A certain carelessness In a perfect circle It is too ripe and crude A coarse bird That fits in too well with the broken shore Unlike the polluting smoke of industry As it catches the closing beams of the sun A rosette triumph A too perfect charade
Tag: writing
Frost on a Barbed Wire Fence
The sad of it Is lonesome sky The heart on a hill Frost on a barbed wire fence Where to begin to repair The midlife heart In what room to begin to laugh And when to say This has passed And it will be one with us What hole is deep enough To make permanent the moonlight And if the stars Come looking for alms I will remind them I have only the sense Of infinity For purse strings
Neighborhood Pool
God jumps in first with a belly flop. But everything God does is beautiful, and this starts all of creation. Just don’t tell this to the Abyss. Not that you can. Be certain of this. You can’t. Next the swimmers, tattoos of birds on their bodies, in search of fish, Along the roads in the air of October the first frost between their teeth, As the sky unfurls into handfuls of dusk. At night, the moon is the butterfly on the city stoop, Crayon crossed out by crayon. The wind is the blueprint, said the parachute. And the Earth is our wind. The sunlight is both even and odd. I purchase sheet music, and some boxes, Because my head is cluttered With the snow Falling into the street lamps, With unsighted poems and handfuls of dusk. What else can I do? In this city, and this poem like a periscope. And When beauty hurts, when it is ugly, ferociously so, and it will be, Try a belly flop in the neighborhood pool. Mouthing your every adieu to the Abyss.
A November Manifesto
I have lost my piano hand. The banter on Saturn rings in my ears (that’s a terrible joke). A few of the handkerchiefs smell like operas. During the night, the ghosts arrive to try on my socks, and to read whatever book I am reading backwards to me. I have found a violin hand. Tonight I will camp out “under the stars” with Quixote and Pooh Bear. The vagrant blue in the November fields. I have that. At least I have that. The lost arms of flowers, though nothing weeps. And the only color is the electrical structures and the graffiti wire. There is dire in blue, directly in this wandering. I will work out the equations at a later date. At this rate, by the end of the year, the moon will have enough to buy a helicopter. And have that ankle looked at. Silence likes to doodle, intentional as clouds. In a sweater, the handlebars are autumn, even as it rains. While riding a bike. Part of it is the dust from stars. Some of it rolls in the ground, like a season. Take a bow, ripple with the sea. Each leaf before it catches hold of the earth Says hello.
A Symphony for a Fake Piano
The foot is disheveled. The armpit is the moon. And what lessons have the rain To letter at night alone without Legs or thoughts? What does it mean to be human When the heart and lungs are a marathon Of leaves? You cannot cross out the distance. Cup sorrow in your hands But to be abbreviated in this light Is life. If death cannot cull these questions At least the ice cream truck tonight rings A symphony for a fake piano In pencil in the night in a sky that cannot be seen.
The Dents of Highway Laughs
Begin in the knees of the earth. Walk the dizziness of A poem that breathes in space exhales into the void. Remember the Tomb tipping Guts of spring, The sea and the eyelashes Defying gravity, The ping pong playing peonies Of electric yesterdays. Remember how All at once The universe put on Its legs And walks like A fiasco of names On a checker board. Will you walk with me? In the opposite of acquisition? Who else can see these widowed months? Beckoning at the table Where is the pen and paper that ribs time and space with the dents of highway laughs? I walk and walk, In a coat, black, collared, the curve of which almost touches the ear. No hat. What is it in us that allows us past narrative ghosts? For this I penciled in the page and erased around the poem Like an astronaut fills the page With the memory of a jellyfish. I stayed up all night Playing solitaire On the PC With the radio on, Curating the ramblings. The soul is a runway for anything Willing to fly. What do we know? It is only afterward A sense of being.
Niagara River
Solitude forgot its wallet Not bothering with conversation, solitude sees if its diaries float Each letter of solitude was offered a role in a comic book movie Solitude of a few shirts, and feet covered in the leather of old shoes Solitude of waste basket prose… the emptiness of a flame The noise sweeps the heart November astronauts are solitude The universe is a tee shirt looking for a ride home, solitude of a bicycle And lonesome like a cartoon coyote But what of the falling leaves? It’s impossible to count them all. All the leaves. But what if counting had an out of body experience? Took LSD, and began licking its Zen palms? In conclusion Almost night now The hurry of pillows and the dot that is the moon The gulls are Mugs restaurant-white Dropped along the shores of one of the Great Lakes Across the river from Canada
The Cosmic Microwave Background Blues
The abyss is flat
And has no bottom.
It is a vagrant simile
Loitering on two
Legs carrying a bowl
Of wishes,
A grocery basket
At the elbow.
Isn’t that nice?
But don’t ask me to look back. There would be too many
Other of me in the way.
I’ve the multiverse blues too.
Singularities
I Absorb Via neurons Approximations In favor of survival. But what of the poems that weigh Less than a few pebbles? I’d like to tell you more, that there is a counter weight to approximation: The square root of UFOs, The moon grew antlers and stopped wearing clothes. What’s left are the scribbles of dreams. A mouthful of dusk for eyes. Fingers like the appetite of the moon. Penciled whereabouts on the heart. You Pick up the few stones Of a short poem, Swim against the stars. The trees in October Are not the same as the trees in October. The cities of the Midwest Are wild with the loneliness of the cosmos.
Poet’s Style
Tattoos: A lawn chair On the forearm, On the shoulder the Metaphysics Of river birds, Melody for a toy piano Near the ankle. Clothes: The attire is simple and cut To fit, No shoes But the idea of shoes. Metaphysics: No breath but air. Meaning: The real is put aside Like a bell on the ground, Like a trampoline at night, Sleeves pulled up at the moon, Distance for a logo. Appetite: Hunger like a table crowded with empty bowls. Metaphysics II: The cosmos on the lips, I breath in theology through nostrils, Pull its lint out of my belly button. In conclusion: The idea was to Fly a kite, after hitching a ride, To somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, Sticking around long enough to see Dusk pushing a shopping cart downhill. Coda: it’s getting late the science fiction of apple blossoms -------------------- x ------------------------------------------------- = tree tops cursive shoes How the volume of time Specializes in words Out of our reach.