Relative Antipathy
A standard uncle and an appointed step aunt
have agreed to declare overly daunting
the inherited tasks of unmasking courtiers
wanting in basic math and fundamental decency,
of separating the entangled antlers
of dueling demons of dollar diplomacy,
and of convincing the fan base that the anthem
thus intoned simply should instill
nary an ounce of pride.
Act
Deadicted Pluzzer
I arode you, so nlaturaly attmpet to saw
and cnotscurt a jagisw of this wrold,
flierecy rginrearnag our dtisnat, deresordid
dmears. Sneadss hroves wthiin a plie
of bule pieces, curevd insuriotsn,
cradarobd dietsines. Your ctonours
slitl esixt sheatweert, callery as a cicelltoon
of croner pieces. I lgune across an urbluntane
tlabe and insitsently celleroct all fuor.
from Mouth Pieces
Mouth enters — well, hops, really —
into the academy.
Long, lonely — well, empty,
really — corridors. Silence in
those hallways. Two ears hear
another silence: of ones who
don’t wish to be found, to be
found out.
The great hall is ornate,
unpeopled, terribly hushed.
Hand holds an unshelved book that
won’t open. One after
another, books that won’t open.
Poem Titled II
vergent snow
and so many
unconditional
stars that it is no
place but ghost-
herd to think I’m
faking this my
shadow art on
a wave of harrow
so a bull it’s sleeping
I imagine by a vineyard
in Spanish grain
though lightning dims
its fringe of flowers
is it cosmos you
wonder is it pain
[sound a word]
sound a word
like organdy
waves
mottles
compass, stays
sudden
tree blooms,
secret water
ouzel woes
dingy doing
emotional thumbs
plus la change
of yearly
agues the wind
a stampede
argues an augury
bell-bye, impedes
involute
stamens, thrashers
scrape humus than
scraper taking
human nouns:
poignant after-image
copies
of copies
au bout de
abouts
Paper People
I am boiling away [we
are all one]
I am piebald
in the face
sludges of soft dirty meat
pressed through chain-linked fences
the currency of the currency
is concurrently concurrent
with the altitude of the sun
the attitude of the people
all roiling riot gear ready to go
you dig a hole in the water
you blacken your hands.
Bit Coin Bling
Lexus engineers—Life defined as credit card—
A glimpse of eternity in black obsidian—
Financial advisors attuned to the good—
A silver platter forgotten to tarnish the beach:
a platter serving sunlight—The artist traded identity
for a Tiffany brand—Las Vegas invites you home
with The Topless, The Wet, The White: Mandalay Bay!
Shoes subject to credit approval—Ford defining
“Escape”: blowing by a mountain-high 18-wheeler
through 200 horsepower V8—Microsoft become Mom
snooping on our passions—Diamond traders advocate
feminism: Women of the World! Buy Your Own!
