that clouds are cities of unmouthable
decisions or a tea of argonaut
leftovers a dogsorrow of train
timetables for an under-inflated
life in a book I once trapped over it
said it was time for his eye to be plucked
out to make room for the new vegan junk
food smoothie place and crickets who never
ask why the abandoned architecture
shambles to a dented alphabet and
the wind while you were away rewrote the
endings of all your short stories to warm
up this salt in the shipwreck’s eye rolling
clouds to smoke trees soon will learn to laugh
Tag: clouds
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Forget what you know sit softly let
it lull you with the sound of hundreds
of pens simultaneously
writing up all those mistakes think of clouds
over that chasm you love Forget
it start again don’t think of that
tickle in your throat keep sharpening
your teeth we’ll see if we can’t find
a few layers of breathable
fabric as you start off Forget
the ad that’s still following you stinging
wind a heavy boot brittle grasses
brightly crunch give the pills a chance
while you stumble on ice in darkness
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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
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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
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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
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with the storm passed on her side the dog the
drone of the fan and what else may stroll through
this thickness what can save bruised fruit and/or
we should wrap this up before we all give
up again but let me start again itall just went so far no matter how I
tried part of me still longed to name a new
kind of apple the ragamuffin the
sesquipedalian splendor but Ican’t go back to that store anymore though
hope one day a corner of a part of
the mystery may but look the slow blueof one of my favorite skies I feel
so attracted to the clouds, those edges
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always starting new epics but never
finishing and the work somehow better
for it. The bastardbut how do you talk to that hateful child?
He turns every knife into praise and gold
for his flaking skinnot enough is made of his resolve to
deny the diagnosis at every
opportunity.They say that those under the southern stars
rarely fish but rely on the viscous
writhing things wrestled from clouds.
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A special Samhain section of Fragment…
it’s certainly not the worst assignment you’ll ever get just wait until they ask you to pluck the legs of another cicada from between their teeth you’ll want to go back to using a toothpick to dislodge the dirt from the fingernails of our fresh corpses and find a way to harness that moisture before the reluctant clouds encircle the city once more as they slowly waft from the mouth of a lost puppet by way of the mouths of several mice who had feasted on the rusted flesh of a half-eaten apple in the dust of a reluctant decision
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please ask me to
kill for you ask
me to imprint
each foot with the
ridges of my
best teeth ask me
to comb the clouds
into candy
for the joy of
toothless trash cans
throughout the land
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Sonnet
skimmed emails we deleted too quickly
may have mentioned the forest of bright spears
and ships ready to launch, but once we saw the
reports on the quarterly report from
Ichthyosaur & Associates we
had no doubt what they were up to with those
color-shifting lobbyists and gift baskets
reeking of brine and though they wrote of missed
opportunities no one missed the flotsam
flecked with blood, tossed by ceaseless waves that could
break on our belovèd beans just learning
to climb towards those heavy clouds pierced by sun—he stopped, mumbled something roses fingers
dawn and walked away from the empty chairs
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red the dog barks at sunset clouds but not forever
(First published in Under the Basho.)
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partly sunny and less humid with an appalling face in the clouds
(First published in Heliosparrow.)
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If/Then
if fire cracks the mirror
then clouds may part to reveal her faceif night passes like a kidney stone
then the box is returned unopenedif the damp gets irrevocably in
then an unequivocal answer will be foundif the suburbs are raided
then your recipe will be forever changedif we ignore first principles
then insects will tire of carrying us
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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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though the team was broken up we still hoped that somehow we would triumph over the league of loners though we were weak and needed supplies and spicy food with which to regain our competitive edge and as the day finished drawing obscene doodles in the clouds through the gaps in the tall buildings we occasionally glimpsed the blimps of our enemy scanning for weaknesses to exploit though this all feels like ancient history since the hastily written but iron-clad armistice ushered in the new golden age no one really wanted
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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
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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
other animals 