over cocoa

The if I go becomes when. Do you want to spend the last ten years differently. Do you want to live in nickel slots, corrugated housing, bad manners. Dust bunnies and fingernail moons the color of old grease. The happy face of the parabola, but you've got that upside down. Well. Shit. The words bedded by pins to black velvet. Everything about you a fashion accessory. The retaught way to walk. It was neither the temperature nor the season for a scarf, but you went there anyway. The stupid places I would never have dreamed of stopping. Idiotsville. Fucktown. The shitfaced sidewalk. You awaken from a dream into another dream. You rise from a dream of water into a dream of walking. Madly populated by willows. Unsympathetic tigers. Seconds to live, seconds to live.

The 30-minute train and the 30-year blow

Crosswalk boots. The lost collar. Excuse me
may I. He sits and shortly thereafter it's his twin.
At some point in the steady fill
you reconsider your decision.
If you were a roof what color
would be your shingles.
The words fly up the mountain.
I love you like copper.
Like rungs nailed into telephone poles.
Equal divisions of light.
In the bird's flight
a heavy reliance on feathers.
You told me you didn't believe in the distance.
I countered with window bars,
the compost box,
an interpretive charley horse in the sheets.
Three blocks to the wind and everyone a brown garage.
The old woman moaning in pain:
The __________, she explained.
Light sockets and eyes.
The world a retarded symphony.
The largest conceivable saxophone and no chance of reeds.
But! Plenty of step ladders and hats.
If you are the car, I am the yellow medallion.
And exactly what good is the yellow medallion, you ask.
Exactly no good whatsoever, I reply.

Shyness is nice

Plastic gray shoes.
Cinder block smiles.
I never asked to be cognizant.

All this wanting flutters around like a moth.
All this sleeping keeps
making me awake.
I never asked
to be the woman in the hat,
the dog in the bag,
the mouse on the cat on the dog.

I never asked to have bones.

I asked for two tickets, Eddie Money style.
I asked for two tickets and a wonderful life, although not necessarily
in that order.
I asked for a slight cessation in stupidity,
a better blender, or lacking that, a
better blended drink.
A woman to love me forever. Snap!

I never asked for wings, although if
given the opportunity I
would like to revise my list and
ask for wings.

Yearn upwards, yearn down.

I never asked for a good haircut, nor the hair
in pair to inform it, bigger muscles, a more dashing
line to my spine.
But we may safely take that as a given.
Much like: human
avarice, artifact worship, and termites.
AKA the overwhelming desire
to gnaw.

Against rising water we built the ark.
Against obliteration we capsule-pack seeds.

I never asked for double-edged tape,
fingerprintless glasses, life
without smudge.

Why is the idea of an apocalypse not
completely distasteful to me?

In another life you
are the samurai, the
inventor of the light bulb, the best
stone-skipper to come out of Derry in the
last 50 years. In another life I am the
housewife, a hang glider, the undisputed master
of the abacus.

I never asked for what wasn't.
I never asked you
to masturbate away hope.

Thanks, Allen

Body I lose faith in you still.

Body the crestfallen have come back to you. Unlikely prodigals in the shape of a shoe.

Body I lay with you and overhead the satellites are wistful.

Why is it no one steps forth and announces us free?

Body we've been together a long time, and although the relationship has been fruitful, perhaps we should consider parting ways.

Body we've had a good run but the door is open.

In the night we waited under pillows and even then there was fear. The fear was black. The night was black. Black, black, black.

Body why the attitude.

Once when I was five I held my hand to the sun and I swear I could hear you through my bones.

Body don't look now but I think I've had a vision.

Bodies everywhere and why do they do it.

A massacre of thumbscrews. Televised canings and precision holographic nightmares. Three old crones still singing around the fire.

Body no one's forgotten oblivion but it's just not polite to say.

Cheat codes unlock the magnificent weapons.

Body up up left right down.

Body we shall recalibrate the soulless and toast victory with green tea.

Fifty-two years and what have we gained.

Body I don't think of my father. But when I do I think he was a good man. This is the softness of later life.

In purple fur we took to the streets to lay the new empire. Aloft the purple flags.

Body I don't believe in Rome or in anything.

Body where will it end.

