1674

HELLO THANK YOU

What it came down to was
Crow dream stone home;

I got up from the carel
To cool my tarsals

In the spring-fed crick.
Pencils float along it.

Everywhere here you hear
Nature say "Oh."

1673

TOMATO SKY PLAYDOH CLOSET

The Virginia a stone
Ah the horse

White embassy rest,

It plainly cannot wait,
Reasoning. It burns

What it knows.

1672

TOOTHPASTE KIDS SUNBURN

I tell you I will not make any more raids,
The elusive going-elsewhere motherboard

An electrical sound marking stretches
Afternoon is carving into the wood of us,

That's our modern way of saline allegory --
To make gods of times of day. I won't

Cooperate with this love that steals itself
Into a brand name, preferring to abandon

Like feathers or a rocket stage the moves
Traffic up till now couldn't touch. I will be

That warm breath dying on the neck,
The only chain they couldn't save in the fire

Everybody but the Buddha called a day
At the beach, but was really a burning home.

1671

WHITE MEN ON THE PHONE

The fact is fucked,
Who says we can't share our feelings?
I feel like a beer
Some sayings on the backs of cars

Work in reverse
When bricking up the apartment
I want the new song swatches
On my desk before the plane even leaves

The committee sulks in its room
I'm amazed to see me
Cram the valise full
And proud of the depersonalization

I can quit making music any time
The fuzzy timbres
Coat the mailman
Did I mention he saved my life?

Dip the sponge in gall
Poke the priest with some silence
Come on, act like something bad
Ever happened to you for once

Or would that feel too much
Like adolescence
A restless waiting to entertain
The dignitary from Mars

He only admires the incongruous
And wishes to feel shame
Therefore rattle off everything
You've heard over the months

There are no questions
Only varieties of tea
A poison you take to be beautiful
Another one to have erections

The entire planet a golf course
The entire woman a sad dream
The entire language a grunt heap
The entire day clear and warm

1670

PETE

I had to go see my blood
pressure guy and my regular
physician I was 247
I came back and I was 231

At the end of the visit I said
you don't have anything to say
about all this weight I've lost

He said you don't
have anything to do with it

1669

CANDY

On the A after 145
Three Dominican women pass among themselves
Photographs, a bottle of Poland Spring
And a real estate listings book

I'm collecting scenes
Where the movie turns out
To be about the woman

Take the first word
You look like
Into the bathroom of the bar

I'm not going to lie to you
Yes I am
You're a good whisperer
That thing feels like morning

A stare in the other direction
Doesn't mean you don't love me
But the lion from here's named Tiffany
And the bats close in on my heart
Whatever that looks like

So distracted maybe it's the humidity
They moved the flea market inside
French spoken into cell phones curbside

Engagement ring and tight white tee
Round face turned down away
Checking her navel ring for lint

Sideburns and buzz up the neck
Holding his head parallel to the floor
Looking at a yellowed novel or soda spots
Etchings over the chapter numbers
I can smell the parlor from across the car

You know companionship
In the aggregate is a lot like sex
But why assuming we're only alive once
Would anybody watch the same movie
A hundred times unless they
Were just so angry

Jane Russell's yielding mouth
That's why

Now I get the whole
'Cleave unto your husband'
Ah but she married the camera
Thank the lord

If you're going to ask me
A doozy of a rhetorical question like that
At least have the decency
To stick around for my flip reply

Spontaneity overrated?
So's your mother

I mean that in the nicest possible way
I mean, you could stop idealizing her already
What are you, fifteen?

What'd you get at the shoppe?
Stuffe.

The stories we tell.
Have I told you the one
About my marriage? No?
Good.

Listen,
That's the sound
We can't even make working as a team.

