She knew what joy was like:
a frantic fuck to summon the missing ghosts of her ancestors
those who abandoned us
we’re alone in this building of random communications
I am a famous artist who discovered in my early thirties that
drinking a full glass of a secret mixture derived from boiling
a certain OTC pill with a [name withheld] OTC ointment
for 1 hour on a low flame gave me the dexterity, vision, and stamina
to paint murals in hundreds of villages across North America.
The stronger the archconservative, the more held over anyone else.
The more who’re here, the more who’re expecting.
The madder the hatter, the more hungry the hats.
The more the man in the moon sings, the better anyone sleeps.
who is hiding in military uniform
except children who lack something
and children who are trying to take something away from them?
And you say, whoa, doan be droppin
those ’od·damn, ’od·awful Gee’s
you break ’em you
flush ’em, right?
There’s this guy at the bus stop with a heavy face carved from water. We nod, but we don’t speak. There were these guys in Target, circling as my girlfriend shopped for men’s polo shirts, orbiting us on some unseen current, men twice our height, watching us with disbelieving eyes.
As I stood at the first ground zero, I once
Again shuddered to feel the pull of madness
(though I knew not if it was my own or some
Remains of that evil which brought the fire
And brimstone of a world wide war….)
I'm barely able in a dream to juggle, as if in a steaming jungle, as if underwater. Swept by ten, by ten a.m. and by ten men, the data mine bears profane fruit. What causes blue hallucinations and has wheels.
Remember that
you were once golden
standing tall with dignity.
Now the gold has darkened to sepia
and dignity is dying.
Soon the rivers will be
running with dead fish again.
Down at your feet,
a bumblebee struggles to keep aloft;
It was a swift and menacing time.
One of the local dogs was having a phantom pregnancy.
Things were leaving one place and showing up in another.
It was springtime when I arrived, an east wind blowing,
an uncanny wind as it turned out.
I’m pretending to be you, Daddy. I’m biking to the meeting and I see an aquarium in someone’s trash and I think, I want that, so I get off my bike and hide the aquarium between two bushes and then I get back on the bike and go to the meeting.
The misdemeanors broke their rock all day. We felons pushed ours up the mountain of our crimes. And there at the summit the setting sun swallowed us. Even imagined prisoners need rest. The body has limits; bones obey the dark law.
if the can, once opened,
can never again be sealed,
what happens when the nutrients
are more greedy than green
“Who are we fighting?” asked a farmer who stopped his wagon to watch the firing squad form up. Everything that wasn’t predator was prey.
the limbs of his mind
the ligaments
of his argument
strained to the point
of spraining
The rain hit hard today
not in a sexy way
but like my boyfriend was
mad at me. I felt the tension
when I pressed my erection
against him, so I stole his car.
Sneaks under shadows lurking
in corners ready to rear its head
folded in neat lab reports charting
white blood cells over edge running wild.
This drives the pair of us ever into quarrelsome, awkward conflict; the incompatible impasse of our binary, opposite goals, frictions generating perpetually make for quotidian frustrations again and again.
There was a time when I could paint without panicking. There were days in which birds flocked to the bird bath, splashing riotously together, a flurry of red and dull feathers. As they waited their turn, some of the birds read Bibles in the shade of the angel fire tree.
Hidden horrors decades
old no longer
matter. Only now.
The Sphere of the Present.
All of us tangled
together. A Rat King.
there is madness in the iodine
buttercup mystery
an enigma of grayish-white
entrails or slice brains
without the blood
So I gave it a different name.
A protrusion,
an inconvenience,
a trifling, stifling,
terrible turn of events.
I will not force any words.
I will not use the word allocate,
too late. I have no image,
no brand, no reason to be
someone I am not.
Ravenous appetites on crushed boulders
In depths, immersed hues
Some oceans
Topaz in bloodied hands.
The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,
waiting for inspiration.
Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes’ frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus’s exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?
Ancient beasts come again to prove
We are not civilized
We are not advanced
We hungrily tear apart
That which we built
No Donald, Israel, Hamas, no protests,
genocide, no slaughter in Ukraine.
No poetry, emails from friends, texts,
calls from the kids.
This, they’ve decided, will be a lot of nos.
I think of Joseph Campbell saying:
"That’s what people are doing
all over the place, dying
for metaphors."
The orthodontist gets off on the torture
Provides wheelchairs to the victimized
Plus a lollipop but only lemon flavored.
He’s an old man, so old he just might’ve
Escaped that notorious scorched-earth regime
I licked a stripe down my own skin, savoring the saltiness of
being human. We are creatures of the sea; my hands once
hauled me out of inky black water. I am not a creation myth.
Remember no one's watching
everyone at once.
All this past and present is yours
if you do without
saying you are here
When the page is the sum total of my nerve
Only then, I’ll feel great in my bones
By night’s arrival, which would eavesdrop on starlings
If I let it count to zero
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