Muscular Thinking Prowls

 

Poem without Stars

 

As I walked across the sky

 

While I turned away

 

The skill of the skull

 

Where does consolation exit?

-There isn’t any consolation in my mind.
-There isn’t any consolation in my soul.
-There isn’t any consolation in my heart.

 

Coaxial brain the

Which sentence sounds right to you?

What will bring you back to me?

We know each other’s secrets

The time-spattered world

 

Fill in the poem poem

 

Sweet

Time

Last

Petal

Desire

Hardened

Entered

Lap

Lull

Ridgid

Parted

Cooing

Sighed

Lying

Breast

Languor

Munch

Blush

Sweat

Hungry

Greedily

Graze

Kisses

Lips

Sucked

Heave

Gaze

Delights

 

Spring

The season is new and flying in the sparrow’s beak.

 

Dialogue with Nature

(in the style of Japanese Noh plays)

Soul: You are so beautiful row of poplars above the iron smelter

the auto junk yard the rivet factory the bread factory the bakery

the mill the cement factory the steel yard the row of yellow poplars

and the occasional blush colored tree.

Nature: No matter. Your enjoyment is yours alone.

I do what I do.

Soul: Yes you are beautiful to no purpose;

just chance color coordinates thrown together

to designs far removed from delight.

Nature: Well, let’s not get carried away here.

You get all tantalized but don’t get angry

if there is nothing more. Can’t you be satisfied

with what you’re given. Why do you want more?

Soul: It would be nice to know if there is a message for us.

This tree has grown like a twisted wash cloth

And that one has the sheen of tumescence

The other tree is dark brick

the color of French roast coffee

Nature: How about French roast coffee the color of dark brick?

Soul: Don’t be a wiseacre.

 

There 45 non-performing words

45 retired words

45 non-functioning words

45 non sensible words

Poems for vindication

 

Dial Vindicating smiles like Nazi salutes

 

There’s No Thought Too Unshapely for the Skull

 

An uncocked wind swallows the corner sky

The weathercock chews the scenery

Hard-swallowing clouds the sleazy pornographic wind

the solar system is like an old black dial phone

the same crusted dialing finger

yanks dreams like the long long magician’s kerchief

but there are no sudden mountains

telephone lines like a musical stave host robins, singing quarter notes

the mountain stops our thoughts from going too far beyond the mountain

everything is gold when you’re about to lose everything

betrayal is a clever description of the world with its

creamy topless air melon skies and candied sunsets

he who speaks fluently speaks to himself

but not seeing is how we begin to see

goodness might taste even better in the curl of a trigger

and laughing back at death might force

the monster back into the storybook

and knowledge a gift hot to the touch.

even death is a foundling here

in the pestilential lair they find

beauty made useless by poison mirrors

back In the monster’s lair

death laughs up his well-worn sleeve.

the fever of things moves slowly

 

While I turned away

You became a boy and then a man

Stand hair like lazy smoke

Uncurdled stream of freshness

That one man could rake a country so

Hard to believe that this is life this pressure

A performance request demand and usurpers demand

Blame so fresh and pertinent a bargain a garage sale

Let stellae befuddle, for this is life a strip of nostalgia

The afterburn of lozenge shaped pie a winter kitchen of warmth and pie

Let last your frolic in the riverbank among the bramble while we watch

A fresh fuck on the foothills a months worth of doses a pile of winter rakings

A nice walk or a long bike ride to the islands a page of not nice warm trailers and books lice device a thrice a cave of Ali Bagmen sit stoned before the fireplace

Let unleash your tamers tale let flow your land free limbs grown if freedom

Spiked anger doused with furrel banked with bonks crusted with enzyme a kneaded population, scarcely shepherded, pruned upon a meat cleaver

Rushed into blivion basked in the well cloven by caves nethered by naked time and vanquished by a compassionate mouth sprinkled over clouds tractors and dirt and spread by failure hold your fire! A fistful of credit a lonely balcony seeping views and nihilist views of the water an approachable military off limits eyes; 40 dollars per eye. You pay nothing for the first eye. State of the art pounds; Larry Lanyard, smuggled himself in a tree, in the studio ceaseless questions muscling around the fire a maiden crack of the covers, more needles more packages, less color, less foxes, more paper; even stones have a life; we’re in whether we’re in or not; you can’t ignore skidmarks; the nauseous arrogance, the noxious arrogance, criminal doves, illegal birds, canned brain, canned brawn victorious brawn; stiff reminders, stiff shoes, help me I am a mouse; give it to me, Jacob; country eggs, stereo eggs, virgin clouds, stiff virgins, mountain breasts, sloshing breasts, glycerin guns; living fat; hot epigrams, foxfam; Phoxpham; growing bars, are your dimples still deep, Italy adulterates, drive and look; a turret, a cornice a dentil