W Hotel promises to balance “style” and “soul”—
Tequila Corazon de Agave alchemized from the heart
of blue agave bred in the rich, red soil of the “Highlands”
in Arandas, Jalisco, Mexico—The luxury of appointments;
the privilege of appointments—The classic contents of
the Filipino Balikbayan Box:
Dove soap
L’Oreal shampoo
Colgate (“has to be Colgate, not Crest”) toothpaste
SPAM corned beef
Set of Encyclopedia Brittanica from the 1970s
Nestle’s Quick chocolate
Folger’s (nowadays, Walmart house brand) coffee
Snickers
M&Ms
Irish Spring soap
Libby’s corned beef
Costco Vitamin B-12
See’s chocolates
Back issues of Conde Nast Traveler, The New Yorker, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Glamour
Oil of Olay lotion
Almay lotion
Ziploc plastic bags
Nutella
Reynolds aluminum foil and saran wrap
Campbell’s soups
Nine West and Liz Claiborne purses (“from factory outlets”)
Parker pens with refills
Osh Kosh playsuit
Baby Gap, Old Navy and Fisher Price onesies
Bayer aspirin
Carnation instant creamer
Nail polish: “L’Oreal for family, Maybelline or Wet n Wild for the servants”
Shampoo: “Pantene for family, Suave for neighbors”
Gifts differentiated among recipients—a matron’s pain
-staking definitions of servants versus those served—
Giftbox as the gift—Bling bling! Kaching!—A glimpse—
The Mortal Enemies of Calculation
Oceanography Fetus,
admit bouquets to the effigy party
Saloon Redefinition,
be a dapper knapsack… dapper knapsacker
Flowerpot Infighting,
only authenticate the forgettable
Mnemonic Pagination,
your bookshelves are frail
rattlesnake them,
rattlesnake them all
Radio-sighting Conundrum,
mechanically bemoan that… wait…
combine Dionysus with hoarding badgers,
then mechanically bemoan that combination
The theory of dyadic rings
A buried UFO slowly
turns my Digital Pen
into a 7-track down-
load of a Wolfmother
album, but this counts
for nothing when it’s
sunny in South London
& the streets are full
of highly trained Re-
naissance musicians
whose white linen suits
& owlish spectacles
add old-world warmth
& charm to a great
place to stop thinking
about digital identity.
storyboard #1
Black & white movies. The March of Time. Backwards. dubesoR. Snow globes down the stairs, the Odessa Steps. Everything intercut, reality / invention. Once again I walk down those ornate baroque corridors, knowing I know nothing of Hiroshima.
Always in black & white. No room for scenic shots. None of those except perhaps as signposts. Otherwise. Film noir.
Color. Occasionally. Kurosawa’s The Ransom. One scene only. In which.
Do I pay the ransom? Do I let the color in?
Music: Number Five
Some stories are tagged with photos of juveniles,
their animals, their yellow images, Tom and Dick,
and preposterous townsfolk who venerate Canada,
though not during March, nor in meetings
of Gamblers Anonymous, as the workers have said.
So, no more information about the river is necessary.
Regarding its vexed course, nobody is in agreement
except for the existence, somewhere down there,
of the underworld, its dry rats, its vestibules,
the blindfolded walks that guide you to the edge.
NO CONTROL
over the speed of sound
our internal monologue or the
rate of attrition we face
the number of footsteps between
your door to mine or
when we’ll meet again
A SIMPLE FORMALITY
misplaced faith is not enough
to stop the leaking faucets
or reverse past mistakes — your
blushing won’t fade any faster
words come from the chest
and die in midair
MINUS MINUS
minus the collarbone, a wish
littoral zone lost through repetition
an urgent message lost in
waves of radio static / interference
on the payphone line foretells
an unwelcome visitor’s arrival
START HERE
there is not enough sleep
or rather a solarized dreamscape
better than the waking world
I anticipate the alarm and
silence it, somewhere keys crash
out of empty pockets
WHEN THE WAR IS OVER
antennas still bristle the landscape
dogs growl in troubled sleep
at imagined threats — no reason
to jump at every noise
or for bones once broken,
now healed, to ache
FORTITUDE: A SIGNAL
a disconnection resets the circuit
through timbral shift and ultraviolet
flash — attention spent and spanned
I’ve maintained this vigil for
three weeks — no end approaching
ask me next year
The abyss has its own rewards
for Steve Farmer
I.
For each four-leaf clover
a six-legged frog
For each lickable fury
a feral angel
For each flaming marshmallow
a runaway shopping cart
For each scribbled treasure map
a secret test
For each naked promise
a silkworm intervention
Cellos & snakes at the heart
of every cool mistake
II.
Use this as a compass
Use this for the ritual
Use this for keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or
loss, & chant: pain, begone, I will have no more of thee
Use this bastard wing folded behind your back, your finely tuned
clavicle, your hair as lasso or noose
Use this splitting image, these words (fallen from my mouth), this
door (formerly a window)
Use all our girlhood superstition about scoliosis, hexes, poxes &
penitence
III.
