1836

COLD LIGHT (RMX)

Converted into -- what? Not art, exactly
And certainly not anything like craft, sorry Charlie

1835

COLD LIGHT

Is not something I much care about
In fact most of what gets mentioned in poems
Could pretty much be left on the side of the road

All these life experiences
Converted into -- what? Not art, exactly
And certainly not anything like craft, sorry Charlie

No, I can't fault anyone involved
But I do wish to step back from the scenic view
And look more closely at what's living

1834

I never got what was supposed to be so awful
About sounding like nursery rhymes --
I have only good memories of nursery rhymes
Such as it's not true that they're all about plague

I do not aspire to be a child
Nor am I insecure in my adulthood
Although I am always impressed
By young people who "look mature"

The wholesomely naughty goosey goosey gander
Frankie and Johnny were lovers
Tyger tiger et cetera and so on
And the unknowns we know

Fairy tales, on the other hand,
I recognize as leading to Nabokov
And all that other collectively agreed
Smug-faced disappointment mongering

It's enough to make a man start a car
And head out on the parkway
Until the urge to lean the head out the window
Turns you into a golden retriever who can drive

1833

BLUES CHOIR (REMIX)

Obstacle course
Finagling
No, no problem -- problem

I am tired of survival mode
This bomb shelter morning
To have played a string instrument
The communitarian impulse
Sings the blues

Kablooey sings the blues
The family of man sings the blues

I am turning green and singing the blues

The good souls who eject paragraph
For M'sieur Tarzan

In America we love cars so much
(On TV)

I love TV so much

I.e. taxes

The average soul collection, now, that
Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Band

So instantly memorable

Unless the high spirits
(Back to soul math)
Clack-factory deists
Such as Mr. Dean Young
Whose proofs of lineage
Go totally unnoticed
For providing the soundtrack to the poems

David Sylvian's father caught rats

Play your eggs at a moderate volume
To register the car

Furious I find lots to neglect

For example I have never spent any time
Rehanging doors
To say something loving

1832

BLUES CHOIR

Obstacle course
Finagling
Sure I can help with that
No, no problem – problem

A twitch in the eye
The poems can only be
About surviving this

I am tired of survival mode
I find it absolutely demeaning
To pretend it isn't disguising itself
As how we live now

This bomb shelter morning
I'm swigging from the shower

It is a feeling I don’t want
To memorialize
Until it's truly dead

I want to be soaring in my metronome
Not shrugging off the ten pound chain

To understand this feeling it helps
To have played a string instrument
How furious it makes me
To play along it's the only thing
I can think about anymore

The communitarian impulse
Sings the blues

Kablooey sings the blues
The family of man sings the blues

I am turning green and singing the blues

The orchestra trying to memorize
How to make your hair stand on end
Will get there when it's good and plenty

The good souls who eject paragraph
After paragraph, o admirable industry!
And none of it worth looking at once

I have no bandaid
For M'sieur Tarzan

The space between
Is trying to be my favorite subject

When you wake me
Don't tell me about driving the car
Off the side of the post office,
That's my dream

In America we love cars so much
(How much do we love them)
We want to have them buried with us
And we love to see them blow up
(On TV)

I love TV so much

It is a vestigial attempt to recognize community
As a service that can be provided
For a nominal fee
I.e. taxes

The British pay for TV with their taxes
And what does the phrase mean-spirited mean anyway
What does it look like, the average soul

The average soul collection, now, that
I can pick out of a lineup

You've got your Marvin Gaye, your Al Green
Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Band

Actually that's funk
As in what's that funky smell
Making this party
So instantly memorable

Ah perhaps now would be a good time to mention
That for a while there I wore Joe Brainard's shoes
And have several copies of Pierre Reverdy
"In the original"
And perhaps it would not

There is never a good time to prove one's lineage
Except with brave deeds with the yardarm
On the field of valour
Where you better not wear velour

Unless the high spirits
(Back to soul math)
Of the shrinky dinks
Have made you to loathe
Clack-factory deists
Such as Mr. Dean Young
A personal favorite of mine
Whose proofs of lineage
Go totally unnoticed
Except by me –
I'm looking at you, Dean

Dean is a frequent soloist in the choir
His collections include Skid, First Course in Turbulence
And the difficult to locate Design with X
In which he thanks David Sylvian né Batt
For providing the soundtrack to the poems

David Batt's dad caught rats

I don't have a soundtrack for these poems
It's five in the morning and I'm joking my fury away

Which is better for you
Than googling up some eggs

Play your eggs at a moderate volume
And don't neglect
To register the car

Furious I find lots to neglect

For example I have never spent any time
Rehanging doors
And have only once dipped my hands
Into a box filled with hinges

I'm not what you might call "handy"

I'm living with someone
She's so warm
When I jump out of bed to write this
That I spend ten minutes
Dreaming that it makes any sense to get up

She is waiting for me
To say something loving
To do with her
And do it too

If we're truly tired of singing down songs
Let's don't make her wait

1831

GO FAST

The power of the psychic field is intense
"Calms th' nerves"
The clutter claim stings, why
Why tha fuck not