 

dingy coordinates

with become food for a sudden mountain

 

and its dirty blanket

the dirty blanket of wind

“Hey! That was a real knob-job rain storm!”

the mountain a large toll-both

storm like a muscular knob-job

 

and their drifting infections borrowed dreams

from a common well this could be time or music

where do you come from what is your name

snoring wind scalpel O sun unmindful bird

rhyming birds and purposeful wind scoring

blanketing the dreamy pangris that you have surgered

scoring blanketing and embraced time itself

the quiet of your auditors the siege of them

by the dream a feeling that you are seizing time itself

stopping it holding it fondling it when you hear music

countersinging a drug happy drag

music this strong, wind this hungry

 

key of G major

Let’s sing: you break it you pay for it

 

from a hat it goes on forever, in fact

fugitive water

scalpel sun

you’re pulling something from our dreams

somewhere where does it come from what is your name

 

Kumquat, the word, demands a bigger piece of the action

 

What will bring you back to me?

 

When did you have to beg last

 

Professor Throw-me-a hump

 

A fork in your dried stool

 

from the smell of a sand bed we create past

musculature ligature armature davenports lace

breaks hulls deities beaks bones puddles of ink

such aplomb turns our vindicating smiles homely

 

how perfunctory it is

 

we find civilization in greetings and romance and gardens

we stride we don’t walk we fly

but it’s well known though unspoken

the sound of the burning fire that carries us into the transporting air

is the sound of the tearing curtain between being and non-being

 

summered memory

wisdom beyond blossom

 

stocks antiques statistics and wine

a boy swimming rivers who touched blurry green fish

and by the way live beyond taiga

at least enough to let slide fills of disquietude for life

seems a mountain it takes a heroin of effort to ignore

 

the burly mountains in our back yard whose shadows

could shroud small European countries

the mountains survey us like angry older brothers

guarding our long-ago cheaply-swapped virginity

for time is throwing light and light is shrinking fabric around the day

here’s the moon spooning through the night like a trigger

telling time and falling into a sun bath

whose skin’s an animal age of warning drums

fresh breaking the uninvited universe pounds outside in the night

wo ist mein geld till

I could grasp the moon’s cold blade or

Slurp the sun’s citric shadows forever

in our world we are so certain about unseen things

from the undisturbed sand bed we create musculature

ligature armature davenports smells breaks hulls deities

beaks bones piles of ink lace

 

our aplomb how perfunctory it is

things are mysteries but we’re sure of them

things pass us by but we understand them

our lives feel short and pasted with dream

we find civilization in greetings and romance and gardens

 

you wouldn’t believe our confidence

we stride we don’t walk we fly

it’s well known though unspoken

the sound of the burning fire

that carries us into the air

is the sound of the tearing curtain

between being and non-being

 

I saw a goose bathing herself in the Duwamish

how honeyed the water she shook in the sun,

a tug pushed a barge, tender monsters, without a ripple.

 

Our world summered beyond blossom, but how?

what wisdom have we but nothing and money?

Gold speaking fluently at the party? A boor

interested only in the sound of his own metal

in stocks, antiques, and statistics and wine

 

 

What I couldn’t do

The writer’s life you know

Wanting to tough it out

Better than taking notes or folding clothes

 

The Yankee Moon

 

Drainage

 

Oh my god
It’s the drainage, coming at you, babe…
I think it’s a special business get this monkey off my back; grief
beyond the sun
The appalling mane of the sun,

I can’t have seen it can I have?
Everything turns on the sun

the outward leaves and jumping horses
the men like jumping horses with their summer hooves

Look at the pussy look at the fists

look at the mud and the spray and
 
You’re not very clever
He’s a tackle box waiting to happen
A ton of tankle and mytox
Hard breath
Fox heat the cursive air the plotless sky

so far from the shaving kit

at the bottom of the train yard
Blowing mint
Tomato massage
Crude dieting glaciers Creamy time narcotic sun air topless planets

sharp-shooting fat sun dieting wind a farting sun

the whole beach is on a diet
 
range of candied sunset
comely hatchets and brine pickles and gears hold up and sense pilots and
sense and machines and last froth oh shit we’re going down

bless the melon sky
the ground tracks the subtle skin
the peachy sky the peppery sky
the gifted grime
sweaty palms

the dated palms
logical melons homey peaches
the winning wanger

Crude and deceptive bones

Toy bones playing with bones

There is a purity to crystallization

Being frisked by the sun the overlord of water

The play of frisky play of green light

under the leaves the vivid silver of the raccoon’s back

there are no boring bridges

muscular toned buffed,

 

Oliver on His Pedestal Chants at the Sea

 

My green youth thanks me, old now,

For giving my memories a chance to live.

