No More Digitalis

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Jump the Piper

"rape him with extreme prejudice"

[shadows)

THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

While a passenger in Iowa City

we passed at dusk a cemetery

and from its gates emerged

the tall Irish wolfhound

lumbering like a Baskerville

beast in need of feeding.

Later that evening

in front of a restaurant

while smoking cigarettes

we looked down

and there on the ground

laid the cordial canine breathing.

The beast was calm

and his guardian was around

the corner speaking of wandering

grave-rows while the dog

came along and chased

ghosts and rainbows.

CHEATING AT SOLITAIRE

Showing restraint--

too little, too late--

fine, fine, everybody's

prolific and ingenious

no need to intuit

to breed to screw it up

just some idiot idea

of love, just a theory's

hooves, pirate Jack's

one-eyed suicide,

birthday thalidomide

surprise—look Ma,

no legs!

CONQUERING NEW ORLEANS

It will never not be too fresh

to recall in this life unless come early death

with a ten-day pass to bacchanal

to die by pride and insolence

fueled by lightning and a numb face

and raw prostitutes with the death wish

fatalist chemists of power doom asleep

SO MANY DEAD FRIENDS

Miss like hell the mind

when I thought it superior

when I was fifteen

when I had a healthy body

and couldn't wait to destroy it.

Gangsters don't worry about it.

I do not prefer anything at all

about California except for desert.

The rental throbbing, guppies

on the handle with harmony.

Hotel suite shellfish on white.

Art deco pastel trauma mural.

Chew on green in chemical slaw,

only the color strongly brewed.

Irish Spring, Shamrock shake.

Pole Position. Rod Laver Adidas.

Correspondent shapes and clover.

Mistletoe torture with crook-neck.

The stuff of dreams. Ideals made

of a lack of brotherhood myth.

Stones of accord, milliner hood.

What about the we-don't-know

and the madam's charging toys?

The day-plugs of acrylic clogs.

Revert. Backward. Regression.

Not past-life, this fucking life.

I don't care for much these days.

Joylessly biding and distracted.

Deliberate, constant diversion

is a talent worth cultivating.

This Place Has Never Seen Light

step tentative reverse, back into slippery alley, galosh displacement

like the waters of crossing by Xerxes, bridges floating, armies come

in step with melody, harmonic bones, yellow fife, moose offal drums

to map the city, in a novel of exploration, the cartographers theorize

and drafting tables are nudged into breaking the unbreakable window

against parody, against the charity parade, from where comes energy

did it belong to the weavers of dreams, did it scream at the snowmen

the drifters of plow inertia, banks of marshmallow down shellacking

a great river of oil spillage from pine timber pilings, thousands old

I will not be careful in the cold, I know its secrets like a family recipe

the courageous ground frozen after drowning in fickle liquid regrets

backward walking, turnstile dancing, look out for the demons in red

ghosts of unknown authors fixing ribbons to mosaics of typewriters

under a war-lost blood moon, I quit listening to her after firestorms

the sand cannon shuffling a mortar round's two-places-at-once part

call it god-like, a tremor of doctor-boxing, a daft dentist chisel point

a courier of girls named Ivy, a strand of antebellum hair in a comb

the foods of nothing, the pirates of plumbing, maybe mud wrestling

continue the chorus, strum the neck with bated breath, charm hook

censured by vice in presidential longing, dreams deferred to dreams

hang-gliders crashing so the cables connect to rock's-pinch, a noose

people fall apart, nobody knows the trouble I've seen, fought w/God

and lost, because of my low self-esteem, my extremes of conviction

my lack of comfortable disposition, glut of love of can't accept at all

Denouement

I know I don't know, where are your tickets 

and passport, did you lock the back, dig holes 

for the children, sleep me off in a tree, away 

from Jesus and this awful species, with oars-

men for the friction, the water-weight 

of weakness, a skeleton bell and slumber 

with witches from a place you've never 

heard of, and the dawn announcement 

of a bantam machine clocked with an axe 

on a lamppost near the cemetery gates behind 

this town, when will they cease the upkeep 

of these gardens of iridescent skin, bullion 

fringe from bone shivers, a solemn history

belonging to a callipygous clerk of twenty

and gouged eyes of game, just a sport-fuck

I've eaten the heart of my enemy chief
and the tender eyelid flesh, anus-like;
and the legs of an heiress on the cape
in winter, sand-blown peaks to sea crust
over a howl of ghost-gull chatter, gone
at once, beach glass the work of a loner
jilted into needles, creaked wood deck,
faded, painted, forgotten at the bottom
like a rich history lithographed in ink;
hydrophobic, tempestuous catastrophe

