today at 17:52 the planet Mars ceased to exist,
the sleeping war machines that rest
beneath the surface, rust no more,
the breeze that soughs across the dead sea bottoms
no longer blows between the towers
They requested that I proof-read
Some poetry that they were
Planning on publishing and
As a poet I always write by
The rule that one should never
Edit, let alone re-write,
twice
the man’s body is strapped to the gurney
twice
his last words are documented for eternity
but a Greyhound will still abandon
Jesus in Tucson, then
reboard him in molecular Cincinnati,
reuniting him with his dark luggage
and old world remains
“you won’t feel a thing”
no I feel
every slow stitch and pull
on the landscape of sliced cheek
witness
under pressure
not always debriefable,
clamming up
could be transformative,
The Presenters interviewed the excluded boy.
Their stated aim was to understand,
to see what could be improved,
how it could be made better for everyone.
thirsty goldminers
nourishing on
mercury-filled water
sweet tooth fills
with gold amalgam
In the beginning,
all my little poems
were suicide notes.
Five thousand pages,
one long suicide note.
They fly into the sea
like a ghost's imagination
and its bewildered dream.
Upon the shore for a brief time
their songs echo, skip
Poetry workshops
trauma and abuse
A room of fourteen teens
about to age out of foster care
It is evening all afternoon. Winter all spring and summer. There are nights when Mr. Mallard looks up from his desk and swears he sees the shadow of his missing wife brush to and fro before the panes.
None of this may make the slightest difference
in how the earth and the sun and universe revolve.
But we are human and addicted to action,
the probable less attractive than the possible.
for I know this world will break her too
the way it broke me, the way it broke my ancestors, so I have to
help her long before she begins believing she's irreparable like pearls that know they can never go back to their celestial shells
Also, one of the dangers of reading
is when it’s cold and people need heat
you will get into trouble for reading
anything earmarked for fuel.
Whispering scissors.
One skeletal
raconteur breeds
a wooden mood. Metallic puddles
A toxic hue fans out across the globe,
infecting the hills and herds of people,
the various populous, causing pangs
of endless delusion to rage
across the spacetime
of a planet already faltering.
This old blood. Old-fashioned in its
primary colors. Then shaved ice
came along in digital billboards
of blue raspberry; and we softened
on progress, and our teeth ached
We’re the ones that remember words like buggery
and deviant, fairy and fudge packer and pansy—
Words we traded and collected
like bubble gum cards.
Another august handful of peace explodes
in a minister’s hand as a ritual of freedom
while the battalion of nation’s pride marches
you can tear down a house
but its crumbled soul will infest what’s built upon
cross-bred into apartments and inconsistent utilities
the rain curious about where it’s never been
germ gentrification
moves in hard,
black air for black lungs,
black water for black thirst
black plague for black neighborhoods
Provided they came
in fancy wrapping, the
German intellectual
of the interwar years
could perceive utility
the sun drives the weary away deliverance from absolute forgiveness into the madness of the mind surely I am already born a man on this Earth so how is it possible that I have never gone mad?
Snipers in the bushes of other people's eyelashes
A premature engagement ring on a severed finger of a severed hand
And everywhere there are faces faces faces
After linking the dominance of the world’s
shallow thinking to the arrogance of living in the present,
declaring the past irrelevant, and labeling the future
as taking care of itself, it is refreshing and comforting
to see someone complain that the world is unlovable
it makes me want to dance
and sing!
the way the comedian
tells the joke!
and everyone laughs and laughs
We were too late for God. Roots like fingers gripping white buckling sky. This summer it is order that cramps the ancient wheat, crows that slash with departure air thick with the annihilation of love.
How terribly strange to be impregnated
by an uncle, a father, a neighbor,
a teacher, a doctor.
Remaining silent at 17,
carrying the attack,
he sprayed weed killer
on your roses.
It was to prove a theory –
chemicals don’t discriminate.
The rest of this story has to be in someone else’s hand. I’m not brave enough to write out all this sadness. This story has to be turned away from any beautiful dread, from any sexy alarm, from excuses, from the biochemical shell game.
bloody hurricane to surgical
light psalm for this scalpel
gutting from cutis
nerve from fascia
He loved the film
about the writer that
didn't write anymore,
just drank to excess
every day. He had
given up writing for
the bottle as well.
I do remember a huge
bird dancing on the crown of my head
when I couldn’t tell air from water.
By the way,
did you know that the stars are rootless
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