 

Most things are mysteries but we’re sure of them,

Most things pass us by though we understand them.

 

Conservative waves are gate crashers with song

Like a uninvited muscle beach party in my head.

 

Your love was a mountain

I hadn’t the guts to climb

 

We live beyond shadows now

We live beneath the sun’s wings

Even water comes from the sun

Gloveless

 

It took such effort to ignore.

 

 

Emptiness is the Fullness of Unfinished Statues

 

Jimmy Guts Happy is Your Name

 

Fried bullet holes

 

Cracking handsome worms

 

A Mountain of Prescience Doesn’t Matter

 

The Arpeggios Crumble

The beleaguered guitar that has a

The souls derivations and tuggings

 

The Diaper of Surprise, the Ascot of Despair

 

Forest kicked and beaten as if by overeager cops

 

Marxist Mountains, Capitalist Water

burly mountains discharge

simple waking between us

and a browning sun is not enough

I might be eaten or at least poked

like angry older brothers surveys us

guarding our cheaply swapped virginity

collapsing birds, depressive health overnight capsules,

windows thin clouded uncorked drizzle O spitting moon

the uninvited universe a gate crasher with song

runs a muscle beach party in my head

the moon spooning through the night

like the nervous trigger of a first time assassin

ours an animal neighborhood of warning drums

and now there’s music where a man once was

a scream outside in the night goes wo ist mein geld?

wo ist mein geld?

you love the sun’s citric morning

The open-air desuetude of her moods

 

Sunsets are homosexual in origin

 

untie the musculature of thugs,

 

Lament

 

someone’s mama read

about the death of a monster

bursting from a book.

and everything will be OK,

and tomorrow’s another day

pity snorts and shakes her mane,

wanderers slashed and pulped,

And prayers are plentiful as smoke.

old timers bet on the death-frying

on young men filled with fuck

on imbecility well-shaded by fake trees

on wounds rinsed in vengeance

on anchors and anvils filling the air

on a shredding sky sneezing over the city

on horizons that will roll and liquefy

the ribs of our listing world press bonily

while you sling your buddy’s hide

and back in the monster’s lair

death laughs up his well-worn sleeve

the fever of things is moving slowly

as through a screen of not wanting to

we perceive the kickings, the howls

the artful blood across the walls

but not seeing is a way of seeing

(goodness might taste even better

your tongue curls softly

like the trigger’s curl

and laughing might force

the monster back into the pages)

such knowledge hot to the touch

makes Death himself a foundling

where Beauty’s a barely breathing stream

and everything is held hostage inside 

a thousand poison tiny mirrors

everything’s going to be OK

a mother sings, knowing, closing the book

 

 everything is all fire, all ice

Still she sings in the pestilential lair.

 

 

a strewn basket of roses

before the all a terrifying, voiding,

calling for mother

 

In the the story ends

Close the book

 

 

Mirrors with one image holding beauty hostage,

they find

(The seam of a cracked ice in the mountain lake is a temporary puzzle,

 

 

The forces of even

The monster back in the book

 

 

 with a single reflection

Steel themselves knowing the worst of the dragon is in its tailsomewhere hearing

 

 

But Monster licks his poison tail

frowns as we say:

everything will be OK,

tomorrow’s another day.

 

O lord treat me like a child

“dear God please, don’t please,

don’t give us contrasts just now,

 

 

hungry enemies sharpen teeth

on the gristles of hatred.

Takers bleed

,

Swinging blood or;

Yes, we share the world with bugs.
[unwanted blessings score the sky.]

