Landscape With Lorca

By mistake the evening
had dressed in cold.

And we ran as we glanced through sheets of rain, stumbled over brooks and wolf sounds. Walls around us filled with water, held us in with frogs and scared fauns. Streets bent and sank into city brine.

Through the mist on the panes
all the children
watch a yellow tree
change into birds.

Names exchange as stars beneath time burn day to cinders. Eyes blow on candles, sing their inceptions. Petals, out of space, split into here and not here.

Evening is stretched out
all down the river.
And the flush of an apple
shivers over tile roofs.

Bodies of birds swim in gardens, pebbles quivering under grass. Leaping with all their fishes, ponds leave holes in the past. Moments share swiftness with drifting blossoms.

In Perp

Braying of dove,
crumble of horse,
open bursting book
to knife the line:
Systems are a hell
of a thing
apart from stingrays.

Whiplash effects ring
ash in content, state:
Collapse into green
fur suit.

By bronze them
corn glide
village cities.

For Poem To Activate

Immersion in the break
(as in the break of a wave)
is what must:

eradicate rigid acres
(counties of thought
fouling out dead tribunal banter);

open more than jars of relish
(mere tensepoints banking at cozy poembottom
in wreck’d clammy tangles).

Then the act of making
has to put up its dukes
against the action of what’s made.

Charged into more than life’s pretty corpse,
(if we die in life, our dreams die, too)
the poem activates,
evicts the jealous why,
embraces the prodigal hOW.

A Blessing:

May Srikanth Reddy Always Have People To Smile On Him And Help Him When He Needs It

Dapper Dutch Youngster, Handsome Dutch Bike (1905)

They Feed They Lion

by Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
"Come home, Come home!" From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From "Bow Down" come "Rise Up,"
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

Karate Fix

C'mon now, sometimes you just need to get some Karate in you!

Here's some high kickin' action:



Here's some serious fighting skills:

You Want To Run

You hiss nickel daydreams into the fog and fog answers back, "Your life is your own if you want it." What about fear of falling, or flying, or powers in a cave or a cage and the respondents to The Hankering Survey? They were all about a packable apocalypse, one you can fit in your pocket and it folds into itself like a trick joke: a joke that is supposed to be funny but you’ve been tricked and it’s just not. And then some expression from somebody’s weird heart comes through and you have to deal with that like it’s serious even though you have nothing serious to say especially when you are in a group and you want to run instead of talk.

I went to the woods...

An excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

The Run Up

Absolutely no way ever, allowing singers to triple their 400 hundred ten million action on the court, number one, in the run-up you gave away 1.2 million, which was awesome when you figure what it’s like standing in front of a mountain, Zambia, Gondwana, the wide ranging gold element for a charity you simply can’t meet or get something in return, yes, I’ve been to the street outside the white house and the government may try to prove it, we’re looking at a low income charitable initiative talking to someone who is being paid to prevent 300,000 children from going to school does Zambia stand a chance? Special thanks to everyone who vultured the shit out of everything just to get the best things, if you want, you get to want, and wanting is wanting, is wanting the want for much more, oh yes, much much more wanting, you could want a train a car a magnet a chalupa a tragedy compendium a reporter to follow every place you go and if you could extract more than 76 million dollars then you could want more and more and what about speculating about the cheap birds that whisper in your ear with political muscle, trying to get the number one donor to some presidents and security men and maybe former mayors of cities, obviously very close to collecting money from poor coffee cups, the state of the union is cobbled together with old buckles and shit and some other fucked up stuff that has been earmarked for other shit.

Problem It Is

Problem it is beautiful,
it is, the felt,
the felt and the attempt other
problem which those observe usually,

perhaps are.
Those can use
other problem
always almost.

et. al.

And therefore all night you walked someone sufficiently opens the complete blood of shoes of the dry dock of snowbank of his et. al. Ones and the yeast river to steamheat of the room with the gate draws up the enormous suicide and the Grecian month tree and boiling which is cooked by the lamb of imagination where sort of his "et. al." ones cried. The complete onion and bad music of pushcarts makes the box sit down or the rear which ate food which digested the crab of the basis of the mud of the river of Bowery is put in place ahead of the wartime of the month it should cover, with love depending upon opium is blue, bottom of the floodlight. The decision of the large main thing where so it makes with darkness of the bridge which breathes at the cliff bank of the apartment of Hudson, under being small. Had it with the hat of the 6th floor of Harlem? The attic which does the rose to his et. al. ones? The roll during the yellow morning when you surround the sky where flame has been attached being shaken, the pancake of thin where it runs and theology of wooden framework of the orange lathe which you write, you cooked the tail of a lung, central feet of an animal which rots and it has dreams, has a meal of corn, roof of the watch which you threw apparently always successfully in 10 spell. All night the pure plant boundary disordered language ream which sank monopolized ones in order to throw the ticket eternal for outside time in order to pursue an egg under the meat track/truck is high is the wrist 3 which and eye the clock head. Next, everyday opened, it cut, you abandoned, it was forced, the antique. The house you think of the senior person where it reached with the taxi which is drunk by the action which is the absolute actual responsibility where it fell down. Really? And method of the sonorous healthy steel iron regiment of the tanked-up nitroglycerin point scream and announcement and being unlucky with Madison of poetry whose God is heavy main line. The lime bridge which it brews in order to clothe the flannel of the innocent person who lucid edition mustard gas gust is done to happen this. It jumped, was confused to free beer where there is an unknown, which does to walking and sings the window outside the Chinatown soup tunnel and his et. al. One balances and has forgotten living, or get off and burn slurp and cry to open those it increases: the illusion of firetrucks? Wastefulness of the German jazz which is completed with sort of the slurping crying where you see, fall outside the window of the subway, jumps with impure Passaic, black, dances? It jumps anywhere? Class of wine of grape which was broken by 30 age of record homesick Europe did and groaned and the skin with in order to throw the groan voice which was broken in his et. al. The washroom of the blood, sound of voice in order to participate the ear and enormous steam gust as for seventy-two time crosscountry me had in range of vision and how discover drove high, in order mutually barreled traveling the lonely watch of the jail of hotrod-Golgotha, blow the fact that the whistle is blown under the past highway Birmingham jazz incarnation and to be or as for him there is a range of vision which discovers eternity in range of vision. Who, who navigates, does Denver, which dies, arrive, being Denver, reach to Denver? It returned? Waiting, it reaches, end Denver which was seen and reaches in order to consider from method and time Denver of discovery, finally knows crosses, and Denver now is lonesome, as for her hero where the quiet knee cathedral falls down? You saw in order to pray rescue because of each other, the hair to mind second illuminated the light/write and the chest, in.

The Beauty Of Things

The beauty of things
is that they usually
look, feel,
smell and taste

like other things.
They almost always
do the work
of other things.

Imagined Midnights

Who told the moon to come out?

Was it the hands of the fountain,
So outstretched they couldn’t be anything but lonely?

Was it the sigh of the owl,
Rounding the treetops in vagabond sadness?

It was the high, cold pines, who,
Uninterested, made the whole sky jealous.

I Dreamt Of You, My Bearded Professor

for Carey Harrison

In Dharamsala, India, where Avolokitesvara sells T-shirts and incense,
I walked up a little mountainside every day for a week,
Sat for a while with my meditation pals,
Picked stones out of rice,
And watched monks and monkeys shout at each other.

Two times that week I dreamt of you.
I can’t remember the first dream at all.
But in the second, we clasped hands and danced together in a huge ballroom.
Spinning around and around,
Women in beaded dresses and men in tuxedos became a wallpapery blur.

We had yellow Buddha robes on.
You morphed into Brando,
I into Pacino.
Godfathers One and Two,
Of no soul.

5.06 AM (Every Stranger's Eyes)

by Roger Waters



[Waitress:] "Hello, you wanna cup of coffee?"
[Customers:] "Heh, Turn that fucking juke box down
You want to turn down that juke box....loud in here"
[Waitress:] "I'm sorry, would you like a cup of coffee?
Ok, you take cream and sugar? Sure."