To believe but only sometimes
To unearth a more useful abyss
To seek prophetic messages in the warm glow of yesterday’s shock
To navigate the inevitable underworld with pure conviction
To translate fear into possibility
To change the taste of sleep
IV.
Use quiet awe
Use your tongue, the strongest muscle
in your body
Use coffee, candy, secret stale cigarettes hidden
in the back of the medicine cabinet
Use the weight of your gaze, the curve of your
spine, the return of your voice
Use all of this as protection from hegemony
& cultural appropriation
Use glitter & guile to disguise your despair
V.
For each deathless beauty
a noble failure
For each lesser enchantment
a graceful détente
For each responsive machine
a choreographed catastrophe
For each psychosexual apocalypse
a disruption contingency
For each tedious evil
a sudden deliverance
Delight & delirium in the rubber room
of every season in hell
proemial relation #1
here are the upcoming
flowers, burgeoning
forth like the capital
letters that autocorrect
keeps putting at the
beginning of these lines
Obliquity
As method. As broken
Bread. As thin line. As
Diatribe. As moment.
Scenario. Nightmare-
Free zone. Sordid wish-
Bone. Mild head throne.
Our bilateral love owns
Too many raincoats.
stupid ducks
even they matter —
string theory is older now —
her eyes light the room
infinite drop kick —
so unapologetic —
just one shop open
ceremony riff —
degree of abandonment —
miraculous road
until our murders —
eight nickels in his sock drawer–
a calling off off
unseated, for fun —
drove to the document dump —
ninety desks in rows
mourning was let in —
first off, she ruined each bow —
busy with their aunts
concentrated arms —
stupid ducks would not frighten —
odd way to count them
LACHRYMARY OF THE SORROWS
Went with the jobbers
in mayonnaise, rugged
& welding circuits
for skort cutters. Mercury
Cougar mission
to the H.A.M. radio
meetup. Bellerophon
so what; a bauble
in the maw
of a pewter dragon,
putz is not even a madrigal
smoke bomb assistant.
Missal command of
a hard green fake granny
smith, tiny flakes
of rotten texts suspended
in orange Jell-O cichlid
heirloom. A medicine bag
for punks. Forgotten
space capsule filled
with mulch, terracotta
lachrymary for
hens & chickens, succulent,
easy on the eyes. Rococo
raccoon shaman
in the Shakespeare
garden. That’s for forgetting.
Last time I will buy
a ticket for that guy, snakes
don’t grow on trees.
from 555
The phobic rests before the veil and wonders what’s behind it so as to
continue to ignore what he knows not to have seen, which is
nothing.
The bottom line is that the human species has to realize the human body
is really just a cheap suitcase.
It’s like you’re reaching a critical mass.
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of
civilization.
If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are
the sucker.
The dispossessed of history are not guided by method but by madness.
From the 4th of August
Where Flesh Circulates
THE AWAKENING
[1]
I forgot the mysterious C___ who slipped syphilis to Vincent Van Gogh—she was a refugee from something unknown thus only imaginable by us: a world of people with hacked-off hands, thus, no paintings to criticize or admire…. I forgot how to perceive the shift of stars without feeling them fade or fall…. I forgot how to feel the Milky Way expand simply because, upon my waist, you placed your palm…. I forgot Tiziano Vecelli’s kindness—refusing to discriminate between daughters, he gave the illegitimate Emilia the same dowry of 700 ducats bestowed upon the legitimate Lavinia…. I forgot when one of a love-making couple is blindfolded, one is a lover and the other a canvas, page, smoke …. I forgot the alley of your city where I stood as a statue frozen by unrequited longing…. I forgot Auguste Rodin drawing women while they took their “melancholy pleasure” in front of him…. I forgot Jackson Pollock teaching the harmony of feelings in riot…. I forgot Arthur Rimbaud who said the bears are dancing but what we had wanted to do was move the stars to pity…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices…. I forgot Paul Cezanne painting furniture to escape naked women about whom, he felt, “One has to be on the defensive.”