Could make a quiche
Could copy edit the governance
Could get right to work on the board report

Put together the whatever

Totally uninterested in focusing on any one task
Flipping like a fish

The useable lines from journals and my spinning
I don't drive fast I'm driving fast all the time

Treating it with compresses

Kick that goal, you've got the ball

1830

WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU POEMS

Summer house, conversation with the maid
Foot pedal etc) and a fat indifferent man
A revolutionary, blood and fire
In the lesson plan, snip snip snip

When the morning béchamel drifter spools
End up looting the anterior slot machines

Probability makes us gladsome wenches

Turned to numismatics' sweet Rodolfo

Wool freed from its role as protector of sheep heat

The prince subsisted on a diet of pine needles
As if life were a pass in afternoon mountains

1829

GIVE ME YOUR SOCK

The internet is my dad
I am surprised to be in the window
Wearing a pair of glasses
(I thought it was a mirror)

Let me talk to you
About the shape of the light
Taking your cues
From the people who make cues

Suddenly the dog
Sat down at the typewriter
A movie of the week
My only parapet

Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel
Watch over the poets
We love their electrical hum
It makes ice cream

I tell the internet this news
And wait for it to overlook
A scene of ordinary drama
Matisse's scissors

Take on Berrigan's
In a round robin heart
The robin engineers
Gave up on donuts

What a long tedious process
This feeling good
And thank God for that
Testing the floorboards

1828

WAITING FOR THEM

What we are sure about
Makes the time go faster
And who doesn't love
Fast time

The minimum a monkey
Carries with him
Is a blow torch
And a powerwasher

Now we present to you
A scene of ordinary drama
And impatience
To feed the grinding machine

That moment of tentative
Starting to waltz
When the morning
Relies on clean feelings

Leads to a dark room
And coal fumes
Say no to a boy
And you feed him for life

But get with the program
And you sing
All across the cobbles
The dimes

1827

We can recognize the flood in others' disasters
A cough from the sleep room means Listerine
Baby oil



Nachos disappear into the gullet
Of the man shaking the cruet

I understand how all these wigs fit
Power drills to me

Will be auto-summarized

1826

Glass
Parking garage
Northern lights
Trained myself
The blow-dryer's
Perpendicular

Wooden stakes in the furrows
The dirt plot a policeman
Monday presses
On my chest, Monday twitches

Flames

Literacy chooser

Market maker

I remember this fitful crayon
Tones of response
Awareness of affects
Comparative toxicity

A low beak

Accrual is ross and maintenance

Somewhere the bot
Bookstore elevator

Talks ill about the movie theater
The cross hatch of Archie's head

Two competing demands:
While drawing the story

1825

POEM FOR POWER

Thursday is made up like an April
With much standard influence on the muscles.

The stretch goals light up the eyes
Of the wind-up monkey,

Close your eyes and walk farther down the corridor.
There is something else -- the after party.

The perception of power
There's very little

I sing a worksong but I know different words
I could just ride this subway all day

No one is indispensable
We'll just see about that now won't we

1824

I WOULD LIKE TO BE POEMS

Neighbors of the dreamer dissolved their sugar
In the packet-boat, and the choir got sent
Where the infantry feared to mooch the sorrow
Of a burrowing table-tennis playing macher.

That in those days was what singing groups were for,
To consolidate the holdings of ailing richies,
Something like Sonia Delaunay in Japan.

Now when we were little it was important
To funnel all the brain activity toward
The ones who held the world in the least regard --
Now we pretend to understand money
And view the socius with detachment,

But it is a short wide-eyed goat, the world,
Aye, that it be, that it be, boys, indeed.

1823

I graced the parkbench
With as much machismo
As a jar of maraschinos
Has pink

My collar turned up
And my headphones
Set to a safe level

Life is like a box
Of detective novels
Or anyway I'd rather
Those fell off the truck

Than chocolates
Or fluorescent tubes

No one worth noticing
Was walking on that sidestreet
So I took a cab
Past the aircraft carrier

It was done up for Christmas
A stocking on every nosecone
A tree spinning on an awac

The bridge gave off
A ghostly glow
A granddad's office
Of muzak and cold light

I remembered the Alamo and the Maine
And that only I can prevent forest fires

A time without truth
Being a kind of blaze

1822

Standing water
Breeds mosquitoes
Therefore they fired
Everyone here

Parts of the statue
That wouldn’t make it
Heaved from the side
Of the cornfield

I told the truth
I liked how it sounded
They overheard me
Now I’m the king

Smooth jazz
And mysterious smoke
Coming from cracks
In your alibi

Who named me
Said the infant
And what were they
Taking for their cold

We will prevail
Said the nightmare
On the edge of the cliff
At sunrise

I love it here
Said the movie star
In the box marked
Previously-viewed

1821

LOOKING AT THE GOOD SIDE, I GUESS YOU'RE OVER ME

Woke up this morning and fought about the rent,
Cracked the plates wide open,
And went where they shout 'work harder.'