In truck stops and hamburger joints
In Cadillac limousines
In the company of has-beens
And bent-backs
And sleeping forms on pavement steps
In libraries and railway stations
In books and banks
In the pages of history
In suicidal cavalry attacks
I recognise...
Myself in every stranger's eyes

And in wheelchairs by monuments
Under tube trains and commuter accidents
In council care and county courts
At Easter fairs and sea-side resorts
In drawing rooms and city morgues
In award winning photographs
Of life rafts on the China seas
In transit camps, under arc lamps
On unloading ramps
In faces blurred by rubber stamps
I recognise...
Myself in every stranger's eyes

And now, from where I stand
Upon this hill
I plundered from the pool
I look around
I search the skies
I shade my eyes
So nearly blind
And I see signs of half remembered days
I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways
I recognise...
The hope you kindle in your eyes

It's oh so easy now
As we lie here in the dark
Nothing interferes, it's obvious
How to beat the tears
That threaten to snuff out
The spark of our love

Saguaro, Bud, I'm afraid
If you don't bloom soon
My heart will bust.

Gone With The Mind

“Bugged the flesh and bugged the mind
and bugged the scene between.”

Some folks think I’m lonely,
Or sad in my little room,
But breathing keeps me warmly,
When I’m sitting in the gloom.

I stand in friendless alleyways,
Waiting for a dream,
I banjo dusty crossroads,
Howling at the scene.

I blow at tumbled weeds,
And ring the lonesome bell,
And rock my onlyness back to sleep,
On wide green ocean swells.

I see myself a sailor,
Tossed on endless tongues,
Groaning in the darkness,
Breath beating at my lungs.

It’s tough to have to love things,
And tougher still to leave,
Since time’s a flick of batwings,
And death’s a heartless heave.

I wish the world a pile of love,
From my dopey tarnished heart,
May children play in sainted lands,
May lovers never part.

But truth is hard and kicks the head,
No matter what I say,
And kids and dogs and seas of green,
All must fade away.


Click to hear this poem.

Résumé Of Friends And Rites

Ben Cramer. Blond Indiana madman. Six foot four in the shade. Size sixteen shoes. Quiet genius. Won’t buy products that appear on TV. Sees humanity as an experiment. All the thoughts of civilization swimming in his blue blue eyes. Asks without fear: If you had a choice, how would you go out? Rural North Carolina Rite: Down by the train tracks, we drink cokes and watch freights go by. Ben picks me up by the waist and flings me at a coal car. I grab a handle and my legs are almost cut off. Finally I swing myself onto the beast. Ben jumps on, laughs at my gangly legs dangling. We ride a hundred miles into cowfields and clover. Watch the crazy sun rise over the steaming south. I jump off and hitch a ride home. Cramer keeps going. Calls me from Seattle.

Buck Schall. Sits for hours in zazen. Keeps head shaved. Speaks in koans. With his camera, documents dissolution. Photographs fire. Writes backwards and upside down. Tells me not to wonder what he’s thinking, to follow my own breath to safety. 400 Horsepower Pontiac Rite: Buck drives me into the Utah desert at a hundred miles an hour. Turns off the road, straight into the brush. Away from all human traces. Sits me down on a rock. Shuts his eyes and speaks. You got to get to where you can’t smell people. You can’t get quiet unless you sit. Are you listening?

Jann O’Mara. Shining black hair, sharp green eyes, animal grin. Lithe runner’s legs, quick painter’s hands. Paints beetles. Takes me home when I’m a wandering scribbler dwelling in black clouds. Shows me her paintings, what a disciplined mind can do. Speaks to me in perfect Italian. I don’t get the words, but understand. Desert Storm Rite: During Gulf War One, takes me up on her roof. Open air privacy. We remove some clothes to make it interesting. Photographs me doing handstands on the ledge. She begins to cry. If there’s a draft, promise me you’ll go to South America. Holds my head in her hands. There are words in here that have to come out. Don’t lose them in that shit war.

Manfred DeMateo. Aikido wizard. Hispanic kid in Bruce Lee’s body. Thundering voice, shrill laughter. Dreams often of dead father. Like me, a mountain roamer. Communion Rite: Zinging on LSD, Manny goes into my kitchen, takes a watermelon out of the fridge, finds a meat cleaver. Howling and dancing, spins in the air around the blade. Jumping and shouting. Nothing to lose but his arms, hands, eyes. I’m afraid to look in the clanging kitchen. After an hour, quiet. Manny is naked, sweating over a table full of pink pyramids, finely chopped. Panting laughter. Take, eat! This is the work of my body! We fall to, sucking down melonflesh, spitting pits, cool sweet crunch crisp in our cerebellums, eyes wide with impossible flavor.

Another Version of "Father Death Blues"

Here's a link to another, earlier version of "Father Death Blues." It's from 1976 and has lots more musical and polyvocal accompaniment.

Can we remember to "continue our celebration," no matter what happens?

Ginsberg's "Father Death Blues"

I b'lieve this was recorded round 1996 or 1997, near Ginsberg's death:

Hon jyst i mewn! (7)

On one occasion, Ben got a call from a rambler.

Hon jyst i mewn! (6)

Here's an insight I had whilst calling Ben Cramer.

Come Back Masking

In midst of all, this busted hovel, the temperate nature of x, smooth mendicancy. When it's then, we’ll go toward fine bodies of water, burglarize lonely and sanguine, busting chops like a long day: mines, rapid skies and hunting movements. My chemicals induce Guilt in volts, in hindsight perhaps, or feelers, as of an old bug found by some pathtaker. Free of copying, of hankering distractions, wheels bop some in-between space.

The ship traverses the map. An older kid makes games, vagabundos, telemetry. Nobody stops him. Planet lumps once more = the way I’m thinking.

In arm strength, come back masking. And when we slowly meet again, there’ll be bones, rattling like old bones, in a can. I wait for you, bathtub my robed fingers, kneeling. My wanting rides the night.

A tang of heavy knife freezes me in a tide. You.

What Stays?

written for and read at the wedding ceremony of Alfredo and Rayne Mathew, Summer 2005

I.

Breath in our booming lungs and heartgongs beating away,
Lives of redwoods and blueberry bushes and humans flashing by
As we spin in a rush and tumble over this delicate,
Durable, thundering sphere of water and air, flesh and stone.

What stays? What lasts? What is passed on?

Inhale the moment, exhale the moment,
This blissful, terminal, eternal press of moment after moment,
Faces in the crowd, drops on the dunegrass in the morning,
Rain in afternoon tidepools, orange clouds at sundown.

What stays? What lasts? What is passed on?

Today you will hold your lover’s hand
While rivers and tides roll in the wind.
Tonight you will hold hands and dance a samba
And stars in their ever-widening orbits will dance.

What will stay? What can last? What is passed on?

In every human moment, at the crack of the homerun bat,
In the millisecond that the camera shutters,
Comets in deep space slowly dissolve, bright in the void,
And the Himalayas are growing, and the Appalachias are crumbling…

What could you make that stays? What could you build that lasts? What could you pass on?

II.

There is one thing, the only thing,
That stays,
Though the cities we now make our lives in
Will one day sleep under oceans and sand.

As you hold your lover’s hand,
Dance that samba with stars reeling above you,
With every wild-eyed grin
And tap of your feet
And each thrum of your corazón
A great vibration of love goes forth,
To the unknown end of the universe…

And every moment that our hearts are full of that brightness
We build the real world.
For, even as the roots of roadside flowers
Dissolve the cement along the highway,
The rays of love are unbending and unbreakable.

We stand and sit and dance and kiss
In the eternal living history
Of all the love that ever emerged
From everyone’s blessed heart...and we pass it on...
And we use it to learn and to live and to love one another.

III.

So dance in the light of the dusk or the dawn,
And kiss in the kitchen with no clothing on,
And run in the ocean and roll in the hay,
And start revolutions that say, “Love is the Way.”

Your Dante’s and Virgil’s, Sappho’s and Rodin’s,
Have done what they could to make themselves last.
And in the unceasing rush of world cycles,
Their creations appear and flicker out
Like lights from summer fireflies.

And so our best strategy,
Now, and millennia from now,
Is to tune in to the unwavering wavelength,
Keep our arms and hearts open on the ride—
All the time knowing that when we gong with cariño
We shake the stars,
For ever and ever,
And love is what stays.