[2]
I forgot the mysterious C___ who slipped syphilis to Vincent Van Gogh—she was a refugee from something unknown thus only imaginable by us: a world of people with hacked-off hands, thus, no paintings to criticize or admire…. I forgot how to feel the Milky Way expand simply because, upon my waist, you placed your palm…. I forgot the sense of “walking upon a cloud”—the “calm” that overcame William Carlos William upon hearing the minister bestow a benediction: “May the peace of God which passeth all understanding be and abide with you now and forever more. Amen”…. I forgot Auguste Rodin drawing women while they took their “melancholy pleasure” in front of him…. I forgot Jackson Pollock teaching the harmony of feelings in riot…. I forgot romancing the stars to deflect the mundane, even pre-torture rendition…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices…. I forgot Degas’ great joy at glimpsing through an open doorway a beautiful an anguished woman at her bath…. I forgot Dr. Williams fell in love with a young negress lying stripped on a dissecting table.
[3]
I forgot Michelangelo on his back servicing a syphilitic Christian— for euphemism, cite him instead painting the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II…. I forgot Leonardo Da Vinci dissecting criminals who died with hard-ons to demonstrate the penis is not inflated by the retention of wind…. I forgot Tiziano Vecelli’s kindness—refusing to discriminate between daughters, he gave the illegitimate Emilia the same dowry of 700 ducats bestowed upon the legitimate Lavinia…. I forgot Titian’s prowess: he painted nudes with their eyes open to stare back at you as your eyes memorized powdered their flesh…. I forgot the thief (in Li-Young Lee’s favorite haiku) who stopped in the dangerous night to sing to the beauty of the hovering moon…. I forgot romancing the stars to deflect the mundane, even pre-torture rendition…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices…. I forgot Paul Cezanne painting furniture to escape naked women about whom, he felt, “One has to be on the defensive”…. I forgot Degas’ great joy at glimpsing through an open doorway a beautiful an anguished woman at her bath.
[4]
I forgot Titian’s prowess: he painted nudes with their eyes open to stare back at you as your eyes memorized powdered their flesh…. I forgot the thief (in Li-Young Lee’s favorite haiku) who stopped in the dangerous night to sing to the beauty of the hovering moon…. I forgot Auguste Rodin drawing women while they took their “melancholy pleasure” in front of him…. I forgot mistaking reproductions for what they copy…. I forgot the anguish of knowledge…. I forgot Jackson Pollock teaching the harmony of feelings in riot…. I forgot Arthur Rimbaud who said the bears are dancing but what we had wanted to do was move the stars to pity…. I forgot Paul Cezanne painting furniture to escape naked women about whom, he felt, “One has to be on the defensive”…. I forgot Degas’ great joy at glimpsing through an open doorway a beautiful an anguished woman at her bath.
[5]
I forgot the mysterious C___ who slipped syphilis to Vincent Van Gogh—she was a refugee from something unknown thus only imaginable by us: a world of people with hacked-off hands, thus, no paintings to criticize or admire…. I forgot how to perceive the shift of stars without feeling them fade or fall…. I forgot Michelangelo on his back servicing a syphilitic Christian— for euphemism, cite him instead painting the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II…. I forgot how to feel the Milky Way expand simply because, upon my waist, you placed your palm…. I forgot scientists becoming radical to pursue the ecstasy of Truth…. I forgot Tiziano Vecelli’s kindness—refusing to discriminate between daughters, he gave the illegitimate Emilia the same dowry of 700 ducats bestowed upon the legitimate Lavinia…. I forgot when one of a love-making couple is blindfolded, one is a lover and the other a canvas, page, smoke …. I forgot how to perceive with tenderness…. I forgot the alley of your city where I stood as a statue frozen by unrequited longing…. I forgot Auguste Rodin drawing women while they took their “melancholy pleasure” in front of him.