Louie's

To delineate
To encircle
To congratulate and
to weep.

Whenever anyone adverbalizes
uncontrollably
it always to my mind
brings the bowels,
the exploding wanton
love
of the bowels, of all the parts of you,
nether
or otherwise
even those alien and
antithetical, the hummingbird
or clockspring
that took you last Tuesday
to Louie's,

the bar I never
go to, on
the street I care always
not to see.

Louie's, where
you stood
two drinks too long, through
two too many
glasses
of wine.

I don't want you
to tell me
his name,
or at what drink it was
he paid
instead
of you,
or how
beyond
the basic
physiological
structure
his cock
worked differently
from mine.

I spend entire
evenings
considering
those differences.

Considering
a yellow
car ride,
a purple
stairwell,
bedspreads,
Tuesdays,
Louie's,
the end.

ordinarily

Ordinarily
the empty.
Ordinarily
the blank.
The finger-smudged
convex, the perfect
eyebrow, and tell me
what is
older: the shotgun
or the mouth? the heart
seen only
as a bird's nest
of ink. the realization
of one forty three,
of thirty five zygote
and egg.

"for miles the city"

for miles the city
for inches the night
for centuries the ice
for five years the fingernails,
your face

for miles the night
for miles the knife
for miles the trees
for miles your belt
for miles the question
for miles an answer,
the right

for centuries the ice, the highball, the glass

for miles the wind
for miles the thinking
for miles the sent

for miles the insinuation
for miles the grief

for miles your fingers
for miles the ringing
of the telephone

for miles the photograph
for miles the gray

for miles the ending
for miles the end

for miles the ringtone
for miles the bend

featherbound

Featherbound
Oraga
Gypsum and moss
Clevinger post

Why did I
walk away from you

I wasn't happy then
and I'm not happy now

The daylight cuts into the water
The ocean swallows the sunset
The minnow swallows the whale

Why did I
walk away from you

In a thousand blank rooms
and your breasts I can barely
remember

Transfer slips
Drink rings
Fingerprints

There used to be breathing
in the blackness
The morning
you dropped your scooter
There will be
no more omelets
There will be no more
tea

All the people here wouldn't
fill a glass of you
If I could
be anyone I'd be
the man who told you different

Why did I
walk away from you

march of the stanzas

It was exactly everything:
two brown arms and
the southward-pointing wheel.
The blackbird didn't
have time for your theories
and no one lived
in the concrete
but us.
Remarkably beautiful us!
And about now is the
time for a question.
Or is it?
You asked the blackbird
exactly why we bother
and the blackbird answered,
wings.

OK, for the part
about productivity,
I lied a bit. When
building the tower one
should usually strike
for up. And away! The joyous
lark and
hangover. Don't ask me
to stretch it in all directions,
to translate from the Russian
to your fears. My brain
is a puddle
of infinite depth.

I am a kitten eating cracker jacks.
a shoelace in the trees
a ruby-throated billboard
and a bite off Chekhov's inseam.

How many forevers
will I be able to see
the tree held in sunset light,
leaves bright and brushed
by the wind.
Already
it is gone.

We are out of the night.
We are arrived.

We're in
the dark days,
or so the advertisements
tell us.
Hopped up on facecream
is not the worst
way to die.
Screaming bombs! Screaming
babies!
Why can't we all scream
quietly!
Sometimes
the exclamation mark
is a wondrous
invention. I remember now
I had pledged to scream
Eureka! at least
once last night and at that
I have failed.

Last night I smashed
my lamp against the wall.
Time for a new lamp!
Time for therapy!

You pay for the privilege.
For the white flat front
of the bus.

And then into the folds of your apron
you tucked the knife.

many times

many times in darkness
have i listened
to the last guitar chord
bequeath itself
to the still.
many times hand on
myself have i thought
this is it, the end, no more
root beer. many
times have i ground
the ax, many times
have i wished to be
more a man.
but what else is there?
many times in the darkness
have i wished
for more darkness,
the utter kind, the
soul-sealing
box, but
that's not the kind
they make. apparently.
many times
many times
many times.

oh!

