One Thousand Bicycle Bells

truth is temporary, child

2011-10-29T10:26:00.001-04:00

I pull back the curtain
to reveal there is nothing behind the curtain
and a small black man bounds out
apologizing for both his stature and gender
then he begins to sing

I pull back the curtain
to reveal the man I must defeat
when a huge robin-red cardinal emerges
and, cawing like a fiery crow
defenestrates

I pull back the curtain
and I throw up my hands
and a net covers the doorway
a net of definition I have woven since Penelope was young
and my points rise by one thousand
and the door to the next level appears
and in the corner, behind a brick
the hidden answers I will never find

I don’t really get poetry

2011-10-27T16:05:00.002-04:00

Accidental reader: let’s confess together,
I don’t get it either!
But I gave up smoking some many months ago

& haven’t been religious since puberty.
Google gives most of the answers, but
there’s so little other space in these humdrum dailies

for the things we don’t get. I don’t want to get
too solipsistic (great word,
isn’t it?) in all this. But it feels free

ing to capitalize WE DON’T NEED TO GRASP,
say it like breath from an unstuck lung,
under the crackle of lovelorn sky in Ohio

when we used to step outside for heartrace
cigarettes & contemplation, or the grand
latinate inflection in a half-hour’s meditation.

Reader, my baby is crying. Reader, we have only
so much time, but it cannot
be kept. It’s already lost. Let’s confess

that poetry is, like love, just another thing we’ll never
get, but can sit beside, thinking up words
for the curser in the text box, which waits & suggests.

Thank

2011-10-07T09:48:00.003-04:00

with e^x^n hours available on netflix
who has time to clean and polish the toaster
much less get to that uck back behind ick
which all i’m saying

is that we sit in the growing mold
and even i don’t want to live my life
anymore thank

Google thank Facebook thank
amctimewarner
there are so many others to choose

The Only Thing We Have

2011-07-13T16:54:00.003-04:00

The only thing we have to fight against

death is love, and love

is not the opposite of death.

Oooh

2011-06-22T18:33:00.001-04:00

you gotta love the ladies
at the laundromat who coo
ooh you baby look just like you
gootchie goo. or I do,
anyway. I love them anyway:

their spanish soaps, the cops
& ballers who hang around,
the gossip stewing. she say
I'M a slut!? she even KNOW
which bed she roll outta
this mornin? There's no

story, no observation-
al wisdom I gain folding
my, & my wife's, & my child's
clothes while the ladies
at the laundromat spark
& crackle over their soaps.
It's only their lives. I like
to listen in. I love them.

It's what's left

2011-06-08T17:01:00.003-04:00

You tell someone something till you're sure they get it, then you keep telling them till they don't get it anymore, then you keep on telling them until neither of you get it, until nothing anyone's saying seems to make sense, until it's all babbling noisery. This is poetry. Or maybe it's what's left after everyone hacks off what they want, & shoves it somewhere secret so it won't get taken back. What do I know? I'm just the guy at your elbow with a ragged sportcoat and a cigarette everyone's too shy to make me put out. My only qualification is I read and read until the words stopped forming right. Nothing made sense anymore. Then I kept reading. It's easy: see?

Prophecies for My First Child, A Daughter

2011-05-06T10:29:00.001-04:00

I.
I shall tell of how you’ll live for many years,
to better understand your tragedy. No flare
& sputter for you: no only glamour
then the effortless emblem of a quick wink
out. Your death will be the drawn dimming
of the wick as you wander into the long dark. & they:
they who keep living, marking your distance
till they can almost see you still, then until
they almost can’t. & there is no moment exactly
when they can’t. This is the way of many grand
deaths, my love. This is death for those
who love life. This is how we die
paying attention.

II.
Next know that you will be wise & how also
this is tragedy. Know that wisdom accrues
by tragedy, and it is tragedy that wisdom
never really matters. For it is not intelligence:
that intimation of success which always,
in the best of us (and so in you, my love)
is innocent progenitor of each alas each
cassandra, each morsel of the tragic
bitter sweet judiciousness you’ll taste.
So sweet, and so cold.

III.
Next know you will be plain in the eyes
of the world, and this is my gift to you,
my daughter. That you walk invisible
to the hungers of cannibals, who batter
and diminish before touching, and would
have you whole for the length of a meal
and then forget. Know that you will be
of a beauty unsurpassed, but the cloak
I have built is such that it will be seen
only by the eyes that mean to see it. And
by this you will be protected until you
are protected.

IV
and finally, my love, I give you the greatest gift
I can, my last and final talisman: a heart
tamable enough to keep nostalgia dear, even
as your head argues for nostalgia’s unreality.
You will become a collector of pleasant memories,
in time you’ll hold each one aloft, in turn,
re-telling the story of those moments, the joy,
the light, the taste of prescience in the air. In this,
your happiness and wisdom will increase in value, as all
collections do, from the relative insignificance
at their production, to jewels you hoard, the only
jewels best hoarded by being constantly given away.

Stand Facing the Mountain

2011-04-22T19:33:00.004-04:00

these are the instructions
the mountain is there and will always be there
the mountain is not a test
it is a mountain
there is no use facing away from the mountain
do not seek the view. at the pinnacle
there may be a view, or there may not
there is no use seeking paths around the mountain
to do so is to still allow the mountain to define your path
to continue, there is only one direction:
stand facing the mountain, and move.