 

The best-laid family

 

333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

 

The Generally Accepted Sex Scene

To find caress alone the self caress

Let the institution screen

The riling rolling bong

Like Casanova’s prong

who doesn’t root for the bankrobber

A scene to evade boredom’s uzzle [bride]

Washing the centuries away

 

of the long stay in the army bed

 

moving with a flea’s or a punter’s specificity

and knowledge stays a brutal pin a

knowledge, a brutal stray

a glossy mat of bloodied fear

sends prickles to the tender parts

wanton words that flabbergas

conserve design contuse

the bone of ideology cracks another skull

and fear and shards

bird its lonely way a stand

sticking at dusk under the bridge

the deciphering war the prison of pills

they want pale ingredients

to lose their sleep and horns bend

the bowed poor the revenge of the rich

 

hope and snarl and glen and copse

on flat and beaten level stops

find the starry tale of woe

in the harpings of the moe

when the bender brings a fiend

savors dops to final scream

want of force is seen as spam

cooking things not only food

body rot and crow’s feet stew

voices raise and young men die

hangover like a hungry vulture

 

the sun was like being hit with a wet towel

 

the happy ending

Standing still at dusk I saw a melon sky

In silent mid night Women planting rice

Wild geese in writhing takeoff. In this windy nest

Ballet in the air Dew evaporates Black cloudbank broken

Seek on high bare trails in the clouds

One fallen equals two plum trees

Now that eyes of hawks

Spot a lovely bowl of

White cloud mist newly hatched like friends

Amble out for love Now in sad autumn

Fireworks beget Green fingers painting stolen apples

Painting boats and shores

A Seattle nest of rain

A sorry old tom cat. The rubber-booted old fisherman

Carrying message-seeds

Sidewalk writing gutter missives

While I turned away

The lace of you trailed

a spider trails you

Two white turtles trailed you

the lace of you returned

a strong rain unloaded leaves from trees

The bus departed

The bees died

My toes got cold

I prefer you to memories

please don’t give me contrasts

life should be all fire or all ice

don’t imagine harmonics harm

beautiful hands doing beautiful things

In the chair all life has moved on

and you’re still in the chair

Leaves seed the ground

Blow avant-garde seasonals

look behind burning leaves

fires show what fire shows

the creamy topless unfired air

the sun going all helpless

 

everything becomes erotic when you

put the word topless before it

topless stones topless shaving kits topless card decks topless candy

topless peaches and topless boats

and, of course, topless melons.

 

sense pilots a dowsing rod cock

and sense machines sky the peachy sky the peppery sky

Being frisked by the sun the overlord of water

I see her smell

 

drip a message of dripping strokes

but good loving An arm, a blanket, hair on breasts

Clothed you are so beautiful

subject to a Twist of light

to me naked well

Hennaed hair over your breasts

 

 

Towards Evening

our foaming house

of air

knocking pines

ripping not of wind

and afternoon arrives

sun on the side of tall trees

the lord is in heaven and carrots

plugged into dirt.

sick after you to bring myself back

sheathed only in your form means life to me

the porcelain quiet of your crashing life

find a jungle and a friend a mousetrap tied to a chair

you in your light tight dress then

I just barely survive your nakedness

just barely survive you

survive by knowing loving plants

urgent tree baffled light

patient towards stars

and you willing the sea to move

I will now submerge into my sludge delta

and wait for you to carry me back to life

and we’ll hit the earth again

the earth over and over

 

I can’t presume upon your horror

 

 

the fear of burning versus the eternal plunge

 

Oh my god

It’s the drainage, coming at you, babe…
I think it’s a special business get this monkey off my back; grief
beyond the sun
The appalling mane of the sun’s mane I can’t have seen it can I?
Everything turns on the sun begging leaves and jumping horses
the men like jumping horses like pummeling suns
Look at the pussy look at the fists look at the mud and the spray and
betrayal is a word for the world;
You’re not very clever
 
A ton of tankle and mytox
Hard breath tons of breath cursive mouth
Fox heat cursive air plotless sky
Creamy time sun air topless the creamy topless air the sun is going topless

so far from the shaving kit at the bottom of the train yard
Blowing mint
Tomato massage
Crude ice
Candied trees
candied range
melon sky
comes hatches
hatchets and brine pickles and gears hold up and sense pilots and
sense and machines and last froth oh shit we’re going down bless the
melon sky
the ground tracks the subtle skin
the peachy sky the peppery sky
the gifted grime
sweaty palms
crazed melons crazed peaches
the winning wanger

Crude and deceptive bones

Toy bones playing with bones

There is a purity to crystallization

Being frisked by the sun the overlord of water

The play of frisky play of green light under the leaves the vivid sliver of the raccoons back boring bridges muscular toned buffed, the fleshy flames of the sun around his burning nut the fleshy fire around the sun’s hot nut you do not refuse the sun’s kiss daddy O

here’s an apple pie in apology
vivid holdings secrets accidents

The inappropriate touching of privates of the sun. The too intimate suns a too intimate sun our biggest violator.

