White Mule

In a heat wave enter the rose gardens of Portland.
The victory of rose names over the heat, the victory of bees over all.
Sun, I do not speak your language
and yet you shout louder.

White mule climbs steps to a Greek villa
to be sent down again. Such is the heart.
The mule and the switch have their conversation.
It is okay to be a tourist in your life, but not an impostor.

Convoy of mule days, convoy of mule heart—
low card brings it in, high takes half the pot.

umbrella today

umbrella today says: bring your umbrella
umbrella today says: don't
umbrella today says: high chance of showers
umbrella today says: are you retarded? bring your umbrella
umbrella today wonders why we bother
umbrella today says: at least for the moment
umbrella today says: i'm listless
umbrella today says: obviously
umbrella today thinks the hard thoughts
umbrella today says: why do we always have to have this conversation
umbrella today: the life you save may be your own
umbrella today says: it's raining. still.
umbrella today prepares for the flood
umbrella today: a new wet you
umbrella today says: yes, still raining
umbrella today wonders when next we'll see the sun
umbrella today is ambivalent
umbrella today is already inside, so by all means, go fuck yourself
umbrella today recommends galoshes
umbrella today says: learn to swim
umbrella today says: well duh
umbrella today: yes

don't call me at work
and aw no
the boss still hates me
i'm just tired
and i don't love you anymore

and there's a restaurant
we should check out
where the other nightmare people
like to go
i mean nice people
baby wait
i didn't mean to say nightmare

-- from They'll Need a Crane, TMBG

oh look it's a goose

broadcast from the high dry
hillocks. affixed with stitch
and strategy. primary
and angular, of stocky
stiffened cloth.

hands pushed the small shoulders forward.

there's no need to say it differently.

a small boy kneecaps capped in green grass
marched before them waving
fifty-two pinpoints on an ethereal
flag

i think we must simply
adjust

to the readout, of your Climate
Control Center which reminds me
of the clash
of the titans if the titans
were an intricasy of inscrutable
levers i mean that
lee-vers, say it with me and already
it's exploding
like some hot
tomato in the grasp
of some outright lonely
lobe.

cracking it open

Just think he said if
we cracked it open like
pancakes i said no
he said nothing
like that at all oh
i said well
then.

once again again

i am at
the still place where
the low voice bawls where
the clock indistinguishes
itself against
the dull
half murmuring
heart.

the night is
glass is
cold on the back
of my neck like
some bitter iced
remembrance i remember
when you saw it tears you
wiped from
your eyes.

what we held on that ugly
carpet our bony young
bodies one summer what
could possibly stand
against all this steady
dripping steady
happening steady
memory accumulated happening
like dust like rust like
the still the still i
want to. i want you. is
what i wanted to say and
never.

small song

my bed 2 A.M.
the silence my friend
is another dull tone on the line

and slowly the moon
sings another pale tune
and already already i am fine

in the dust far behind me
lies the salt of your tears

in the blue sea before me
lies the waste of my years

i thought once i'd make it
but now i know clear

that nothing will ever be mine

black ribbons

i left you walking half
to forever in all the barns
hands were turning mad
pulleys still upon
the doorknob i left
you even when i
looked i split
my lips.

i don't fit in much
of anywhere between
the thrall and the frame kid
socks and fingers worn
where i've used them my
intention no more than the
knobs of an old
electric.

blood tears and teeth
blood tears and teeth
blood tears and teeth
blood tears and teeth

morning on the train (on a bookmark, my bookmark)

what is wrong
with a dog in the grass. today
the sun is on my knees.
a smile is on the garage
door. and everywhere
the monochromatic joy
of the sky. five
thousand humans move
together. air blows
because of a process
involving freon. rings
mark the hands
of the taken. when
the ground cries out what
it's missing always is
the cadence of their
boots.

the questions of your life (phase 1)

• If you had to identify yourself as composed of three different authors, who would they be?
  
  
• If your house/apartment/cardboard-box was on fire and you could grab only one item before escaping, what would it be?
  
  
• Would you rather live by the mountains or by the sea?
  
  
• What song would you like to die to? What song should play at your funeral? Are they the same song?
  
  
• What animal are you? If you want to, explain.
  
  
• What would it take to make you give up everything?
  
  
• Describe your ideal breakfast. This means more than just the food. Where are you sitting? What's the light like? What are you wearing on your feet?
  
  
• What's the last thing that made you cry? If you refuse to cry, what's the last thing that made you feel oh so very bad?
  
