tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90013138273271898812024-03-13T08:07:11.499-07:00Yellowstone RoadUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger296125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-8561476385542360592013-06-26T14:36:00.001-07:002013-06-26T14:46:31.133-07:00Psalm for sleeping fishesSplinter your knees on these planks--you command on the misted dock, the sun not risen on a sky like bruised star apple--callous your hands in prayer, or I'll cut them to the quick of your tiny hammer wrists, and you will never press your palm to your heart again, and feel your heart press back. Hear my story or you will not be loved--But you command that I do not hide my human heart, and even if I slip beneath the pilings wearing my concrete sneakers and slide my lumbar along the algae furred rocks, and I never see the goddamn sun show, I do as you command. I look away from you to the water, and my heart is like bruised star apple.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-46220613426737070042013-06-25T22:23:00.001-07:002013-06-25T22:40:52.528-07:00Hiding placesI was no kitchen knife wielding knight<br />
with checkered table cape boy<br />
I will say<br />
just a naked coward.<br />
I want never<br />
to grow up<br />
I<br />
an old man<br />
will say<br />
and pull the blanket up<br />
above my head<br />
in gleeful terror<br />
close my eyelids<br />
and die.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-15297795588250074872013-06-23T09:56:00.001-07:002013-06-23T10:02:59.386-07:00Toy rocket astronautsWe came close to exit speed,<br />
before the gravity well brought us back down <br />
children<br />
like all children fallen down <br />
wells, gloves open-palm to retracting<br />
light<br />
helmet visors<br />
reflecting a pinpoint sun,<br />
below us<br />
still water waits<br />
and our descent<br />
thick with stratosphere<br />
seems to whisper<br />
cool against our cheeks<br />
what it is to grow old<br />
in stages. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-76869535025160007552013-06-12T00:12:00.001-07:002013-06-12T00:19:14.364-07:00Stages of separationWash wash my hands and face<br />
There seems nothing to say<br />
In the breeze<br />
Of rocket plumes<br />
Skin blacked<br />
Launchpad dirt blown<br />
Out in the night<br />
<br />
Dance for rain so<br />
With rocket burning<br />
Burning above our heads<br />
Clouds soon make us<br />
Doubt sweet<br />
Sweet doubt<br />
And we can drink<br />
The rain<br />
And wash away the damned <br />
LightUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-36044473794820991692013-06-02T01:34:00.001-07:002013-06-02T01:37:05.801-07:00ValueA cow said Moo and another cow said unto her are you not afraid, sister? And the first cow, lame with splintered legs bent out like the roots of a great tree, sliding along the industrial conveyor belt, said I am not afraid, for my God will deliver me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-25854089862548444622013-05-31T14:56:00.001-07:002013-05-31T14:56:44.603-07:00And then there was lightAnd then all the bears were heroes, those from the Baluchistan and Kermode armies who fought with great honor, until their heft fell butchered upon a forest clearing of morning glories, in the breeze of an autumn dawn which stirred the flowers open like purple fists holding stars in their palms. And the Baluchistans wore great white doves across their black breasts, and the Kermodes' white fur had been washed pink by the claws of their enemies. But the morning glories knew nothing of the fire of dusk, or the carnivorous night, could not distinguish this brevity, this brittleness, from their own. They knew only that the blood seeping into the soil was theirs, and they drank of it, and it was good.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-27623895150325121732013-05-28T07:49:00.001-07:002013-05-28T07:50:21.928-07:00Embryonic rock balladLet me be the rock<br />
star who steps off<br />
stage who sits<br />
on your laps<br />
spills your vodkas<br />
glasses roll shatter<br />
on the sticky floor<br />
the cigarette fog<br />
obscuring our faces<br />
as I beg you to hold<br />
me fetal.<br />
<br />
Let me show<br />
you a network of<br />
my veins, like a fiber<br />
optic toy glowing<br />
red cigarette tips<br />
and let me be the joke<br />
you remove from the deck place<br />
before you on the table<br />
examine discard<br />
"No wilds boys no wilds"<br />
force your tongues<br />
between the cracks of my painted<br />
grin in dark auditorium stage<br />
light igniting nothing just a feedbacking<br />
guitar dropped against hollow shoe-<br />
worn wood.<br />
<br />
Let me inhale the<br />
nicotine exhaust <span class="st"><i>pliƩ</i></span><br />
<span class="st">from your throats into the back of my</span><br />
<span class="st">throat</span><br />
<span class="st">Let me swallow</span><br />
<span class="st">your spit</span><br />
<span class="st">what you give</span><br />