Culture

2009-09-25T20:42:00.002-04:00

"the tilling of the land" from Latin, cultura

This this this this this this this
this is the sound that wheat makes
this is the song that wheat sings
this hiss this hiss this this this, But:
down comes the thresher and grinds up the wheat field
down comes the thresher and grinds up the wheat field
down comes the thresher and down comes the thresher
and we pound the wheat to flour with a miller's wheel
and we smooth out the powder to a silken meal
and we add a little water and we add a little yeast
and we arm ourselves for slaughter
for we're conquering the East.

Who You See

2009-09-21T18:46:00.001-04:00

Number one, says the doctor
I don't really feel that you
are possible
and this frustrates me.

No one has read a book
like you have, doc, I say.
You read
the hell out of those books.

If anyone knows a thing,
you do. So if I'm not
possible,
how am I, I say.

That's one for the PhDs
says the doctor. I'm a
stitch man.
I stitch things. It's what I do.

And you read, I say

And I read. But that won't do
for this. So I'm going to stitch you.
I'm going
to stitch this to you, he says,
holding up a thing.

I'm pretty sure,
I say,
I didn't come in here with that.

You are right, and I can't rightly
say it'll do a thing for whatever
afflicts you
but I'm a stitch man and I cannot

have an improbable freak like you
wandering out of my office
without saying
I did something drastic in response.

You have a point, I say.
It's to make the hole, he says.
Which he does.
And that's how I got to be
who you see before you, today.

Learning

2009-08-31T11:30:00.001-04:00

first by the river, its shadows, you uncover a shell.

look you shout: shell!, and ahead comes the echo

of your voice, but deeper, replying: of course. it's all

shale here. you stop and hold the shell to your sight.

there are a hundred tiny mirrors replying with light

to the question of your eye. but every mirror only shows

a you. it shows a hundred yous that no one else will ever see.

a hundred different yous that are not you, or yous that others

see. You do not know the hundred yous that others see.

they cannot see these yous here, which are made of you,

each one an echo of your eyes, and of the years that suddenly

speed between shadows by the river, till you startle and rouse,

and move toward the footfalls before they crackle back, before

the voices wonder where you are. but they crackle on, voices oblivious

to the stretch of time or what you might have echoed into being.

You must replace the shell and catch up to the footfalls, now.

It will remain, with yous, among the shade. and were you always here?

The Opposite of Shadows

2009-08-31T11:27:00.002-04:00

Once, after a dinner party hosted by a passing acquaintance ran beyond late, due to a magical confluence of personalities,
which kept the conversation tumbling like a jingly stream until past all reason, I made pretense toward the guest bathroom,
and stepped off the back porch into an unexpected sunrise.

Is the word “need” too strong for what the light did to me then? I raised a last pilfered glass of yellow wine and the light
passed through my glass and played the opposite of shadows over my chest. Syracuse is a dim place
in the winter months: most days the over-erased chalkboard of the sky brooks no specific source of light. In this space souls become

lost; they have no compass point to orient around. And when the air, at long-last makes way for a sun,
it often rises dim, sad, lonely, seeming out-of-place. But in the darkest moments, or after the long blanket of winter
is shuddered away, there will suddenly lie on the floorboards of a warming morning pools of lemon light, like a surprise,
and I fall to my knees, myself surprised, and drink.

Haircut

2009-05-21T10:12:00.002-04:00

A—what do you call it—a temporal confluence

where the same ideas keep banging at you from

every direction—the radio, the book a friend

gave you, the magazine you subscribe to—

nothing outsized, just the same few words, a

quote or obscure reference you suddenly see

everywhere— actually I see it— like an Emily

Post proverb coming from Proverbs the Masons

used to use as passwords, or a Neil Young lick

echoing out of a steel drum or an asian single

string cello in the subway's underground, then grinding

through your head until you realize, reading

Dickinson to distract yourself—still me—

it's the same rhythms. That's when I find myself

staring extra hard at Sabretti's vendors, or

the guy I see smoking every day outside his coffee

shop because the final secrets are there, like a ball

on the universe's tongue, and at any moment someone

might open their mouth. Does it happen? Never.

And I don't understand anything, even now. I

find places to go, and food to eat. I fiddle with

whatever few distractions (body, electronics, music)

I like—you too, I assume—and we wait for the

most important parts of our lives—marriages, or sex, or

children, or success, or the death of our parents, our

loved ones, ourselves—to happen. And in between?

A good book. A trip to the Keys. Haircut. Poem.

Weeping

2009-05-20T20:27:00.000-04:00

In 1989 I turned twelve and for many reasons,
some harder to defend, I told my Fundamentalist
neighbors I had found religion in the Tao Te Ching.

Their mom called my mom weeping for my soul,
of which a more understanding friend once explained
to me: of course. What he meant was poisoned love
is still love.

Later we went to a basketball game, my Fundamentalist
neighbors and myself, where a man forcibly converted
me to Christ. My neighbors were twelve and thirteen

and later one would run from Jesus as fast as his strong legs
could carry him—from Jesus and his father's belt. The other,
I don't know but would not wonder if he wasn't somewhere
a deacon.

I never heard the phone call that my neighbors' mother

made, but her eyes never welled up seeing me, and she

never tried to shield my satan-loving self from any of her

brood. I came and went in that household for many years

as one of their own. This is also a certain type of love.

But I also never got the belt.

