Saturday, August 27, 2005

1702

The lookout fire going out
Was a lot to endure;
When you stayed on watch
It gave me heart, but

You could have said you were blind.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

1701

MISS ME AND ABHOR MAN

The mood charade's on its best easter
And why I'd pie eye any boded sheer yes
Is anyone's mystery. Call th'electrician,
My little thrashing hate, call down
Tear after tear from the wall of autumn

And from that height I will send them. Montana
Is not the same as Wyoming, the viola
Is hardly a local morning news color reporter,

I'm telling you anything just to move my lips
In your direction, your directions, your
Decision. I open the bonnet and where
The engine was I find a bed of hay.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

1700

CUSP OF VIRGO

Udon line seven deep,
I've called it: fall.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

1699

IT'S OK SO AM I

The morning came in
While we weren't looking
For something to do
For a change not leaning
Against the poster
For the people throwing
The party into
A catnap with a closed
Door and a hen porch
On which to be blue

Like a blue cat
And the blue hen

1698

What's your favorite number, she wants to know

She reminds me she's still married

So do you dance to ragga and reggaeton

Like they're meringue gone to war?

Amalia Rodrigues crosses the room

Pregnancy doesn't seem so alien today

The sky is not helping me change the subject

Isn't plastic surgery wonderful?

The demographic that won't come out

For one of its own is bouncing in its room

Friday, August 19, 2005

1697

I WILL LOOK FOR YOU

Music coming from the window
of a car moving slowly down Vermilyea,
a chihuahua at the steering wheel,
three men leaning the rear fender forward

It's the afternoon of the evening you ask me
if I feel like another cookie,
an afternoon I want to personify
as thinking about wanting to rain

So go on vacation already
and I'll water the gray spots to life
and when you have your tv show
I'll arrange to have a Nielsen box

When we're not talking I still exist,
running around setting the scene
vacuuming the fun out of the Accord,
wincing at my lack of coffee

I look forward to dreaming all night
but sit in front of the screen typing
and get on the subway for no real reason
feeling like the end of a regatta

1696

Best thought worst thought

Glue

In the robot code,
a blank face is
a bounced ball

Finally I am taking down
the "don't touch" signs

Writing letters
to the editors
of 1994

(I don't have a
"cancel all" button)

(Look at all these
Hollerith cards
I got off ebay)

Waiting for the smush
to come get
all the movies

To come fizzle me up
with smutty facts

Facts not known
to the AP European kids
re Catherine the Great

Ghost-free facts

Evenings patrolled
by the blue angels

Women of the neighborhood
not thinking straight

And other examples
of money gone wrong

1695

KNOWING

Doodle on the margin
Of sprechen-sie
Empathy codas

It is very white of a whiteness

This needing to feel
temporarily permanent
or vice versa

Dork, don't charge the batteries
with assault

Just open a vein
of quartz

Make music out
of thrown out things

And volunteer
for the Open Door

1694

The cumulus effect,
what I covet includes
"By pushing beyond baseball's
reputed origins in
an English children's game,
David Block has discovered
the game's true origins
in an even older English game,"
the art of translation
plum ice cream

Who do I know at NASA
who can get me one of those
space cats?

Are you practicing your German
on me? Doctor's orders --
back off the gin unless
you're hot to find out about
assisted living.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

1693

They insist their experience isn't yours
Then complain that all art is the same.

1692

"I like my father!"
She shouted as she threw a rock
The size of her forearm
Into the kelp.

"I like my father too!"
He shouted skipping
A little boulder
Likewise.

And so they passed
A good half hour,
In violent action
And praise.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

1691

TRUST MUSIC

You have to be a maniac,
Talkative, huddling behind a rock
With a firearm

And I for one am relieved
Never to have been there. To be sure
I've had lonely days and years

Sweating in the enormous soft clamp
Of the headphones, tilted
Forms sliding off the case

As some detail in the production,
A xylophone counterpoint
To the saxophone's lead, or maybe

For once I get how breath
Is what they mean by phrasing,
The weight of vowels

Bouncing to scatter, a broken
Necklace, mascara, some mild
Curse on the body -- no heroics

For a month. Of course my sensations
Aren't yours, do you think jokes
Are automatically sentimental?

Waiting for tickets.
And then, the day of the show
Playing the entire discography.

1690

To get talked about
You have to be foolish,
Who knows does not speak etc.

The lampshade spiderweb
Won't boil over,

The women lying face down
A hand each on the other,
Sand little finer than gravel
Under five dollar towels.

Wet gravel footprints
On my five dollar towel,
The wind picking up
The sawbuck umbrella;

Bold strokes are the opposite
Of willful. The shoulders
Show the difference
The palate notes between Gavi and other,

The palace notes
Your indifference to its praise.

If you think this is exile.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

1689

Talking forward through this strained
Window screen plan forming some distance

Into the flowers I covered this meaning up
Because suddenly I was no longer able

To distinguish between colors and sounds
And numbers and letters and for some reason

This state suggested to me a kind old woman
Who believes in breathing the air

And baking the pies. This woman made shows
Out of small blame. Nothing could echo

In her reasoning like a star thrown
From the railing. The paintings glowed

In the evening hiss. That was the kind
Of century we had let our payments slide on.

With continents that nobody found depressing
And yet which we could never quite imagine

Revisiting. Minutes passed in this lonely
Quarrel with dinner.

1688

Now in this supreme quiet I'll
Look for where you've gone

I manage a store

The windowsills compare
Our new

Play-differences

With what goes on behind the eyelids
When there's no softness

In any

Of

The aqueducts.

1687

The question then becomes
Are we going at the speed
We believe we'll be able to maintain

Or is this is some un-
Clarified wish to

Barricade ourselves
In some momentum
That can't be scripted

Except by moving onward
Outward and reddening like a tomato

I don't stub my toe
On the index
But keep flying
Farther towards

The differentiated
Spastic

Quiddity.

1686

In the time it takes to water a plant
I became impressionably sleepy

My nerves came to collect me
And we slipped back below the surf.

1685

When you lied down to sleep
next to me

and we held each other

turning to find
how to be comfortable
in the middle of the afternoon

me, a turnip
and you

a principle of
certainty

I had to compress
this flourishing

sense

into
a plausible

dream.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

1684

LOVELY WITNESS

Is there a mood you could
Abraham and Strauss
Into a perfect spiral
The sore roof

It's possible to walk straight into
The right shoes, it would feel
So much like home delivery
Of a knack for saying the wrong thing

To know what you mean by "dueling pistols"
When I show up with shawarma
Not knowing what holy water
Goes for at the motor pool

Barely remembering
The deaths that stunned you
Depressed the crap out of you
And there was a lot of crap

I guess I don't think of life as a sandbox
I have to share with the future