1668

The day I get up and walk out of here
They hand me a sherbet of tomato
And I am a fat roll of bleeps and silence
Pasted onto the time where our human
Love tries not to walk toward the light

The day I get up and sing out the name
I was born with begins with an alert
To all the sad and single-minded robots
To assume the blankness of orgasm
And locate me in the upper deck

Watching the cannon fire the harvest
The bright switching of the cars from
One side of the affect to the cricket
Excitement that is a music and the temps
The scoreboard alternates with the time

I descend through the tear gas
To organize the fallen into a rage
More pretty than an industry award
And clearer to the xylophone bosses
Wary of this unforeseen mercy

1667

Avenue of reddish resistances
To medication. The keeper
Of the collected reactions
Murks and macks a little lonely.

You're concerned with the unit of sound,
She's concerned mainly with the unit,
But benevolently. It's that time
Of life. The sky is very clear.

This guy. Excuse me, I want
To be kissed on the Avenida,
I don't care what the porchsitters
Are cooking up for later.

1666

BIRTHDAY CAKE

Driving down the parkway I'm
wishing the trees were
giant feathered sleeping things

That's something I don't divide
from its appointed caretaker,
the heatwave from the hood,
meat gravy from your bread

The afternoon comes on like a hurricane

The music waits for you,
looking for something
without a firewall

Didn't I write it in bluish white
along the length of your heartbeat

The good news is there's a riot in Santa Barbara
The bad news is they're evacuating Galveston

The one I love
wants to know which one she is anyway
from here to Windsor Terrace

Take a leak on the picture of the insurance company

There's nothing new
for you to do
so why not stick around
and sweat your guitar away

We love it when you close your eyes
'cause it means you're telling the truth

Something about your mother
and your second oldest brother

When we go running across the street
the signs all point the other way

If it would make you blush again
I'd tell you what kind of people I come from

I know your name, don't get dressed

1665

MOVING THE TREES

Take off your shirt,
That's one thing you can do in a poem
When you're tired of listening to the street

Who knew
All we wanted was to be free
To buy and sell each other
And give the house its cut

Wandering the aisles
Covered with weddings
A scratch from the excuse to the name

I can't do nothing
But move the trees

Hand over heart
Canvas on the frame

1664

SUN ON THE JAZZ

It hasn't thought of itself
as noodling
as much as
at home in the wilderness

but now that you mention it
what we're saying

feels less like repair
than the dime
time dropped on
the sum of our evasions

1663

Maybe I'll go a-grocerying

Today vanishes into the side pocket
And you, practicing signals,
Let me doubt the wiring

Wiving, pencilling
The cartoon
On the plaster cast

Some arrowroot yearning
Calls out for an errand

A little matter of focusing
On the throat

Of hearing in the voice
Something warm like 'come home'
In any weather report

And the vision it entails
Of standing by the side of the bed

Getting down all the information
About what feels right and new
And the difference and overlap

1662

I am waiting for you
To tell me about
Your dreams

Specifically
What you mean by them
And how you learned
To drive the energy board

1661

Having a hard time appreciating this torture
On an aesthetic level?

The paper forms a natural luge.

The forty-third week of sideways trading wrapped up today;
You have to hand it to the image-handlers.

I would like to commence making out now.

1660

It feels so good to own a new book
That I forget to get sick of drinking
Don't notice my canoe rush toward exile
And make friendly remarks to the sky

Restraining a sexual impulse
What for? I guess no reason
So let it take over the token booth

You know everyone in the world
And you're coming at me with a push pin
Come, see, conquer me, why not

I'm enjoying the warmth
Of the torches burning my fields
And I admire the towers
You're building on every hill

This is what we do here
Wait patiently for the present moment
Then grab hold as it flies by

1659

We're hot and tired
Of the regular structure
They call the beat

They call out to us
You'll be back

You'll be the ones
We make wash our socks

We make a lot of money
Breaking down boxes
And manning the doors

And behind the curtains
The little god
Is doing all the thinking

It makes us want to dance
Our way across the plural
The shapely music
Don't even speak English

Everybody's moving to it
Like it's the city
With all the jobs

We stand around in the dark
Reading the backs
And walking across
The broken windows

1658

I could never cry
Until tonight
When you passed by
Coughing and staring
Over the bunting
You keep your anger in
A kiss for little bear
A nose for business

The solution
To the next day
Is an essay
The blues rolls
Down its windows
A dance crasher