A story about the clock

2009-01-31T10:50:00.001-05:00

The clock does not mean to mark your death.
It makes, in hulking thrums, a song
of unspooled fears. And when rewound
each week, it sussurates in praise.
The clock stands on a shifting sand,
touching each grain on the head, secure
that it will never touch them all. Surprising,
then, the sureness of its song. Surprising then,
the steady tone which only falters at the outer
edges of the rachet's run, first quickening.
No. The clock does not know it sings your end.
It's busy with its own concerns. It's built to sing.

1986

2009-01-27T17:20:00.001-05:00

Based on a poem by Weldon Kees

The closet full of games: Monopoly
care-worn and fabric split, parts gone.
Christmas Eve, we're playing,
making up our own games. Sugar meringues
and candied oranges in the parlor. Stronger

stuff in my uncles' cups. I see my cousins
--all of us--grown, going off
to war in deserts, disappearing one by one
in ten, in fifteen years -- to drink,
to shame, to somewhere off the family map.

I did not know then which I'd be. I buy
a box of meringues from the grocery
and I am back in the front parlor again.
Around the Christmas tree, a yellow light.
The closet full of games. Monopoly.

A book with a clock

2008-12-08T09:33:00.002-05:00

to Michael Burkard

on the round tip
a sea voyage is opening
check the leaves
for falling, the doors
we sink from firmament
but something else suspends us
check the windows and doors
to see if a child is safe
and welcome, you may be
riding the wrong bus. the wrong heart.
finding yourself dead, check
the schedule, the friends you
are with. these birds
are not my birds, not wings;
something softer, more sound.
a book with a clock.
give me back my birds.

* nb. this poem is assembled from lines written by Christine Kitano, Eric Darby, Nadxi Manello, Ashley Farmer, Michael Burkard and myself in Michael's graduate level writing workshop.

The Light, The Noise

2008-11-04T12:35:00.001-05:00

Sometimes in public buildings
sunlight descends like a waterfall
onto the shoulders of a stranger,
tangling in her hair, waking a constellation
of motes around her sweater, even
licking her golden skin with its soft tongue,
as she squints and plays with her cell phone,
and says disappointingly stupid things.

The Terrible Nights Awake

2008-11-04T09:57:00.001-05:00

When I try to remember, I get everything wrong. In my mind, my parents called me inside at three and a half to ask for permission to divorce. And I clearly recall a hat, a tall stovepipe like the one Abe Lincoln wore, descended from the ceiling to my head as I raised my hands, nodding, to pronounce my consent. Dividing to unite, I suppose, as opposed to what the other, older Lincoln did. Untrue, all of it, except for the shag orange carpet and me-by-the-door, and a little plastic red car which I went back out and played with, afterward.

Or, on the mantle in the living room: a picture of an old man kneeling in the snow, arms around two children, which I swore was my grandfather, my father and his sister, until one day (I was eight), I mentioned it, and dad said "no, of course that isn't right." It was our neighbor down the corner, and his daughter. The other child was a cousin. And for years, they were. Until one day, (I was twelve) I mentioned it, and dad said "no, of course that isn't right." It was my grandpa and my father, and aunt Barb again.

And deja vu: I get that too, always about mundane stuff. For instance, yesterday you asked if I wanted almond butter on my toast, and I said no, and then the phone rang and you laughed. Then it struck me: I had dreamed of that, oh, several months ago. But instead of almond butter it was a belly full of salt. And instead of toast it was a burning garden. And instead of our phone's cold trill, it was the sounds of us clutching each other and weeping. But the gestures were the same. I really don't know where I get these ideas which keep coming, and going, and coming again. But I try not to think too much about it, for obvious reasons.

Demons along the beach

2008-11-04T08:41:00.001-05:00

Out past the shimmering distance, a padparadscha rose,
built into a snap of gumweed by the cliff.
Ruby its hips; nephrite blades. And you are the edge
of a circle that coarsens my skin. My feet callused,
my soul pillowed with temptation, I tread
the wounded glass beachfront, teeming
with crustaceans. I plant their corpses
in pockets of water for scavengers. I search for the grail
so your eyes might be pleased. I make
branching tracks on a beach covered with demons.

Letter to a moment when I did not die

2008-10-18T19:42:00.001-04:00

It was not the noise of you—thunderclap of glass
six short feet behind me—but the, it wasn't silence,
something else, how the bright blue day gulped you
back, so that seconds later I could realize I heard
everything: airbags popping, tires whup-whupping
sideways across pavement, a back axle groaning and buckling
into cement, before an actual quietness occurred.
And me there: the balls of my feet barely on the curb,

a taste of rubber powder in the air. I turned to take in where
you almost took me: crumpled metal, plastic rubble
littering the crosswalk. Then the drivers, stumbling out, rubbing heads
and arms, withdrawing cell phones. Then the trees made their shushing
and next I heard the noises that had disappeared: songbirds
quieted, voices, traffic, gone. A nearby rooftop generator cycled down.
As did my sense of everything. I turned around.
I can't remember the rest of the walk home.

