and woke. At the forest’s center parting branches
-
Three Dreams
some strange squash
I don’t know how to cook
they hand melike a prize
though they won’t let
me text
someone I need tourgently
watching
the clock…
My punishment was just.
Though I had no
memory of the site they
said I visited. The onethat made the commuter
jet come crashing down. But
for some reason I could not
deny the charge. I tellthem I would like to be
hanged, but they say they
don’t do that anymore.…
We talk to the chef/owner of this
sushi/chocolate shop
and tell herbecause we’re friends
about another meal
we enjoyed recently then
she’s notpaying much
attention maybe because
she’s busy preppingshe says we should be
carefulof the knives in the
other place I want to
ask what she means and
-
my boss, a collector of insomniacs walks the halls on stilts, examines every coffee cup, for progress and, avoids the stairs today is Friday, and the small dog always by her side, will have its nails cut, when we hear the yelping we instinctively check our 401(k)s, and count the leaves of the cypress, as our greatest asset, in a moment the weekend will, begin and the dreams we share, shift to images of pirate ships, chained to a monstrous wave of silver fish
-
Or a Musical
like a bird flying
past the window you
notice in the corner
of your no let’sassume it was a bird and
the little early
spring flowers by
bending
down tolook blue
white purple you want toreach for it
but don’t
want to scare
away that thoughtrunning down the corridor
rattling
every knob
like one of the
doomed youroot for
in a horror movie
-
Excerpts from My Autobiography
xxxxx
once the image has life an emptiness says
it will always be so I stare into the distance
blind to trees and flowers
begging to be born but the refrigerator hey
are we doing stream of consciousness
cool and the snow gets sharp in these
huge piles in the back of the lot
days later my handwriting
starts to rot never to recoverxxxx
suicide off the table you start working again
with a miniature saucepan and the clock trying
to rid the mind of all the rules you’ve
made &
feel your hand tight around the thick
rope now only good for that
silly exercise you lovexxxx
away from the neighbor’s dog
across stinging fields we grow
smaller so slowly we don’t
notice until grasshopper parts become
our yard sticks and blades
of grass jostle and topple us in this
dream-familiar landscape we
learn secrets of slow growth, the rootlike
lineages of wormkind and a love
of the sweetness that writhes up from
dark earth and we long to pass
it on to our children who have
grown monstrous in the orange light
-
The New Sound
those faithful plants I neglected still shelter my [redacted] even after the party is long gone the conversation buried in coarse sand
you mentioned that the fashion this year will be nothing but zippers and mismatched shoes so leave me out of it and let me sleep in the sweet green morning calls dropping dew
but at my back I sometimes hear Noel Fielding reciting bad poetry in my ear and
perhaps the goal is to write something that no forget it yes I see you noticed it too but went back to your puzzle so thanks for that
-
Remember to
Forget what you know sit softly
lulled by the sound of hundreds of
pens simultaneously writing down
your mistakes think of clouds
over that chasm you loveForget the ad that is following you
keep sharpening your teeth into points
we’ll see if we can find a knife and a fewlayers of breathable fabric as you
start off stinging wind your boot brittle
grass bright crunch beneathForget it and start again don’t think of pathogens
the tickle in your throat give the pills a chanceoutside flashes of red flowers one ant
carries his scrap of stone down into the dark
-
the difference between scrap and fragment wind
in the rain in the trees but once I’ve walked up to
this cliff then what maybe later in the day an aching
back full of whisky isn’t the best time to start but
well this is getting too prosaic so get the clipper &
the magnifying glass there’s only one place you or I
can start and that’s with these badly drawn feet
bleeding into the stones of the sharp here & now
-
the right eye, even after graduation, and at the start of a successful career, produces worms, which
-
And Again And
Cold words in winter.
.
Fleeing, familiar.
.
No
leaves falling.
.
in an unlined notebook thoughts
downhill
.
gods of our youth now chicken salad
.
What, do I have to start again?
.
Happy there. Though the
smoke. Through?
.
Still
strings. A glimmer in the
sky. Awful.
.
What she
said. What she meant.
.
No, leaves falling. Earth spins.
.
blossoms
.
in the prison
of the rib cage
.
nock
.
on bars
that
aren’t there
-
Traffic in town
like your thoughtsheavy and slow
curse honk squeal why can’t they justyet some come and go
so
easy nothing to improveand you are
the gears gas leatherette
going somewhere
very important or
back from
you forgot wherebirds follow
the breezebut
stopped
on the road fluids
leaking
crackedoh no
not again
other animals 