The rabbit scurries
To the next paragraph
Train music
Keeps us company

This is our pleasant
Present moment
Built for seething
I know that
Is the catchphrase
Of its hit sitcom

The cherries here
So red they're blue
Like something else
We don't mention
In this attempt
To pass unnoticed
In the way we think
Means being adored

Being the dictionary
And breaking a crystal
Off the butter dish
Throwing a pot
Into the bonfire
To celebrate
Being on the roof
Covered with amethysts

1657

Can't go thinking because it's twenty below
And feeling's out of the radio case too
Let's sit on the bed and talk about work
And take intermittent breaks to keep it fun

I wish I could feel a whole lot worse
About everything we see on tv
My persistent fear of executive producers
My when I grow up I want to be a rock star

Of rock and roll you add by way of support
Can't go playing the tenor sax along that axis
Please could we go now to get the batteries
I hate the playdoh knob shark shirt demo

1656

Poem withheld by author's request

1655

The posse resizes a fridge magnet.
It's a way of standing to the side
Of the commuter train. A computer
Brain would still feel its reward
Centers go nuts when you go knocking.

1654

I look where I'm going
And still bump into you
Which either means it's late
Or you're out for "trouble"

I am looking forward to it,
The working through it
Like a plump child, say it
A fat baby with no concept

The afternoon is ok
With this unsupervised election
You've got a nice wit
And it's a quarter to three

I could go for a little smile
A little sunlight on the parterre
Kills the loneliness for fun
That's why they call it popular

1653

Make it a party
With all the drama
Of a bassline
Knocking up against
The boards

The one they spend
Their time of energy
To mass against
Loves to get a look
Along the side

But we live for
Peak moments like
Broken beats
Bigger than crawl space
Wider than ties

The boxes stack
Where the kids put them
I am timed
To mimic the crisis
Peony roots and all

1652

I am doing some very difficult work right now,
I am wondering what will come of my car.

You want to see the Grand Canyon
And I am somewhere in Bayonne.

The spirit of our times
Wants me to pick up a pencil

And start pinning down these vermin
By their capes. "How many knuckles?" they ask,

Meaning, "Is it love?"
A man will take a long train ride

For the correct friction.
Music that hits the reflex points.

We want to be that whole person
Who doesn't take the easy money,

And still I keep getting what they call help.
The big hit swoops very low to the ground.

1651

I would much rather
Talk to a woman all day
Believing in my power
To make her feel alive

Than go learn how
To build something
I need to protect myself.

1650

He has a huge head
And will therefore be famous.
We share a need for fedoras
He disappears into his room.

I open the door
And he's disappeared.
Crazy Baldhead is playing
Nobody on the bed

Nobody under the bed
The windows are open
But the screens are down
It's going to rain

But there's still light
He's not in the closet
That's for certain
He's got my books

Lined up on his shelf
Papers on the floor
In the family manner
We need a drummer

1649

NO

I feel the xylophone bonging
In the basement and I know
I'm not supposed to acknowledge
This restive midden. I stare.
I make jokes, fall asleep,
Pursue a course of people-pleasing
That flares with creep light.
I buy newspapers and drink coffee.

Music keeps me at a length
From this feeling on both sides
Of too much asked. The mother,
Is she sick or not? Piercing
Sounds come from the migraine.
Is my mother sick or not. Is she
An alien, and therefore am I one.

Cicadas and crickets like gold coast
Sprinklers, gold is green.
I run across a field but why
Is endlessly implied. The same goes

For drinking a root,
Walking the length of a stream
From culvert to spider'd culvert.
Alone doesn't care
If we're alive, ambassador
From the kingdom of silence
To the boy who's quiet too
Except around the word of the day.

1648

WHITNEY HOUSTON

What do we want
When do we want it

How do we get it
Who do we have to
Dot dot dot

Where do we go now
Where do we go now

Who do you love
How will I know

No justice no peace
No meaning no love
No music no light

I don't know but I've been told
There she was
Just a walking down the street

What do I want
How will I know