Love In The Asylum

by Dylan Thomas

A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Blasted

Without and with inward crashing, toast me to the devil’s mattbone, I salute sweltering sun, always brining away at me to rise up this courage, make life what in tricky tree truth it is/never has been/always could be...ah, if we were starving I’d feed you blood from my wrists, let you drink in my life, as you, lost in worldstance and genuflect confusion, your communion makes me radiant, grow in fire, emerge from that old convict feeling and tremble forward, head hitting floor a tumble thousand times till I have that mark of humble devotion (an ideal),,,but, ah, I’m lazy and I have no children yet, and my wrists are brimming with blood, as I am definitively not starving and I work no fields and my fight for justice right now seems to take place only on my inside, and rating sunsets doesn’t get a guy to heaven, though ratifying them...no robots to simplify battles, drones from on high coming in to blast me as I dodge sideways, thisaway/thataway, hurl my last fuel-filled dynowhateverpod at encroaching robot star-invasion ships, thus saving all from sure destruction...but it didn’t happen, I was home writing, and someone else nabbed glory, and me, me was merely winking at them starships, thinking what kind of poems they must be writing, with all that time to cross the galaxy, damn...

Coded Language

Written and Performed by Saul Williams

A lo mejor, soy otro...

por Cesar Vallejo

A lo mejor, soy otro; andando, al alba, otro que marcha
en torno a un disco largo, a un disco elástico:
mortal, figurativo, audaz diafragma.
A lo mejor, recuerdo al esperar, anoto mármoles
donde índice escarlata, y donde catre de bronce,
un zorro ausente, espúreo, enojadísimo.
A lo mejor, hombre al fin,
las espaldas ungidas de añil misericordia,
a lo mejor, me digo, más allá no hay nada.

Me da la mar el disco, refiriéndolo,
con cierto margen seco, a mi garganta;
¡nada en verdad, más ácido, más dulce, más kanteano!

Pero sudor ajeno, pero suero
o tempestad de mansedumbre,
decayendo o subiendo, ¡eso, jamás!

Echado, fino, exhúmome,
tumefacta la mezcla en que entro a golpes,
sin piernas, sin adulto barro, ni armas,
una aguja prendida en el gran átomo...
¡No! ¡Nunca! ¡Nunca ayer! ¡Nunca después!

Y de ahí este tubérculo satánico,
esta muela moral de plesiosaurio
y estas sospechas póstumas,
este índice, esta cama, estos boletos.

Bella

por Pablo Neruda

Bella,
como en la piedra fresca
del manantial, el agua
abre un ancho relámpago de espuma,
así es la sonrisa en tu rostro,
bella.

Bella,
de finas manos y delgados pies
como un caballito de plata,
andando, flor del mundo,
así te veo,
bella.

Bella,
con un nido de cobre enmarañado
en tu cabeza, un nido
color de miel sombría
donde mi corazón arde y reposa,
bella.

Bella,
no te caben los ojos en la cara,
no te caben los ojos en la tierra.
Hay países, hay ríos,
en tus ojos,
mi patria está en tus ojos,
yo camino por ellos,
ellos dan luz al mundo
por donde yo camino,
bella.

Bella,
tus senos son como dos panes hechos
de tierra cereal y luna de oro,
bella.

Bella,
tu cintura
la hizo mi brazo como un río cuando
pasó mil años por tu dulce cuerpo,
bella.

Bella,
no hay nada como tus caderas,
tal vez la tierra tiene
en algún sitio oculto
la curva y el aroma de tu cuerpo,
tal vez en algún sitio,
bella.

Bella, mi bella,
tu voz, tu piel, tus uñas,
bella, mi bella,
tu ser, tu luz, tu sombra,
bella,
todo eso es mío, bella,
todo eso es mío, mía,
cuando andas o reposas,
cuando cantas o duermes,
cuando sufres o sueñas,
siempre,
cuando estás cerca o lejos,
siempre,
eres mía, mi bella,
siempre.

Landscape with Boat

by Wallace Stevens

An anti-master floribund ascetic.

He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds,
Then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still
The sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air.
He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see
And not be touched by blue. He wanted to know,
A naked man who regarded himself in the glass
Of air, who looked for the world beneath the blue,
Without blue, without any turqouise hint or phase,
Any azure under-side or after-color. Nabob
Of bones, he rejected, he denied, to arrive
At the neutral center, the omnious element,
The single colored, colorless, primitive.

It was not as if the truth lay where he thought,
Like a phantom, in an uncreated night.
It was easier to think it lay there. If
It was nowhere else, it was there and because
It was nowhere else, its place had to be supposed,
Itself had to be supposed, a thing supposed
In a place supposed, a thing he reached
In a place that he reached, by rejecting what he saw
And denying what he heard. He would arrive.
He had only not to live, to walk in the dark,
To be projected by one void into
Another.

It was his nature to suppose
To receive what others had supposed, without
Accepting. He received what he denied.
But as truth to be accepted, he supposed
A truth beyond all truths.

He never supposed
That he might be truth, himself, or part of it,
That the things that he rejected might be part
And the irregular turquoise part, the perceptible blue
Grown dense, part, the eye so touched, so played
Upon by clouds, the ear so magnified
By thunder, parts, and all these things together,
Parts, and more things, parts. He never supposed divine
Things might not look divine, nor that if nothing
Was divine then all things were, the world itself,
And that if nothing was the the truth, then all
Things were the truth, the world itself was the truth.

Had he been better able to suppose:
He might sit on a sofa on a balcony
Above the Mediterranean, emerald
Becoming emeralds. He might watch the palms
Flap green ears in the heat. He might observe
A yellow wine and follow a steamer's track
And say, "The thing I hum appears to be
The rhythm of this celestrial pantomime"

"...like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Prospero, from Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act 4, Scene 1, lines 140-48)

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.


John Gillespie McGee, Jr. (1922 - 1941) was an American/British fighter pilot. He flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at age 19 on December 11, 1941, during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick, Lincolnshire. The poem was written on the back of a letter to his parents which stated, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed."

A mi musa

Yo, con mis ojos de puro otoño,
Yo soy el código
Que usa el mar
Para hablar con la orilla.
Y tú, con tus labios crecientes,
Tú eres la gravitación
Que usa la luna
Para levantar lenguas
Desde las olas...
Desde mis olas que,
Cuando pasas encima de mis crestas,
Deleitan ahogar en tu pecho de puro cielo,
En tus ojos de marga, primavera,
Y lentejuelas celestes del polvo lunar.

¡óigalo!

Flare Guns In Winter

Someone up in the wings
Is calling for a story about the future,
Which is simply someone else’s past.
You can’t consider doing death
Unless you consider doing it
With fireworks and flame retardant suits.
I’m whispering in everybody’s ear:
Shining faces can’t win me back.

Flare guns in winter,
And mind all over the skies.

Chondra Ippermistrum

Swirlick mockjools,
Pappist snabgrackals chanking furrust oper Chondra,
Hent charhicking snoward
Finto snaygeen.

Pand sim san sim gand pand.
Sidder fo myne,
Sidder fo chyle,
Cappin yep shee fowt.

Bin doods marping oper neem,
Porsik sazzle nometure,
Jin sif epper kweel.
Grack gartick mot sim, sooz jin.

Peen sershglit,
Vang bax im hora fass,
Fiss marn kay yoon sarper kay,
Goud kown haymick fing.

Gell, nee hyte sak pell,
Hin sot mim im sweaming zim,
Bimperled zochound,
Gree fayle sim.

Montray,
Voe doogit troat,
Ep zoon, ep zoon,
Ippermistrum. Ippermistrum. Ippermistrum.

