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

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

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