Sometimes I wish I could be Lisa Jarnot

2008-10-18T17:05:00.002-04:00

the five and dime
the five at nine
the fife, and i'm
the life, the time
a rife in mine
a laugh in line
a loaf on lawn
a left and lane
a heft of hawn
a fist of dawn
too fast to damn
to favor time
who find the lime
at five fifteen

list for a bachelor's death

2008-10-08T09:59:00.003-04:00

red dress
spiky balls
vows
sweaters (red, green)
black boots
black sandals closet
long sleeve shirt
(pink, b-republic)
rings
list of food on desk
butterfly barrette
face glitter

Accident of Fact

2008-09-18T17:38:00.000-04:00

The day of your birth was a Tuesday. This is an accident
of fact, caught between the heathen gods and heavenly orbits
of your calendar. The sewers caught fire in your city,
man-hole covers blowing off all over town — one
in front of the car that took you, still tangled to your mother,
to Akron General Hospital. She labored nine hours
to expel your small form, covered in water and blood, a feat
that three doctors said couldn’t be done. At seventeen minutes
of eleven in the morning, on the longest day of nineteen seventy-seven,
with Cancer rising out of Gemini, (a Tuesday): you became.
It was temperate, and sunny. Gods of War were dragging
swords through soils across the earth. A cloud of Martins
startled from a tree outside, and draped across the hospital’s long lawn.

Portraits of the Office — Colleen

2008-09-18T09:24:00.000-04:00

And then there's Colleen, an energetic smoker,
relaxed in a way that makes others nervous.

In laconic conversation, she responds
to every third comment.
She is a non-drinker.
She laughs, often even, never at jokes.
She makes wistful nonsequiturs.
Her smile causes co-workers to wish
they could brush the hair from her eyes
and in this way she deftly manages
both Sales and Shipping.

And oh, poor Peet. Fell, once, hopelessly
in front of her. sprawling, beet-faced.
Her, crouching, tender as a mother cat,
in her dangerous heels,
to gather up his things,
never once touching him.

Metaphor Porn

2008-07-30T16:15:00.002-04:00

crows in a fingerlake park

inverse blizzard
overcoats at a business lunch
the wedding party searches for the ring
hiccups from a screaming baby
solarized photo: boats on an ocean
Picnic of scattered punctuation
jittery coffee beans out of the bag
broken train whistle call-all-alling
balsamic drips on salad greens
torn-up postcard of a Rothko print
seagull shadows, unsewn and strewn
calligraphic stutters
escaped cat-pupils, collecting light
onyx carapace, exploded onto viridescence
a cancer gift: lover's lashes on the pillow
or a bully's taunting "aww"
amplified and made flesh: hurricane of sound.

Mountain Town, Spring

2008-07-29T21:20:00.001-04:00

Here roads are rivers
of mud the cows shit in
so you can’t tell dirt
from shit. It coats everything:
ankles and calfs,
splatters even on shirts,
festers in sinkholes,
eats shoes.

We are tourists: rich
and foreign. Above town
lay three clear lakes
we will not see.

Each yard is a dark stain
oozing downhill,
coating sawlogs, our jeep’s wheels.
Even the river itself, a runnel of mud.

This is as far as I’ve been
from my cities,
sidewalks, street lamps.
I wake in the morning. I dig
for a lifeline
to home: white toilet paper
quilted, and bent from my backpack

then muck through the mist
to the rickety
wood-covered hole
to peel back
the blue tarp and arrange
for a place
to place my feet in the mud.

My thumb hole

2008-07-25T11:18:00.000-04:00

My thumb hole
is ragged
more than broken
blister less than
torn kite.

Not hurt
(at least
no pain) but
it, you know, annoys.

In my right
hand I hold:
a heat gun --
a hair dryer --
hot coils and a fan

and I wave
over skin which
melts, joins, or
sticks together.

No more hole!

(though I -- whoops
fused three fingers
together and will

need a knife).
But later, the blister
returns: twice the size
and full of puss, of course.

oh fruit flies humping

2008-07-09T22:45:00.002-04:00

oh fruit flies humping
on the microwave
oh grit on the floor

oh bottle of beer
oh instant messages
from new zealand
or indiana

oh cat sneaking off
to lick the bathtub faucet

oh lives at stake
against floods forest fires against
governments weapons troops
on the radio oh fearsome radio

oh cat in the bathtub again
oh beads of water
on my cold beer

oh super cell
which is i discovered a really
really really really really big
storm cloud due to thresh
syracuse any moment now oh
harbinger of global warming
i’m sure

oh wife
hundreds of miles away
at a real job i guess
while your husband
writes ditties
and chases the cat
oh that you and i were fruit flies

Her Curled Ethiopian Hair

2008-07-01T09:17:00.002-04:00

Her curled Ethiopian hair
wide dark eyes
the ever-present smell of salt
seven years old a dirty plaid
dress semblance of private school
over jeans rushing to my side
as she did every recess
to grab my hand
to watch me survey the yard
in my crisp volunteer’s uniform
to slide her fingers
into the sleeve of my coat
and pinch
the folded skin at my elbow

Traveling in the Caucasus

2008-06-28T10:57:00.005-04:00

Away from the city, where markets feed
on the remains of Stalin’s realm, we drive:
a family bolted together by common passport,
searching for some place
the guidebooks don't yet know.

I’ve been here before so I think
I know a thing or two: I bring
good boots and quiet contempt
for my colleagues’
prissy phobias. About the rest, I’m wrong.

Our hosts are kind.
Loose-toothed, dulled with sweat
dried on the skin. Beside them, we gleam.
When looked in the eye, I look away.

We’ve come to 'help' with the harvest
--a tourist’s trick for hospitality
the locals haven’t caught on to, yet:
they don’t try to sell us anything.

Deep in a vineyard we alternately pick
and eat, our buckets
slowly fill, empty into a flat-bed,
then fill again.

Later, in a fallow field,
a table is produced, and linen cloth.
We are guests, the fare is rich:
ripe tomatoes, salty cheese
pickled greens,
a bowl of sour cherries, cucumbers and plum sauce.
A fire's built and coals are spread for roasting meat.