Mad Ballad Of Mad Change, Watching The World Above The World

I crank my hankering, tonk me toon, plunk past isthmus of fantasy disaster, turn all my keys, patience and collision with hearty earth, explosions of sun and mindless hole in my wild center, shot. I toss in pure gorgeous matte black of full space, ache in wild muscle-strain abandon and press mouth to dirt, fly fast-free in the world above the world. I once thought of a world beneath the world, made of thistles and bitter roots, cringing under frozen earth. Now I think of the world above the world, high-kicking all the rooms apart, flamenco-colored, spinning, spangles on wrists, bordered with love and faith and gem-studded lights. The world above the world is made of translucent pavement, amethyst, spiny shards of half-tilted trees, covered in ice and suns. The world above the world hovers over my head, a field of impossibly too-streaming flowers, with minarets! It hangs in the sky, looks down at me with a smile that stretches past all worlds, above and below and inside me, across wide swaths of silver river. I cry out(!) from pain of all this beauty, turning in a honey colored glow that comes out from in me. I maybe could be a solar system. I maybe could be a trillion voices, a quintillion arms to hold the world above, a duovigintillion hearts, each one bigger, by planet sizes, than the next, crashing into and through all the life. I’m emptying of fear. I’m not empty of longing, not yet. But the love that rains down on me from the world above the world is cleansing me of fear. Imagine that...me, a spinning celestial ting.

Playing with the children, by Zen Master Ryokan

trans. by Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel in Great Fool.

Early spring
The landscape is tinged with the first fresh hints of green
Now I take my wooden begging bowl
And wander carefree through town
The moment the children see me
They scamper off gleefully to bring their friends
They're waiting for me at the temple gate
Tugging from all sides so I can barely walk
I leave my bowl on a white rock
Hang my pilgrim's bag on a pine tree branch
First we duel with blades of grass
Then we play ball
While I bounce the ball, they sing the song
Then I sing the song and they bounce the ball
Caught up in the excitement of the game
We forget completely about the time
Passersby turn and question me:
"Why are you carrying on like this?"
I just shake my head without answering
Even if I were able to say something how could I explain?
Do you really want to know the meaning of it all?
This is it! This is it!

No poetry today--
just happy to be
in and out of the rain.

Song of the Yodo River by Yosa Buson

trans. by Robert Hass in The Essential Haiku

She speaks (in Chinese verse):

Plum blossoms float by on the spring water,
flowing south where the Uji meets the Yodo.
Don't cut the mooring rope.
Your boat will be lightning in the rapids.

Where the Uji joins the Yodo,
and they flow together as one body,
I want to lie down in the boat with you,
and when i grow old be with you in Naniwa.

He speaks (in a Chinese quatrain composed in Japanese):

You are plum blossoms on the water,
petals floating by till they pass out of sight.
I am a willow growing by the stream.
My shadow is sunk in it, and I cannot follow.

World's One Inch Punch

,,,knock goes the world, knock goes me in it, plunk goes you, halloo goes the trick, el radiant ludicrous truth, city of dreams all up in my sky, cloud of unknowing that takes me, spins me, shows me my hands, my human humming tree, thought buried under treasure of all running, we’re a never-wheeled wing in highlight orange marker across the land, I could sleep on stones with you, be the last man alive in the world, sing opera loud at my all-open lungs to empty windows, play golf in hospitals, swim in fountains, rob pens from banks, whisper my financial secrets to statues, rappel into prisons and let out all the ants, hold you with my just-strong/never-scary arms, repaint the continental divide, manifest the thinking thing while asking what thought is about, ask Shih Wu, dude, “Do those who look for mind with mind ever get a river to jump into twice?” “Nah, man,” says brother Marley, “we don’ need no more trouble,” then Bruce Lee leaps in, does a mean John Lennon impression, “peace to all the people,” sayeth the famous One Inch Puncher, he’s man incarnate, a model for making worlds work when we’re in them, I’m him, your Mister in the mystery world of feeling, I’m your date on the day the world marries itself, the moon has something to tell you if you listen loud enough, it hears, too, if you quiet your cortex and watch the way the stars reel their jig in your holy earth eyes, I am with you in noisy silence,,,

Hon jyst i mewn! (5)

Swing to the loop and mosh pit.

in milk/ in sky

am i crazzy
am i crashing
am i wonderpuppy
am i prayer
in night
in trembling night
waiting for collapse
and expand
wound for all time
in milk
in sky
open
it wants
to absorb
everything
there is
no exception

Ablutions flub Krakatoa

Ablutions flub ten
extra world, Krakatoa
end estimate halloo.
Hoth stick up
swearing dolphin nonce
fly a pie.
Tow day rumble
flair gunny sack
meander absinthe tokay.
Swan wick dawdle
em dexterous clothes,
margarine finish shine
operate high job.
Knock theater womb
treacle flush tangent
Electra Mortimer Hungary.
Moms tom tattoo
rebel limbo tea
neck aerator return
tryst race mansion
block or block.
Morse horse declension
equine numbers gallant
incunabulum gong daytrip.

Hon jyst i mewn! (4)

Ben Cramer recently received this message from the very well known poet Rewfjaan V. Roofjean. You may have trouble playing it if you don't have a player that plays "wav." files. I'll try to get an mp3 version up when I can.

this am a strange interval

to this am a strange interval, my sister and mom am in a action, or, if not in a action, a we’re no matter talkative as a matter of we apiece be considering facts different being crazily interval, and I'm laying do something inbetweeny, attempt to be her “communicating,” become her explaining their feelings to each other ... cuz facts always been a part I’ve tried to game: peacemaker smootherouter, deal in ... but I ain’t do it, see ... I ain’t getting in among facts dates back to excitement ... oh, wait, now they have it edged ... (it is a action) ... mom’s yell out her chunk it’s a great time, I be considering, facts she’s saying it, no matter a great time facts she’s yell out, or yell out ahead my, but my sister ain’t reacting she’s a fair way been yell out for, I wish certainly say something, have a mind to her to have a mind to my mom her drop-in, have it edged, open facts lines at communication ... but I’m hold back ... this ain’t my action, this ain’t my excitement, this ain’t my accents, I don’t have to be one of inbetweener here above ... to, there a bash at relief in facts midst at stress, draw up these drop-in as a matter of fact decrease correct now botsett at I’m no matter is running away and no matter reacting sadly, albeit ... I’m a fair way being in the middle of

Pictures Of Me And M'Nephew, Jack Carlos McKenna

Rilke's 2nd Sonnet To Orpheus (Fragged)

And a who from this almost and of her through the and a that inside had now And in Her in that Where? that her this your Where A before almost

,
,
to me
herself my.

It girl harmony song lyre form bed ear me sleep everything trees distances heart I wonders I them meadows spring She world god sleep she desire she death theme you song itself she girl

.:
the, had
so could,:
that ever my.

Single diaphanous awesome deeply all first perfect

the., how
so no
ever to? See: and.

Stepping appeared made was touch seized slept felt Singing slept was had wake arose slept is discover consumes is vanishing

Ah, will
?—
? . . . , . . . .

Merry Christmas, Love To All

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.than.html

Wild Lions On A Gerbil Wheel

looking
through a red gelatin
barbershop window
I watch
you strut
—a Bollywood star in a Gustav Klimt sari—
body and hair perfumed
with sand-scented oil

the dust motes part before you
as you step
into empty air

in this desert town
someone built a therapeutic ice pack man
out of therapeutic ice packs
stacked them high
and stuck motion-detector
light-bulbs in for his eyes

crazy-glued chains of magnifying glasses for arms
and pieces of plastic window-display sushi for fingers

the ice-pack man
tilts his head as you glide by
instinctively aware that you flee nothing
and that nothing about you is obsolete

you make we want to eat ice cream
and admit my problems

the world of dew--
is a world of dew,
and yet, and yet ...

--Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

Hon jyst i mewn! (3)

Interview clips. Some time ago, it seems, Ben Cramer became very good friends with someone. Here is a story, from that man (perhaps a Brit rocker?) about their first meeting.

In this clip, apparently from the same interview, he recounts a tale of adventure and guilt.

Laughs A World

The spaces between people: laughs a world. Front tarpaulin, you raise your glass to woods with burnplugs and ankles twisted sideways, feeling wishy. Not a tan in the house, all bellies white and foolish and we slung noodles at haloes for getting old kicks in. Now, this text’s prepositional transitory mood maneuver: All hauled up from clammy ditch where previous civs deposited bodies, precious stones, even flowers. Once, waiting at a stoplight, I saw them taking a dead person away. The dead person was also waiting, but not to get somewhere else. Criss-crossed lines and cankick rambling walks on roadsides, traintracks, utility-conditional spaces where cities want you to walk but not authorities. Good advert strategies: free to buy, once you’ve tasted the expensive stuff. In magazines, trinket-baby eyes wink back at you for clever moments of goofy intuition. You dreamt of last night’s good rest, an old lover who meant a lot to you, as much as I did, but probably more. In this text, you and I are the same. That was the end note, so as not to pale out too quick. The meta-narrative was the occasion, despite being able to eat, walk, conclude things about where we were. Sometimes, I have this feeling, that I have lived too many different lives to represent myself honestly. Trying feels scattered. You feel a mode, think it’s me, be that for a while. We’ll both feel freaked when it alters. Am I listening, or watching your lips for change? Time was.

