Thursday, March 22, 2007

2008

INTUITIVELY, after reading Larry Joseph

Would I recognize a new Terry Southern if he or she were to materialize,
I drink so much celery tonic the seas look like green fields
And the development of toxic cleanup sites into homes for the beautiful
Is a subject aching for the Julia Roberts treatment

But I am not aching, I am nodding politely
As the row of nesting dolls from John Berendt to Henry James
Tell me what I am missing existing among the brand names
Of ludicrous abject pixie mercator projections

Sunlight sincerely ice water for the heels all bankshot
Diggity, do you want to know more about industry types
Or give it up for the music control gang suds, and if you say
It depends on the industry you get four more years of modish politesse

Oh exhale for the criminal rage pimentos
Crying out for olive-complected neighborhood armada
(In this case a couple dozen motorboats and an ex-tugboat captain
Weighing in at 320 lbs, worth a bag of rubies and pfft)

Or don't exhale, like I care how you crumble your adult life
Into the fizz, I have my own waking dreams of exercise
To paste up in the bean formica carburetor Rauschenbergismo
That in its sad lack of a patent bad boy imprimatur

Will have to wait its turn by the carousel
For a cameo, and meanwhile arousal
You are waiting and I am typing this as the files wash in.
It's just like us. We want to run straight into it.

Friday, March 16, 2007

2007

AS IT HAPPENS

Some mornings the science
Section has nothing to steal
But does that make me
A vivisectionist by default?
No way, Desiree.

Not that I'm trying to persuade you
Or ever could, the bomb squad's
Sirens tut-tutting as they doppler
The pre-dawn. Dawn.
I said pre-dawn, you dirty girl.

*

Deep in the ganache
The pressure's practically nucleic
And what stipples the questionnaire
Can't be reduced to incompetence
But rather is the inexorable product

Of Inexorable Products, Incorporated.
I don't doubt for a second either
The permanence of this lush vegetation
And that makes me what, exactly.
Exactly.

*

The pie is in the safe
And misery's blessing
The same comfy policeman
Who noted our presence
Among the ghosts of the piazza.

*

The photographer in love with his subject,
Oil stains on coverlets
Even descriptions of the land
Onion prose.
For whom all this showing off

When every day ends
In communion with the spirit
Of the marriage?
When the wife begins to vibrate
Put her ankle to your ear.

The thought in isolation
Stylish in its weather Rome
But carried to a tune,
It floats on the darkroom page --
Fit in your head and become an action.

*

The keys have ribbons
And phone cord wristbands,
Ordinary leaves
Pressed in a domesday boke
Don't think less of this afterlife.

*

I prefer wombat to capybara but oh
To be the scarf
Our syllabary spazzes over,
A dreamlife reciprocity
Cannons recognize...

They gather by the recycling
To take in the sounds
Of the love-off.
We play the piano taking turns,
Then crash chords our together,

Your peanut butter in my benadryl,
Like bacon for Frenchness,
A patio under the stereo
For the gathered souls
To revel in their timely guesses.

It will happen,
It is happening,
And as it happens
I enjoy nothing so much
As waiting for you to see it.


[This poem was funded in part by a grant from an anonymous donor.]