Plain American Language

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

Thursday, December 29, 2011

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.