Tell me how to study the sound and read the air

Let the morning bring me fair

The end is always what we dare

Advance the swing between your legs

Strike a blow for not knowing

Dropping slights and dips and backs

Hold the torch from ear to ear

Gin and beer and vodka stings / strings?

Working on the deadlline seeking

A deadline a humming motor of stealth

Lighting appliances well appointed terms

Teeth the hobby of kindness the battle

The act of cleaning the air the discovery

Of the sunken chest the sense we are at the beginning of things salt pork, murky candy

 

There’s No Thought too Unshapely for the Skull

Tell me about the mind that runs the universe?

Well, he, the mind, is there and he is cold and uncaring

but he loves beauty the long legged woman climbing out of the truck,

the falling sheen of southeast Asian hair; the beauty that torments us

and reminds of what we can’t hold at every minute.

Somewhat like a cold successful homosexual novelist.

He reigns over loud orgasms and quiet libraries bitter beautiful morphine.

He reigns over lava flows floods and the spread of plum blossoms in the wind.

The stuff of jokes: fishing for his cock he cocked himself a glance in the stream and a fish poked through.

And not for the first time noticed he was bald he peed

and he thought himself good looking but under proportion

to the amount of women who should have been hitting on him.

Think of all the math this mind withheld from us until lately

think of all the double h words in English or how about all the double l or even triple l words? Wallless.

The cold is inappropriate, time to move.

Rescue books from the cold. The heat and weight of prancing deer

wake you in the morning.

Gold fillings on front teeth remind you of the gold windowpanes

on the eastern bank of Lake Washington hit by the afternoon sun.

The dust universal we share. The blond boy flings his jean jacket

over the chair at 13 Coins, heedless of the dust he sheds across the plates

of his fellow eaters.

The bald man on the airplane still has a ring of springy orange air

that he fluffs with his knuckles over and over again

as he reads his techno thriller, spreading headly dust

into the food and drink of his fellow passengers.

There has to be a mind. Someone knew how to make

the cunt so practical, so sweet so exalted so ecstatic and elastic.

 

The sunset was cheap as a Japanese fan.

The monkey air

 

In these dark waters

players with minds of drumsticks

The best sandwich in town is the BLT sunset

With flowers on it and fans on them

with Japanese Noh

my cock has the mind of a drumstick

scored ribboned thistled verified

Verbaled throated scarred torn

like a flake

what of the kid who wants to be black?

We can only reabsorb him: there ain’t no pick and stomp

Ventrilio is grinding sausage up to his elbows

farm still open basement making a

A cracked moon,

 

Standing still at dusk

I dreamed of battles

In silent mid night

Women planting rice

Wild geese write a line

Dead my old fine hopes

In this windy nest

Ballet in the air

Dew evaporates

Black cloudbank broken

Seek on high bare trails

One fallen flower

My two plum trees

Now that eyes of hawks

Spot a lovely bowl

White cloud of mist

Is newly hatched

Strangers are like friends

Amble out for love

Now in sad autumn virulence

Fireworks begin

Green fingers painting stolen apples

Parting boat and shore

A Burien (Seattle) of rain

Oh sorry tom cat

The old fisherman

Two white butterflies

While I turned my head

The song ended

The lace of a spider trails you

a strong rain raked leaves

from the trees

The bus departed

The bees died

My toes got cold

I prefer my memories to you

please don’t give me contrasts

just now, life should be all fire or all ice

don’t presume harmonics harm

the fear of beautiful hands doing beautiful things

In the chair all life has moved on

and you’re still in the chair

Leaves milk the ground

Carrying messages seeds

Sidewalk writing gutter missives

Blow avant-garde season look behind

burning wood burning leaves

Substitutes for a promenade;

what fire shows these leaves

 

To Face the Old Love

You sit like a murderer of old love

 

A committed murderer of old love

 

How does torture come to me unreasonably

I didn’t chose flux and smoke

 

too many heads

give me back my gears the old house will never live

 

Unhook the bra memories

such a sexy lucky phrase

like landing on a new continent

or leaving earth in a balloon

young men don’t want to free themselves

from the unhooking of bras

young men learning about undoing

I should be free but I am not;

I can’t change change

young men learning about undoing bras

The power of bras over breath

chaste and hemmed fasteners

So much I want to say

What you see is a man hemmed in,

Was I made to test the limits of unreality

A circle of guitars spreads sunsetly

I want to start noise

love to start moving; did I forget love?

did I construct a person

that is now cracking up?

of myself as a captured man to shut up?

