Tuesday, June 29, 2010

All

He calls poetry an object. He calls her an object. Mary Anderson Franklin doesn't love Johnny Pinkerton because objects do not love like the way the sun only hits the water, the rusty boat beds, some ways some times and Johnny Pinkerton isn't his fuckin name anyway so fuck her anyway, 'cause Mary ain't her fuckin name anyway so who the hell were either of them to love or read poetry. Just two kids without names just two kids without nothin' but poetry they didn't deserve and not deserving it made them better just a minute or two even if it wasn't theirs and it wasn't their names it was saying and even if it said, who the fuck are you anyway, nobody, that's who. It was all about that sun, somewhere under the boat bed, somewhere stretched underneath. It had to do with the birds up there under the rusty bow smile cut the way their mouths couldn't turn, kissing the way they couldn't, slumber, dreaming, and that was all there was. That's why. Because, Wouldn't it be nice and soft if that's all there was.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Ballad of Marty McFly

Sits in my gut this way, that way.
Ours.
Ridin flames lining the asphalt like mike fox nick cage the loneliest spectacles
Sad, if you ask them you won't
Ask them.
Rides my gut like hummin
Our AMFM wave
Chewin on cumulonimbus cotton
Fed a wisp to the doggie
Fed a wisp to your mother
Hopin prayin
Though it holds no sway
With Her but maybe with she
I still hold
Tight fisted
Tight as a fist
Bitter on tongue tip
Bitter in the eye pink
Darling, you dance in my Gut
This way, that
May I
Join

Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Stomach

This wails in my ears We will fucking die no other words come no other words can describe the cold crawl under a layer of skin not even these and not even these can give the silhouette a name not even these i am afraid of this wailing This wailing does not cease This wailing is thickened by blackness You baby you are all that glows it's silly to say this but we are silly together and no one can be heard over the wail and what lies between the Syncopation of b-b-breath l-l-laugh l-l-love don't c-c-care at all and all I don't hear and all we hear now is the sound of our own dying like the feel of warm air exhaled across your stomach and it does not end

Sunday, June 20, 2010

This is a Father's Day Story

1980 is the year, when he says it I imagine it clearly, a room of men in deep-lensed glasses with wily curls of hair, with stubble, one man in a lab coat with a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk in his hand, standing at the head of the long conference table. They have never seen this before. The man with the disk smiles and with a fling of his wrist the hard-plastic square is airborne. It impacts the table quickly and bounces once, twice, three times before sliding to a rest near the other men. They ogle around it / THE CONSEQUENCES OF JUMPING FROM THIS BRIDGE ARE FATAL AND TRAGIC.

The disk is undamaged.

C:\> a:
A:\> cd the fucking future is before you and you will die please insert floppy disk into drive a, the floppy disk must protect the delicate pathways, dir

one time three brothers inserted the floppy disk much to his delight one time the youngest brother lied he told the two older brothers that the hare (hero) beat the tortoise (villain) and the secret level was three-dimensional this was unheard of so all of it was taken for a lie but part of it was true (everything is three-dimensional) and childhood lessons were learned
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he paints an image: one day, the image will load "like writing history with lightning." His only regret is "that it is all so terribly true."

Given what you know about this time period, why do you think we can never go back to this place?

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Only Thing

Seven minutes until 9 p.m. This is the only thing in life that I am sure of.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

What Waterfountains Do

Water cones from the center, endeavoring to be air. It falls and rejoins the congregants. They are sad to see their prayers have failed, and shout, "We'll never be air, not so long as we're water!" But in the same moment they realize they had never known what they were until they were not air, and had said so. Thus, so they will not forget again, you will sometimes see water in this way. During these times it is important to be clouds.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Give Thanks

For peeling my cape from the stigma, so the wind will not carry me up, so the air is worth loving, because I cannot have it.

For frailty, when I will remember God wetting my cheek all the time. He cries rough against my neck, and laughs, because we are brothers this way, frustrated with the other.

Knowledge of Life and Death. For transience: it means only to stop spinning, dear.

For stripping the pretense down to the pale falling chest.

For love, which is sad in its context.

For the glare of a snowbank so I may rest and be numb

For the words I stumble to whisper in my teeth.

For listening to the wind I used to know, beating memory from our heads. For sailing closer, pressing completely, and we cannot remember whose breath.

