A dump truck in orbit. This Will need to be resolved. Uncertainty as a system allows Pockets of possibility. This Does not need to be resolved. This must Resemble a few lines Of verse. What else do we have? ~ Carrying my metaphysical Shoes, over my enigmatic Shoulders, happy as a guitar String. Everything matters: the trees, The sky, this jalopy of a Neighborhood. Walking, I chew up all my words. I am almost afraid How beautiful it is. ~ Going forward, There will be lines and metaphors (in these poems), But no words. Hence, To write a poem is to regret. If only I had the words to not have them. ~ The universe is being chased By distance
poem
On the Strings of Gravity (More Short Poems)
The Blight of Poetry- Like a pulled tooth Chapped lips and a hole in The sole A tee shirt The reads Add Verse Double crossing hexameters (Whatever those are) And me Baffled hair Writing it all down For Walt- The sea Is all of our names Without being any of them. My Favorite Novel- On the chalk board Two dimensional windmills And Quixote With a barber’s bowl For wings Film Critic- Kung Fu Hustle Is the true spiritual Sequel of the Matrix Lollygagging- Electromagnetic fields To stand in. And then there’s mass. No to be Confused with weight. What was said Spoke of beginnings, The cowlick birds Holler on the strings of gravity. A Stone on a Pillow- You establish it is Windy By opening a window By solving some math problems In a notebook Feeding the birds By the look of the city roofs And no matter how far you walk
Least Likely to Stick to a Plan (Short Poems)
Cleaning- The scrubbed stars Took all day Like a tub in an old room. Bodies- Now look, a shipwreck of lights Equal to the theater of the universe. Adjectives- Battered, folded Into paper planes Like the unlikely Waist of a green Apple. That’s When I Reach for my Revolver Record- I am looking for a verse. I am standing by the sea, whistling a Saturday morning cartoon theme. I gather a few juxtapositions. Wonder, awe, fear, dissolution, realignment. I am starting a blog of the photos I collect of sidewalk cracks. Don’t Forget- Along with immense size, How infinitesimal the universe is Would make a haiku blush.
But Not You
What ghosts of what stars did we know? If you could count all the acres and every plasma swirl of the sun, all the yellow gulls of its every beach, What then? Can we lose everything To the untenable slopes of love? ~ I haven’t the soonest blue Or the latest sonnet by Homer. Like a last place finish, the lone kite in the sky. As the moon opens its suitcases. ~ I’d like to see this through, outlandishly so. I study the effects of gravity on my houseplant. I ride my bicycle over to say hello. The rain clouds interrupt, though it never rains. ~ Latter at the drive-in neither of us Will recognize each other Or the lengths we sought to not Fall in love. ~ I specialize in putting words Just out of reach. But not you.
Cubist Roller Skates/Soundless Space
1. The velocity of a poem-asteroid Is elliptical alliterations. 2. Locals call the moon, Charlie Knuckles, Who brought a fork and spoon into the desert. (Because of this I jumped into the ocean. And took my name from a turn in the road.) 3. The dismal diameter Bleak around No matter how many megaphones Without an atmosphere The moon can't hear what it cannot say 4. Data is finite. 5. And yet, We crossed The sea And found the inaudible Screams of the moon, Buds on spring trees. 6. You were silent all though the movie. Only once, I heard you say, "The crimson sky over the city dump, the cosmonauts are a tree line." You see the wire that holds the celestials, The magnetic ghosts in cubist roller skates.
Classic
The kids Clogged the sink Wet spaghetti Kitty litter The Iliad
Somehow it’s All True
The Birds loudly say their names In spring The assonance of making a living Which side of the moon Is homework In spring Puddles have telekinetic reflections And walk on their fingers Furthermore, the séance of computation Is poetry A lone piano Tuned like a pinecone ~ Down the road Even the sun is dust, even arithmetic is dust But the dust on this road such fictions Sweating with the undreamt dark dreaming Queried with meanderings ~ At the rummage sale I found a copy of Charles Reznikoff, Complete Poems And some trading cards of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure I would never walk the city the same after reading Reznikoff Hereafter always I would deal with the oddity of time travel with the greatest of ease
This is What I Know
Unknowing can be navigated. Ventured. Crossed. Consulted with. I start writing poems. Not knowing what they will be. The rubble of stars In my boots. ~ How savage is the immediate. You stand up to it. You hold your breath. You even tuck in your shirt. But this too weird Varied Almost infinite If you had the guts to ask. The rubble of stars Retina holding. ~ This is the bumble In the be all of our magnificent lives, The sorrow and the silence of our Hearts when they are lightest. The worst and everything more. The crumpled sunlight Passing for debris. The rubble of stars Ankle deep, spring aspiring.
Writer’s Block
If at first, you draft A poem, To start, you say: A yellow couch Listens to John Cage. Next, leave it With the paint cans In the cellar. In a year, or two, Go looking for it. Without reading it, Turn it over, Start something new, Like: You found me In the birdbath, The rainwater Is shirtless. That will never do. It’s best to be desperate: The universe Was swallowed By a few words. Long shadows Go to great lengths In doorways. For the better part of a decade Put it with the dry Beans in the back of The cupboard: The night arrives first A pink ribbon Of steel, A headache of honey and blood. Just abruptly end and hope no one Notices: Writing a poem Is like finishing a knot, Or cutting a hole in a net Before collecting butterflies.
A Knack for Lost Places
A bowl filled with letters or a bowl filled with numbers, which is less
organized?
Some of the frayed universe for pockets.
I was looking forward to the time off. I wasn't going to write.
Or read. I would smoke a joint and watch Buckaroo Bonzai.
I would bathe.
The light reflected by the earth is less organized. Then when it left
The sun. Same for the moon at night. The boiling pot is order.
I would walk.
You first need to acquire an almost super-awareness of the dusk. Also,
it will cost you a letter in your name. Henceforth to be omitted, in
writing and in speech. Do your socks match the awful joy that for some
brief perspective no matter the foreground includes its end? To get an
idea, watch rain drawn down a pane. It's not chaos. And if we had the
guts, it would stir us home more than it does.
At the end of the night, at the end of our exploration, you wanted to
know my name. But it wasn't mine to give.
The paperwork we found, we burned it, it was mostly poetry.
You said we should write down afterwards how we remember it. And the
ghosts, they too had names. Remember them.
I made a list of all the groceries. But due to long
Lines, instead I found a list of all the unmade beds in the city.
Including a short biography on the pillows.
Send a SASE. Do not include my address.
Put it into a bottle. Fold it into a plane.
I know where to look for it. I have a knack
For lost places.
