A Knack for Lost Places

A bowl filled with letters or a bowl filled with numbers, which is less 
Organized?

~

Frayed stars

Are in style

The 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.

~

The light reflected by the earth is less organized. Then when it left
The sun. Same for the moon. The boiling pot is order.

~

Bureaucracy Paperwork We Stole-

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.

~

Send a SASE. Do not include an 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.

Portrait

You sit
Here and invest in the part of you 
That has no beginning. 

Eyes fixed on the wooden
Fireflies.

A deserted city for a headband.

Shoulders like Heisenberg's uncertainty 
Principle. 

The to-do list of dusk in the air. 
Which you have always taken seriously.

And a tattoo
Of wings put on the bottom of the feet.

The
Void for what it is, the thread count of 
Existence. 

You think, 
Did the universe inflate, superfluous
Of compass, all in one go of it? 

Behind you the sky, 
Not knowing how many
Keys make an accordion, 
Shoulders the long way 
Home. 

This is clear. 
As it is uneven, and croaked like meaning.
Like a portrait. 

What the words have to do with this,
Is an emergency.

Unknowing Poem

This I will say plain,
I will not
Sabotage distance with
Preoccupation, I will not
Dirty the socks of the moon
With pleading.

Let them be.

That’s why shadows are important,
They tend to adhere to you,
So you are what you are not,

Jumping atop lost pianos
In factory made shoes, singing
The birds are the perfect cents.

Originality is propaganda,
Certain exaggerations
Must precipitate into fairy tales.  

Like November helicopters
Gathering up the body slams of dusk.

Pillows that are fire
For this garden head.

The Books on the Fridge

A well-kept bike, a stack of poems in disarray.

The books on the fridge. I'll get to them soon. After a walk and a few   
More months of procrastinating. I’ll write poems too. Small ones, by   
An open window. The moon like a dog licking a plate. 

Mirrors
Don’t know left from right. 

A group of dusk is called a vanish. 

The arteries of stars
Do they feel it too,

The quiet celebrity of being alone?

The Opportunity

 There is an oblivion 
Just next door
Recently relocated.
 
Here one visits
If one is willing,
A returning
From the future
 
That’s been with you
Before you were born.
A pumpernickel dawn
Of abandoned hospitals.
 
But some fool
Cut off the wings.
And misplaced
The spelling bee.
 
So, you hold up
The rainy bicycle
With the perfume
Of your arms, and
 
Into this pinch of creation,
And pinched by creation,
 
Till your knuckles have as
Many stars as a galaxy.
 
Laughter is a tree truck
Without a ride home.

Oxidized City

 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  

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





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 gray electrical structures and the graffiti. 

There is dire in the blue, directly in this wandering. I will work out the
Equations later. 

At this rate, by the end of the year, the moon will have enough to buy 
A helicopter. And have that ankle looked at. 

Part of it is the dust from stars. Part of it rolls in the ground, 
Like a season. 

This is the part how each leaf before it catches hold 
Of the earth

Says hello.