A Pair of Glasses

What is it you called morgana was not the red glow

Of the wine glass or plain morning but candle light

Too was and we grew older then and now what’s

Not the same.

Eventually crawls like a bastard onto a highway

Garden path or a train station platform revealed

Long old we had worked on broom handles and

You clutter in the midnight like

An attic.

Glasses like sky tiptoe dawns before us

With no light and dank geranium aspects

So the cloud no longer seemed like a jellybean

Or a tunic of grapes you lapped.

Perhaps we oft the stars when climbing down

Miles of handshakes light years of handfuls

A smiling jerk concerned with door hinges

Doesn’t matter now that dinner is forgetting.

Harm is now immeasurable there is no

Meter by the bed stained glass has no chance

Against

“Brick and mortar and lime” once used

To build his tower.

Up to the sky communicating distance

How when one is gone no other takes its place.

Uncle Frank

It was a long drive. Pulled over a place

As fitting as any when it’s all green all rest

Room to repose us jalopies and burn the nose, no cut

That air.

The radio high-pitched with “high and lonesome sound”

Claw hammered banjo, irritating the speaker fabric

Maybe a bird or squirrel, leaves too, not sure.

I headached

Caffeine and smoked, clocksmeared from the uncharitable lanes

I left her running, the road long enough, the car clear

From it, and idle she was faithful from the lake of all

Places I would have to piss, but must of needed the comfort

Of that most similar though much more magnificent

Toilet.

My urine, like a fountain arrow directed me to the nodding round

Gem, gleaming poached near the bank, wobbly and firm.

I laughed out “hey uncle Frank.” Being that a miracle,

Like a bee sting, would have to find me. Like a skull.

Like it was.

My instinct beyond me, my zipper a loose I thought

“That’s not uncle Frank.” And one step in I got eyes’

Sockets clean as pizzazz, drunkerly forgiving charm

Like my aunt would say, he was a no good drifter.

The brainpan

Floated

The current I could not tug waded my uncle’s imposter

Agreeing, concurring, bowing bodiless away.

Dragon Fly

Swimming pool, plum tree, agapanthus poke from greenstock

and groundcover,

Buffed winds paddle dust on my mother’s porch

Where the pail Snaketail stream-haunting,

Darts from one resting place

To another, seizing prey along the way.

I say, “I remember you”

On Huntington Library lawn, Lacy park dream, in my young father’s eyes

Fighting lightning bugs across Cleveland river fantasies.

World all over

We’re resting on logs now, stones, and leaves,

We creep and squat

In dark ooze on the bottom of a stagnant pool

Then climb up any convenient support

And transform into adults.

So I say “we must be friends,

I’ve know you long enough”

And you yellowish with reddish veins and clear tips

Fly through summer thoughts landing

Now that I’ve been far away

In warmer springs farther north. Is it true you die so quickly,

No quicker than any last breath

But

You must have seen something I missed

While catching a fly in midair

Before the earth

Stood without you.

To the man in the desert building a house of sand I hope you kept a record

Leonard Cohen

The First Birth

Did you ever think of how horrific the first birth must have been

Unexpected, a child fell, hung bloody, both of them screaming alone

In tall grass of Africa, more than likely unsuccessful

Did she run to escape the miniature tormentor, dragging it

For miles till it stopped screaming

Or did she grasp a stone with brand new opposable thumbs

And silence it with technology. Or dive into the lake

To wash it quiet, eyeing for tigers, wading while blood reached

For the surface, and was it raining or hot, weather we have never seen.

We can guess she did not bury it or give it a name.

Let’s suppose soon after, in a safe place, she invented a song

Without words, a gentle howl, a godless mimeses of another earth;

A kind born cry of mortality.

Tiny Macabre

Splidatikick, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom

Mizzzzzz bdik, pshshshshshsh…;

“Click

A television reported that a tornado hit southwestern

Kentucky at 3pm this afternoon and several houses

Click,

A Nearby train did dash through miles of insects

Splitting a northeastern wind at 60mph

Lake Erie juggles white sailboats

Margaret “a writing major”

Just returned from India

She’s quoted in summation: “Splendid”

600 hundred golden retrievers

A freak storm

That hit northern California today

Brought hail and moments just as small,

Of sentimentality

Click,”

What was that Napoleon said about Saturday night?

It vanished into a forest

In europe

Bada doom doom doom doom

Da da doom doom deem

Brightyellow flickerish lamp sizzles bug

World

The morgue breath

Froths

In angelshadow

A broom handle that

Swung

As though there are no hands

At all

Click,

A can of paled worms

Was left out by a seven year old

Without a dream left in

One of those buttshaped noggins

“Click,

That moment the fish died

In the corner

Of his eye

Bada doom doom doom doom

Dad a doom doom dum

(There is a man dying who is watching this film)

“Rhoda, bring me a snapple”

Click,

I fucked you because your

Intelligence was attractive

“Like a game show?”

