Before he died a few years ago
I touched Moses' dying skin
almost empty
of its fleshy weight
or "aryan", or "norwegian". the ideal
of blond hair, blue eyes as wrapper
for a superior type of person
you know, the stable genius sort
You were very small at the time I admired you,
and from each glimpse across the water
you seem only to have shrank away.
They call it stormy Monday,
Thursday’s just as bad
Siri’s not responding
My GPS’s lead me to Riyadh
May you know your neighbors’ names. May those names cause
more pleasure than frustration. May they applaud
the life you choose to build—your triumphs and flaws—
your loyalty and trysts—your science and your gods.
The paper is ripped on the page
of my favorite Alejandra Pizarnik
poem, my ear aches, and I cool
my hand with a glass of anything
what kind of city is this where one line goes one way and another line elsewhere and another line with three possible points, another for foul shots, another for out of bounds? where telephones have lost some of their lines? where bodies come in types instead of fonts?
Speech was discouraged
to keep from setting off
the man of fire
who would lash and scorch
then burn you down.
like cornered in juarez
or the rough stoppage
on a dead end street
like this is your other
this is the price of looking
of behaving in a rational
and irrational way
A headless snake
striped like fresh high
way neck rough
gnawed away from mind
away from—
no matter which reality
The medical
papers in his left
hand somehow describe
a journey into hell
going deeper trying to
escape
The bar is stained with alcohol
with a mirror behind
so it looks as if there’s twice as many bottles
as there really are.
I am traveling with my uncle
down this old road falling apart
with potholes and chunked out gravel
an owl watches from the woods
the granite hills burn like buildings
without relinquishing hope
even a sliver that defies
dark sky guarding
person from poisonous
"It is not my fault if you cannot understand what it is I am going to be talking about, if you lack the duende necessary to understand my poems on the run."
Someone has gifted me an
astrolabe. I use it to determine
the distance between the end
of one line & the next. Its
ethnicity changes daily...
Is Love the pinnacle of DIY culture?
If you have a band, can you love
in desperation? Can you print your
own love? Develop your own love
collective? Let’s ask the senior biologist
the undertakers’ polyester suits
couldn’t withstand the volume
of work and soon they too were dead,
perhaps of constant exposure to
despair as well as lack of food,
Keep it close
to the bone, boy.
Keep the blade busy.
You were never
going to be their darling
so what have you got to lose?
Sun cracked grass signals
the yellow haze of transition.
Pinon fire in a kiva stove
is a Southwest desert Fall
in the armpits of tradition
and passionate drumming.
When the buzz of mosquitoes is music,
lampblack is a painting on one’s wall.
When taps are stark, streets are lightless,
circuitous human trails at every trestle:
despite the doggerel of lonely
atoms, out of sync with
the unending Styrofoam
models from childhood
The artist says “I haven't drawn a stitch since;
I shake my fists at words and recall the rising din.”
The butcher says “I’ll grind it fine for you
if you stand over there and vote along this party line.”
Charlotte to Savannah. It smells like bad luck and sorrow plus a look of too much
crystal meth and DIY tattoos. 40 years
since I've taken greyhound.
your antic flesh comes back
a pistol loaf of bread
the door blows open
hair and leaves
by right a rite of passage
should be entered into
by one who has prepared
who understands the gravity
commitment and opportunity
Just look at your face so wasted playing a man so real, as real as charred skin in your hair can get. How far will you trudge down this never-ending path of enlightened servitude? Wade into the river to soothe your feet as many times as you’d like, but the ringworms keep burrowing.
her voice a specific
timeline of remembrance,
that of leading my still
young wanderings through
cancer and familiar cave,
The crashing of the English canon in Spanish Harlem
Resounds like cymbals in dissonant reverb:
The path out of poverty is strewn with dead white poets,
Whose diction students strive to emulate,
Josh wuz mind wandering
and waiting foa da bus
wen some ghostly figures
came walking around da corner
to stand behind him
as he sat on wun bench.
How do you know when it’s done? I admit the children
were wrecked but the sad man gave me reasons to remain—
the sex was sex, his blows weren’t all that harsh and he never
shot at me but once. It’s a gift, I guess, to know how to leave,
All right, Catherine of the wooden raft with wheels and, all right,
Cleo of the heavy carpet and its intrigue in court. Darkness is not
night falling over us mid day clouds roiling in, electricity,
unease. All right, the misuse of power, blood lusts and scars,
What can she mean, divested
of her nudity, why does she suggest
sleep
over
shadow?
ringo meets a girl-silhouette in a short black dress her legs are long, as alluring as throwing oneself into the thames to get over a bad life maybe the dress is what erases her having been called "tone-deaf" by george or web-handed by the south 5's drummer he suspects everything is distorted
The great Django Reinhardt wrote a song called "Nuage" - clouds - today there are no clouds - a pellucid sky, slight gold inscribed on the mountains and pure azure - a raven floats, the sun broad as in the poems of Whitman's "Song Of Myself"
The Stone Age in this age, the Flint, Michigan age.
Stone tools, cutting tools, edged blades
for removing flesh from a carcass. Smacked
against steel, spark, excite, to ignite
the old factories long smothered with vines,
If you're not any more interesting polluted
than you are pristine
then what's the point?
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