Poem For Painmouth

Think: slippy cool ice chips; mint bell peals sliding down warm lips; handholding under clear cold skies, hot thermos chocolate tucked inside coat; temples rubbed by strong, careful hands; freeform cloudshifts tripping by summit tops, kites aloft with crows; kind slow kisses lost in tremulous eyelash reunions; trees leafy green and shady over desert hotheat; cake on plates, eaten at weddings between fundumb dances; carpets of moss and leaves in quiet forest silences; waking pressed to naked lover and favorite song.

the circus the circus

the circus the circus the big apple fambly circus in new york city with sparkling Chinese men in blacklit greenlight skinsuits tumbling through rings and strapped inside giant wheels that spin around a clapping axis—Jack sitting on my knee wide-eyed and startled by hilarious watery abandon of clowns and buckets and sprinklers sluicing while horses wing the ring with sand-upkicking hooves spattering front rows of kids and dads—holding my own mom’s hand while strange white-dreadlocked god-figures stand upside down on top of each other, on their hands, a human power pyramid, dark skin glistening under big misty floodlights—my sister and cousin next to me, passing around hot soggy hotdogs and tossing salty popcorn on the floor—a giant billowy puppet man with flowing blue arms and weird bulging squinty eyes sways right next to us and Jack says, “that’s kind of scary” and I say, “yeah, kind of scary, but kind of cool, too,” and he says, “yeah, cool”—and all and everpresent are shimmering tight thigh muscles of acrobats, arm and back ripples of tightrope girls, sequined calves and glittering chests of dancers—a wild guy on a bike with oldtime aviator goggles rides wobbly round the ring, up on his back wheel, while taking off the front and spinning it in his hands—clownmen piping satyr flutes while audience kid faces flicker in the strobe of this polis vortex—Jack squeezes my hand when the bikeman rides through a ring of fire, acrobats swinging on spongy poles above us...he is my nephew, he is almost four years old, and after the show he’s up on my shoulders and we run and traipse up and down sidewalks, laughing and singing about the people we saw spinning and seeing just how far we can get our fingers up our noses...can we touch our brains?

Hon jyst i mewn! (2)

Ben Cramer, strangely, has recently become a vortex for some rather startling messages from some very influential people. Here is a message he got from Yoko Ono. And here's her brief follow-up call.

Hon jyst i mewn! (1)

My good friend Ben Cramer just received this message from reporter Leon Scanowitz speaking to him live from Monrovia.

The Art Of War With Myself by Amy King

Hear this excellent poem rad by the author here!

Find yet more goodness at www.mipoesias.com

and www.amyking.org

Retired Colonel “Toro.”

Lifted argyle curtain.
Corralled fish into sucker-arms.
Fazed bacon.
Tore blue shirt with feet.
Made bricks.
Washed old dictionary.
Retired Colonel “Toro.”
Tossed newspapers at lamppost.
Busted helmet.
Woke silver dog.
Ate spicy mustard with 2 spoons (1 each hand).
Made nasty list.
Achieved hoot.
Dried ink.
Blackened headlights.
Covered paste jar with “magic” stickers.
Wrote to Anemone Board.
Mellowed nun.
Bagged Dolf Lundgren poster.
Hollered with satchel.
Pilfered Fillmore.
Replaced new art.
Considered Campeche.
Commuted paragraph.
Armed cabinet.
Hosted zoo thought.
Thrilled Gurkha.
Politicked edgy friend.
Exorcized whiskers.
Framed annoying clerk.
Warned dark.
Hocked periscope.
Varied mouthwash.
Hurled budgie.
Drank “Gasoline.”
Referred joke.
Knotted 20 µ silver-alloy likeness of Bruce Lee’s One Inch Punch.
Redacted Fancy Feast.
Raised Hulk flag.
Contacted medium cheerleader.
Snubbed haettenschweiler.
Looked, sort of.
Mattered provisionally.
Abraded masseur.
Handled past a shoe.
Ran, caped.

Todo El Poder Intelectual Es Una Salchicha

On-The-Bike-Horticulture was Ben, a Pablito, making cash to pay for tostones in the nickel window. He rode every wrong way next to the cops, without getting seen, since he always, when available, took the secret passageway. There was a little salchicha that didn’t represent, but actually was, all the power and knowledge and intellectual fortitude in the world. It was the same as Wallace Fowlie’s bald head. When he ate it, he also didn’t eat it. When he egested it, he brought the tautology to its natural conclusion. In the middle of the sea, there lies a wasted land. At the midpoint of [his] life, [he] found [himself] in a dark forest. He opted to pregin prevery prentence pre proke prith pre pround “pr.” It was better than not breathing through his nostrils the whole day. He didn’t notice that a building that was almost right next to the one he lived in had been restored (or built anew) simply because it was next to a hill. He never rides up that hill, except today, a December day when he wears cargo shorts. There is no sweaty old Septic System Cleaning Company shirt in his pocket, but there was one in the pants of a fellow he met at a wedding reception.

How Can I Assemble All The Flowers Into Something More Than Just A River?

Ever so minutely delicate, I can still feel the pink digits of day’s beginning rove through my hair. In corners, in homes with loneliness, who will weird out the pretty sources of love? Trust, in raindrop form, is the comeback’s exoskeleton.

In my search for meaning I am always alarmed, never surprised. Rapt in booming vestibules of the past, I keep finding more animal habits, more thickening games, more careful meaningless gestures. Many instruments intended to produce laughter barely suffice for groping.

So there’s me, bleary-eyed and coaxing. I wonder through the simple days, loose-jawed and without handles, avenues plush with brass tacks. The grey and green of it all is getting brighter, as I practice non-avoidance.

Joanna Newsom is strange and amazing

Here's her video for "Peach, Plum, Pear.":



And here's her doing it live:



But those are really just a minimal taste of her wild and relentless talents.

Some Emily

CXXXI

WHO never wanted,—maddest joy
Remains to him unknown;
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine.

Within its hope, though yet ungrasped
Desire’s perfect goal,
No nearer, lest reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.

from Part One: Life, of Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. 1924.

Some e.e.

XVIII

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head.

from SONNETS-REALITIES section of &. 1925.

Some Me

Give me the ellipsis ...
My dot dot dot
In the dog-eats-boy world.

Let Cummings have his commas,
Dickinson her dashes—
I’ll take the trail to silence.

Nothing says “wait” and “feel”
At the same time
Quite like ...

Luna di settembre, arancione ed in pieno

Vista dal ponticello de Brooklyn, il 13 settembre, 2000.
Per il miei nonno e nonna.

Luna piena, sopra la vuota città,
Nel cielo dei miei nonni,
Li vedo appendere là, nella sera della mia gioventù.

Luna arancione, sopra la città molto piccola delle mele,
Nel cielo degli amanti e della polvere,
Li vedo, sognando il nuovo mondo.

Li vedo, luna di settembre, sopra la città eterna,
In mezzo d'una folla dei fantasmi,
Aumentando dalle nubi esperte fredde sconosciute calde nelle stelle.

Allen Ginsberg Reads and Sings

First, watch/listen as Ginsberg reads "C'Mon Pigs of Western Civilization, Eat More Grease!"