Manufacturing Formica Factory Flora

An inflatable bowel dildo born a butt balloon of bursted poop
A mongrel elf sputum shaping torch of Bakelite el-tripped Loop
As it lays a game of suits setting places upon a quattro tableau
A sentient willow sprig and apiary maple branches from groves
Am I the outlet sex of nail-file pricks all in electric light
A deluge/barrage of jetsam/flotsam displaced by Armalites

___________________________________________________

An inflatable bowel dildo

born a butt balloon

of bursted poop

A mongrel elf

sputum

shaping torch

of Bakelite

el-tripped Loop

As it lays

a game of suits

setting places

upon a quattro tableau

A sentient willow sprig

and apiary maple

branches from groves

Am I the outlet sex

of nail-file pricks

all in electric light

A deluge/barrage

of jetsam/flotsam

displaced

by Armalites

I dropped off her confession in a handmade paper envelope
after editing it for scope and incriminating content I hope

she didn't have much to say about the delay
about the killing fields she had overseen
about the starving families whose famine
she had the honor of starting with disease

modern cargo cults and dolphin rape caves
make the news these days and my pulpit's dry
making more opportunity for great difficulty
whatever she wants she gets so long as I stay high

I lapped up her recession with wringing rags cut from curtains
after tearing down the diffusion for blinding by reflections of suns

all the raw materials converge there at high volumes
noble gases, hydraulic vaults, rogue elements of Hades
Osiris a spiritual labyrinth of hedged bets and solemn
charges of forgotten felonies from dangerous physiques

the angels are around me pressed against the wall
nauseous and oblique in the art of rock's hard place
where fascination ends the teenage feeling of good
you didn't need to worry about the excess of belonging

you didn't need to misdirect the directionless with death drive
the dirge song of missed callings without adjustment to thrive

a stained slut on a carapace couch of slotted spoons resolving
a cane of wickerwork candlewax coating a candlestick chandelier
a falling tank of solvent and winning girls of old easy jobs laving
a seminal flux of rewind fluid an acid bath in cock-a-doodle cheer

Hurt

I saw your picture of the old man dying on the train
I saw a middle-aged victim of stabbing violence again
outside the bar window in Uptown over a gram toot
of killer blow and a dark glass of stout and loud rock
I saw ice form over the face of dead junky in the park
I walked every street of Manhattan with one eye open
while the other slept off a needle exchange and bought
lots of expensive new clothes up top before walking back
I never thought about the novel I meant to remember
even though it sat tight in my back pocket on hard boots
I waited too long for a cab and felt the wind waver over
Brooklyn Bridge while the river sounded like a hole
in the ocean and the city swizzled backward into cold
my sweetest friends stayed in the burned out buildings
and my plane was delayed long enough for one phone call
I didn't have the nerve to let you know about my plans
to disappear in spite of my inability to extract myself
and without conscience sever every tie I knotted long ago
threadbare and textile bundles behind a pipestone tomb
fetal cliff mummies a warm and osteolytic breath from
the farthest star cackling back infinite bad paintings
created in earnest with total lack of technical capability
but full of the fullest colors of fall and compulsive creation
I ran from a nightmare and lied to the slighted dealer
I hugged a pervert on the Spanish lawn near a fountain
I gave away my freebase gear to the hotel receptionist
I left the last time and laughed nervously the whole flight
I realized trying not to start lines with myself and I
was getting us both nowhere and I could not articulate
so I decided to just start lines with whatever I felt like

Take It Easy

tied an awkward object to a coarse rope and dragged it thru mud water

slush and brushwood and half-constructed site waste to a pole set in concrete

several factors overlaid a pin cushion rubberband network of push-tacks

two locked bathrooms and empty coffee pots and spilled grounds

a taskmaster cutting mailing addresses off magazines
but what about the skeet pull thing and clay pigeons?