Then wine is poured — strong wine
from grapes so dark they’re black.
As the sun’s last rude embers die,
and lamps are lit, the farmer-owner stands
and raises a glass. A toast —
a toast to our new, dear,
kind, generous, American
friends.

It's night

2008-06-24T13:47:00.002-04:00

It’s night (again) in Princeton
squirrel mechanics
twirling rachets
tighten lugs on wobbly branches.
A phone trills, somewhere distant
& they pause.

We're coddled: embers
burning in my palm &
a candle in between us,
jaundice from the window to our back.
Slouching, adolescent, in your father's adirondacks
we look at where the night protrudes,
we're young enough to wonder at its interludes:
the ancient mythic mystery of dark.

A word hovers, teasing, then escapes your lips.
There's almost enough darkness to disguise it,
turning, you whisper, hoping breath will be enough
to send it fluttering -- false ambassador to trees.

Somewhere in Libra, there, a lonely light
blinks between extensive blackness,
& the leaves sheathing the earth.
It studies me,
or else whatever's interesting it
between, beyond:
I am my own after-thought.
In between my feet & soil there is air,
I’m not breathing, I am leaving you
to record this, instead,
& rolling up, & setting fire
letting something else that calls itself my life
settle where perhaps a life should be.

when the robins arrived

2008-06-24T10:46:00.001-04:00

when the robins arrived we were unprepared
the cat pawed at the plastic sheet
covering the window and clicked her jaws
no one had put buds up on the branches
a mess of snow and leaves still scattered on the lawn

the skies began to blue and this angered me
Too soon! I shouted at the birds
I kept drinking whiskey by lamplight
even as the long nights began to shrink
I made soup and put it in the freezer by the soup

but they understood the robins arriving
perching in the bare trees it was agreed
they will not sing this year there will be
no eggs no green grass they will explain
to the frozen pond underneath the weary ducks
we will continue to winter until you return

You Were Never Here

2008-06-23T11:14:00.001-04:00

based loosely on a poem by Galaktion Tabidze

You were never here. You’re so slow with your torture.
You chop at the grass by the pond with your knife.
whoever said you were dead was a liar.
You were just born today, and I died.

You were never here. And you never unnerved me.
You never were human, nor alien either.
Whoever said you were sad must despise me:
You’re a giddy schoolgirl, and I’m in despair.

You were never here, so leave if you want.
The house that we lived in was never quite real.
Whoever called you a gypsy was prescient:
you carry your house on your back like a snail.

You were never here. So may Fate fuck you over
Again and again like the bitch that she is.
Take your safe port in the space between spaces:
You’re already immortal, wherever you are.

Invocation

2008-06-10T12:22:00.000-04:00

We sank into summer’s sol-
ipsistic slothic solace
into hungers deeper than
mere light-life-warmth we talked
late we woke to a rude sun
burning we turned, slowed, set
our batteries to “store” we walked
at lesiurely pace and made things
clean again we drank deep drafts
of water and swam and smoked
and called out to each other
from balconies porches lawn chairs
when we slept we knew we were missing out
on something on the radio
our leaders talked of hope again and TV
hosts spoke of pain and cost
but it was hot and the grass was long
we had only few but enough
this all happened already but you
can now remember it whatever light
you’re standing under whichever tie
or shirt you wear
whatever time of year

2008-06-09T16:58:00.002-04:00

came a ways from the west
there we learned of color from the sky
to be an adult, tried things
gained dubious understandings
the best of which I cannot explain
failure, our only true teacher
what we must still learn we cannot yet accept
but I am a meddler by nature
there is no honest work
     but what the spider does
and singing, with its permanent structures
a sun hangs (orb) over the razed fields
like a bright popping behind the eyes
squint, and ignore, and attempt escape
the overhead sun was always a myth
go back again with another mind
the river is always different
a clean punch of chlorine in the nostrils
decay                                             decay
here in the east, east is not enough
         there is west beyond it
& to the east more west still
impatient — a meddler — an
     american. fever is progress
every story reminds me to be hungry
be curious
to seek
here there is much to see even as a
dark ozone looms over our shoulders
a fat drop touching my elbow
reminds me to be aware

2006-08-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

Erie

“Waves on a lake, Who ever heard of that?”
the little motor pushed out past the harbor, then
the bigger motor pulled past sight of land
“Back in the day patches of her caught fire, couple
times. It’s safe now.” Stripped to jeans my uncle
punched off the bobbing aft and hit the waves.
“It feels good going deeper and deeper.”
Ponds and pools, sure: always ground to touch
I crouched, twitching under feet.

Everything Sounds Better In Italian

2006-08-18T19:07:00.001-04:00

says Adam
though Sarah thinks
that means everything
sounds better in Italy:
water lapping at the boat
along the Grand Canal in Venice,
say, or (her choice) the
crunch of Nutter Butters
munched on hills outside of Rome.

She may be right – she almost always is.
Though I can’t say I like her taste in food
(she’s six — the age where what she eats
is one ingredient in many forms) she has a sense
of the aesthetic preternaturally advanced
and will arrange her plate
or playspace with intent so
everything is perfect and she knows
if even one peanut’s disturbed.
So, when I say
no, sweetie, what he means is
words sound better in Italian she
says of course,
‘cause everything is better over there.