Then, learn with him how to "Do The Meditation Rock"

After that, "die when you die" with "Gospel Noble Truths"

Memory As Solid Smoke

Holding hands up/out in front of me to block sun going up my cavey nostrils, trance of this world, I feel you once again upwelling for my root-shot. Cavernescence of head, mucusoid webtrails pastiche my Hadean greysongs in/outward from older earthsmudge. Bean-breathing electroluminescent whorls inward from El God Eye of grief outward to forlorn navel Mandalaspace, many loves have I lost, many lives started and restarted. Many worlds have I traversed, many affairs meddling with my brainheart. Fashioned from the mawbone of my own crass mindscape, where relatives crackfall like giant Jackfruits down from trees in night, property thudding as with the routing of hogs, in shade of bitter grasses, I lay me down to contemplate itch on my bare backskin. Fish with jaws of rusted Chinese scrap metal hauled off to build big things twenty centuries from now stare at my weeding hair, upcoiling dirtily from might of candlefields and future weirdflowers. Sitting upright in possible space, the world plinks her pollen mandolin. I hurdle forward, mad through voidchasms and sundry songholes. With sun descended, free from the colloid of time, fingers press at my sides; me, self-imaged a man of tendrilhands, rustily send down feelers towards warmth that flows further past cold dirt air. And in night breathing, while manic moondrafts sluice me over, someone comes striding, wild through fields of frozen heather, to take my hand, longfingered, ringlet-haired, white-skinned and fine. I smell her own hair, busting up cold-current watercourses. I crane toward contact, feel real after centuries of blankshining vocal catatonia. Mythos plies its horned wares in dusty corners of my regal visionchambers. I sprawl outward-bodied, grab Nereid flesh and stunsing new grooves after girlwhirled nightsighing. Squalid time, you/me wretched in angelic torpor, what blithe pilgrimage are we on now, with eyes so wide we pupil-respire? I see her thin figure, strong and roiling in sleepshorn tumult, tangled, as I am tangled, in alliance of ocean-bed winewaves. We one and two to the perspiration sounds of happy fingers fumbling for new knowledge. Unestablished codes of thisness and drunken heavylidded sweetsounds double as body cartography. Mist rills flirt between lip gatherings. Flying on the ground never felt so highwinded, currents of this rococo lay circulate back to beings born of tiny phosphorescent touches. Walls bliss out like shucked snakeshrouds. Her smile is a smoky token to take on all my travels.

Writhe, Young Snakeskin-Haunted People Of This Floating World, And Find Your Way To The True Fountain.

I lay my bell-cry out, aloud from under creed of night, rioting in loadstone-mangled hands with crashburnt eyes, torn apart by fire. Flowing from tongue-induced wounds, three-souled breathfeathers embrace the daystar’s brilliance. Touchstones gather in water-stirruped windchannels, whipped aloft in softheard fury peals. No rhythm in the chest makes up for sound of rain. I angle dreams together with white winter blossoms crowded into ice along pond’s edge.

Glances Of The Previously Furious

This watermelon watch seeks everything, thinks about Monday with gigantic frustration, fails to encourage perversity. Frontiers lie fallow, haunted by housewives’ spinning eyebrows. Careers, like display cases, obscure the cracks in things. Culture is not good for much more than beverage measurement.

Anatomía

Corazón:
Choza de palos,
Lleno de ranas
Cantando en el crepúsculo azul.

Sueños:
Alas de paloma
Grabadas blanco brillante
Contra un abanico de plata.

Noche:
Cáscara
De luna irisada,
Párpado de un lagarto viejo.

Some Rilke, Some Comments on Rilke

"...Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still explained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick up (it was a joy meant for somebody else—); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,— and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many lights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labour, and of light, pale sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them."


--From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke (1910, trans. Stephen Mitchell, 1983).


I am fallen, and hard, for 7 muses. I never expected this. My whole life spun, the most unpredictable moment, and seeing myself suddenly in an entirely new light, impossibly alive. I see her face, smell her hair, taste her skin, not only when I close my eyes.

So I must remember not to forget about Seu Jorge:

The Bed Is An Island of Freedom In An Era Of Exploration

for 7 Muses

What,
now and/or then
is the truth of poem extraction,
of the press of bodies, friendly relations
between bodies, the lingual trick and slip,
trip and slick, fleeting warmth
in an otherwise icing night?

On the outside, fish swim in air.

Why the cross-stitched milling
of bees under the rib cage?
What the truth of ticking
and beast sound, hair tingling
the upper back,
the neck, the chance
encounter with the lip-dryad?

On the outside, blue cacti tell secrets.

Time, then?
An extra-spatial thing,
a gradual occluding,
a tropical crucible
for saponification
of the senses
and window throwing…

Outside, tired cars sleep cold.

What comes in?
Who comes in?
Who gathers readiness,
nautical miles from Pangaea?
In the cant of reason,
in red-rimmed momentary
lapse of trees, outside,
where eyes tell storytales,
a dream in the crazy night runs closer,
ever more highly reticulated,
ever ready to follow a candle,
shadow of another energy signature,
into the dark. Who’ll stand
for cinnamon scented
new kisses and not deshacer?

Outside, Christmas lights think new thoughts.

Victorious humans,
in perfect
cracked-apart versions
of their body-shells,
find magnetic ease
in a hundred glances,
a hundred beginendings.

Outside, houseplants huddle closer.

In this rarified air,
in this stricken era,
the bed is an island
of freedom
in a time
of exploration.
It has its own atmosphere.

Mere

Bright and dark unbroken forest light from within my willing world to find places I’ve never gone and whisper where I might... I am a way that being does its thing. The lost cloth of a thousand years of seeing. The truncated silences that make comfort feel unreal. The feeling of the car as it moves from inside my ear. These things I cherish, along with the tight night embrace and the reeling kiss.

winter winds
roam the mountainside:
ghosts in the saguaro fields

***

watching it rise
from inside an old car:
the waning moon

***

talking about loneliness
with someone else
isn’t so lonely

Cold Duck Plaything On Red River Drink

Why the happen from the chance, Crom?! Today when the pacific is a trade from the tune to oven-folded head of your dear pal, drinkthink my chances at the lathe, I crumble coal for ya. Not a hanger, but a gliding thing that guns trip down from hotpot frightening heights, fly butter, or something such as like a fried butter pavilion where to rest your deepest tot. Wink the peel if you slip down on comedic chance the pop of iffy stuff, like falafel and smoothies made from old loofa things, radio men emerging out of froth strewn stew. All the goiters made our appetizers wet, the free-floating gobs of fist abandoned to the casa, and masters of teal and other leaden tings go belted into night. Whiff of birdshot from your doppelganger, Mr. Chance, is an encounter with your times. I still the harshest waters. You, messianic Oyster, eyes wobblewarbling over pages made of pixilated vibratto-hustling, stand in the shadows with the figures you hear to know. You'll get there.

Reliquery Redux

I a sting eyed burn event, ramble from butt of stove, make palaver out of old pipes and trees winking out at edge of civilization-colloid. Nothing but broad expanse of thought between distances of spear-popped space, capsules of old Inferno-giggles crunking their ways out from out of Mars-eye. Grunt the canticle with dents, cuz old cousins like oliphaunts know Poems have Demises, like big bellied head-legs, squids, octo-men, and whatever else rambles in night-towned dirge ditches, filtering the city dust from over-opened skies. When whispered the majesties of old Serendib? Where hallowed the crows of radio-siren-headed dervish toboggans? How tinctured streets with handblown Venetian pavementshards, wondering in kind nights from memorescent tries at visionshifting? Old friend, tumbling animal kinder, beatitudes of lilting bell-peals in the homes of your head, be well with world as spin cycles quicken and pow...