got it to the corner of Romeo and Juliet

where the double-barrel banged open the parlor door

and smelled the dew-peaks on her downy tuft

before sidling upstairs to find the indigent boy

cowering under the girl's covers with a sack of wet mice

and the urge to purge a virgin of her vestal absence
this is where I get off

rescinded wind, maybe a fortune at that end, my ravaged miscellany
pristine as the first falls, the kickback mist, heaven's hand in laser light
in the dark show, forestalled shadows, just a few days sowing the meadow
leave it to a limited air supply, and maybe, the organ lungs will go free
the colliding spoons of security, an anthem hymn of false serenity

the machine must slow, we must succeed, there is no option
the engine block in want of lube, the world in want of petrol
the guide says this was the spot where the world's oil dried
the clock says this was the time and the place that we died

I have a funny way of showing it
but the bookends justify the magazines
humidity of southern battlegrounds
publications sold in sad cafes
now there isn't enough cash
to while away the days
worrying about the next conquest
and I'm so bad with math
I'm afraid you'll have to find another way
to take back what belongs at rest

I'd scream hoarse wither without you, cornishrow pickle hens, iodide, what say you, the wench, Winnifred, colonel peanut butter and all-dies, all the men's horses of death, all the building up of nothing, all the energy in the sails, blackened sea creatures attached to guilty and becoming patients in lost wards, keepers of light, soft impression of magenta tears, blacklisted screenplays, glitter heels and sudden glitch, the disentanglement, utter and joyless, diving headlong into the fairway refrain, sandy bottoms with crooked goalposts from an Incan specter parade of lobules, pheasant breast the game's delight, what hath they done to me.

Dirigible Earth

sorry I slithered out of your glue, primates in the trees called time, I screamed hoarse

ventured to build a better society, got lost in the bushes outside your dream, headphones

watched the glow from a late show, saw space traces bullet down your house, big armchair

back at the bottom line, bad coordinates for living, what the pipe smoked, what I hoped

a charged houseplant with claws mangled the musical psychic air, it helps to have limits

nail down the rope so its lengths can be pulled taut, nailed again, misfire, rocket launch

I don't have the butterfly trigger, the war bonnet of smoke, no network to Windhoek

the heat got to the engine, the oxygen got to the iron, the pigment painted a dye

the balloon had combustion carrying revolution, the tropic utterance of a bay

a singer's sabbatical in an ocean of snow, mountain crest groping dark

no precognition, no energy from the sun, just a rusty sleigh ride

snowshoe hares and spry foxes, stuttering, staggered lines

all that was left was an empty gondola barreling

Get Naked At Once

Auto-drip scars lightning, trapper peaked with moon leak, shadow field
up against long, drawn-out meadow greens, golden oak, fury of live prey
on cannibal drone-fire, dust bomb, burden load of chrome, meat sticks
out of coal, grill waste, barbarian moss, the colloquial charm of minions

out of this melange, the grass future, solid flight commode, icicle drops.
Stuck in the middle finger of germs, the hollowed tree, carved canoe end
they lick the flicker, dominion, follicles of lamb's bread butter on pickle
the toast of marriage swell, catered alligator and octopus pate, crumbs.

How's about the fish sticks, the form, the food source, the arboreal apes.
And the belligerent nemesis of second language, the cat nap stirrups, all.
Gone from plantation puns, linen threads, cheap equilibrium, Hoffa pops
on the train, the el, the sub, the condom wrapper, the spilt jug of poplar.

Rhine wine from the bottle, meatloaf and cornfield proper, caregivers
changes with the star chart, the zodiac ritual of falling far apart, what point
at what moment kills the sound, the drowning boat, the choked fish split
and the provisional terror, sailor sight, love the brush, the bush, the weird.

The bawdy cackles of Sylvia's pig-grunt and mule-bray lasting through the night.
Fuck me while my head is in the oven, from behind this spaceship taking flight.

when pressure swells
caught prime tempera
paint in distemper
and the shopkeeper
spells stout disaster
with hikes in prices
past November ices
the commute ensues
and follows the news
down to Lolo, down
in the valley, among
rivers and herd bulls
and the whole livery
line waiting on novas
we'll keep driving out
we'll keep tuning out
the static and bruises
the commission moos
and mileages without
village reimbursement
while the town sinks
due to the mountain
lanes full of avalanche
and sheriff hounds
bully the trout fry
into submission like
wolves hungry for chum
and a fight against death
with the ranch hand gun
water table struck with wire
a vibrant wire of power line
a verdant hill of alkaline
whole country a quagmire
waiting for air to quit fire

