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.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
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.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
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
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
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.
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.
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