Click,

Ba da doom

An ear lost its shadow

To an Ernie Ford song

Today

Click,

How I could have

Should of known better

I have no idea

Oh! Orson Welles

Click,”

Bad a doom doom doom doom

Color bars

(It’s pretty again

For a minute)

My wife turned to me and said

“Walk with me through the vines

Before the bombs drop”

Ba da deem

uuuuu hooooo

(a sigh)

Peschoop, chick.”

We Live Among Crowded Scenes

(The sound of a flashbulb clacking as in antiquated photography)

Pay attention to the way-

ning effort azzit buzzes into mercury

Like dead Jellyfish peeled to tide

In a theatrical universe, then

Kaboom!

Spotlight on the small white cat, trotting a-

Cross---between metallic spurns of oil, threads

Of automobiles---a busy freeway

The wind in an eyeball that collects sound walls

Of unforgivable pink. Sun or no sun the world

Will have its parade no matter how little that kitten.

Orange signs blink “detours are fun”

Riddle you helpless to a tornado shaped building

With a parking spot at the wedge

The barker’s megaphone knuckles

Have “lick pusy” tattoed on em

in crayon font---

He shouts, “plato, playdoe, pay doe…now

Hand me something you can’t see”

(You, crowded around yourself)

The mariachi band will never stop

Playing at your table.

(Besa me, besa me mucho).

Soon the walrus in your grandfather’s tuxedo

Will pick his teeth with whole catfish bone

Half-lit behind the velvet lamp shade

He pets your kitten,

Picks his mandolin a rendition of

As the Saints Go Marching In.

A photograph of your knees

Is printed on the awkward menu

You decide to have a cheeseburger

---Medium rare.

25,26,27

25

Yellow starthistle sucked at daylight in Roseville train yard

Robert’s veins creaked with chemo-electric rush, beeps of machinery

We sit waiting for northbound Union Pacific Scarecrow, Klutter, and little Timy

Max the cocka-poodle has fentanol suckers stuck to his fur, Bob sleeps

Charlie blinks red, Dunsmuir in line, raised by Hells Angels Timy bleeds

Bobby weezes with sleep apnia, cancer, she’s calmed by Zanex, television

In boxcar hum and sway, rollicked in soot blanket lake Shasta swims bellow

He thinks for hours on itched boils, Fox news, and “don’t bury me yet, I’m not dead”

Bob the veteran splits cold coffee n’ whiskey, orating schizophrenic; donut shops, guns

Come to find out she’s been fucking his cardiologist, he thumbs through medication What hour is it?

Past midnight we crawl through spotlights into Klamuth Falls the bull is waiting

The round soldiers in their regiment pill bottles dissolve in his chest, it’s stage five

Running with metal braced military packs we enter the BNSF yard, poised to flee

He’s not ready. Thinks about his wife’s smile, his son’s dirty boots

26

Did too much blow night before the funeral, I miss the sublimaze, the oxicotton

Read Dylan Thomas to the crowd, weird group of Jews and cemetery rats

He worked there, in the mortuary, twelve years sober 13 dollars an hour

Wasn’t long after I left Jersey, Bergen County jail, stolen inmate cup, that he died

Proud his son hopped freight trains across the continent, never heard of Guthrie

Or anything American, a Zionist he thought of Israel, sobriety, and pain

Lying in bed, I lit a smoke, twisted the knob of the fiber optic peacock music box

He’s only tears now, animal thoughts, a monument of decay

27

I jerk off, look down, and no shitting you, it’s the Virgin Mary!

9 am Captain Beefheart growls out pathological blues

“Strawberry caterpillar, strawberry butterfly”

What are these stains on my boxers, take a picture quick

The peach tree is blossoming birds and pomegranates are hard to eat

Skid row dope, Mexican says “I know people who would stand where your sitting”

Shut up, I’m living like Bukowski, late twentieth century, Fuck Lowell

She doesn’t mind the Tijuana whores, kisses in New Orleans, Mescalin in Death Valley

O yes, mescalin in Death Valley, incantation for fat fingers, we all three cry for fathers

Nude in the sun spittle, dancing in the Panamints, we cry for our fathers

Ars Poetica

Something Thinking

Not every literature

Like representation

Of a brain

State

Will be,

In other words

Than these

A clarification

Of the

Intersubjective.

Signs and frames

Emanate from us

While this

May cast

That shadow

But

How too is minimal

Immanent logarithm

Leading to

You.

It could look

Like dish soap

Or Protean

Equation

Depending upon

Which aspect of

The language game

We play

Something

Looking like identity

Transient made

A play on

The illusion

That it must be

Elusive

Must it be

Elusive

always

As eyes

Sought to

Find images

Manifest

For we said

It is

intersubjective

If there are layers

To a cake

Than we must

Be equipped with more

Than sweet teeth

Hands too

Our tongues

Glad to

Participate

Toes neither

Are lonely hollows

In these here heroics

Thinking

Deposed

As priority

To accidents

No less than

Any artist’s hands

Apply to infer

To pride

An invisible reference

It wishes itself to

Become

Questions

Not of what

it is

(Obviously beauty)

But what

The conversation

Entails

We are bound

By choice to write

Or not

That is all

It is not

Much

A SHORT CALLED AWARE

Aware (The Shift Puller).