The TV plays an actor in me
a simulation of a forked ward
bifurcated triage, a yellow cage

The doctor is an actor on stage
a dinner theater factory improv
lessened guilt, a guileless age

A guileless rage plays a symphony
at a double march of procession
mild hemorrhage, a colloquy

A Postcard From The Edge from U2

a deathbed flashback
of a death-camp smokestack
on a camp cot of no-death-do-lack
not the lot, nor the world-war railroad track

Utter Waste of Earth

I don't care much for retards
although I care for the one next door
out of sense of righteous duty even though
he's fucking worthless and I fantasize about killing him
thought about filming snippets of his annoying time-wasting
to illustrate how fucking bothersome he can be
and then a snippet of me tossing a grenade down his stairs
and watching the stupid look on his retarded face
Huh? What's that?
and then BAM as I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh
and then post in on YouTube
and wait for the cops to pick me up
but he wasted their time every day
so the cops would laugh with me

Soporific Belladonna

Hey guy, here's the fire to hide from, with a head cloud
and system of palladium, an earful of candid brass
the lungs of a master stroke of mind
cataloguing flatulent ovations

To orate, there's a presentation coming, with wry nerves
and careless study, goldenrod maladies shun fast
held expectorant dips in travesties
beleaguered by fellated trains

Twins on see-saws of low hunger bogs, tire swings
taut and spinning, the squeak of the wheel well
and tired rope, event horizon tweaked
whinnying dwale, bibliolatry

but I don't want to think about a discipline
I want to play and play and play all day
I want to play get nothing done but play
Play is important ask anybody
I don't walk to the store anymore
there are more pressing demands
like how to be heard without singing
if anyone needs a sacrificial lamb
let me know, I'm not innocent but I can bleed
well, will wash away your trepidation
with the fluency of my digestive river
where colored smoke makes a painting

So a friend of mine who teaches freshman comp asked what I thought about sex with students
I said that while we'd all like to spend weeks in a sweaty bed with all that young flesh
It was problematic and best suited to fantasies
He said that he explained to the girls that the sex would in no way affect their grades
Well they didn't seem to like that very much
I mean, he's a handsome and funny and intelligent guy
But not enough to warrant no-strings sex
There are many strings attached to that awful decision
I told him he'd better just give them all A minuses and hope it goes away
But what about next time I asked him
Aren't you going to continue down this debauched path of social destruction
He said of course but next time I'll just fuck the pretty ones

It was never about strictly not caring, it was mostly about never having a reason

Boulder Dash or Waterslide of Stone

It was a sinking-stone, one that takes the surrounding ground down too
And I know you're alone, even though the stability is reliable and it's a challenge
For all of us to relax, the thing is, we're forgetting, and forgetting the fact

Where's the sense in that, quicksand that happens to be frozen, bag blocks
Nothing fathomable could be had, a surrenderless garrison of shackled crews, flagless
Bucketless and partially eaten alive, they say the genitals had been torn off

By the teeth of starving curs, devouring what they could, and had eaten
Their way through the liver before they succumbed from blood loss, I feel so light
And interrupted by the honeyed keys of autumn leaves from to the windowpane

Here then come the asides from obsolete cinematic screeds of scrolls of guns
And vagary penny candy store novels of game room coloring book nuclear warhead
Some zooted beats from outer space the hyperbaric color of test engineer red

A gunsel is a criminal carrying a gun or homosexual youth but either way would
be a great Historical fiction novel about every poetic hero worth their shit, but no
Matter lost my way just now having to attend to domestic matters, such as putting dinner

In the oven or else, I'm lazy today, trying to be anyway, on account of my abysmal
Self-esteem, general psychological condition, and utter ennui with existential angst
And there's no help to be had here, unless from the self, so be it, I will give it my most.