  
• Bestow on yourself a nickname. Don't tell anyone what it is. You may have noticed that this is not a question. Do it anyway.
  
  
• Suppose you're stuck in a weird acid flashback, in which 5 minutes of your past keeps happening over and over, an endless loop. What happens in that 5 minutes?
  
  

too sleepy for thinking too tired
to sleep. i left my parents' house
along the slash of my father's
handwriting. the basket
of my mother's worry. i set off
to the world beholden
to my imminent disaster.

and only made it Here.

now cold in the hole of this
cliffsitting cabin.
the trailworn edge of the world.
being Here is like being anywhere:
too many feet and too little blanket.
more bullshit erected
at the side of the road.

simply put:
fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck.
when morning

breaks i will step against
the sun. write my own
selfsame letters.
foot on stone my stone.
in the message i mail
to the present i'll tell them,
don't wait.
the future is certain.
all the songbirds
eloped.

Proverbs 8:1

 1 Does not wisdom call out?
       Does not understanding raise her voice?

 2 On the heights along the way,
       where the paths meet, she takes her stand;

 3 beside the gates leading into the city,
       at the entrances, she cries aloud:

 4 "To you, O men, I call out;
       I raise my voice to all mankind.

transition

Arrayed and dismayed. The lip of your metal cup. The edges of your memory. The smell of gasoline where 'Jasmine' would have been prettier. It could have all been prettier. Bent over the counter top while the unforgiving give of the vaseline. I am not saying I want it different. Would want it wearing heels. Sufficiently stilettoed through butterflies and bees. All ripped in the hitch. Then from beside the balustrade you find the smaller vital you. The you that might send you a message. With a half-perceptible pulsing it unfolds like the odor of grass. The comb at the throat. The small boat embarked upon the great waves. A mouse and a cat at the tiller. A raspy brace of sea salt. An azure dream of a deep and sighing jewel. When I snap my fingers you will awaken. When awakened inside your fingers you may snap. The last long call of a gull. That's it. You can open them. We've arrived.

tin prayer

oh lord
of fire and
lord of blight,
lord of the light
blue dressing.
lord of mysterious skies,
crying masses
of intestinal angst.
lord of vapid footed biology.
lord of mutter and worry.
lord of bitch-
tied 'bout the kneecaps.
lord born from the imprint,
lord copied from carbon.
lord still independent
of who voices. lord of
unbroken
breads. lord who by bison, by blue, by
wrecked and half-noble knuckles.
oh lord it is for you
that i bleed a bad tartan.
it is for you
i dance a slow jig.
lord whom to holier
nothings were nowhere
never whispered,
genuflectously intoned,
the breath of the great
patella oh magnanimous sweet
unfulsome oh bloody oh
lord.

Paranoia mix

celestial

the ridiculous arrangement of our bodies. books given on your birthday. how once in the backyard you dropped to your knees. took me there. a taffeta shift. spiderweb tights. that could have been us that rode to the stars. instead we never went anywhere. paved circuit from the bathroom to the bedroom. from the bathtub to the sink. we always want more of our powers. but someday we're done fighting evil. or good. love's fingers on the autoharp. the moon on the horizon. before the sadness of the stars. do i regret it? no. it's not a lie if you believe. what won me was the wisp. what held me i don't know.

the king of carrot flowers / once inside my head

black coffee

when only the fire glows
twin dots dotted from a host of ill centuries (.)
where space and wistful longing launch
themselves wheel idly around the same
round hole, whole star swung round

my hands and knees, 1 can
ajax 1 coarse green
scrubbie blow
me a kiss, red tile and wooden stairwell
50 pounds of onions too tough
to die. kid

what came for you later only came
cause it could smell you, that same
raw stink bits black trailing
tongues around your gums, your weakness, your initials
hot knifed to
the trunk of the tree.

it loved you
through rubberized fingers
crouched round the rubberized
handle,
held wetly half past
midnight.

once it was
you and the footsteps, you
were all just the whisper
of leaves, he liked
that. "Comfort,"
he said. "Don't
you see?" I
didn't. I don't.

you want i want

you want for maleness
while i just want
for peopleness. we're
neither. i want
for dogs' eyes,
third prize,
a fast mist at night
or the lonely light
laid down
from open windows.
thrown sleeping
to the street,
complete,
discursive and brainless,
highlit and neat.
(oh lover
hold thy tongue.)

