Plain American Language

I cut a sliver/of WC William's finger
and placed it inside/my philosophy...

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Concentration Camp (I dont know why it's called this, it just came to me...an overpresiding feeling?)

Like a stifled sneeze, I feel uninhabited
at times--waking from dreams
in which I have been blinded by chemicals
and pitted against stranger-adversaries,
and while a faceless bloodied, ravenous
onslaught powers toward me
a sudden wave rushes through my body
pushing it all back--waking dizzy--
waking later than I wanted to--
slugging my hands through the day--
a miracle is tea and lemon, a miracle
is ginger and quiet noises of fires
and the shifting plaid and flannel
of autumn, to walk and see reddened
oaks, then to fall away from the world
at night. And in this am I ever awake?

Monday, November 15, 2010

St. Patrick Duck

Now is when I climb trees,
cerulean sky and oaks and others
of red ochre (once love was
red ochre). Shaded underneath
these feet like roots
are timely footprints meshed into cement--
these are names these are rowboats
twisting around lakes
in Maine and Manitoba
where I am eating chuck steak
repeating again and again solitude,
solitude, solitude, fire, duck
and then am happy in certain
moments of spring.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Curtal Sonnet

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched
like bejeweled solitude,
a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,
hard as lust, a violin tremolo,
a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl
tight against my jaw--how the undead
measure God stackable as glass
how room for both whisper and hiss
a clicking, wound--this terrible lust
to know what it is to crave, to roam
searching.