Love of blackness is boundless; the kid

that was formed and shaped in the 60s

will choose…black sly in the family stone

What

 

The wife the kids you’ve trained yourself in still life

Everything seems so provisional

The moon is a trigger

 

Cocked moon burning wood burning leaves

 

Substitutes for a promenade

what fire shows

 

Eyebrows and shaved armpits of smoke

 

We’re Old Enough

We’re old enough to know

Someone always plunges

from the river stones

it’s always been precarious

for the beautiful young dead

yet here we are

a kind of snicker

still scratched by love’s greed

renewal is but lust

kicked by hungry hunger

though we’re slightly more than sleeping stones

we’re old enough to have known a while

 

 

Sleeping Alone

It’s too much the dress rehearsal

The ridiculous somberness of it

Floating in the empty canoe adrift

Among forged smoke signals

boundaryless dreams

Accurate barking owls

You alone with your heat your smell of rope

You want hards and softs the taps of toes

to brush other skin from knee to bush

Your hand to swirl

twin hemispheric eminencies

but you bob a near empty barge

you don’t like the lack of future,

boundary, the webby thoughts

in every direction past in future out

give me another prisoner you cry

but this is your gas and juice and knowing

your feet go searching swaying across the flannel

sometimes a blanket feels like an arm.

 

first light the birds go crazy

Blue birds blue notes

Are balls of paper

the poems written on them

that you throw to the audience

 

Imitation Shakespeare

Round O heart and merry unbind thy froth;

unspume the muffled tendrils

That brine the untoward casings of your tongue.

Vulcan’s hammer would yet sing.

 

Tis morning and once more

the turning spoke and the acquiescent spur

Shall awaken the tiled skies

and sliding berth

of nature’s complacent lap.

 

Aye, twas but a tilled sleep

not an earth-boweled quarry of cast dream

That ties all fitted pretenders

into a knot of unquench’d bereavement,

 

For thy love hath sent me earnest conjurings

worthy of my debasement

It is but shine and notion. Can woman

be so trifling of favor? Must I

Await crown headed morning to withdraw

her polished blade and strike

The turning heads of routing clouds

to run with dogged and water-bent dawn?

Nay, I’ll tarry, cloud bruised and barren

as a French farthing, thou makest me

To amend my farewells in knightly embroilment

and with embossed brows,

Our jointed craving is not yet measured.

I shall unfallow thy articulated wound and

So, cleaving, ignite the visible erasure

that cometh to all under Saturn’s wind.

 

 

Around the Apartment

Our frontier seems a brain

full of gray and electric

Storms, broken drug trees and charred phone booths.

Yes baleful old ladies with done up hair for church

Dower talcum and perfume ghosts in the elevators

new passengers our community of love

and recognition how you come to love

the faces hair clothes manners of neighbors

the alarms are always false the firemen always handsome

a good chance to catch up on gossip though

I miss Muriel, she was so good with dogs

I would like to open all my doors

I feel the musclely spirit of Bruce Lee

over the jonsing beggars at the electric door

the hammered parking lot the shot out neon light

the shot out shot out moon

gorgeously preens

In the courtesy of the checkers at Shop Rite

(I will always be thankful for your kindness)

the way a view

is an opening on something but we don’t deserve views

he he dead yes she saw him through, he lingered

and beggars jones the electric door at Shop Rite

a geological harem what to do what to do

sugar cane manifesto

Goodbye morning

McFate the ship captain

Second helpings

Sun as chapel

You gorgeous pumpkin

Gilded floated gorgeous crookedness

The risen names

Municipal poetry

Civil service poetry

Plush cherries

Pearl moon

Women live in their hair and tits

Heap big

mournful muriel

 

 

where I live where I live

you  love the moon’s cold blade

tells time and falls into the fried sun

Do breaking orgasms scamper the walls like mice

 

became a heaving hump like a wave

that to detach the artery of her affections;

the stork decides whether or not to harmonize

in the desultory diet of crunching Muscovites

and dentures up and holy tool use, and design on desire

she applied as if applying a desiccate or rather we ate

desiccated beef but decided not to press on without our horse buggy.

This desideratum was decisive in not getting us to move further.

 

Desks of desire

The despot at the desk

It’s all way to diffuse….

