On the Bed, On Vacation

Sometimes I would rather not begin

by stating the situation in which I sit,

neck bent. Nightly, instead,

I will go to the pool hall

and play half-silently, admiring

broken fans that,

perhaps, cooled a great number of players,

cues in hand, important, blue chalk dusting off their shoulders

like drifting children; they tumble down

covertly, ethereal near the construction site

Oh construction site, in the town in which I was born,

you light up the as if you

were hosting a Hawaiian barbecue,

or perhaps celebrating Channukah,

though that is slightly troubling

as your candles are innumerable and scald

a fantastic after-glow

on the dashboard, dirt piles

and football stadium, drifting children. So, then,

the problem: light, being.

Beams beg for walking upon and

you are months from completion--

no night-watcher will touch

a foot on you, blue-black whale whose mouth glazes

open like candle wax,

except in the future when

children roll their fingers on your cavernous walls.

Trains (completely unfinished)

Opening wide the mouth of night

light is not an oracular ghost,

rather factual: stiff as military starch,

a lampost

trips the dark.

Morning you are woken with

clouds bombastic and purple night

a healed blister

a wisp of cold aluminum

drifting downward from the sky.

A loud breath, the throat tightens

as the whip of an opposite train goes by.

Not Really

Driven like a nail through brick

stick dark as unstuck mud

on the boot left cleaved on the basement rug

a knife poking through a pumpkin

something like breath, a drachma unearthed

by a four year old, cloaked,

shivering: hexagonal,

seemingly gorgeous, a dream--

the picture of horse, the faint upward motion

of coin bounced on the pocket's

inside, it climbs without bearing

right or left, thumb coolly caressing

its image for more than ten years--

time passes, as a pear.

In the thinning, subconscious night

light enters the room like a horse's canter.

Not tomorrow but soon I'll teach my students

about nuance, nooks and crannies

like a young child's hands, clenched

and dripping with fudgicle sweat--

meanwhile the child drips, content,

accepting. I used to think that silence

among two people was awful--

not knowing how to move from one end to

another, thinking, then, about sex, attraction,

interlaced eye contact like gradations of

color. I was constantly adrift. Now,

when I think of things and am with someone

who blinks at me like crystalline winter,

which is her laughter, which is, sometimes,

cold, I don't mind silence: it is part of the process,

the coming up with the idea, the forming,

then the coming out with it: firestorm

of I think I love you or we're missing

soap in the bathroom. Transient night

in Washington, D.C., such transience in this town:

we are constantly disappearing, books

being written, only backwards.

(no title) (i think this is unfinished, and could be added on to) (inspired by Arda Collins "Over No Hills")

And in the deepest

sense, I am looking

for companionship, which for days

and, perhaps, all of March til May,

I had rationalized or

imagined as the recollected

amalgamations of the hands of

two old lovers--

I'm a bit of a cat-burglar in that sense

and freely admit

this at a coffee shop next to

an opened computer

finished latter and two strips of paper

curling around and over themselves--

I read through

so many of my old college papers

looking for something scholarly--

thinking of language and love,

now and then

thinking of the inconceivable

facebook status (wintry,

porcupine-esque, desired, fulfilled,

scared, rounded out,

proud and reasonable, pencil-

thin, as a mollusk

climbing on thin blades of

grass, looking at pretty

girls) but punctuated--

I think I should not eat my words

anymore, I think

I should be putty on the wall:

don't you use it to hang

things, to maneuver and tear

into use for the pleasure

of making your

house a home?

The Unknown Bird (I saw this phrase in an Elizabeth Bishop poem)

The unknown bird sits atop leaves

and leaves of green--jays, pigeons

scooting up against the windows

the swooping, leaving

imprints indicating: birds, birds

this is the oven of us all,

four hundred degrees we simmer

in juices savory with lemon and dill.

Summer bakes us and will never treat us well.

~

Beneath the daytime, people pass each other

on the street. "No one smiles back at you,"

my friend complained. "No one says hi." We

watch as the ladies and gentlemen in

seersucker and fashionable period-dress

cycle by--we snap photos, imprint our

eyes on each gaunt hat and they are

changes as wood drifting down the river changes,

becomes the last sign of life, entering the ocean.

~

If I can swing it, my next lecture

will be titled: For My Next Trick: Residual

Patterns like Electricity Buried beneath the Wood.

Each word will contain sequences,

like bath and both and bother,

path, pith, patter, late, loath, lover.

Judge whether the path in the woods

with broken branches that are stormy weather,

leads out or simply further. The way

gets dark. It is an unabashed lover.

~

The most extreme weather I can think of

is a tornado. When I was young, I looked

out at the tail of Hurricane Emily wagging

darkness and almost filling up the drain pipes.

To have ripped off the roof of a school, to

gauge out the lungs, veins, of trees makes

nature seem overlordish, though it is not, though

we are making it be this way, us, caressing

as two pieces of used uranium nestled in their bed of shale

forgetting, later, that they never had known other than this.