--

you want for maleness
i want for peopleness

we're neither
yeah we're neither

i want for dogs' eyes
third prize

oh brother don't believe her
yeah don't believe her

a fast mist
at night
a lonely light
laid down
from open windows

thrown sleeping
to the street,
complete,

where ever you will find me
brother you will find me

the small hours

A joyrider rip up Lockland.
It takes barely five minutes
for a precinct helicopter
to dip and swivel over lawns
and two opposing lines of cars
parked innocently snug to the sidewalk.
They haven't found him yet.
Every couple of minutes or so,
my blind soaks in outrageous light
and the helicopter hauls its drone
and feud all over my backyard.
There's a fan over my bed
that says similar things in summer:
adages, reproach and rhetoric.
I talk too much, give far too much away.
In mumbling my company, I reckon on
a twofold payoff: some echo;
being found out, consequence.
I lie low. Minutes swell.
He must be out there somewhere,
lights switched off, crouched and bundled,
foot within an inch of the get-go.
I pull the comforter up over my ears,
count to forty-two, then start over.
I'm trying, trying hard, to hold my breath.

by vona groarke

You can't feel it with your hands.
In your tooth tips,
lips,
wrenching the complaints like jagpipes
to your glasses, a broken tune.
And only across the room.
Amok we go to the morning bakery.
Amok I feel you below the blanket.
A teddy bear beneath your elbow
is no way to live.
The slug's slimy purpose, now compare:
favorable in singularity, but grand totaled
it's hardly worth the metrics.
My god, all that time punching the pillow.
Frumping and rosecheeks.
All that anger mistaken
for health.
A saran-wrap crumpled nose.
Who knows?
I sometimes have those thoughts.
A remarkable, unerring diligence.
But then we have sex and shortly thereafter,
I am free.

grayday grayday

cheap symbol i'm here
talking nobility
while you wait with
a half-handled boning
knife, serape, cigars yes
it's taken me, is not well
belted cloaked hidden you
shouldn't look up the halo
of the moon. in other
worlds the saw
is the law, she will
wear a veil, she may
never see you. a hot
blooded holy, lent back
in strong wind mother
fucker i've seen you
i know you
three times alien
babies in the
plastic pitted
capsule.
artificial
life. ill-fitting
zipper. pathos
particularly mcglincy
you gherkin
i am. i am under
black kerchief mainsail,
the jar,
the man who played with
muddy waters plays how muddy
comes apart. this poem
has no idea
what it is.
this poem is still trying
to wake up.

it's a flower.

reply in the sky

Your pictures are
very cool but they
are also so very very tiny
on the web page.

Awful, hideous, and old
is what we all become,
someday, just
like someday we will all
become babylike and pink,
also sweet and soft
as powder.

St. Paul is a twin
to Minneapolis, and Minneapolis
gave birth to the Replacements,
and I love the Replacements
from the top of my Westerberg
to the bottom of my Stinson.

Good luck
on the redeye
and on the mid west.

Three cheers
to the almost-rendered heart.

an evening in mongolia

Dean Young was sad and Russell
wasn't much better. It's true

we had little
to go on: a few
shaggy ponies, spears. When pressed,
which would you abandon? Usually
you toss them both
to the latest thundering

herd. If we all
walk an endless desert, why
so many poems
about flowers yet
so few about
hot feet? I guess
what I'm saying is

so what. I don't

care what you ordered
for dinner, even
when I get philosophical
about bicycle seats or
the seats that sit idly
upon them. Mostly

when I wander I
do it in the company
of monsters, carrying
the names of by-gone
women: Henrietta, Missie, napkins
folded in our monstrous

pockets. None
of us make comments on
the sand.
What a waste.

If you can't
remember whether you
brushed your teeth, what
are the chances you
actually did?
This is at least a
measure.
Of you,
as a person,
good night.

saturday wordle

saturday saturday saturday

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The far majestic (bly poem)

Your cigarette down-poised, un-lit.
Welcome to the often-tunneled
earth.

Your course is mapped
like a constellation
in the stars.
But the shapes
- the bear the belt
the crab the stupid-
handled pot -
you don't buy it.
Are you so desperate
against the dark?

Maybe it's a trick
for memory. But is that wisdom
or excuse?

Luckily age
has taught you to doubt.
Often, yourself.

These days you're happy
making love slowly. You wish
the coffee stayed hotter
in the cup.
What if
the world could give up wanting.
You ask that to the ass
of every young girl.