Misremembered Sestina

2006-05-04T19:58:00.000-04:00

The sand keeps spinning in little gusts of wind
up and down the beach. There are two dunes you own
in front of the house. All summer long you talk
of letting me run down them on the last day. Now I’ve sold
this memeory packed in a jar of paper, hoping when I’m bald
I can go walking in the world, collecting my life in pieces.

This memory is false: I used to drive my aunts to buy peaches
but I run the risk of picking it – among these memories which wend
around I can’t remember which is mine. Strong thoughts have bowled
over truer ones. Which memory was more righteous? Which one won?
Which one was beautiful? I took a paper jar and slid
another memory inside. My brain’s full. Too many memories to take.

A boat on the sounds begins to tack
shoreward, leans deeply and parses
the waves. Hands scramble – tiny dots. A slippery salad
of seaweed washes across my feet. No. As if with a wand
I conjured this from ether, real as any other memory. Now
wait it did occur – unless the lie’s grown bold

inside my mind and insinuated itself, like a bard
inventing wars so we can all feel like we’ve won. Tuck
me in little thought: tell me yourself. Put us all on
gliders so we see the storms of images approaching from our porches
or (remembering another metaphor) let’s drift on the river as you wind
through all the details that make fiction nearly truth if slightly sullied

by a few small vestiges of fact made out of sod.
From the beachhead I make out a boat-hand with a beard.
The breeze shifts seaward, the vessel rights, the tiny figures win
their battle with the elements and mathematics of torque.
No one perishes.
All the shapes on the boat top wink out one by one.

This is my memory now. I’ve made it my own.
None can take it from me. I can’t be sold
except to further cement itself as one of the many pieces
that make up me. Perhaps it’s real, or still a bald-
faced lie, or both. Maybe every memory is only talk,
simply not strong enough to stand up in stiff wind.

This beach is where I stand – a child playing bard
praying words solid, plying them with tack
to hold together all the pieces of my mind in time’s stiff wind.

Sunday's Still A Holy Day

2006-03-29T15:09:00.000-05:00

we are the otters of the universe
—Richard Bach

—which shocked God (and good,
that serene bastard) because
the otters thought they were the
otters of the universe, but I’m
standing here, smoking my
last last cigarette (I swear) and
waiting on the Royal Oak
All Wood™ coals in the grill
to do their thing, sipping a
black lager in my Classic Wool™
jacket and really finally feeling
Spring — the coals are playing
some glass clink sonata unique
to Royal Oak (Kingston briquets
never sing) they’re getting red
now and the sparks are dancing
and I’m feeling the nicotine
or maybe it’s the warmth
of fire sixteen thousand
years old and I’m thinking:
hell yeah: this is a
river and my fur is all
wet, I’ve got a chunk of
slate, I’m breaking shellfish
on it, drifting…

I tap the beer against
the grill and the chacoal
keeps piping and bitching.

(music to sit in a cold bath, with the lights out, & the stove on)

2006-03-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

oh, that is that
is that that?
that is oh, oh that oh
is that? is oh that?
that is that oh that
oh that is is, is that oh?
oh that? that is is oh
oh is is oh? oh is? is
oh, oh? is oh that? is
oh oh that? no, that
is oh, oh no, that
that no is that oh, oh
that that. that no is
that that. what is that?
is that what that is? is
that what that no? no.
not that what, no. is
is that not what that is?
is that what that not is?
is what not that what is?
not that what is not
but that what is, is. oh
oh is that not wait, what
is that, oh what is not that?
oh not that
oh not what that
that no not oh that
what not
not oh
not is
not that which is not
that oh that which is that.

Not Now

2006-03-06T23:06:00.000-05:00

[edited]

not really able to relax
or properly not relax
restless but not properly
restless cold not frozen but
not radiating heat not
nervous (or not properly
nervous) so much not witty
certainly but not thoughtless
in any blissful sense wordplay
sure halfhearted bits &
serious but not enough
soon married sooner ruling
something small not self not
fully not lost no real
reliquishing control
not amateur anymore not
yet professional but still
not fully on the fence
(not really anywhere between)
that not speaking an aside,
not speaking for anyone in particular
not properly certainly not myself
certainly not fully
uncertain not hidden
not fully revealed you see
but not enough not happy not
truly but not sad not
destitute not wealthy if
wealth is friends or faith
experience or such (not cash)
not particularly sure if there's
a point a song behind the
scenes a shot
at something great a game
not interesting enough to play just
pages of paper not quite
purchased yet a pen
not dry an itch that isn't
bothersome but I'll half-scratch
it just not yet

You Sea

2006-02-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

a spray has diamonds in it
& over a heaving flood
swims lather like hot blood

man may worship her
bemoaning gift ships
& stormy death but
only the deep blue
could cry all the tears
our goddess wants,
needs.

Song

2006-01-28T21:24:00.000-05:00

In a quiet neighborhood
on a little path
a pair of never-lovers cross
and their breaths embrace.
The music from her headphones
leaves an aftertaste
of quietly averted gazes
on a little path
in a silent neighborhood
where never-lives are crossed.

...

I was walking home from the office today and reading Auden as I did it... then I got this little song in my head.

I Had A Dream In Which Everyone Was Mistaken

2006-01-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

It bit her afterward, although it said
it wouldn’t — this is where the story’s wrong.
A venomous python, gold, green, and twice
my leg’s width. It had far more threat than charm.
It chased us through the garden hissing slurs
and treed us in the only outlawed spot.

She ate because the creature said it would
leave us be if we did. It licked the air,
to taste the broken fruit’s perfume. Content,
the lying traitor lunged. Of course it would.
By then I’d swallowed and I knew shouldn’t have.
I broke a heavy branch and crushed its brain.