Exiting the 44 line bus on the mere average morning in an autumn several calendars ago, I felt a deep awareness that arrived erratic, unannounced. The framework for how the melancholic intention comes to invade a person, lives in the immanent, and has no place in this account of how I arrived here, in this place, settled. Things move: by design moved by a mover, prime or otherwise. I was moving, dragged heels and without earnest swash, half mind/third body wondering over words quit similar to these with less reflective attention, more a phenomenal discourse on small objects in terms of the larger, such as my melancholy to me, or leave to sky, eye to head, building to cosmos, and the such. I had to ask myself: why does the internal seem expansive and deterministic to the grand view; the cell dictating the disease, the cure, actions, and death? While pondering these earn shaped disasters, I became so aware of it all, the world and its confrontation with me; less powerful to it than the disease to my existence, I began to sweat.

I stood in front of a bank leaning on a classical column of city white rock, and realized my palms were so wet I was having trouble holding myself up. In fact my entire body was drenched, my flannel shirt pulled down on me, that burden heard in gospel songs, real as the mule beside them, the well to fetch the water. I couldn’t keep my balance. At first I danced in a circle, creating some grotesque ballet, trying to scream yet nothing but more drench came out. Pools of me dripped to the ground making any sharp move/decision impossible. I had slid into the street dodging cars by shifting my weight best as I could. No one honked, no one looked.

As I spun about the crowding streets I could notice them. The pressed color still in grey moving day, the jacket tail whipped, the accordion gates slammed with purpled cold hands. I started to gather pieces of the city into the now muck-like drool of a sweat surrounding me. Little pieces of trash, like receipts, cigarette butts, bottle caps, newspapers, and bus transfers stuck to my skin and clothing as I slowed down. At some point I must have gathered enough to stop. I stood on the sidewalk holding onto a lamppost heaving puffs of heat against the cool dampness of the transconfiguring moment. So aware of my strange appearance as an urban trash monster, I watched people walk by giving me looks of disgust, small children mocked me, hissed, and a police officer told me to get a move on it. I couldn’t move. The weight of the accumulated human discard bogged me into the cement, and the best I could do to move was a large appliance like waddle. I shifted my weight with such force that each thrust I thought must rip me at the middle, tear my torso, decapitate, and shatter. I pulled myself along with a shift/pull maneuver, grabbing telephone polls, street signs, and street lamps. Every shift, every pull, took such effort that I cried and hoped my tears would alleviate the heft of the trash, possibly wash it away but nothing, they were an unctuous primer.

I managed to shift/pull my way up a street I knew led to a park. I needed finite repose, a space where I could concentrate on freeing myself, unaffected by any human interaction. I’m not sure how long it took me to get to the park entrance but the sun was setting and the joggers were thinning. I sat at the entrance quite a while, breathing deep and doing my best not to replay the horror of the earlier affair. I couldn’t help myself. I felt calm now and new the act was over, the curtain fell, the spotlight had been removed, but the stained image remained; that’s its nature, to remain. I cried ignored, and alone leaning against the park gate wanting to slip in before it was closed so I could hide through the night. Once I became dedicated in shifting and pulling my way through the park I started to cover some ground. I felt lighter as I rustled my way through the pines and stones beneath me. The jagged edges of the rocks and wood started to free some of the trash once clung irremovable to my person. Up the side of a steep incline I made my way, rubbing against tall oaks, and kicking up earth dust washing away the manufactured waste provided by the cities finest progresses. But as the trash fell away, a new skin was being acquired. In place of Camel ends, bus ride limitations, Mickey’s seals, and headlines were shards of stone, chunks of wood, thistles of pine, leaves of gold! I was transforming from the urban monster of decaying materiel, to a Pan of the forest, a real natural freak. I arrived at the top of the hill just before complete darkness. As I made my final shift/pull to the cliff edge, I felt the earth hold me. I looked into the emptiness, the blue blackening and imagined myself aware of the fall, but I remained, still. I sat on the precipice through the darkness and into the morning where I smelled the robust earth stuck to me, around me. I could hear footsteps of joggers. The frigid breath of daylight slid across me and hardened with moist dirt taking away any original shape I once had.

I’m not sure how many days have past; I won’t count the suns. I know that lizards in the right season bathe in the heat on my arms, birds gather tweed and stone from my forehead, and occasionally someone will sit in my lap resting from a hike, run, or from life in general. A pretty woman will sit against an arm and read a book, a young man has written words in concentration leaning into my chest. Teenagers spray paint on my back words I hear people chuckle over, sometimes in distaste.