I DO NOT THINK I WILL MAKE IT WITH THIS DAMAGE

She sings all I need's a

Little sign to get

Behind the sun and

Something or other

About finding a place
To celebrate the give 

And take of amphora 

Finds under the waves 

Of pools' course but 

Who would care about 

Anaphora so mundane 

and casually muttered 

By the professors of 

Canonical obedience 

Augmented by cadence 

And the sadness and 

The silence of the 

Splatter of always-

Female jumpers from 

The tall malls of 

Chicago property on 

Michigan Ave. siren 

Cloud tourism scraper 

And stones of falling 

Panes of sheet glass 

Not even the terrorism 

Cuts through whole 

Torso to leaves two in 

A split like firewood 

Hand holding child

Now agape quiet and 

Rapt by the axes 

Lastingeffect the other 

Spurting veal tender 
Retreat and shattered-
Glass red with 
Screaming distant
Turbos what-a-

Supercalifragilisticexpi

Alidocious-ness to the 

Whole thing the scene 

The terrapin

The tragic serpentine 

Belt ready for a new 

Cataclysm to rock my 

World west of Winsome 

Terrible fishermen 

````````````````````

So many variables it's 

Scary I guess I mean 

Think about it I don't 

Know how I got here 

And why it had to be 
So violent and
Dramatic and
Emotional and 

Absent and vacant and 

Lower than low it just 

Came spiraling down 

This mountain of 

Accumulated miseries 

And returned 

Abductions and little 

Girls missing for over 

Fourteen years with 

Parents still waiting 

Every day to hear from 

Them and I just sit 

Thinking about how I 

Don't have the energy 

To create anything 
That will truly bring 
The entire world 
Together in one big
Party with tents and
Rain and music and 
Drugs and stories and
Food and friendship
And sex and learning
About things you only
Google about.

This is a new day and 

The old ones that 

Complicate selective 

Memories and pander 

To your insecurities 

But it's okay we all 

Make mistakes and we 

All lie and we all have 

Reasons for 

Overcompensating 

When faced with 

Feelings of guilt and 

Shame and no matter 

What you can always 

Get a coffee and a a 

Thin cigar and sit 

Behind the wheel of 

Your carnation 

Blooming to the stars 

With unfathomable 

Technology and 

Missing agents from 

Global forces and very 

Few living resources 

For what happened 

There back in the 

Pleistocene sex scene 

Between the grunters 

And the dragged
Squaw of prehistoric 
Architect pledged to 
Braise the bullfrogs or

Dogs of plenty wit rex

The realization that I have shortcomings and may never be of real consequence because I lack the talent and time in life to matter makes me feel confident and certain that as far as I am concerned I should end my life at once. As far as my family is concerned I should stay for making their days brighter but it is beginning to make me not care anymore about other people at all because when I'm gone they'll get over it and I will be free. Free at last, free at last.

If I could shit on this virtual journal, I'd smear it all over, rubbing it in, it would stink so bad, and be a caking filth, ruining any pristine white that had been.

I don't have the steam that cares. Wastrel. Peat bog burial that allows future ridicule. Distant mocking of a practical handicap. Know what I'm good at. Pulling the trigger over and over.

blowing the word you can't remember, the words "word" and "the"
across the oil plain next door, booming, winter dollar, draft home
the crude can't proof from wind, what a travel to bridge the distance
from work to living, from shoplifting to giving, flight out of question
and sunwarm grass a fallacy, a vertical descent without the cavern
the deeper the brighter, floating mountain, dead arrogant friends
becoming part of the wallflowers, the moss and crumble-rock
untouched by flesh, a library of the crude word of rescue
one talisman of Oppen, one of a thousand nodes of knowing

No Direction (Hoarder of Words)

I'll begin the poem with I, in spite of all I've read regarding the absorbed self
starting every line with it.


I read a poem today from a friend who I've never read anything from before.
It was good. Very good. It had all the restraint of years of not writing.
It made me consider my faults, such as the lack of direction, in all my endeavors. That's me. But I stopped pretended I had it long ago. I will always seek it, but fall short in the clarity of purpose, and the sharp edge of a plunging blade.
I can't make the choices alone. The real decision about what to cut. No discipline in the one place I don't want it, but need it, as much as needing to stop making an enemy of my audience. Alienation will not work in any communiqué.
I'm too prolific, but don't mind not stopping. It makes me feel better about everything else I don't do prolifically. I am a hoarder of words, and now I have a hoard of words.
They've gone from toothpicks to block paragraphs and no one reads them anyway.
