1530

POEMS ABOUT

What's the goreen thing
On the hood of the fog?

When I was papier-mache-ing
The man riding the catfish,

A holiday came and went,
Came and went, and where was I

But far from the traffic
Strumming the piano keys

Discovering where the songs
Fit in the niches along my ribs

In this vast foggy loneliness,
Might be smoke, might be feeling

Coming up through the floorboards
Despite all my shoulder

Up against everything I want
And the time spilling everywhere.

1529

POEM ANALYSIS

I wholeheartedly recommend analysis.

1528

TAPROOT POEM

My middle school classmate Harry Tarantula
Passed the hours in pre-biology class
Doodling immense phalloi. Caught, he'd claim
He was working on a presentation on the taproot.

To corroborate Harry's story, I would volunteer
To recite a taproot poem: no teacher ever
Paid the least notice to my comradeship.
Harry crashed his light craft a few years back
And now there's a scholarship in his name.

1527

THE POEM IF

Swoony textures wish we'd live nearer to water.
Rudyard Kipling crashes his roadster in a shrub.
The quiet blankbot firms up a crow for unknown clarinet
Solos as the banjoist flosses on the landing.

1526

THE POEM

I pretend to be a giant soldier,
Lasers shooting from my outstretched fingers
As I stand up to my ankles
In the continental shelf.

1525

ANOTHER LOVE POEM

Love
Doesn't
Lead
To
A
Withdrawal
From
All
Other
People.

1524

LOVE POEM

Erich Fromm gets very angry
When he debunks the concept
Of swoony romantic
One-person-out-there-for-you
Hyperventilating love
As a symptom of self-loathing.

He relaxes when he says
That the first condition of love
Is love for man as such,
"A concentration of lingering love
"With regard to one person."

1523

FRIENDSHIP POEM

One nice thing about friendship
Is that if it gets sado-masochistic
You can always go home.

1522

DIRECTIONS FOR HOW TO WRITE A POEM

Pick a word that you like.
Pick a lock that you look
Into the next word, maybe it's
The next word of a sentence,
Maybe it isn't. Try not to
Worry about the feathers
Flooding the floor, it's time
To put down the pen or push
Back the keyboard (me-board?)
And notice what you pinch
With your stare, a Shar-pei
Running across the steppe
At your command. The one you
And the two you and the blue
Shine of the afternoon
Won't mind if you pierce
The quiet with your words,
The ones you felt like
Bringing with you.

1521

THE HOLINESS OF ADDICTS AT SMURF GRADUATION

Gone, coded over
With blissed blue
Wide light. Somewhere
Blue blind soul
Makes a habit of
Talking out of turn,
The brain listens
To the heavy heart,
Justice relative
To the payday's
Show me state.
They don't have to
Tie off or pop
At that particular
Moment, though
They might, what
With all the three-
Apples-high guys
Linking arms
And talking
In slightly different
Voices about Tintin
(Only one girl
In the graduating
Class). They're
Holy, all right,
Blessed out.

1520

ADAM SANDLER'S POEMS

As a kind of mental exercise sometimes
I try to imagine the poems the famous will write.
(I used to imagine the new age career Axl Rose
Seemed destined for after G'n'R exploded, too.)

One condition of fame in our society
Is that you must be willing to embarrass yourself
As a matter of routine. A parallel condition
Of anonymity is that difference must be scorned.

I myself loved the Hanukkah song. Didn't get
The movies, but whatever. It's just funny
When famous people write poems. It's another
Story when writers of poems gain fame.

Here, then, is my attempt at imitating in advance
The poetry of Adam Sandler: Lookee
At the shiny monkey
Playing on the new cut lawn.

Oh I love the shiny monkey
As he sings his monkeysong.
Now he grabs his monkey willie
Oh now monkey don't be silly!

Now he sees me on the lawn
Coming towards me and turned on,
Oh I better stand not sit
What's he's throwing at me? Ohhh.

Expletive deletey
From the dirty nasty monkey
Playing on the fresh mown grass
I am still a very rich man. And married. To a beautiful woman.

1519

BARTENDERS AT LEHIGH BARS

I'm a parent. How do I react when
I learn that my child attends
A top ten party school?