Friend,
what map could possibly lead you?
What starshine
will sing you
through the night?

Obvious Poem

Part of me is very sad.

It's not the part
that is given a latte
by the beautiful woman.
Or that eats a blueberry
muffin still melting
from the oven.

But it's there.

It's not the part that sits
with my friends on Saturday.
That hears "good job" at
the office. The rustle
of paper. That's not
the job
but I hear it.

There is the danger
of too much obviousness.

Why?

As if the worst
that would happen
is that life becomes
too still.
Too simple.
Like a cucumber
sandwich
on a plate.

Just fucking eat it.

Oh, heart.
We still wander
a black ocean.
Tell me when it is
we'll go home.

Warhammer 40K quotes

• Beat your thoughts to the mold of your your will.
  
  -- Attributed to Leman Russ
  
  
• Pain is an illusion of the senses, despair an illusion of the mind.
  
  -- Assassin Proverb
  
  
• Though my guards may sleep and ships may lay at anchor, our foes know full well that big guns never tire.
  
  -- The Tyrant of Badab
  
  
• Here I am and here I shall die.
  
  -- Attributed to Leman Russ at the battle of Rising Fell
  
  
• Do not waste your tears. I was not born to watch the world grow dim. Life is not measured in years, but by the deeds of men.
  
  -- Unknown
  
  

writing a poem on wednesday night

I thought I would as
there was little
else: sitting
in this chair,
dying. From
somewhere
a violin
sawed like
the happiness
hissing out of
a beachball, epic
deflation and then:
again. Why am I
lost in the memory
of vinyl. Why am I
dying of wide ties
and glasses. Why do I
sit in this chair smelling
orange.

My mother was the first to go and I can remember a fat man with a red face and a black suit telling my father that there was no doubt where she was, that he could be as sure of that as he could of anything else in this vale of tears. But he did not mention where and as I thought the whole thing was private and she might be back on Wednesday, I did not ask him where. Later, when my father went, I thought he had gone to fetch her with an outside car but when neither of them came back on the next Wednesday, I felt sorry and disappointed. The man in the black suit was back again. He stayed in the house for two nights and was continually washing his hands in the bedroom and reading books. There were two other men, one a small pale man and one a tall black man in leggings. They had pockets full of pennies and they gave me one every time I asked them questions. I can remember the tall man in the leggings saying to the other man:

'The poor misfortunate little bastard.'

I did not understand this at the time and thought that they were talking about the other man in the black clothes who was always working at the wash-stand in the bedroom. But I understood it all clearly afterwards.

-- from "The Third Policeman," by Flann O'Brien

today i feel like this

"No there's no sun shining on Robson street
You've tipped your hat and escaped defeat
So intent speaks louder than ink or pen
No, I'm not your fellow Canadian, John
Thanks anyway"

--from "The Sharpest Pain" LOTL

One Night Stand, and other titles

It didn't mean anything.
Anyone but you.
Yes, I was drunk.
Yes, I _was_ drunk.
Bus smell.
Coffee angst.
Oh good, tomorrow.
You never loved me.
Oh, it's my _additional_ leg.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
When the flood happened.
No roses.
F you, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Soapy.
Die alone.
There was a reason.
Liza Minelli.
One Night Stand.
Ephemeral online contact.
Generation gap.
Two years too young.
It won't work.
No, you don't.
It's me.
And, you.

another tiny note chiseled a voice of holy hebrew that always
sounded wrong swearing during sex, it was the same sound
that stayed quiet in the choking of children, who rubbed
their tired eyes with the sleeves of yellow rain jackets, chewing on
the invisible string that connects the past to the corner store, leaving
pretended views of shyness, late night keys dropping from our hands
like feathers, which still, in weathers like these, get out the cacophony

a coastal town leaks time from underneath a picnic bench,
in a dell.
no one notices.
one time I listened, but the leak was in finnish.
“leak” means something different, is spelled differently.
it wants to be left alone to catch up later.

the end of freedom

The slats here
will be the slats everywhere.
Why not an opera?
Instead of the symbol
for "asterix", you have drawn
the symbol for "at." And me,
I have given up
this life entirely. From
scrub brush to toothbrush to
sky. Neon festivity in place
of god. Rising levels of Ugg boots. Fashion,
and sheepskin, are weeping. Over cards
you told me you were leaving. And still so much
weeping to be done. You will leave me
adrift in pen caps. A scene by stagnant
suns. I will be
a bottle of blue water. I never
thought you'd wish that
on me.

for esme

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder 'What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

--Dostoevsky

mr. beeps

one tiny note

One philosophy thinks
happiness must be
birdstyle, built
one twig
at a time.

