2038

ALMOST THERE

I am almost there.
There is a stack of paper.
It is shining in the sun.
The world sends its rejection slips
And they call it an economy.
Feel the rejection slip.
It is cool to the touch.
Now look at it. Keep looking.
Stare at it until your forehead throbs.
It is only a definitive response.
There is no stranger in it.
The world sends its fortune cookies
And calls them encouragement.
"You are almost there."
The present belongs to those who are present.
Apparently I am not quite present.
Neither am I checked out.
I am a reader of poetry, not history.
It is an almost-thereness, a parallel la-di-da.
I read so much poetry I grow gills.
As for writing it, I once had an idea
To be a cold war government.
To flood the enemy market
With counterfeit currency.
Now I think I'd rather live
Somewhere in that other land,
Maybe find work as a teacher
Of the poetry of my youth as a second language.
I'd do more good writing Esperanto greeting cards.
Still. My modus operandi has been: to persist.
To believe: I am almost there.
I just have to get to the end of this treadmill.

2037

THE BUTTON PUSHERS

I watched them start down the hill toward the daybed.

It was a green night, and I was fond of statistics.

There were clumps of yellow and blue grass growing in the mud.

They had just differed with me over the influence of Dostoevsky.

Childless, cruel, or strong, they're unfazed by allegorical kid death.

For me that kind of literature is a psychology experiment.

If I insult you, and you're offended, then ha-ha!

The magnificent lark of a shithead, etc.

We agreed that in Karamazov he transcends button-pushing.

But, they added, button-pushing beats window-dressing.

I listened for the suck of their shoes in the mud.

2036

MARINER'S MEASURE

You'll do
And do
And I'll just sit over here

And prepare my soul
For the sense
That shimmers like a triangle

At the back of the orchestra
What is a poulter?
And how

Is all that doing going?
Boing
Goes my heart,

I am somewhere
Between lonely and alone.

2035

CLAY FEELS GOOD

My son is asleep

                   I'm out of bacon

                                Noise in the nursery

Noise in the open hole in the ground
My days without any kind of tv are numbered

                   Red
                   Blue
                   Red

                   Cherry-finish
                   Plain green bamboo placemat

                   The archive is quite the meat market

Car chase between a mini-bus

            And a blimp-mobile

                            Car chase between a three-wheeler

And a police cart

The police cart circled
By bicycles

I am disgusted with my terror state

                                                      IT
                                                      FEELS
                                                      GOO 

2034

JE LES Y AI MISES

Odd verbs appear like magic
And we all know what they mean.
A blue machine.
A fire built of seeds.

The agent buys his passage
With a little book of dead.
Here's to him.
Here is a blue hill.

2033

TRYING TO

Remember you;
Staring out the window
At the end of sunny summer rain --
A whole train passes in a second.

2032

WORKSHEET DENTATA

SRA cards and chalk dust
Basic traveling across the muckety muck
A robust royalty destroyed and glistening
Some assembly mystifies the blue bulbs
Heat and cold smoking the difference engine
The permission tattoo saints Columba and Louis
(Incredible tradewar nonagons) mete to shills
Try me, erace white in the zone
Legroom for dummies, whalebreath predates
A niece in Puerto Vallarta
Going softly from sofa to pie land
The dame hurried improv into shuckfest convenience
But sun shines bright and sun shines best
The train hours plunk
Ten gallon hat in the lagoon, supersize me
But mess with my floozy and you'v donated
Your last words to science, tundra and whatnot
Sideways as a wooden spoon