[6]
I forgot Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni possessed incomparable draftsmanship except as regards breasts, though he was weaned by a daughter and wife of stone masons…. I forgot Michelangelo on his back servicing a syphilitic Christian— for euphemism, cite him instead painting the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II…. I forgot how to feel the Milky Way expand simply because, upon my waist, you placed your palm…. I forgot Leonardo Da Vinci dissecting criminals who died with hard-ons to demonstrate the penis is not inflated by the retention of wind…. I forgot Titian’s prowess: he painted nudes with their eyes open to stare back at you as your eyes memorized powdered their flesh…. I forgot how to perceive with tenderness…. I forgot the alley of your city where I stood as a statue frozen by unrequited longing…. I forgot the sense of “walking upon a cloud”—the “calm” that overcame William Carlos William upon hearing the minister bestow a benediction: “May the peace of God which passeth all understanding be and abide with you now and forever more. Amen”…. I forgot the anguish of knowledge…. I forgot Jackson Pollock teaching the harmony of feelings in riot…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices.
[7]
I forgot how to perceive the shift of stars without feeling them fade or fall…. I forgot Michelangelo on his back servicing a syphilitic Christian— for euphemism, cite him instead painting the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II…. I forgot Leonardo Da Vinci dissecting criminals who died with hard-ons to demonstrate the penis is not inflated by the retention of wind…. I forgot scientists becoming radical to pursue the ecstasy of Truth…. I forgot when one of a love-making couple is blindfolded, one is a lover and the other a canvas, page, smoke …. I forgot the alley of your city where I stood as a statue frozen by unrequited longing…. I forgot the anguish of knowledge…. I forgot romancing the stars to deflect the mundane, even pre-torture rendition…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices…. I forgot—as did everyone else in the universe—the name of Georges Seurat’s mistress: Madeleine Knobloch.
[8]
I forgot how to perceive the shift of stars without feeling them fade or fall…. I forgot Titian’s prowess: he painted nudes with their eyes open to stare back at you as your eyes memorized powdered their flesh…. I forgot when one of a love-making couple is blindfolded, one is a lover and the other a canvas, page, smoke…. I forgot how to perceive with tenderness…. I forgot the sense of “walking upon a cloud”—the “calm” that overcame William Carlos William upon hearing the minister bestow a benediction: “May the peace of God which passeth all understanding be and abide with you now and forever more. Amen”…. I forgot Auguste Rodin drawing women while they took their “melancholy pleasure” in front of him…. I forgot Arthur Rimbaud who said the bears are dancing but what we had wanted to do was move the stars to pity…. I forgot Pierre-Auguste Renoir who loved the girls of Les Halles for letting their breasts sing soprano above their bodices.
Binariate on Edge
Softness of the Rays
Teeming with Apart
permeable invention
entrance into
lake isle cloud
the mariner’s manual
the moon’s armor
no hesitation
circumstance
the wave
or
the wing
of a monarch
above the rainforest
take the word triumphant
& carve it in a cloud
the chandelier
a comment
hermetic
subterranean blues
This is alchemy–
syllables of name, heat and Kevlar, linear time. I know
the sorrowful mysteries need an excuse
to interrupt the sound of 3D printing. Lull fit
for a conversational juggernaut. What’s your ritual?
What’s my ritual?
Auto-tuned longing has been done.
As has eyebrowless portraiture.
Just now I thought all the music stopped but
it’s the lake gone lead. Meaning
we can all leave the house
without mascara. I am careful
with pedestrians—turning the corner is a wilderness.
There are always secrets.
Transmutations.
What type of close do you need today?
Gardening, not architecture
We are dirt and can’t keep long nails clean
when ringing the morning bells.
Soil curved in cuticles maps out of reach places. Bury me
in a forged thing—a mallet to the body skirt. Strike
the belt. I want my lips to bleed out
sound as if the beat could plant a seed
under the sternum—make my heart green
opal splintering with vibration.