Desire is a despot from which we must detach ourselves

Gotta a run; too much that is deviationist the detergent of detonation…

 

 

Where I live, (the Nettleton on 8^th & Madison)

 

Don’t say canary yellow

if you haven’t seen a canary in years

if you live in a mangoless world

my frontier seems like a brain

full of gray and electric storms

broken cherry trees unsent prayers

where drug boys and girls suck at the corner phonebooth

old ladies with talcumed skin and done up hair for church

leave perfume ghosts in the elevators that take me back to the 40’s

beggars mind the electric door at Shop Rite

jonsing to the musclely spirit of Bruce Lee

standing watch over his old dojo

between us and a brown sun burly mountains

survey us like angry older brothers

guarding our long-ago cheaply swapped virginity

time is throwing light and light

a shrinking fabric around the day

simple waking is not enough

collapsing birds, depressive health

overnight capsules thick windows

uncloud uncorked clouds undrizzle

a moon spooning through the night

tells time and falls into the fried sun

it’s an animal age of warning drums

where fresh breaking orgasms scamper the walls like mice

 

the uninvited universe a gate crasher with song

like a muscle beach party in my head

and a scream outside in the night goes

wo ist mein geld? wo ist mein geld?

how I love the moon’s cold blade

how I love the sun’s citric morning

 

Under the Hail

 

I see her smell

Survive by knowing loving plants to no end but good loving

An arm but blanket but not me

Clothed you are so beautiful to me naked not so

But I forgive your nakedness knowing your beauty

Let sleep dear thing how black you are

I love your love your smile and eyes

Clothe in your light drip

Settle the sound of day seaplane gull bee

Your love stands me tall

Burning and a message of strokes urgent trees

Quick and gone

The sun’s fare to live to live

Where did I go forever at all

A shingled tree baffled light subject to a morsel

Twist of light

Henna patient to stars and you will the sea

To a patient foam house of air knocking pines

Ripping not of wind

And afternoon arrives

Sun on the side of tall trees

The lord is in heaven

Come for carrots limber ones the night’s about to fall

I want to see you hidden as a dear

In the copse your form means life to me

The quiet is yours in life

Find a jungle and a friend

Like a mousetrap tied to a chair

What permission am I waiting for

Ruthless slog we’ve hit the earth again

Slow carry me carry me

Life’s taken a barge down the river but here it stops

I am in my vast domain

I like the image of myself one who has gained mastery over his fear

Outdoor gear pants tucked into boots

Rolls own cigarettes at the table outside

At peace with birds and woodpeckers

The quiet trees around me like so many big brothers

 

 

The closest I can get to my brain you fill my toes

Pour five into my heart and wake my loins

Peter my fancy neihghnboring my stout shout blood

Ring chorus joy all for brownness blondness joy fight what we caqnnot say sing bell fire riot joy rapine how many begs hove hove you?

 

Your blood is so young

Small spiders joy ring joy

 

The sturdy paint of the sun

Wander theory winter’s run tell the tale of ka and din

let me sail for hampers swim all the not all the swill

can forgive a nimby pill follow a bug our formica

should his wandering shell like a torment of waiting

in somber shack never wait for the sun again

call to fun bodily craze yet stall at poetry

in real killings life is the real sun

it’s paint is red and moves forever

we’ll wait come again never

 

Find it boring ever after

So many signals to tell us what we’re doing

boring in and out drilling what we’re doing

is beyond us are we just exercising?

How much does it cost to learn life is not an exercise

what finality do we live for that leads us to ignore our oblivion?

We see signals so many but never the fading fighting atoms

lets fade now or fight

I’ve heard hand-to-hand combat is the ultimate high

we avoid it here like death to be sure

laugh at death anyway just because

he takes beauty from us or leads us to it.

 

Truth comes in signals

We have not truth but signals sweet pine shedding brown ticks and pins you’re bark like a difficult novel wrapped around your green core what else is there we feel in our feet happy color feasts ambulating what more is it than apple pie I get mine and your get yours is the world a toy we’ve already got a toy a brain that makes us stay and learn give me gimme that gimme that gimme that

 

Nature red tooth and claw

Wait nature dark and bumpy the frosty ant worships his tiny ending it was summer and I came. Called to greena dn darkness and sound and light everything with eyes shall rescue me balance used the earth as an apple core flung now into the forest floor le cackles and le caws draw silliest breath pine and mind death and breath

 

Crossing the ferry

The ticket taker’s bored there’s so many of you each with his urgent question each with his uniqueness soon to be banished. In another world maybe the ticket taker cares for us but I doubt it maybe he asks three questions that begin with … when? Or he drags on a cigarette and answers without looking at you. There are so many of you all unique all with the same question that begins with “when…?” All of you soon to be banished.

