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Saturday, August 21, 2010

blizzardays


Right turn • Red lights • Left turn • Red lights • Straight on • Red lights • Red lights
 
More than enough is enough is never enough.
Too little for too many, too much for too few.
The accidents play out in limitless frames
and we go limping through the stoplights home.

Left turn • Red lights • Straight on • Red lights • Side street • Red lights • Red lights

Snow keeps on coming,
hangs out like fleurs de lis and chandeliers
on streets of neon cashmere,
painful to the touch.

Straight on • Red lights • Side street • Red lights • On ramp • Red lights • Red lights

Whatever happens seems an omen of Rome:
the thrill of agony and the victory of defeat,
the feedback loop of the on-and-on.
Laughter a murder laughter again.

Side street • Red lights • On ramp • Red lights • Lane shift • Red lights • Red lights

So I roll on reality, one-lane highways, growing gaps,
executives come downsize time,
how a carefully engineered face waits behind every door.
Functionaries, understanding
settled like a watermark upon the eye
regulated to the brink of disorder
and blameless for their bombshells.

On ramp • Red lights • Lane shift • Red lights • Off ramp • Red lights • Red lights

Solutions are subversive
and our ills as we desire them to be--
big bad unsolvable
infinitely profitable.
What will we take back when we reclaim remains?

Lane shift • Red lights • Off ramp • Red lights • Red light • Red lights • Red lights

Look, a vehicle breaks from the herd, spins into whiteness.
Cop cars, cherry and snowball blueberry, alight,
butterflies en masse around catastrophe.

Off ramp • Red lights • Red light • Red lights • U turn • Red lights • Red lights

Do we control our destiny? Did the dead?
Up to a point that never settles
like snowflakes lost in outer space, 
shifting down around around around?




Red light • Red lights • U turn • Red lights • Wrong street • Red lights • Red lights


Oh, all you Mercedes with no track to run
aiming your afterburners into
Mercedes with no track to run before you,
are you tuned in to catch the latest contradictions,
are your wheels spinning in ways beyond design?

U turn • Red lights • Wrong street • Red lights • U turn • Red lights • Red lights

You can stop it if you really try you see you can't stop it.
Snow keeps on coming
keeps turning to mineral in white lot light
to cauliflower dark from the dirt.

Wrong street • Red lights • U turn • Red lights • One way • Red lights • Red lights

Two hours on, red lights have me filled
with so much hope and doubt
waiting for something to catch fire.
Almost home; til then
we must submit to aspire.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Still 2



Still 2

Smoky Polaroid with dingy drapes and antique dolls

Hot flowers with black peach and quetzal

Black string and white foam

X-ray with lemongrass

A plate of tequila, silver, and gloves

Tarantula, tangerines, keyboard; Tahitian sky and matrix

Honeycomb and mandala beneath a vortex

Soil grapes and ingot on plate glass

Vincristine, yarrow, and worms

Prescription pills and perfume mister with windshield shards and bloodstained nylons

Pumice and milk with cobra

Teddy bear and retaining wall

Parvati with opal iceberg and Norwegian sky

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Gentlemen I Remember and the Things They Said to Me in Passing

Do you like classic rock, sir?

You don’t say much. I like that.

Don’t underestimate the power of attorneys.

Stop! That’s licentious material!

Of course I remember you. You were the last person to see my son alive.

No it’s not tainted. I just tested it last night!

I always liked pro wrestlers until I learned they grab the hair under each other’s armpits.

Hey man, your girl ever been DP’ed before?

Are you gonna catch the damn thing?

I really want to masturbate in front of you right now.

What do you think should happen to you?

I would have taken you boys down to the station.

You might turn out to be a cocksucker for all I know.

I like this very much. I don’t have any tolerance for this at all.

Man, you some kinda bookass librarian.

I have serious doubts as to whether you wrote this.

What in the world do you want to read that for?

A Merry Life and a Short One


I had no captain to begin with.
The navigator was a basket case.


All compasses went haywire and the anchor rusted through.
The birds mocked me as they took the sails
This man is the opposite of what he wants to be!


Tired of being a stingray in a world where meaning has no time
to be established as the continents I witnessed move,
I saluted all flags, I accepted
all things.

Very soon I was marooned.

The whales were speaking in kazoo.

Comets and sea turtles
told me secrets and lies.
I took my pages from the proverbs of a given sky
prayed with one hand and an ocean wave—
Give me my pineapple wine!



I thought I was really something.

Then I wondered
why no hunters
blazed in search of me
across horizons bluer than cologne;
 

why I'd left no wake of golden bones
and found my torture,
a Manila fortune,
in nothing but new days now shining
too bright to be healthy or real.


One morning
my head wide as the sky
I could not tell if I was breathing
because I was the air

counting the silver
stars up above
listening into the glistening,

a black magician for good.