Ghost discs blossom on the chocolate.

I mention all this because I want you to know
That I enjoy being alive under this wide sky.

1820

LOVE A DUCK POEM

Feeling peckish?
Love a duck.
Cackling jackals
Walk the deck.

Black stacks
Of mack tactics
Make cracks
In flak jackets.

Love a duck.
You mean
The world to me.
Krik-krak.

1819

POEMS WITH ARE IN IT

Minus the play bream no one
Honestly thought kids'd cozy
Up with, the idea wagon was
Mainly falutin' their wide craws
For a plural chorale, headquarters
Going from orange to Idaho
Like marmite on weetabix
Or show ditzes plonking
Now you see it into a guess your age
Fermata disposal. I could staff
Through this character mint
With an aerosol pervert
As my trope corps, but the thought
Of the sooey pig pig pig
Claymationing my sexual harassment
Into a luxury rental
Converted my dim sum landscape joy
For quick resale on the gray market.
It toned me down, even as I mastered
The reverse curl. But I had a plan:
Choose only those words
That made my window of opportunity
As I liked to call her in those days
Dream up a use for all this
Linty tylenol
Covertly operating
On the prudent man rule. She was,
In fact, and still are, actually,
The apocryphal kind there's one of.

1818

FEEL BETTER SO

I can come
Touch your lip

The weather is gargoyles

Praying to all
The instruments
You've sorted
Into drawbridge
Mercy and brick

You're drifting
As the doctors
Lease cars

Your pretty neck demands magnetic stubble
"I'm pretty ghost-x"

Just lie back and replenish
The gesundheits
With a little reaching
Up to the pantry

You're a brother and a sister
And for that alone we need you to keep
On your side of the chalupa truck

I'm not even touching your hand
And you snap the blinds open

1817

THIRD PERSON CRYING

That's the third person crying
I've seen in the last year;
The tapping of the foreign rights
Makes a light ring in my white beer.

The yes-please connotes a long winter
With stars crushing cars
By means of electromagnets,

Guilt leaking from the sprockets
The mob pries apart
Waiting for the coronation.

Tonight I'll eat,
The christmas tree tumbleweeds
Like to flip a taxi,
Bookstores shaken by the windows.

1816

Clearing out the night
For all the weight I've shadowed
There is sound in the goldenrod
And cream in several cartons.

Today I am placing a widget
In its soon-to-be-outmoded grace period.

Chowing down, as it were.
The night is startled
To hold such surplus drayage.
I am monitoring it,
And plowing into a stipulation.

1815

SOMEONE CRYING

The file folders are jumping up in a crowd
And I'm the President of Shoe Trees,
Blue cheese Easter falls on a Monday Monday
When we hold hands and fall aslant.

Someone is crying.

There is nothing
I can do to make this sound
Into a place setting,
A barroom muchachas exquisite for neaped
Fennel jogstrollers
The hoplites.

All the dogs are taking up thinking.

Biff, come widen the track-lighting.

P: error file not
Zebra-mandated.

1814

DAFFY DUCK TAPDANCING

When I wear a weighted vest
And move from side to side
One foot on the step one foot off
Then back the other way
I feel exactly like
Daffy Duck tapdancing.

1813

SLEEP ATTACK

He folds himself into a biplane
And goes to sleep at me, head first, pow!

Everybody stays indoors
As he passes overhead.

1812

OVERTURE

Amid slight diesel fumes, the lights dim.
Semaphore leads us to love songs
Of hallucinations on the water, fugue
State wanderings across moors and braless
Contentions with renewal forms.
Tonight I will dine on Greek food,
Summoned for a stark portrayal
Of my chiseled referendum skylight.
I am grateful for this ferberized music
Lending me its campfire and its Rin Tin Tin.

1811

GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE

The stadium was packed with a thousand pre-teens
Waving electricity over our heads. It was a small stadium.
My funniest friend was putting out sparks
With a large slurpee. If anybody was making a triangle
or a double-u with their hands, we were thinking
About feeling like a civil rights lawyer
On the other side of the country. On the other side
Of the harbor, fireworks, lightning, shellfish, Truffaut.
A hurricane was already in the mail. A videotape
Was already being fast-forwarded.

1810

SONG OF THE HORSE

All I want in this world of crying and steam
Is hard enough work and a dry place to sleep.

1809

The dream felt like having me stay over,
I was aware of the words in sandbags
And this mutual wish for a rhythm
To invite us into its easily-begun circle.

When you go for weeks without washing your hair,
Oh everywhere car horns
And the shame anyone hides
From the rebels of routine

There you can get a scone for a dime,
It's never pulling on the phone cord --
A high water mark up to the crenellations
On the inside of the keep.

1808

You can understand how different
A melodica sounds from a toy piano,
The children slumped in the back seat
So many unmatched socks

The alien changed our feelings
For the rhythms we used to party;
There was time to choose words
And a little to use them.