You Aren't Mine

2006-01-10T20:01:00.000-05:00

Rain in from the window
on the too-nice four-poster bed
Rain in onto your blue skin
but we don’t close the sash,
or tie the lucent curtains back—
they aren’t ours.

Swami, naked by the river, waits for his clothes to dry

2006-01-10T18:20:00.000-05:00

This place is sick with dust: the fecund particles
of human leavings that drift and give good nourishment
to airborne fungus, bacteria, the odd cricket. And the fans
blow all this shit across the waste of linoleum right
into my sneezing face. I’ve got a stitch in my side
from the violence, and I’m waiting for my
shirts to finish spinning. What of it? Nothing,
but I wish I too, were naked by the river.

Lines written below New York City, on a train, December, 2005

2006-01-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Geese flippers in mud padding
to the song in my ear, a
certain style, a cut of
fabric which stretches, clings
shifts registers, doesn't tell
so much but shows, like
Deadwood or Rome, or Carnivale
shift and linger, narrate
and demonstrate, a soft
fabric rent by stress & chemicals
discovered by the dead, religion
as a form of physical relief
we perform because it works
or has and if it isn't aren't
we all strapped to this
train no matter where it's heading
into or out of a seasonal
set of objectives, you scan
shun this or that as against
reason or against feeling
walls defend and knives enter
the city and it, too, bleeds
outside the lines like marker
you take care of your end and
we'll take care of Delaware
but who'll take care of the callers? can't
we get away somewhere -- to depictions
of peace via excursions into nature
boats on the water and pictures of
geese flippers in mud padding

Snow on a Field

2005-12-14T08:22:00.000-05:00

This is very in progress:

Snow on a field

like confetti
     on a field
like parkas
     on a field
like mounds of paper maiche
      wet pancake batter
     on a field
like tube socks
and shin guards
     on a field
like all your unsexy underwear
     on the field
like miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles     and miles and miles of floss
     on a field
like the arc of Apple’s computer mouse
     on a field like
like the eyes of all who look upon you, tender with cataracts
     on a field
like goose shit
     on a field
like wind-beaten flecks of frozen water
     on a field like a banquet of boiled eggs
like chicken thighs uncooked, soft and grey
     on a field
like a shaken bottle of dandelion milk
      the hard mooing of glue-factory cattle
     on a field
like the noise in my ears
     on a field
like a burp, were a burp to have shape and were that shape somehow both soft and hazy and also crystal sharp in the same moment, the light going under it, but also hovering above it, dancing off the strange undulations running across the length and breadth of it as, in the cold air, a silent jet streams its contrail into the sky
     on a field

Drinking Ted

2005-12-05T15:44:00.000-05:00

not what
you think
neither
lovesick
nor er-
rata. I
am in-
haling
his pat-
terns of
breath: the
patter
bursting
the laugh-
ter swee-
ping o-
ver a-
cross the
lip of
this room.

Collaborative piece?

2005-12-04T18:20:00.000-05:00

This is an "edit" of a poem by Aaren Yandrich, called "The Penitentiary Saint" -- it was mostly an exercise for class.. we all added to Aaren's poem, then took the new poem, and "made it our own" .. I'm not sure how much of this is actually mine, per se, but it's pretty..

His is a soldier’s body, strong fingered, thick,
still lacks discipline still bears softness
which once defined him. He wanted war.
He would have been admired, however pleasant
or painful, the vertical march, bursting
from the finial. He owns and does not
and it does not matter. In the small
space, a drone rung, transferred, and he is
at work to dismantle his mouth, he has already lost
the pains, the smell of blood, each welt
is circular, replication, repetition, it repeats
the darkness, his own sweat, weak limbed,
and shunting because he cannot compete
He feels his own stench leaving
bits of consciousness slip through
he touches his chest, stares into corners where someone
almost cannot help but estrange
blood welling solemn silence, force into
fingertips only touch the ineluctable
surface open but not … the removal
of sanctity crushed hard beneath
the smell of old newsprint. The twitch of
an echo rebounded arches, straightens goes
slack. A small voice behind the macula
the gift of which is not entirely original
the approach to the altar emphasized alone
matters. “Nothing is being done” he
strokes himself as if for one moment
he would have been admired.

Snow on a Field

2005-12-03T17:14:00.000-05:00

noise in my ears
shape of the scrape
of paper page
to page were that
scrape to take shape
hazy and
crystal sharp
in the same space
light hovering under
hovering to replace
dancing through strange
undulations breaking
               the brea(d)th of it
               cold air
               contrail in the sky

on a field

God's Dog

2005-12-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

is cheap or nondescript the way
you might expect a dog to be endlessly
wagging staring ahead with half
an impossible smile. Fuck you, dog.

always stands on four legs even peeing
like that standing on the four
legs it never eats or sits but rests its head
next to God’s eternal throne the smaller
(thr)ones to the right and left are for Jesus
and a ghost who hates I tell you that fucking dog.

has no halo and isn’t made of clouds
which would be silly it is a dog and God’s eternal
wisdom is not symbolized by a white
beard so you know God is immutable but
he dotes like an idiot on that fucknut dog.

is built like a retriever just made to catch
a stick and God can chuck a ball forever
but that wet-eyed mutt stands and wags
his stupid tail and sings “hallelujah”
the way God taught him to.

Fucking dog.