Friday, June 4, 2010

The Way Foolish Lovers Die

Naive is ice because it talks delicately, like it doesn't know how the game is played. But we like it better that way. We pretend, too. In that way it does a good thing for us. We may walk slower, we cannot feel when we touch the rough edges. We don't whisper in fear of shattering, but we may shout, to obliterate the thing we love.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Snowbank

I am a snowbank, winter is a time of watching for a snowbank. This city that soaks you in the shade of oranges, blues, reds, and you watch under the starlessness of light pollution. You watch yourself and you think you’re watching the city the whole goddamn time, you think you’re watching the heel-shuffles of empty guts scrape the icy sidewalks, they’re never warm, lacking material, but what a thing to see it’s a reflection the whole time. What a dirty trick. This city’s full of dirty tricks like that. What a clean thing spring is.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Great Fire

After the great fire, everything straw was subject to the wind.
After the fire, we all decided never to take air for granted again.
We were in love with fleeting things, like afternoons and saltwater.
We got to thinking that maybe the great fire encouraged us like an uncle. We got to thinking, you know, about thoughts, how thoughts are encouraged by uncles. We hoped that fire never forgot us.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Mayflower

I am disappointed in my mother tonight. Her narrow nose, pointing down at the dirty Earth beneath her as she sweeps blood from the porch after each storm. Toting the proper papers around in a bag bearing the names of former husbands; (Marcos. Francisco. 1848 she changed her name. 1853 she bought her freedom.) Setting a plate of las papas fritas de la liberté for the neighbor children. Humming over the thunder that shakes the mountains, not hearing the quiet sobs as each time the thunder shuffles away. In the mountains the three sisters distract themselves from her cool song, the oldest by shucking, the middle sister by cooking arepa, the youngest with dolls in corn husk dresses. “How can you shoot women, children?” “Easy. You just don’t lead 'em so much.” Are the neighbors’ mothers hiding their red cheeks behind the mask of Dinah? I'm tired of seeing her ugly face, like dried clay, Adamah, I'll walk until she's behind me. “The dead know only one thing: That it is better to be alive” alie Water the brown back of David’s Son is drank from a bottle. The valleys of her lips are filled and she speaks of Mesopotamia. She is called Mayflower. For what else would I call her when I am no longer welcome?

Biography Hippocampus

To have knowledge is to be disappointed in the world, to become hopeless about hope, to be disgusted at the dirtiness and ignorance of the human animal, to worry constantly about inbound asteroids but also to anticipate a kind of relief from sudden, catastrophic death. Wisdom, then, is the acceptance of these feelings, foolishness a retrograde movement at the equator, where you find me strolling forgetfully.

This Ain't Carver's Goddamn Cathedral

Close your ears and hear your music. Close your eyes and see the thing you want most. Close your mouth and clench your teeth for the sweetness of blood we share beating. The beating of fists against chests because our ribs won't give, goddamn them, we hate them. When does hate become make love? Honey, it don't fuckin matter when you're blind, when you're deaf, when you're mute and your breath lingers in the taste of pennies. I pray, tearing the delicate skin from the caps of my knees, that you are close enough to smell it.

The Legend Of

Sometimes I wish you could tell me what it's like to be a super hero, to take me underneath. If you could tell me what it's like to fly underneath. From what great altitudes cheeks pull back beneath a thin comforter. So thin that, if it were not for super powers, we would feel the outside air encroaching.

Let's Make a Deal

I'd like to live somewhere no one's been for the time it takes a sun to sink. The religion would be sweaty. God would be the space between us. For once, a God who is cool on the skin of my chest, not stale air on the breath of hypocrite car dealers. I'm so fucking sick of Fords and Chevys.

Say Hello

Goodbye, today. Hello, baby, ice on our
teeth and a dark blanket to keep our laughter between us. It all comes
slower, see. Watch it fade; it's nature, it's the nature of ember.
Watch it fade. Orange is the color through which we must see through each other, and whatever that silly thing is on your cheeks. I said goodbye already, do me a
favor, give me a fucking mercy. Say hello.

A Brisk Thought

Looking down the cliff wall and filling the wind with you.

Excavation

Sees himself through the reflection of Earth-pressed stone behind your knuckle, the haunting man he's always wanted to be.

Calcium Deposit

The cold wraps, long, sad blanket, an echo of ghost-water in a one-woman little waltz on home to you, where 3 a.m. tucks me to your bones.

lla < 3

Love lacks apology.

Garbage

If garbage didn't go in a can, where would it go? I would put my garbage randomly around my apartment, but then arrange it so I could use it.