Oh blackened pit of despair!
Let me take you by the handlebars.
Let me fluff for you the pillow. My guts
are fruit punch,
Hi-C fucked open
at two ends
by metal.
It is a good day, the sun
appallingly bright and the sky--
OK, the sky
is hazy. The hydrocarbons
are having a field day, even if
it's the white ribbon kind
that even the fat kid can win.
No prize
for you, blackened pit! Today the trees
are weeping black
lullabies and my sadness
shines like a far boat
on the bay.

recommendations for 30 yrs

live life
like a razorblade. become
beautiful
whenever possible.
encourage
light, spread and
take
sips, sometimes
gulps, sometimes
the whole damn
enchilada all
at once. yours. make
every effort to
surpass
the common verity. read
as much as
is humanly possible,
then ever
so slightly
more. and maybe most
importantly never
forget to
rock,
rock and love,
love and rock and
more of that,
onward, double-bass drums,
howling,
the night.

lupo rima

What we gave
to the wolf
can never be recovered. Even
the strongest
of similes will eventually
leave us, black
as a pocket or
bottled
like the sky. So
don't. I am here
to give you
the rafters. I am
the wolf
with the butterfly's heart.

not finished yet but still

How many more sad
poems than happy ones!
It's all right.
Why borrow another's
broken razor
when what's really wanted
is one's own private hospital
for lost birds.
We all want to be
Frank O'Hara but
it simply isn't practical.
For example,
the single size of pants.
There is so much
to suffer, ice cream
to spill and everywhere
we walk may be
the 101 in rush hour:
to the bathroom at night or
to the kitchen to say,
I need you.

adjective as a noun

hard as an eskimo pie.
hard as as a sheep-shackle.
strong as a bathtub.
strong as a corkboard.
strong as a lipstick.
black as a shoelace.
black as a dollar.
black as a susan b. anthony dollar.
black as a plate.
black as a theory.
theoretical like a beer glass.
theoretical like iggy pop.
hard as crutches.
theoretical as birds' wings.
black as a pocket.
strong as a pocket.
strong as a tub.
bottled like the sky.

two from the iggster

"All I liked to do was walk around the streets with a heart full of napalm. I always though 'Heart Full of Soul' was a good song so I thought, What's my heart full of?
I decided it was basically full of napalm."

"What happened was by the time I finished Raw Power, my standards were different than other people's. That's the only way I can put it. I wanted the music to come out of the speakers and just grab you by the throat and just knock your head against the wall and just basically kill you."

what else are you taking with you? (old)

Kat grabbed a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table, lit one, and lay back upon the couch. She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, savoring the acrid taste. She heard the crinkle of the tobacco burning, watched the thin ember ring work its way up the cigarette as it turned white paper to ash. She counted the rings on the stem of the cigarette, the tiny striated lines marking the paper that held the tobacco. How many rings per drag, per breath, she wondered. She inhaled and watched the rings disintegrate into ashes. The rings of a tree, she thought, rings of the cigarette that mark time’s passage, our life together. This ring for when I met you. This one for we first slept together, and in gratitude you told me that you loved me. Here for your birthday, when we drank too much tequila and I broke all the plates.

alipio

certainly he
can take it,
man the beseiged,
alipio americanus,
chicagoan he who
takes it every night on
3am sidewalks.
the mechanism
is one handed,
american industriousness,
with one movement
the blade, but
the sentiment to use it seems
a most unamerican undertaking,
by this i mean one
must act unencumbered
by forethought, repercussion, as
if one were already
dead. no one
ever stops at 3am, and
thus it is
a wash, a thousand
knives into the eyes
of a thousand draining
shadows,
bootheels and
bootheels' echoes soon
will all just sink
away.

friday

here
my heart
is nothing, her
forehead, tears, her
handkerchief, if
only i had
loved you, streetlights, why
all i see are things
that lie
behind us, baby, i
would have
been brighter, better,
another man
entirely.

not quite weller

hello i am a nothing salesman
i sit alone and wait for endings
once a year i suffer the old folk
it's always good to know where you're heading

that's entertainment
that's entertainment

at age twelve i was a brilliant young lightbulb
by eighteen a pock-faced nightmare
thirty-five and now i know nothing
it's just the wattage that's what i'm saying

that's entertainment
that's entertainment