as Paul Anka licked those white cubes
from between her dainty toes, I
knew it was too late for me so I flew
into the nearest more or less wood to
let my momentum slow to sap and
all those fictional women of
my graphic novel past were just
as complicated as needed
and as whatever else and, less
but I hear like is drawn to like
or the other way around I
know I should just go out and play
apart from now there is no other day
but this urge to heap mountain on mountain
Tag: mountain
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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.
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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
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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
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I am miserable / too full
of the wrong / energy / why did
n’t I / start this differently
but instead say the sea / say the
stars somehow / in those distant dawnsbefore days / what do you want / from
me the mountain / rising up / sure
and slow but / these flowers / have not
yet shared / / a single secret / throughstamen or petal / and does this
dream / always have / to have a / car
chase with an / explosion / but thepull of some / feeling I don’t / want
but will / now set in / moist concrete
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Fragment 71
to keep my optimism fueled for this thing. I still can’t tell if it’s working or not or if it ever will, but can you
it’s not the worst assignment you’ll get just wait until your task is repeatedly plucking the legs of various cicada from the gaps between their rotting teeth you’ll want to go back to blatantly secreting soil from the fingernails of fresh corpses before those hoards encircle the city once more fulfilling the prophecies that
really judge that standing in the middle of it? I’m still not sleeping very well. I think I might have to go back to journaling
wafted from the mouth of a lost puppet by way of the museums of mice who have feasted on the rusted flesh of a half-eaten apple in the dust of a reluctant decision gnawed on for twenty years which is whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the bland job I neither hate nor love or bow to the boughs of trees the crowded subway the bass line of a new song deified in the sun-symphony of her hair her smile but can worn images steer worse to better the cards show no numbers no suits just your reflection in the mirror across the street beyond the sparse forest with darkness closing in to sleep
before bed. I did do an extra half hour of meditation last night and I think that did help me get to sleep. But then it was so hot in the bedroom that I was sort of tossing and turning a lot. And I think M was feeling the same.
softly beneath the black warmth of the legs of your horse the river talks loudly tonight and through its nature imparts a restless feeling to those who love to be astonished so we may once again make a claim on the portion of the kingdom we believe is our birthright but the verification process is tedious and it’s more often the other way around grasp it too tightly and it shatters cuts your hand and everyone at the party looks and I bought so many things that had to be indexed labeled filed maintained to feel some emotion in regards to consumer accessories my skin was getting better but yet it was not enough I could say that my plan was not quite world domination though I knew what I would have to do but one day the mountain carked
and ran through what was left of the town the people stood by as they had for so many generations and I felt the wind on the sand on my thighs looking for an escape well I might be busy that evening but we’ll see it doesn’t sound enticing but I can’t say that to him you know how sensitive he is about these things and it’s only now that he has found the tools with which to deconstruct the various elements that form afterward instead of watching the snowball
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Here’s a very happy Friday excerpt from Fragment…
would lead you to believe I do appreciate it all and other times I can manage a laugh that wiggles out from under tons of earth in which I tried to dance but perhaps soon I can emerge though the soil is cool and cruel though maybe I’ll stay here with the low rumble of worms and voles in my ears and make a home no matter what they dump on top of me or how the plates collide one day this dump could be a mountain range higher than the Himalayas with me pressed between an ancient deli meat
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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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Recovered Notes on the New Planet
the sky moves so fast a fragrance like marshmallow
what I thought a purple crystal dissolved in morning dew
evidence of the old civilization if the light is just right on the microscope slide
meters into the crevasse wrongly assumed it was scree
fields like maple syrup over a fresh argument
a language I’ve yet to master sneaks into my notes
returning to a previous marker an acrid smell sunken ground
stuck inside the tent autocorrecting hail
rivers like a laughing bandage to forget the insults of rock
the way forward often loops around in sharpened midday rain
what I wrote on a rock ran away
this mountain like melted gnomes who to name it after
a quiet spot by the river eaten by these mineral teeth
the silicavore’s thought projections jostle the rover’s gyro
a fine web like cotton candy spreads toward the sea by evening
I think there are dogs in the clouds
a dry brown leaf and voices in the wind almost enough like home
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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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other people’s postcards
and the problems you carried from home but
with new hats in the shop they said you
must visit after something muttered
about the mountain air some vista orchirps back and forth in brightening dark cold coffee
though later and once the music mercifully
stopped and after the little chapel was
broken down and the beams
turned into pens for disappointed
tourists the sound of the little fountain
carried us
awayif we knew where we might go the precious
shell the shadow inside
other animals 