<span class="st">when you say confiding knowing "What a wreck what a wretch what a mess what a fuck what a slob what a hippie what a cunt what a hack what a has been what a one hit always taking hits more tracks on his arms than his records"</span><br />
<span class="st">and let me be destroyed</span><br />
<span class="st">by your consonant </span><br />
<span class="st">the way infant skulls fractal</span><br />
<span class="st">kaleidoscopic against mothers' fists</span><br />
<span class="st">shaking with milk</span><br />
<span class="st">Let me be the joke</span><br />
<span class="st">you tell confiding knowing</span><br />
<span class="st"><span class="st"> like I am a whore in which you know and confide by</span></span><br />
<span class="st"><span class="st">bruising my imperfect shape</span> </span><br />
<span class="st">like I am the moment</span><br />
<span class="st">in your lives</span><br />
<span class="st">you ripped clothes from</span><br />
<span class="st">a mannequin displayed</span><br />
<span class="st">to the street because your money</span><br />
<span class="st">was good</span><br />
<span class="st">because your credit</span><br />
<span class="st">was good sirs</span><br />
<span class="st">you know your credit is always good</span><br />
<span class="st">here sirs</span><br />
<span class="st">and I am the moment</span><br />
<span class="st">in your lives</span><br />
<span class="st">you paid to nude</span><br />
<span class="st">a mannequin</span><br />
<span class="st">to the street because you thought</span><br />
<span class="st"><i>I want I want I want</i></span><br />
<span class="st">and you could have so you</span><br />
<span class="st">took because the mannequin had been molded</span><br />
<span class="st">without face.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br />
</span> <span class="st">Let me be the puddle</span><br />
<span class="st">reflecting the nude mannequin</span><br />
<span class="st">and from which </span><br />
<span class="st">like your smoke laughter</span><br />
<span class="st">knowing confiding</span><br />
<span class="st">blackbirds scatter</span><br />
<span class="st">trembling</span><br />
<span class="st">my skin.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-84852655364280423742013-05-24T12:05:00.001-07:002013-05-24T12:06:59.571-07:00It is father's day in the enlightened age, what did you get for your father, Isaac?Maybe we kill because science cannot take this doctrine from us, so it is ours, the way we masturbate forcefully into test tubes and examine our semen under microscopes, the way it makes us proud, like, Great Game, Slugger, or, Give 'Em Hell Over There, Son, Shovel Your Trench And Shoulder In To A Shadowed Nook Till Christmas!, or, Get Your Cock Out From The Shadowed Nook Of My Daughter Which Makes Me Weep With Fear, or, Welcome To The Family! The opposite of To Kill is To Emerge From Shadowed Nooks, and this is an act of great faith, Amen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-6453494693948159162013-05-23T17:47:00.001-07:002013-05-23T17:47:56.121-07:00How I love you<div><p>Someone once discovered that human intestines could be unraveled and then wrapped around the equator of the planet earth to form a tourniquet, and I wish these were my intestines. The idea of a liquid flowing uncontrollably, of undertows and tradewinds, this idea terrifies me, and this need to suffocate terror is the most human thing I have left. Please, let me do this for you all. This is how I love you.<br>
</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-21381866800703943692013-05-21T12:05:00.001-07:002013-05-21T12:05:18.283-07:00So I see you've met Pan of the subtropicsYou've put on your shoes, haven't you, but you've forgotten the laces, and to step means to stumble or to leave your rubber-soled foundation in the tall grass. You are sad, I can tell the way you look forward into the horizon of cypress trees edging the clearing, because it is as if you are looking behind you. It's okay to be sad because swamps have the unique quality of swallowing, buzzing, swirling, engulfing, so that you forget there was ever such a place as not a swamp. By this I mean that to be engulfed is indistinguishable from engulfing, this is what lovers do, buzz and swallow and become indistinguishable, and also I mean to say that swirling carries with it the inertia of a ballerina, for instance, or the spotlight which she orbits. This is heliocentric and this is inevitably what you will think as the sun which you orbit casts its light on your cheeks, and you are the only one in your private swampy world, with no one to give yourself to but the wet earth. It has already removed your laceless shoes, and maybe this is the first step of lovemaking, so you must make love, you must engulf and be engulfed in the tall grass, to the thunderous applause of crickets.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-53721802184802390922013-05-20T21:02:00.001-07:002013-05-20T21:11:54.394-07:00The Division of Forestry<div>