Dating Scene (last poem of the 30 days, one day late)

There is a box that I kept, cellophane

clear plastic sheet, blue exterior.

Inside, a brachiosaurus and water color

of the Hudson seen from Hastings-

on-Hudson. Where is the world you've

built--sapphire stones in groups,

dark seasoning on salads, apples

that break the silences of November.

I'm looking for a Jew, who speaks in

dialectics, whose hues range from green

to the browns around the pupiles, with

hair so curly it is its own forest

and she sings like glory-bound diaspora

like shapes and wavering trees or,

when June hits, dripping popsicles,

her power lies in electricity, her font

is Helvetica and the care she heaves

for the comeliness of things brings power

to this city, she is a glass building bridge

that frames an old post office

she is the camera, the typewriter,

the ribbon stretched across the park,

she slow motion, she is the tide,

she once was. I'm looking for a Jew,

a world to build; can you help with that.

#13: Rain (rain rain rain all day long)

A dance on the garden for three days

rain you are my Rubix cube of night

tell me once again why, on facebook,

your relationship status says single

when my eyes married the sky and

your blackened clouds. I expect,

in the middle of August, you'll

be gone--flightless fox of April.

Let light carry you away moreso than

sour memories of no-fun Sundays; let light

break you apart like exhalations

#12: Rhyme (this was a lame-o rhyme...)

Last night she Topeka

Tonight she'll tell her secret.

#10

Knowing full well that the earth, lizard crawling

on a tilted axis,

would spin upon the sight of her

would that the earth would spin at the sight of her.

She controls the pits of him

the riptides and pools of him

the entrails of him the trails of him

how they blink, would that they'd blink

and set wind lauding the bricks and windows

of city buildings, wings that spin circles

City of spinning circles, would that you

Would, in light of love, int he light

And love would contest not

of its amber vision again,

that is to say, its amber vision is the power

that fills the canyon river and paints it amber.

II (#9, written by people on the street who were kind enough to write something, and a little weirdness at the end)

I would like a life

full of Love

full of expectations, dreams

and hope above all

with trees, rivers, dogs and rain

In a world with trials and tribulations

I find myself searching

Looking for an answer

There once was a girl

who had the whole world.

My most favorite never

have what elephant

Butt: big crazy asophagus

Cherryblossoms, see.

#8: Observations & Anomalies (written at 826DC)

There's a musk ox on the crate!

Parasaurolophus--is anything more unnatural?
Free popcorn--brought to you by Jesus.

Laugh Out Loud: tiny dog, purple leash.

Colest day in April and eating raisin bran.

Do I jog or bike on a Saturday?
Speak Spanish, man, or take a walk; something!

That's my favorite song: Something, Something I Love You.

I don't have anything: bobcat. I don't have anything.

Poem #7: The Charlie Sheen Poem

Mother, I am full of Tiger Blood.

Get me two cigarettes: I've already

smoked the first so you might

as well get three. Have you heard

from the elders, they've found new

boysenberries, each tattoing a name

onto their shrivelled skin: mine.

Lover, find anything other than

wonder, you won't find it.

Bone-Flower Elegy (After Mary Jo Bang & Robert Hayden)

(This one's dedicated to my Aunt Riv & Uncle Josh)

As him, in the dream, as her

as art is constant yet the destructor

of my wrists, I hold this:

I can't even remove my glasses without

not seeing, and that was what

I wished tubes were all we knew

brush past beds as lolling heads

whirred and clucked and snacked on

death crackers, dry and thin.

When I think harder, will you be there,

and what was worse back then

was thinking hard that you both in separate

coffins were not. Eyes dilate faster

what with the drops is the garden

blooming yet, reach to me your hands, I will check

Poem #4, Response

(I forget why I said this was a response...but)

On through an eighty degree night, fact

of warming in the midst of cold April

breeze is blankets, though the sinus headache

and twinging uscles annunciate in my skin

felt hats felt in winter are for tomorrow

newspaper rolls across the street; heat

but the dark of it inside the new

flowers make spring finally here, as if it were

fall but with white instead of fire

Guac (A Found Poem)

(Here, I took pieces of conversation while at a friend's house) (Each line should be cascading...unfortunately, blogger can't do that)

That's a lot of pressure

peanut

hospital

About Ocean City

that one

that was intense lightening

We can wash off the porch

We'll split it three way

Wasteland

I should tell her to clip out

I should tell her to clip out

She's not clipping out

There used to be so much:

He abuses strange materials

You think they'd keep that for next year

So this isn't a documentary.

So this is a documentary.

Poem #2: Three Short Poems at Qualia Coffee

(Here I took lines from old poems that I didn't much like...and took the best lines and added some others)

Whistling through your picturing and finding naught

thou picture, beside

figuring, knit caps, glasses

bees, love, bees.