 

Ripostes and Ham

It was winter when we swelled so large unbunnied unbruied unhilled a loft of sex and demand where each buried duff desire that unsnuffed cigar that flatiron full of paydirt and fill and extra dahlia bulbs the flowers are not evil but the ferns are old and they have something sinister to say like a mousetrap on a wire tied to a chairleg

Poetry and Ham

Sorry for the meaningless attention getting title

maybe I was just thinking of my Grandmother

and her beautiful ham

just the right amount of brown sugar

and salt I just want a love like a grandmother’s

it’s got to be the purest on earth

parents and children are too bewildered

the kids wondering what brung ‘em

the parents so full of expectation or not

but in all world literature

is there an evil grandparent, I don’t think so.

I want to write a poem but there’s a ham in the oven

no nothing tropical here only smells

of the closed in the elevator of our apartment building

elevator courtesies going in and out of doors

I would like to open all my doors

the way you can in the forest but at night

I might get eaten or at least poked

it’s time not to burn but to pray

thank you for this day like an ocean under the sun

it’s as big as we can really feel

I don’t think the stars would be as kind to us as our ocean.

We’ve got an earth all is leaving at bright moments

such foil and terror a setting of ambition

and pretension against death that fat phony

 

 

Poem to Rex

Rex you’re such a dumb ugly dog

but you are loved by my friend and

so I love you he must have cried at life

as it was first presented to him as a gray

cement wall under Cocescueau that mad

man how a world class scientist he sent

away for parts to an outboard motor and

bullet missed him and maybe he offed some asshole

in uniform what do I know

about as much as you Rex,

you mutt but he loves you

you’re his doorway to the world

 

 

Poem to Horace

in our world we are so certain about unseen things

from the smell of a sand bed we create musculature

ligature armature davenports breaks hulls deities

beaks bones piles of ink lace

 

you would like our aplomb but quickly note how perfunctory it is

most things are mysteries but we’re sure of them

most things pass us by though we understand them

our lives still feel short and the past still seems a dream

like you, we find civilization in greetings and romance and gardens

 

you wouldn’t believe our confidence

we stride we don’t walk we fly

but it’s well known though unspoken

the sound of the burning fire that carries us into the air

is the sound of the tearing curtain between being and non-being

 

The other day I saw a goose bathing herself in the Duwamish

how honeyed and fresh the water she shook in the sun,

a tug pushed a barge up river without a ripple, slowly

 

our world seems summered beyond blossom now

what wisdom have we but nothing and money?

gold speaks fluently and he turns out to be a boor

interested only in the sound of his own metal

in stocks, antiques, and statistics and wine

 

when I was a boy I swam in rivers and touched bright blurry fish

my green youth thanks me for giving my memories a chance to live,

 

we live beyond shadows now

we live beyond the sun now

we live beyond sadness now

We’ve let go sacks of grief and history

Yet wonder after such strange pain

Our life seems a mountain

it takes such effort to ignore

 

To my favorite waitress

At the SeaTac Double Tree Inn

Her name is topsy and she always calls me

dear honey and sweetie

she makes me feel so good

and even told me to go ahead

park free in the front lot

“it’s OK; you’re a guest while you’re eating, hon”

she makes you feel special

she wears her nametag “St. Louis, Mo.”

My coffee cup is full and so is my water glass

 

 

 

how Garcia Lorca has such freedom in his lines he takes what’s at hand and does with it…

 

I’ve drawn lines before but I work to erase questions

In your arms

An improvised world of erased questions

 

our lust amortized we and see what we never saw:

we are toys.

 

An Open Door

An uncocked wind

Swallows a corner the earth the gray sky

with dingy food a sudden mountain

that captures your health toll stops time

so borrowed dream from that we dream

from a common well this could be time or music

where do you come from what is your name

snoring wind scalpel sun unbird mindful

rhyming birds and purposeful wind scoring

blanketing the dreamy pangris that you have surgered

scoring blanketing and embraced time itself

the quiet of your auditors the seige of them

by the dream a feeling that you are seizing time itself

stopping it holding it fondling it when you hear music

countersinging

music this strong and hungry wind

fugitive water scalpel sun you’re pulling something from our dreams

somewhere where does it come from what is your name

 

There is no private sun

A divinity awake but that’s all

When did you have to beg last