Sometimes I think, a tumor was once a flower, there has been no rain for years, we do not recall the times between brush fire seasons, we share evacuation tips and hose each others' roofs when we spot smoke towering in the distance. Though wet roofs will not help, this is the closest we come as neighbors to embracing. We smile, wave from our yards, robed, dogs bounding in fatalistic, knowing circles. The fire is a rising tide. Time is measured in fahrenheit. I want to tell you, Hey Bob, did you know that love is just an electric wire hooked from your eyes straight back to your past, that love is a word that means nothing more than survival, that without love we would have all smashed our skulls against the cave walls until our thoughts dripped viscous into our eyes, blinding us from whatever meaningless things we've painted of ourselves. But then I think, who doesn't know that? So instead I watch the stream of water arching from the hose to the shingles, knowing that it will all soon be smoldering cinders, and the fire will consume the oxygen and make each breath we take thinner, and this is like a lovely flower.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-90495502361680324722013-05-03T14:46:00.001-07:002013-05-03T14:48:50.064-07:00When we talk about paralax, darlingSorrow or laughter<br />
comes from a glass jar<br />
swelled with fire bugs<br />
prisoners<br />
of fancy.<br />
<br />
If you can't tell which is which,<br />
in all that jarred<br />
fire,<br />
we are looking at the same God-<br />
Damned sky<br />
swelled with jarred fire:<br />
You, fingers furling full of grass,<br />
dirt, or brine-caked sand, staring up,<br />
and me,<br />
atop, watching the fire<br />
swelled in your eyes<br />
prisoners<br />
of fancy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-35070133326650224882013-04-17T08:29:00.001-07:002013-04-17T08:29:51.931-07:00A weaving lessonThe threading of a blanket is nonetheless made of many single paths. It is unclear what I mean by this, if it is literal or if what I mean is that I am lost. Or if both are true, and being lost is an action performed by the blanket, of which I am the object. What is clear is that, even in the darkest uncertainties of one's existence, there is a blanket, there is loss, and there are many threads.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-90302140677236416012013-04-10T19:31:00.001-07:002013-04-10T19:31:27.236-07:00Obituary in headlinesColonel Feeds Boy Walnuts<br />
Shells/Casings Litter Colonel's Stomach<br />
Colonel Reclines with Boy Lapped on Chair<br />
Brown, Tobacco Brown, Colors Chair<br />
Tobacco and Gunpowder Stain Colonel's Fingers<br />
Fingers Clutching Skull, Colonel Kisses Boy's Forehead<br />
Boy Stained with Tobacco and Gunpowder<br />
Colonel Survived by Chair, Boy, StainsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-41394787735644421492013-04-05T10:17:00.001-07:002013-04-05T10:17:11.031-07:00How to read a poemAlan Watts once wrote<br />
that to describe <br />
an experience<br />
is to fail<br />
to divide an inch,<br />
an infinitely divisible inch.<br />
It is pointless,<br />
measureless,<br />
meaningless,<br />
impossible to clone<br />
in words <br />
the experience.<br />
<br />
A ceramic mug<br />
of spiced red tea<br />
loses its hyena's jowls<br />
in metaphor.<br />
<br />
Love<br />
loses its gut's imploding-star<br />
gravity<br />
somewhere between<br />
O, V.<br />
<br />
So what's left<br />
for words<br />
to say<br />
is:<br />
<br />
Life<br />
is like words<br />
and words are like<br />
memories,<br />
chasing<br />
moments. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-62478839003592300072013-04-03T16:47:00.001-07:002013-04-03T18:51:11.579-07:00Your gray hourIn the world's approaching shadow,<br />
from the sliver sun dusk,<br />
wind flutters its pigeon-down<br />
across your skin.<br />
<br />
Only in this fleeting hour<br />
does your migration's path ride<br />
currents of air<br />
with everything soon to dissolve<br />
in the night.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-90079304196470774162013-04-02T19:01:00.001-07:002013-04-02T19:03:26.012-07:00Collisions at bedsideTwist this metal frame around;<br />
if this is the closest I come<br />
to being held,<br />
at least let time slow let<br />
physics twirl<br />
as they may.<br />
Implode glass;<br />
if this is a story about stars,<br />
let sunlight twinkle, twinkle,<br />
across the shards,<br />
and let your voice<br />
be a soft narrative arcing wind.<br />
Life driving toward some kind of<br />
contact<br />
any kind of<br />
contact, violent<br />
contact.<br />
My favorite part is when our hands touch<br />
and as I drift away you ask, <br />
What would you like me to read tonight?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-68197035738497478962013-04-01T18:35:00.001-07:002013-04-01T18:35:28.191-07:00Oral mother sky parableThe cloud looks like dry ice over the moon,<br />
and this you say is your proof God is a tweed-<br />