They fill out my oversized poetic dress, squeezed from my organs by the corset
embellishing the bustle where I sit. Pouring from the bell bottom of the hem
out at the ankles of my swollen, pregnant, childish form of pretend-a-pride.
Impassable I've been told. Dense. I'm sorry for everything you've read if it wasted your time.
If you left feeling worse, or with less questions, I apologize. All apologies, though this time they have nothing to do with the amends of an alcoholic. Just an initiated, genuine reconciliation for the monstrous and empty rants and psychiatric pathos. Sorry.

I can color the background of my text, too

Hannitize says Ed, wow, constructive killer of conservative
bomb Fox News smammer Milwaukee with imported beer
atomic harmony of inert anemic neon nor xenon mortician 
pucker up, put up a guard, put down the mongoloid retard.


I won't watch the event, not on television, not in formation
or the line up, frontage code, Butterfield Road and hot dogs
river rats, canoe casino floats, engine repair small animalia 
ackerman gadfly Jesus turpentine Volga hover, ye tanagers.

In the motorcade a cogwheel link gearing
A Sauternes in cobalt glass pinwheel red
Lavender and savory in Niçoises reflecting
Pools of sel de mer and vinegar wedding
Where a line break led to a stanza swing

All the way over here

Just out of reach, my sweet

My honey, honey

Cum toward me 

In an arc of siring 

The siren horse of bulimia  

Blurring

[pop song lyrics]

This lucky fight, still solemn to blue plights
All the things without me you feign to refrain
Numbers, sub-prime, draw the odds, make it right
All the things without me you feign to refrain
You take me weeks of counting to feel again

Burn the time out of thunder
I can taste the static
Burn the time, lightning circuit, network
Watch these lies construe your part
Burn the spine out of jackets

I can smell your burning child

Rehearse for Prado, oil cello
All the things without me you fail to refrain
You take me weeks of counting to hurt again
You take it easy while pouting in your diadem
You flake you let me trust you to not begin

Burn the time out of space
I can taste stardust mint
Burn the time, stellar gush, nova fall
Watch as she tries to pull you apart
Burn the crime out of arson

I can smell your lucky denial

No Dental Dam

a headquest hike downhill without
knees or graded dirt the loudness
of a cracked rib and branch tumble
where chips stack and cards go back
to the shoe to shuffle to gamble air
whatelse but a languishing model
cacophone cracker soused on couch
in stutter with dead definite
sediment and your joyous louse
has every word spoken on a thimble
but a droop foundation under house
I can feel my effort falling short
failing by light of the dragoons 
Valley Kings swirling dormancy 
the puissant utterance of dearth
chimera songs in the punk vein
the dirty tongue of verisimilitude 
let's walk...
sorry, this town prides itself
on every brick building as brothel
in some history no one lived in
no one alive today anyway
and all the windows produced
jumpers what delicious thrillers
sad sex workers in corsets
having used their single bullet
on the bedroom door that night
afraid to unslide the deadbolt
too scared to break the bodice 
and crush the cagey bustle 
maybe we love history's hookers
as we love fantasy's catharsis 
we can go under the trainbridge
or over the tracks but not thru
never across the private yard
of billions to be kept coming
and then antiques start drawing
changing displays but always
showing and wanting window
dressings and dustings and sales
to do the same routine uphill
in the overlook of thankfully
the floor of the valley stays put
sliding down the weather road
in summer snow and chaff
the thresher husking winnowing 
and detassling a cooler-full
of breaktime corn shucking
either way the brickroad sinks
the alley is guttural prim
the princess-pants walks fashion
in spandex and leashes meekly
what a paint job they'll say
what a fine cobbled fantasy
before the grace of foothillsnow
goes obscured trails cur-caked
what a commitment to art
what a slovenly excuse to make
oh chanticleer quiet and cold
can you give a brother a break
and wake the city I impart
for the longest breath hold?

I gather it has more to do with a lack of dignified poise

than whatever statement was made, but I don't subscribe

to dignity-- that's one of the luxuries of my generation--

no pride to hurt

No foundation, not a conquered-earth patio, no cocktails,

just rewards from ancestral-work, cumulative. I gather

because no one knew about communication outside

of parties and bars until after the wall came down, and then

only for a minute, and not again until after Wall St. came down.

Such toys, a toy revolution!

Products of decades, each their own unit,  repetitive twelvemonth,

Dementia pugilistica, refilling their own script with annual character

and Reagan's plastic wig and office Christmas party rape charges

and the silent witness under duress. 

