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)

we wore band-aids on our nipples for the pheromone tour because you’ve got to give some to want some. we went down below sliding on the banisters of shown skin. we sang with the unwashed clothes of the pips formerly of “and the pips” fame. we rediscovered the short life, the long night, the hourly bells, the way old watches used to move the air in overhead vent shafts where mice knew of cities done, of the light that blocks out the light as she fixes her hair with one last look in the bathroom mirror, the way our genes make the overhead fan turn and noise the wires to spark and chew mouths full of large organs, of less words in the thread, unraveled.

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.

oh my god my goodness

i will never be right again.