulspring we waited for the next
mandatory office partyand with a little effort
we drank it down despite
what we knew but faster andthough we seem to be getting
off topic here is something
you’ll need to convincingly
say if you want to move up
to the rank of cannibal
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it should be more than cotton
candy though I lack
a recipe my hands have just
this tiny pen filled with
latency and the ladder is rottenhow many more nights
the sun bobs up and down
I look the other way that burning
you say it’s the weekend well why
not warp the mirror a little moreI can’t remember
why I entered this raceand I want to go to war with
each slender shadowmy feet must be cut from my shoes as soon
as the sun returns some color to those skulls
from under a rock hear me sing and walk on
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waiting for the final
misstep I stay inside
air conditioner ping
tink heavy dark air I
make spear points for some self
I wish I could discard
that sinking twist in the
gut deprive the fall of
all color but the game
gives up and talks about
dreams of cooking techniques
sneaks under floorboards after
brandy and cigars in
an old book and then
we may taste something new
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still searching for the new sound for so long that the trees we planted in the wild days have made it to the other side of the desert and at night we hear heavy fruit drop sonorous into still water but this is not enough there is still a hair unreachable in the throat in the morning we find the ruins of another city it must have been spectacular with those stones in the sky
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who birthed
a stone
shining
through cries
broken
picked it
up kiss
kiss put
it down
this white
page still
hates me
no that’s
silly
after
all the
great sea
flashes
stop that
the night
humid
for what
was his
name John
didn’t
he have
a big
something
car and
maybe
I’m wrong
headed
eyebrows
foreheads
who walk
by my
window
why do
they breathe
so close
to me
so pick
up the
white page
try to
forget
the names
swarming
the heat
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in a smear of ink but let’s play
Yahtzee so tired of all my
jokes but how much for
anyway turn off the hearings
and listen to my stomach
full of primordial
soup for a bluer sky when
we all have a moment
to floss again and plant
some grain or at least
some new suspicions
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In the morning you can reach out and see on the breeze in the mind the damp stone tightening straps keep him in place the pain in his cell the confession conversion meaningless at this point or the life by the sea rough stone grey the children I pushed through and lined up in the earth and the cliffs so beautiful lonely one time one town on the frontier barely built I can still smell new cut wood that simple home sun creeping through seams in the wall another sunny place warm weather sweet breeze always fetching writing down his many thoughts the wine was good
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while the computer is updating I dare to go outside & immediately swarmed by a cloud of cicada who clumsily ram into me the neighborhood cats gather to investigate insects collapsed exhausted and finding it boring 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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can’t remember if I’ve read this one before and dotting the letters that need sway into a ditch made muddier by my mouth and how do you say all the that’s inside behind mirrors twisted down a blind alley stuffed between cushions on a couch no one likes but no one wants to give away
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In Which a Poem Is Spontaneously Generated by Accidentally Recording a Conversation with the Dog Sitter and Some Impromptu Training while the Phone Was in My Pocket
I know drop her off she was just like would not my friend no actually no she gets in a Miller play salsa with her squirrel she was in back with the rest of it easy so good for shaking so much just a little bit of chicken on top of her food or fussy or whatever any money right away when I get herself but she yeah she gave it to a couple other ones by five or some fun a lot of like painting this weekend we got company coming up in North Carolina next weekend South Carolina to do some painting touchup stuff it’ll be hot in it OK thanks for absolutely you’re right oh boy what inside inside good girl outside not inside inside inside inside inside good side OK inside the dorms OK Minnie
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shopping with my eyes closed and the fist but there is still space for a three point turn the car alarms deep into a special night when the landing was postponed sure every other day is a fine place to start but I know you’ve already tried and for all the good it did I may as well have had decaf but there are the inconsequential moves we make that turn heavy when it wears off and of course I have to admit that these lullabies are lovely so many things to click before retiring with that same headache under the same lonely star
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before I’ve started I
give up on this little
story surrounded
by the almost noise
of air conditioners
slow unseen aircraft
the last breath of
why can’t I juststop me if you’ve heard this one
but no it’s just
from here we see
trees burning birds
thud to the ground
apartments collapse
spilling canned peas
and plastic dolls into
a stream and clouds
and clouds and clouds
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where the skin grows thin a sharp moon pokes through bare branches
(First published in Heliosparrow.)
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it then sails over that hill like hot oil down your leg but you need to get dressed for the evening execution though since all the cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll to the river past the perimeter guards and through the rubble hole in the southwest corner and hopefully no one else has found this place with its improbable stashes of obscene poetry journals good to eat for 1,000
beers we drank in rooms so completely similar to this dusty light we may have been poor but by God we can still be now where was I going with this nearly full shopping cart the sky is getting dark the bushes full of feet
rabbits in the parking lot obscured by the halo of the horned moon
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so let the long way round wrap its feelers around your best escape plan though they never seem to notice the little ways you applaud their best blunders & it’s over before you know it while several species of spider set up medical offices for the oncoming collapse but wait you say when you realize that the manifesto you’d been working on has slowly transformed into a cookbook
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riding the hills of Hellas I think of
. The landscape rich with bright
rock parting soil old pines older
mountains. That alphabet’s sounds
and symbols that with a little practiceour tour guide’s tense wanders—
Persephone is going to be taken
the world has been punished
Xerxes again is moving on Athens
Odysseus will have a clever idealoud and sure sun on white stone
the temple of Zeus here
and in ruins
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This bullet is for you he said and poured another drink. Of course when the robots take over no one will notice. Har har gulp. But should I really tell you about the feeling that came over me one day vast as the sky while I watched insects swarm a red mass of hair and bone by the side of the road. If only. The day was hot and he had just been forcibly removed from office so we thought we’d throw a little party. Little did we know that her speech would sour the whole thing and make each of us long for the home we would never see again tucked into the side of a mountain where dogwood blooms and that little pond with so many frogs in spring. But that’s the way it goes. When they bring it out you try to eat with a smile.
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such energy though these eyes still blurry
but the day begins early & takes the blame
for every flattened patch of fur on the highway
for the last two weeks and what do I know I
wasn’t there but you feel the flies surround
you & maybe we got off on the wrong
foot and maybe that’s all there is now
in the still heart of the great machine a
few sparks with dances to come and yes we
can agree that I use the word too often
but it’s still the right one for the job and
out in the forest it sniffs a mushroom
and moves on since the field guide’s at home and
doesn’t want to take any chances
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the rain over my eyes a plastic yogurt container dug up after thirty years with a note asking about the neighbor’s rhododendron
and I want to quit this empty Dorito bag instead of violets world
but I lapse into something like prose and the gnomes leave in disgust their thimbles still half full of sticky beer
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something other than the hook in your mouth? Hold the end of this
(First published in Under the Basho.)
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that sentimental day we recite our atrocities a la mode
which rhymed at the time though not in retrospectthey say it may never be untied though
will serve as a warning to newcomers
peddling some dewey gospelthe car wouldn’t start as we had not
calculated for the variance in the
new gravity and its effect on the ancient
components that likely will takeweeks to fabricate but if you’re still with
me we can descend into the canyon
and investigate the rumors
of this miraculous vegetablelike drawing a hand with the hand that’s drawing the hand
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her toaster,
now a senator, votes on
the moon’s independence
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There’s this river underground
the birds sing of it as though
it were a gem as though a gem
were something they had interest in
though perhaps my translators
but no don’t let me blame them
this river at times packed
with grey slush moving fast
enough that the fish wish they
had eyes but here on the lost
real estate development the
philosophers have left
with the fabled food trucks
that won’t return
other animals 