They aren't interchangeable, image and text,

not in the interface of business sickness

but they're mine to alter, without grace or balance,

emotional, most importantly, which is what gets all the boos.

The scolding scoff and sneer, contributing to the problem

A pill the size of an airplane and fuel for thirty days, transition

to musical and dinner-dancing all the way to the top

and out the bay window people like to write about

Eclogue

fuck the city

fuck the country

fuck in the grass if it's sunny

fuck in the gutter when rainy

fuck the impulse to restrain

fuck the futurist terrain

fuck the forgotten

fuck the clear sky

fuck the feeding 

fuck the bleeding

fuck the now and new lie deceiving

fuck the open gates on the bottom

fuck the last gasp kneeled out

fuck the raped lover dying in the keel 

Middle English --Middle Low German--Middle Dutch

divisible friends fortressed in broken vessels

lower louvre

impatient swing
setting permanent
against muttering
crawling tenement
tent collapsing

in the tart sky
ballooning a fast
pfui of sex on top
with an Eiffel tramp
digging heels in trash
her heat astounding
disregarded pounces
verdant casking
lovely furs left
after Germans

but what of Alsace
and Maginot smudged
what of Aragon ink
blot begging for Huns
zomething different
what about the girl
the polecat stink
the cover of organs
the spawning twirl
of being nudged
to flashes of grace

Synaptic Mongol

Directing
and rehearsing
the wild card
and wither
on porous
horse
arriving late
in the limbs
of wrath

the Provos

their salvo
what is real
whose pronoun
avid acronym
the boughs break
and tingle
the eaves
your loss
a sister of dust

a soft break
color pushed
to edges out

to edge out
the font solvent
character psalm
past participle
kingdom hood
the estate
falters forward
with brambles
and purple kush
tumbling
backward
into ambiguous
season ending
seasonal
distending

Syzygy

like watching fish swim in television, weary tampion plug shrouding, murmured gills and venomous scales of commerce on the sunken city, in barnacled palatine orange-pink and white powder jewels, grist from a hundred year old soil, siloed and motley with cucumbered headspace, a sweatband of joy and pearls, embroidered seance troubling,  fountains of street thugs, perpetual youth, lip-blood and rusty, drab deciduous vermin stirred, lords and ladys; there was a journal entry about waiting on an inevitable lack of scoring, vamps and mugwumps, sea dragons with traveler's cheques and scrotum, surgical, opened with heavy machinery, street-level bombs, Vauxhall mechanics, dewy mead,  red grass

Stand Up Digression

thinking about abortion jokes 
while rubbing one off in the shower

it more had to do with fanaticism 

as I have a tendency to believe 
pro-lifers are fanatics, that is 
unless they're actually as scared 
as I first gave them credit for...

it's all about seniority, really

an expectant mother is at least

twelve or thirteen, so that's not

really experience but it's time

put in, and that fetus hasn't yet

been cursed with life outside womb

so women should have veto power

and I've been one to think my father

always had the inalienable right

to end my existence as a minor

as he created me with his own 

gravity is the ultimate arbiter

of fate when you're climbing

and ancient trees still crash down

under the weight of weather and saw

or rope tugged by the heavyweight

it is a monster still connected

by hunger and linkage in food chain

but really what I'm after is drift

double day of dream sleep after week

spent; what happened at an early age

we can't remember readily; it must be

unique perspective used by the dead

wallet found in packed jeans in trunk

full of pills, some painkillers, some

poison, coins made of cyanide embossed

in undecipherable German, beachhead 

had to dig out the sandbank with pick

and this led to the companion dimension

full of phone calls and bad medicine

snow blind from the whitewash of dark

stunted by old growth of the remedy

of redwood monastery passing, cut tree

a cathedral ring sprouting steroid ally 

following old trails on new streets

with every sign in Spanish and of 1970

there was an intermission she woke me

to revisit reality, I peed seated

and went back to bed but it was late

it was early, it was early in the world

it was timeless in the apartment 

amid campgrounds and smoky highways

had to keep calm past the 82nd parallel

I'm 41.6 nautical miles behind record

in the ocean trench laughing at races

and had to hitchhike back from the pole

company of a sled full of broken dogs

pulling a red sleigh with anemic elbows

and heels full of slivers, blood blisters

but that memory is part of a world away

and who knows if it's a destination any

will return to, does a time yet to happen

have people who will say, comfortingly:

if you'd have been a little more patient

if you'd have only had faith

if you'd have waited

none of this would have happened