~

Janis Joplin has a way of crooning to the beads

hung by the sandalwood candles

O Janis, mine own candle

is not sandalwood--I got it at the factory outlet

it smells vaguely of the hanging gardens.

~

I am following the red ribbon attached to my journal

belittle rain fills it up

here is my coffee, I meditate over the cup

30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge!!!

Hi folks, I'm participating in 30 Poems in 30 Days, as part of National Poetry Month! Yay!!! It's a great time to experiment, and have some fun, or be serious and not have fun (but really have fun).

Here's poem #1:

Will you be the ruiner of my objects, climb down my runny eggs

and lay flat on the tongue bedding

with the book of poetry

I am dropped and thump--

dizziness is a towel I wished

upon and get all the time.

Lucky you, jackets hanging on my chair--all you do is be brown

and corduroy and nestle in the corner. Luck you,

vines creeping out of the shelves,

lucky you orange twice bitten,

twice juiced and picked up,

luck you, ruiner of objects, vacuum-er of pens.

Creator and destroyer, where have you been?

Look Out (a very rough, rough poem taking a cue from Josh Beckman)

From the way it looks, the view from the mountain

is just as clearly showing me smog

as the trees directly below my foot.

I remember when I was climbing Torres del Paine
I didn't understand

that not all roads that lead to Rome involve trodden-upon footpaths.

Kneeling on gravel, I prayed each time I grabbed a small tree

it'd hold. The phones almost entirely dead,

we communicated through the one computer

at the hostel, where coffee was strong, and delicious.

I suspect upon the moment that clouds fitted

themselves upon those mountains that rain

poured and pounded like the wind and gave

beauty to those towers. I think I read that.

Do you read? Do you take in air in quick sips?

I think that kind of thing is interesting, like how it howls

in zigzags like a terribly disoriented fox

up steep hills and that birch tree peeling like peanut

butter in a cold, cold kitchen.

I was listening to too much Tallest Man on Earth, and wrote a song called I'm Going Swimming

(this rhymes and doesn't rhyme in parts...it's rough, and if you want to put it to music, feel free. In my mind, it is finger-picked and sung with a lilt, a little fast & folky)

I'm building diamond mines in Africa, my chest.

I doubt the workers will be getting any rest

too soon, but if I were you

I'd think about the cliffs in Martha's Vineyard and if

I were you, I'd paint them just a shade grayer,

or two. At 32 degrees

the snow will pile on my heart and leaves

will tell us stories of the wet and the blue.

If I were you, I'd head off to the south

and there I'd live without the fear

of stains of onion on my fingertips,

then touch my lips. I once heard a story

of a nosebleed that filled the world with blood,

I think it was the Nile, I might have read that

in a book somewhere. Classical literature.

Was it Dante or the Aeneid that said love

was floating above me, floating
like those glass-like bits of beauty

when we look up from under water.

And time, it is reflective of the glass-like

bits of pain, the breath we breathed accidentally again:

sometimes I can't see (x3) when I'm swimming.

One Bedroom

The slip occurs more often at night

Tintinnabulations of brick, rust-colored light

Under the moon, your eyes look soft

Night music, a resting thing

Slower, farther, more patiently droplets walk up the back

Dreams like missing criminals, books like smokers' fingers

Your neon gait as you stride forward to the sheets

The ice of our closing eyes; wide, size; talk with your hands

Brick, brick, brick, night.

I Am Your Golem

Apple me: make me red with grief

and longing, make me green and orange

and golden. I want to bloom

from a flower, stem from your roots

I want you to sway and drop me

until I split open with want.

Bake me, porous and earthenware, put

your everything in me, make me

what you will, bury me

and with one word let me know what heaven

is the ground I walk on before

you un-earth me like a strewn piece of clay.

A Recipe Box

This papyrus is thickened by the roots

of cedars and Lebanese cyprus trees,

granted they travel underground and

papyrus walks in the hands of messengers

but when treating both in this concotion

we must note the irrevoable sameness

of the two: columns and lines like azaleas that

could have blossomed at night,

arctic whispers of solidity, how

smooth they both are upward into the sun--

to make the concoction harden, then,

pull these two elements together with a soluble chemical

and whisper three times like southerly winds.

Curtal Sonnet (revised)

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched

like bejewled 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,

know what it is to crave

a clicking, roaming thirst--

how in a room both whisper and hiss

search.

At Night, Owl's Eyes Reflect Most Everything, While Moons Pass Over (before this was "Concentration Camp")

Lately, I feel uninhabited--waking from dreams

in which I have been blinded by chemicals

pitted against stranger-adversaries

while a faceless, bloodied, ravenous onslaught powers toward me, a sudden wave

rushing, then, through my body

pushing it all back--waking dizzy--

waking later than I wanted to--slugging my hands through

the day--tea and lemon miracle,

ginger and quiet noises of fires,

the shifting of autumn, to walk and see reddened

oaks, then to fall away from the world

at night. When am I ever awake?