I'm living caffeine free. The weather
Wants me to ovulate in a cloud
Of synthetic carbohydrates. Meanwhile
The widow's comfy and the music service
Says I've downloaded two thousand
Albums in the last week. Sometimes
I loot the bright light of afternoon,
For fun. Mops. Money just appears
When I say I need it.

1518

ECLIPSE OF THE MOON

I was so tired we got in bed
And watched the shadow upside down.
Any cheering in the street
Referred to the Red Sox.

1517

ALL KINDS OF LOVES

In the place where I used to sit
I looked out at an office and a hotel.
Sometimes the curtains would open abruptly
And there'd be kids jumping up and down
On a bed. Now I sit with my back
To the avenue. Boxy buildings ascend
Step-fashion up to the top of my window.
Rain cross hatches the heat release
From the lipstick building. I'm not
Where I need and want to be.

1516

EASY

Sugar donut, give me your subdominant
Because I don't have my rhythm
And I need some carnival gloom
To cover my shoulders and ring the bells
And run on in long sentences
Like a toddler possessed by a donut.

1515

WAGON WITH SAIL

The earth wants you to think about registered trademarks.
Anger is voicing a slaw debt. The next morning
Recongealed a stammer by letting up on the wistful
Shoves. It's fungible, your neurosis, so why not
Trade it in for a cyan sheath of broad delight.

I climbed atop the Pullman and unfurled the mainsail.
I stood a good chance of being cleared off the deck
As we came around, and knowing that, kept my legs.

1514

RACCOON USING CLOROX

Maybe poems
Will appear in the washing machine,
Maybe afghani flowers
Will edge the field
Where the ones who've lost their legs
Play soccer,
Maybe boyfriends
Will say out loud, "Why would you hurt..."
Trailing off into decisions,
Maybe teachers
Will look over the collages
With photographs of a beano boardgame
And scatter thoughts
Of schoolgirl spanking from their minds,
Maybe child A
Will complete her report on Ataturk in time
To go outside
Before everyone has gone to Hawaii
To hear its poems.

1513

COOPERATION ADDICTS

I watched the elite
Drive their trucks into the sea,
And walked down the alley
Glass decorates with physics problem chic.

The oysters gathered round
As I laid my hiccups down,
And the vibrating devices went to sleep.

I called out to the moon
With my thinking out of tune,
"Bring forward your white wines
And the cable sweaters we fought for,

"I grow lettuce in my home
But am out of natural products
And the competition watches as I eat."

Now tomorrow makes a window
Out of refined sugars,
And lecithin is added to the air,

But the Macintosh computer
Is a brand name best forgotten.
Integers and letters mean you know.

1512

DECIMAL POEM

You know it's not polite to point.

Such was my first try
To supply
A decimal poem. Dismal.

Not even a hundredth of a percent
Of the way toward
The unitary.

The role of the individual
Is 99.44% clear. Keep clean,

Break it down,
Be a basis for comparison.

O little star of decimal.

1511

CHANTING MONOTONOUSLY

The human body unfolds
From a threshold of sunlight
And begins querying landing planes
On their training in geometry.

"What is holy is the holiness
Of the most holy. What is holy
Is the holiness of the most high."

We are dust. It is indisputable.
Variation is delightful. Also given.
Altering your normal breathing pattern
Can relax you or give you an attack.

I remember when jazz was solid state.
An early morning yoga program
Gave me a hint of the power of light,
Genome overlap with poodles and fungus.

Somehow is a miraculous word
Papering over deliberate ignorance.
Somehow I woke up to the call to prayer.
I don't deny that we are tiny creatures.

Nevertheless it is bracing to speak
In a moment of danger. To make fun
Of the insects who might as well eat you,
And in a way they half understand.

I have come around to the power of chant.
I still associate it with willful
Self-denial, but can appreciate it
On more than an arts-and-crafts level.

Good for you, the universe says,
Returning my mild condescension.
It repeats it out to the edge of the pancake.

1510

WHY I NEED A BIG BROTHER

Sumptuous materialism
Demands conversational dialectics.

This carpet on the table,
The furs on the finials,
Goblets, fruit, and red-green prints...

All the stuff
Wants to see a real argument.

1509

KINDS OF ADVENTURE

In the illegible north
The chrome stands out for faith,
A letter squeezed out of the press
And blurred.