suited mourner with a pinwheel hat. Well, fine,<br />
I'll say.<br />
Someone better tell Him to wise<br />
up. <br />
Now the cloud<br />
slips, <br />
the moon<br />
nude. <br />
And you say, That<br />
ain't no man's silver<br />
tit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-39493022917414462532013-03-06T08:10:00.001-08:002013-03-06T08:10:49.299-08:00Nighttime pulseWide-framed pit bull spooned beneath my arm. My fingers pressing her scruff, white. A curtain blocks the moonlight. Dark cakes the bed--me, my wife, the pit, the <span class="st">Catahoula Cur balled at our feet</span>. Blanketed in sleep, except me, who can't distinguish sleep from death. Present from future. I imagine the pit's skin already cool, all the cells in my body replaced, ten, twenty years from this bed. I imagine my restless, empty arm. For a moment she stills, a timeless moment, when I wonder if she is dead or alive, fingertips brimming with quantum potential. Eulogies form on my tongue, but before I can utter words the pit's head launches up and she is barking and growling at the curtained window. Both the dogs are barking, so loud now that their screams echo from wall to wall. Someone has arrived home late from the bars, scuffing past our apartment window. Their violent noise stirs my wife. This is how life is distinguished, I realize, and I have never been so glad to shatter.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-23590941082416960322013-02-06T21:11:00.001-08:002013-02-06T21:11:00.980-08:00Anatomy of a sleeping man<div><p>Some nights are a jacket as thin as the hairs on your arm, cold moon-silvery wind stabbing easily through. The first dawn you watch alone is a speckled wood frog, her organs petrified in ice since first snow, thawing pale green under the sun in April. Your last day will be too warm for coats, and the frogs' croaking will stuff the windless air, and the moon will hang like a discarded eggshell, hollow cell memory, the ghost of frostbite. Dreams are like that. Black fingers, a silhouette of touch.</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-66984397418335682662013-02-04T15:13:00.002-08:002013-02-04T15:13:42.977-08:00A great depressionTicker tape parade for our boys come home, an embrace in the debris like paper ash falling from upper floor offices. Wandering the streets in a predetermined pattern, and then gone, the pavement still warm from boots and the sky like cooling flesh. In their wake a fallen comrade, a stockholder fallen from an upper floor office window, a leg of his dress pants riding up his calf beyond a silk black sock's cut. How the sock spoils the mood of a homecoming parade.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-19205247675074761322013-02-02T21:40:00.001-08:002013-02-02T21:40:43.568-08:00Blue collar militiamen gather in the hillsCoffee settles on the blood like vultures on a tightrope. A shadow of a boy's heart steeped beneath the black bitter, confusing love with boiling. Like a cloudy night, a ghost of stars around the edges, industrial town sheen on the dirty brown sky. Black swallowing mineshaft, not the wing-spanned scenario the canary had imagined herself in but shit, an honest living. Potential collapse always vibrating the veins, that sense of an elevator sinking, clang, clang. Confusing fear of the dark with the dirt in your lungs.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-6310782886750295182013-01-30T13:28:00.001-08:002013-01-30T13:34:03.330-08:00Wasteland aftertaste<div>
Cutlery on the sly, metal on ceramic like the rhythm of a joke, keep em laughing and it glides beneath the radar. A garden of phototropic radar dishes, turning in unison to the sun. And the dishes, bowls, really, and the digitized sun waves, a joke that cuts at your meat, which is the source of metastasis?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-38940698663274936442013-01-18T16:25:00.001-08:002013-01-18T16:25:15.747-08:00Platoon boys ruminate on their eventual reincarnation as the enemy<span style="font-family: inherit;">Doing the social dance, like a fuken peacock. Doing the war dance, like some goddamn ferrets. Standing still in ether, like a river stone. Dead and buried to our necks. We'll meet in some stinkin desert land, turbans blowin in the iris-slicin gusts. But we won't recognize each other. No, because the dunes are dancing, too.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9001313827327189881.post-86955964211134521252013-01-10T12:55:00.001-08:002013-01-10T12:55:20.298-08:00Failed collage adjacent to a stocks ticker<div><p>(THE INTERNET STARTED) <br>
{what you're hungry for}[<i>About Their Children</i>]<br>
[the skinny on one]<br>
{her profound desire to make}{Substance-Induced}{Cell Death}<br>
{it would be...}["Lightest,""driest,""deepest,"]<br>
{<b>Static Positions</b>} /<i>only </i>8,501 <i>beds</i>/<br>
[There is plenty of grooming,]<br>
<b>(</b><b>Reconnect)</b>{the noise level}<br></p>
<p>invisible my presence</p>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0