And some older stuff

2005-12-01T14:39:00.000-05:00

A while ago mom (hi mom!) asked me to send her some of my older/better poetry... Of course, I immediately sat down and failed to do it. So I thought I'd post them here. Consider it a sort of "greatest hits" without so much hitting.

Tired

Say, for instance, that you are washing dishes.
Not you, specifically, but an ethereal you; a theoretical you.
Say you are washing dishes and the most beautiful person in the world is behind you,steaming broccoli and mixing a salad.
It is Memorial Day evening, and you have had the whole day off, and a theoretical you is picking the morning’s egg crust off a pan, while behind you, the most beautiful notional person in the world is expansively letting the steaks marinate.
The theoretical you is picking the symbolic egg of domesticity off the cast-iron pan of both history and servitude while your conjectural muse cooks, and you are doing it by hand, the old-fashioned way, instead of using the emblematic dishwasher of impatience and/or technology. You’ve both been up the whole night dancing, so that in your tiredness you are splashing and drifting across the kitchen, as if the representational half-beer of sin on the counter by your elbow has been much more effective than sin ever is, really,
And in a very post, post modern way the evening sunlight has pushed itself through the clouds of obfuscation in time to create a thick sepia gloss in the whole room and paint the day’s eternal powdered wig a bright pink,
Then, theoretically, you might be in a state of real, honest, un-symbolic bliss. You might want to be tired,
Just like this, forever.

Thirteen

Their eyes crossed swords across a crowded June:
Beefeater stares; pre-adolescent stress.
The culprit was a calculating moon
Or hormone blooms. They could not help obsess.
Excitement wound between them like a snake,
And sunk its teeth. Their hackneyed saws are moot,
But, flung like mud, the names began to cake
Upon their skin. They became names. He: “beaut”
And “dickweed.” She: “sweetie,” “bitch,” and “Garbo.”
This is the silly game that grown-ups play:
Kiss me. A slap. Then call me hag, you hobo.
Was it like the soap-show Day by Day?
Friends wait for gossip. She fingers mother’s rhinestone
Earrings. Friends wait. He puts on dad’s cologne.

Sister of Mercy

Sister Mary George O’Toole
No one’s lover, no one’s fool,
Always merciful and fair,
In tidy chignons, keeps her hair
     Covered with a cloth and prayer.

Knows this world is strewn with sin,
A steady gaze and level chin
Calm the fire in her eyes;
Never one to sermonize,
     Moral conduct never lies.

Built a convent and a college
To honor both her God and knowledge;
Empires each, of discipline,
Harmonies of faith and reason:
     A secret jar to keep things in.

When the cooks have gone to bed,
With but the Lord and her own head,
Sister Mary George O’Toole,
Alone and empty in her school,
     Cries for all that’s sweet and cruel.

Kept safe behind a wooden door:
An iron plaque, a barren floor.
Across the beads her fingers trace,
While recollecting every face.
     She loves them from a distant place.

..and an embarassing piece way back from my dark-and-solipsistic high-school days that I'm not too proud to post:

Will

When I die, make sure
to remove all gold fillings from
my teeth; and sell them.
Be sure to shave my post-mortem
head, and maybe
make a soft, warm, hat
or stuff a pillow, full of me.
     After I am dead, perhaps
I think my dried and tanned and
oiled hide would do well as lining
inside a coat, or perhaps I would make
a better drum instead, stretched tight
                       on a wooden rim.
Bum-ba Bum-ba Bum-ba Bum-ba Bum.

   Take my skull, and bones and spine
and when I die, prop them up with a metal stand,
and set me in a science room
to help the children understand,
           what it is that makes a man.

Then, when all is done, take my meat
and
for those of you who hunger, eat.
Feast at my funeral (I hear the leg is best)
and let no morsel go to waste
give the dogs the rest.

If you can see no useful place
for whatever else that you may find
--make a fire of my eyes,
the gristle of my ears and all
the dinner guests have left behind
     and Warm Yourself.

To Talk

2005-11-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

You’re writing this poem
with your sighs, the flick
of your lids, you overlook
commas, skip lines, breathe.
Notice how it moves:
the words. Listen.
Your breath moves
like you did
when you used to
dance
and tonight
you are at home,
trying to escape.
You are as lonely
as a half-read poem.
You’re counting
minutes, trying
not to turn the television
on and the quiet
of your apartment
makes it so quiet.
The phone
won’t ring. The cat’s
asleep. It’s late,
and you have to do
whatever it was
you haven’t done,
soon.

Because Other Poems are Good, Too

2005-11-30T07:58:00.000-05:00

you should check out this poem by Peter Handke... it's from an amazing movie that was made into a terrible movie by hollywood.

But the poem is amazing.

How We Keep

2005-11-29T21:54:00.001-05:00

I’m not going to wait until morning
for the clementines, ripe in my kitchen.
I will pick one, then perch on a cushion
and press my thumb into its skin.

It is soft, yes, and round as desire.
And orange as the peak of a blaze.
And it peels like a secret that begs to be told;
It rests in my palm like a breast I would hold.

I am hungry to break the hide open.
Oh, it wets at my hand as it splits.
But my skin, from the juice, will not soften.
I unravel a wedge and I bite.

For a fruit, it’s peculiarly clean
(No overripe late-summer peach)
Like a daydream the tidy maintain,
Knowing the dew will not weep

Down their lips and then over their chin.
Neat, quick, and fine to behold.
For even the sternest, this pleasure’s not sin.
But oh, sweet, the nectar — how we keep nectar in.