It rains, and alternately
Is saintly. Blue and blear and chilly
And you could miss it,
Scanning the ground by machine.
Airplanes pass miles above
As swords scrape. "Eleanor,
Let's drink before you hear
What I promised I'd say."

As you pass the dark path
The furred creatures cling
To your arms and legs,
Not biting, and with no odor.

1508

SWEET AND BEAUTIFUL ENGLISH POEMS

Had you sought deliciousness
And words made to the life,
I would approach your business
Cautiously. The blade
That carves the paint
Is broad and dull.

1507

THE BOYFRIEND METAPHOR

A little death wears a mask.

When I rise from my bed
Owls peer with long endings
Trained on the windows;
Taped in the notebook
A guide to the eleven kinds.

The heavy coat is armor
Only for invisible waves,
And when he stands in it
He feels more vaccine than man,
More plexi than heirloom.

Still, he goes maskless
Wherever. He goes there.

1506

WORKS OF FIRE

When I rise in the cold morning
Here in the shadow of the mountain,
And the earth is still
As the vegetables respire,
My sorties over the crater

liechtenstein ignorecatcall diabase palodickens
rapier moatbeman brother twofoldstun
drum bolometerdice injure septemberradioactive
hecate goerskyscrape blackboard moonlightdeprecate
darn contortalongside thymus zazenanatomic
cutback nestleacquisition frugal synthesesupsilon

Do not wake the cool rock.
If in that sleep we dream
And machines, feeling the edge
Swim off into the air,
Look on, look on,
And then to work.

1505

SOFT ADOLESCENT METAPHORS

Honest men are honest women
And it's hard work forgetting Poland.

1504

METAPHOR FRIENDS

Sitting down to write another one of my
Adolescent need to see you poems I notice
Emerging from the fog a stack of pancakes.

1503

HARD WORK IN FLIP FLOPS

If politics were hard work honest men
Would resign themselves to love
In the plaza with beautiful women,
Followed abruptly by public executions
Brought to you by your name here.
Anyone goes to a job like a tv show,
But this is studded with differends --
Vacations and briefings, the executive nod.

1502

PASHA

In the Dardanelles Mustafa Kemal
Explained his name, Perfection.
The explanation took eight years,
And ended with a Republic.

Of the names Cavour, Mazzini,
And Garibaldi, it is the last
That makes us smile,
In New York at any rate.

That unpleasant cipher, Geo.
Washington, is the American
Equivalent, I guess. Ever it was
Thus. Fight, win, and become

The sultan ostensibly deposed.
Cooperation without the umlaut
Ought to put you in the mind
Of barrels. Hail Ataturk!

1501

PROACTIVE SOFT CREOLE

Sappho diphtheria diphthong
Sotto voce. Alhambra v Gethsemane,
Ataturk a matrifocal?
Autochthonal cthulhu machers
Bituminoid as black forest cake.
Fenugreek substituted for chervil.
The gassy bacillus is liable
To ameliorate what manganese
The Peloponnesus might yield
A regatta of Shebas
In a Sheboygan shebeen.
Please, no smokeless chimneys,
I'll take a toque
Over a hairnet hackamore. A toke,
You say? Ahem. Eheu.
Chalcedony in Faisalabad.

1500

IN THE FELLOWSHIP HALL

Do I need to say it feels good to know someone
Is proud of, loves, thinks it would be lovely
For you to meet all their friends, say something
Inconsequential and smile? Plus pastry.
The room in which I feel bathed in warm light
I also notice another kindly
Intelligence that for some reason we
Avoid creating at home. I like it.
I seek it out, and vice versa. Amen.

1499

PLAYING IN CHURCH

In the chapel under the sanctuary the light
Comes through some lesser scenes, then heavy
Curtains as it shines up the dust in beams.
I run up the inclined aisle, then slowly
Make my way toward the altar and choir,
In miniature of the room above I always imagine
Much bigger than it is. In the sanctuary I sang,
Heard my own songs, was blessed, even learned
The West Virginia handshake -- stamp your foot
As you push your arm down. Stacks of
The Upper Room wait in sitting rooms
Off every hallway. It is, maybe, my template
For heaven. It is absolutely empty,
And I run, listening to my dress shoes echo.