Night Work, Done In Morning

Sleep two great equalizers, greed and childhood, suppressed, grainy with dew, apes run forward off cliffs. I watch Tando listen from within weeds, gathering dusk in his nets. Flies buzz by quadruped ear tips, hunting in agitated cloud, tiny mobs. He thinks, when you’re traveling, ask a traveler for advice, not someone whose lameness keeps him in one place. Swelling from ancient heat, he makes waves with hands to remember water patterns under cover of leafy head. In sinuous folds of cities old and grim, where all things, even horror, turn to grace, he follows, in obedience to his whim, strange, feeble, charming creatures round the place. In seeking weathered notions of seem and mind-at-rest, he’s clattered his walls with hand-sewn symbols, cranky sometimes, or full of sweet radar scent, and tangerine-blanked photographs. Pancreas and penned wishes own this pose, what’s stung and told from pillow’s lies, or a long wergild parchment, stitch lines of song on guarded eyes. Pang in pang, tacit time genuflects for an old brass ring or stark hymn. Crows abandon Stand-In Alley, look grim, ready for takeover. Later in the afternoon, swimming his shadow in late afternoon clear water light, “Three-eighths-inch open end,” he says, voice raised, he sees me pause in front of ...... . We swim in nada for thin sips of life in it, he up-stones a throwing spike, an arm in strength. Tando, it is strange to live in a body, to have hands and feet and a head. Is there a simple meaning in this? Is it important to live in one part of the body more than others? Franchise of local food producers, mitochondrial collaborations, marmalade goes in, sweat goes out. For host species that live with mutualistic organisms, cues derived from symbionts are likely to be exploited by specific parasites. Where water goes, we should both go, and go under. The sting of recognition triggers the memory & try to take that apart (put that together) dissolved in day’s baked light. If your cause includes you well, you will summarize the traits most excellent, a lot of lies in words. Or flies in a jaguar sign. Now hominids eat hominids and big cats get themselves gone at the sight of them, which they always did, but perhaps with less disgust? A rum endeavor, this human wheeling, going into and over everything for a chance at lips and touch. Our voidy ball of space wrack both warms and winces from the heat of you, Tando. Look, feeling is a vividness that passes so quickly, you have to abandon the poem to follow it.

Sixteen Lines For Monkey

Sixteen Lines For Monkey

My Legs

Instead of being filled with blood, my legs are full of giant silver mastiffs, gnawing and pawing and leaping against each other from the sheer mad joy of motion.

A Train Jumped In Front Of A Woman Tonight

I scam rascals of an extra dimension.

I scam rascals of an extra dimension, tranq gun for premonitory feelings, crapulous and goring, I ride. Time to people them skies with blokes and fish hat tangerine calluses. All stories I tilled under and told to me and switched ’gators, my stomach turning hit and jump a dirt bike, dangling from a tree and throwing firelit paper crumples down on our neighbors. Not to shake it but there was a candle time when boyhood friend Danny Roemer and I built a startling tree house at the edge of the road, took boards and hammered them into branches, gambling on blindness of cops. We stashed everything secret and meaningful to us up there, everything to make fire and some money too. That was our stuff, and we liked to hold it. Once we set the street we used to play on on fire, turned Danny’s lawnmower over and opened the cap, covered asphalt in gasoline and popped a match…watched from the bushes while the elder McGuiggan boy (wearing a leather jacket) stomped the flames out, looking all around for who did it. We sunk deeper into the bushes, held each other tight for laughter. Should have known I would get these memories back, auld things and actions whipping by as my wired home-visit approaches. Got to see my brain crease in the mirror. Will I visit the Granfortuna graves again?

Writing This From Bed

Like Truman Capote I’m writing this in bed. Writing in my sleeping bag, transcriptions from skull wall, elephant ears grow from memory’s heads…ghost fragments of all friends shivering me temples. A constant staccato signal stutters outwhere, of who, of how, of whispers under my covers. I, a child, am taught to think with a new body, an awkward body, a joyfriend body, reveling under fulling moon, just letting motion happen. Even with my graying hair the body moves mostly how I tell it…spine pain grinding away under the lunatic sky, but me, laughing at the sweetness of it all…rolling along on crazzy green wheels led by the 7 muses of Art, Insight, Nonsense, Strangeness, Light, Energy, and Yes. Chanting of nonScrit sanSense words had me hand over heart, hands in air, bellowing as a baby bellows first words, tossing them out like cheerios from my lunglipped bowl. The room itself chanted, vehicle of a hundred yogis bursting with Bhaktic glee. It was a mytheirheart situation, and it was good. It knocked my shieldface off. I was happy to give it all away. José on the cushion next to me, vibrating kindness in every direction, his smile alone beats back the snarling orca of despair. And still there was the strange dream, this morning, sitting on a cold ground next to a fence, watching an owl silently wheel in a field. It came straight for me and I tapped it with my sole, sending it caroming against bumpers of soft air. It came again and this time I tapped its forehead with a broomhandle, knighting it as it veered, turned, landed next to me. Imperturbable owl.

Another Day.

It’s November in February. It’s odd in evening. It’s San Francisco in Ireland. It’s cold in keys. It’s bravery in calliopes. It’s mystical in flames. It’s peace and truth in candles. It’s Transylvania in tapeworms. It’s grout in eyes. It’s breakneck speeds in physical therapy equipment. It’s horns blaring in teacups. It’s blackmail in Gnostic rituals. It’s bands in pudding. It’s memories in Mars dust. It’s always a hand in front of my face. A stumbling block in the dunes. And an accident in your field of vision. In a gypsy wasteland, it’s a wall to crash through. The tundra. If it’s in time, it’s in mezzo mar, un paese guasto. In trips, it’s rolling. In magazine pages it trolls in my swelled head, made of grandfather, lost. It’s past, in colony of dreams, redoubling each minute, a cluster of frog’s eggs. I is a doubtful river-crosser, using sticks to support himself in the frigid whorl. It’s avocado in continent before the drift. It’s at the midpoint of my life, I find myself in an obscure selfishness. It’s a good bet that everyone I’ve ever made love with is asleep right now, at 11pm Arizona time, December 1, 2006. It’s December in February. The skies are whis’pring change. I’m Change.

Breakfast With Las Locas

Old birds and heavy old glass, and me a’battle over meself, “me” fights for pits, waked up and cracking nuts in me’s teeth, handling old new feelings like new and new again ‘til more roasted art. Poached cashews, et cetera. I rode up my bicycle on the y-axis, hills and hills and saw and sawed away at these own legs and smelled laconic luster of desert, wishsinging in my nose-thrill, fumbling upwards with wind through the beard all cool and cold, fingers passing over my face, feeling heavy think deposits upsurging and winnowing down to hills once more. The windows now are closed for a time while sweet things express themselves rottingly in garbage and other areas of everyday life. Right now old watermelon, never ‘et, just came out of fridge and went under the can lid, staining my notions of health and healthy eating for a winning lifestyle. We happy three spoke of crazzy and of how the middle has no import, of bodies doing their dead thing making skin crawl, mind popping open, like steaks slowly blowing out insides on Poltergeist countertop. You note some will say that with no purpose we’re out there with the trash, living off the carcass of a dead world. It may be. So and so-so. And bathtubs show how faces screw up into themselves, transient foxholes for ducking into when guns go blazing outside the little casa. We fit up holes in our heads for putting eggs into and papaya, too. Signs on the wall collaborated to make the breakfast restaurant feel like a tribute to itself. Little amounts of coffee kept coming keeping the conversation coming. La ciudad grandly warped its arms around me and I felt light, excited, new-intentioned, clamps loosening on moldering idea structures, a brushless carwash for the body.

Old Piano

I remember my dog liked to lie under the piano while my dad played, resonating sounds must have soothed him. I remember how my sister used to practice her string bass and we would sit around, my parents and I, listening to her. That probably only happened a few times. What do I believe? I remember listening to the birds as I woke up with Jen next to me in our bed. It's her bed now. I remember waiting for rain. I still wait for rain. I remember watching a man get his nose kicked almost clean off. I remember feeling strangely more than myself when I finally knew, for the first time, that a girl I liked really liked me. I remember sweating from drinking too much coffee. I remember falling asleep from drinking too much coffee. I remember writing poems from drinking too much coffee. I remember wondering how my mother's hands could work so well when my infant hands could barely hold onto things. Now not only my hands hold on tight.

This Morning Comes With Me

This morning comes with fatigue and a sense of purpose.
This morning comes with dread and ambition.
This morning comes with light and weight, heat and estrangement.
This morning comes crawling without romance.
This morning comes with a big feeling of wanting to make something.
This morning comes with a fist.
This morning comes with a beard trimmer.
This morning comes with a sore back.
This morning comes with a hot shower and skin scrubbing.
This morning comes quickly.
This morning comes with these lines.
This morning comes with a side of beans and salsa.
This morning comes with a little shim.
This morning comes with a story about intentions.