Another thinks:
there is no nest.

So much is possible
with so little.

David sang
his song to Goliath
with one tiny note.

The Same Dumb Run

1. The bathtub is grayed at the temples.
   
2. The pigeons asleep in their chair.
   
3. Twice hideous, once loved.
   
4. A raw feeling at dinner.
   
5. Red knuckles.
   
6. The faint strains of roadwork.
   
7. Pistol whip chorus.
   
8. You speak only in striations. Obligatory turbans and you don't have to see me.
   
9. The bearded croissant.
   
10. Cleanliness rarely equaling happiness.
    
11. Along the ________ edge of my knife.
    
12. Given up to perfect hair.
    
13. An unlikely confusion.
    
14. If you believe it's the same you'll never make it.
    
15. By radiant bus drivers.
    
16. Everywhere, everywhere a peach.
    
17. Grandstanding the pipe.
    
18. From many years ago a letter.
    
19. Oh, god.
    
20. The checks inadvertently in the checkbook.
    
21. The horrendous nature of ink. Of thinking.
    
22. Four orange flowers and nothing is better.
    
23. Volumes of Tolstoy and nothing is solved.
    
24. To argue at length the proper placement of the bookcase.
    
25. The love of you never rising above my hands.
    
26. The hue.
    
27. Dogs in the doorway; don't bother.
    
28. One day we'll walk an imaginary wheel.
    
29. An ever-increasing canto.
    
30. You might be less sad if you listened to Pavarotti.
    
31. You would like to pretend there was a first time.
    
32. Do you have a favorite bird.
    
33. Is your favorite bird the one you both loved and murdered at some frequency with BB guns.
    
34. Too much fabric at the ankle.
    
35. You imagine you whistle and they hear it.
    
36. You imagine they understand.
    
37. "Fashion Coat."
    
38. Every day write down the song you'll die to.
    
39. Math for the meter.
    
40. So much discussion.
    
41. We drove in one sitting to Pittsburgh.
    
42. Between gargantuan movements of light.
    
43. Who wins whose insanity.
    
44. A more complete recollection of scraps.
    
45. The collective holding of breath.
    
46. Legs crossed and waiting.
    
47. We came upon a clearing and within the clearing lay _______________.
    
48. Oh come on. What doesn't lie within a clearing, somewhere.
    
49. Some's and every's and an's and the's.
    
50. All the power to possess it.
    
51. Drive fast in white heels.
    
52. The one bass note that will win you.
    
53. It's impossible to predict what happens next.
    
54. To make the bed or pack a picnic lunch.
    
55. We walked out into the clearing on the tips of our half-ripped shoes.
    
56. There must be a scientific term for saying very little.
    
57. There is a term, like a shirt, for everyone.
    

jurgen, jurgen, rectify torpedoes
the lack of turtledoves in your thin little world
tears popping balloons as they float upwards
coming hard gloom to surface
and then not stopping, you rose
a different dive, like the kind you drink

captain captain, stroke your movie star beard
your imaginary charming sister
who finally falls apart when she hears of your demise
your own face as the thing you wanted most
sinking in shallow water

kitten, kitten, you went down as well
chronicled
damaged film in salt water
over you, and yours

prochnow, prochnow, did you ever milk a cow
in the large hum
boys in the road scrum of your listening eyes
until the words arrive
irrelevant
dead
migrained in barracks
these are my ears, and they have a nice house

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.

whiskeyface, I saw you in the face of three-fucked up kids, in a softer amulet, softer than the bones we were born with. they trailed out lying about things they liked in phrases learned on the voyage to the new world. where did they learn those words. who taught them to say “I love that boy” as if someone else felt that love, as if the way we try to walk was a distance in itself, four walls for every room calling out incantations unlit, a small bladder, and the door to the café letting in the coming cold. are you like them whiskyface, or is that the command you hear in some voices, a repeated sample, a regurgitation, a liquid sacrifice that helps us from the lunch table to the cement to the car to the chant that says this is monday, an extraordinary best seller which is always ending just to come around again gone.

Cannanes - We Drink Bitter

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.

Switzerland (Unmixed)

The door opens up
and in walks the
angel of death
looks just like a friend.

I took the pills
I took the pills
I took the pills
so why can't I sleep?

(Hope & Suicide, 2007)