From The Memory

Members of The Ardsley High School Graduating Class of 1989 That I Remember off the Top of My Head(And Some Others Who Were In My Grade But Left For Other Schools):
Jeremy Kantrowitz, Suzie Canone, Richie and Dannie Guerra, Stephanie Ellis, Lyle Goldstein, Larry David, Tricia Jones, Jennifer Fencl, Andrea Dube, Jonathan Wolfson, Sam Thyrre, Howie Kobrin, Stevie Gymesi, Janet Cryan, Benjamin Liu, William Strauss, Lee Horowitz, Mark Woll, Rob Rothbaum, Tracy D'Apice, Linda Locasto, Linda Castellito, Lizette Smith, Gidon Isaacs, Paul Kyrmse, Deirdre O’Brien, Tara Mathews, Mike Beck, John Choi, Gautam Ramakrishna, Edward Lathan, Maritza Thompson, Bernie McNernie, Mindy Wachs, Shari Kleinman, Danny Roemer, Leonard Scaparatta, Richard Kim, Kazi Aoyagi, Jimmy Joe Capuano, Erica Plumer, Janine Gutteridge, Craig Stevens, Kenny Keenan, Nestor Laracuente, Joe Scapesi, Doug DiStefano, Tony Mason, Kyle Johns, Debbie Choyne, Elise Davgin, Jennifer Emerich, Christina Acampora, Lisa Dessina, Dana Absgarten, Lynn Aurbach, Jody Jacobson, Pina Monteleone, Danny Fried, Michelle Capiello, Eliot Richman, Matt Smith, Michael Rachanelli, Gary Whalen, Jasmine Rajbandary, Jimmy Markowitz, Laurie Fink, Chris Fayette, Kim Collins, Laura Schwartz, Danny Glusker, Naveh Greenberg, Dave Chenard, Jackie Shaffro, Kai Nichols, Robyn Moskowitz, Tammy Feldman, Danielle Inch, Stephanie Pecora, John Raniolo, Mike Morel, Leslie Delman, Jeff Harris, Deanna DiFillipo, Elise Takara, Victor Arone, Sibu Thomas, Victor Rugiero, Mike Weinenger, Danielle Inch, Deena Gault, Mike Venbturino, Anne Marie Mosca, Kelly Mulholland, Kevin Morris, Jeremy Gardos, Donna Zucker, Adam Shovolski, Kaori Nakamori, Naoki Kamiyama, Nick Vasti, Lino Iozzo, Chris Brown, Leslie Stern, John Tucker, Rodney Brown, Steve Kahn, Jeff Pasquale

Plum Flesh

New foundlings of a gone world roam lightly on tar and fabric. See there a stunned money man and his rumbling pocket of fish, all his meanness goes wildly and forward. Lift to uncertain height that willing dog, spots or something for feeling closer to places where I’m vulnerable…so vulnerable like seeing a young woman young and friendly but she has too hairy arms for me and something else like learning to sweat enough. The world passing me by with me staring at it in the face, swift in heart. All philosophers and plowmen whisper something to their lovers at night, some of them lovers to each other. The string thing gathered the world under its aegis and weather for new feelings for no one whatsoever wishing to rim the glasses or some kind of fish haggling in the ether for a chance at things, then things, then things again, more things. This one goes with saying, this one without. Either way, no one sees what happens in the swish, we one and another getting too sad for just doing strange things. Here, fuck, I am in my aloneness, feeling alone and like I have given up so much, the domestic world that I aspired to and gave up and couldn’t handle and the two girls perhaps were out on dates and I with nothing, but my uselessness thoughts shuffling through post-steri(li)ty, they are shabby and give no bread, no milk, no light feeling like I am free. This is the experiment, fanciful and brown in the closet. I ask and ask, but really am mostly silent, afraid, low-selfed, depressed, aloud in the world wishing for a voz intelligente and you/me you/me, poetry of the bed, little sayings with neck nuzzling et cetera and bands around my arms. There is no you and I am thirty five and alone again, Christ. Alone again and wishing for the work to be done without its doing. A lazy self1sh fuckhead, ranging thoughts through mountain scopes, alone in the world with demons and fantastic me, charged and changing. All the brothers and me are quick, grown in the elder tradition of baying hounds. Frakking pound of flesh.

Leaf Linings

In mottled breaths, trees turn up toward hills, show eyes
How paths wear grooves in hearts. And weeds grow up
Around the graves of our one-time wonder feelings.
Mirrorless, confused, life things gather
At storefront windows, looking past fishtanks.
TV pictures show fire eyes and galaxy yawns, photos
From old photobooks of endless shows that ended long ago.
Wishes and tricks all pour from pipes.
And sewer drains, bricks, and relevance rush
In angled motion, sweet tea on the porch
With someone, eleven grandmothers talk
And grasp at mailman memories, achievements
At the library. Ripe cherries pick old bugs
For raids on their redblack skin.

Who's Breath?

A lost cause returns, tired of hopping flights, coursing all veins true enough in places and going, nothing but chances and being before and being after but no now. No. No. Never now, standing there, staining the floor with my everywhere thoughts, a million trillion things all happening at once or twice and skies all open egalitarian and helping me fish with my hands. There’s that stare I was talking about when we gave coins to the kids. Remember walking through the streets, followed by watermelon smiles and all shifty-eyed and wondrous with trees and hope in the world. This morning I smiled at myself in the mirror. I laughed, or made myself laugh. Streets and potholes slow me down, when will days of air cars come? How I like to eat and wait and eat again. Something is lost, something is found, all weddings have the roots of Spain, flaming with dance and abandon. The first place I went alone was Buffalo, to visit my grandparents, now both dead. I wonder if The Force could be made real if we imagined hard enough? I could invent a cosmogony that might rectify my self, especially if I invested. The trends. The meat. The heart of things, bubbling up and slipping across all the butcher shop floors of the world (read: relationships). Our love oxidizes. In the pantry there are supplies for the decline of civilization, they wait, hoping to be utilized, against hope of the world. This line is a re-run of something said before. Loop, essenceless loop with fingers attached, classically posed against the window, inspires a hunger artist to work again. I am a glutton artist, magically aligned with my gut and missing the breaking wave. Breathe patterns of water for maximum allowance from the wind father.

Sub-Cheer

Tourmaline and flares, all suggested and whatnot, ripple over water-dells and rivulets. Tan giggles pack meat, et cetera. They writhe, wring hands, necks, elbows, get that queasy feeling from brushing two tongues…What have our screens seen? All the searchers, wishing wells, elephant people, in the train stations of the cold soy world break breathing rhythm. First feeling worsts the second. There are wilds to roam, tarnished star-raptures tumbling along bowl-topped skies. Shave seconds off feelings. Full subtle submarines, questions and experts churn romantic pastimes in dark water-spaces. In sense and trials, we feel through eye doors. Take cake fried and placed on dawn gauntlets, sending torque to find ear engines. This is the site of words, of some thing to say and say agin and not just play but go somewhere, rub the potbellied idea set thing, merely saying the frustration and finding worlds that have sails flying at edges of pop pop nude figures wheeling ever high ever trickt, lonesome bird running down my fine, hard to discern coastlines of fear and shivering. I diamond the sweetness, long the own’d owl-call, gone the long old time, sending my thought to far corners for safe keeping. Sorrow and hallowed graves, wished for long, and days are their own whens.

Dog Memories

Pop car slop out. Not a ship in size for old bottle me. I lay down. I take my rest. My first rest in a long time. Yesterday I took a nap. Delightful and full of time. Something about music makes shuddering good. I suppose I travel in a circle. Where did old trees go? My old backyard finished with me, though my dog lies buried there still. Dead of a broken heart, busted aortic tendon, chest cavity filled with blood, panting on a pillow, wanting to sleep. Sleeping now, Old Sweet Dog, survivor of car hit, of suburb family madness and weird two legged things hitting you with rubber bands, putting you in the tub and making you cold with water and soap…how COULD you have loved us? I need that forgiveness power, my Brandy. I invite you from my dream into my heart. You were always there, even in my confusion. My living makes me alive. You are in the ground behind our old house. I wish for you a celestial plane of running and many smells, much humping, much food. Or, alternatively, where can I find your holy sweet and stinky coat of brown fur somewhere out there in universe too big to imagine? You are there, I see you, having another life, reborn as a fat suburban father with kids and your own crazy jumping dog, doing it better than we did, being clear in thought, not torturing each other in broad daylight.