LET'S PLAY BLIND MAN'S BLUFF

Lord, how manners have changed and yet not changed.
There's nothing to recommend him but money...
I have my books confused, but nobody will tell me so.

Lord, how manners have changed and yet not changed.
In a room full of ladies and gentlemen,
boys and girls, enters the faceless,

the question, the long body,
the system of quiet wind,
the silent stalking of curtains
against the lines of the long body.

We sit in the drawing room,
hearts sluggish like August afternoons.
A haze of sweat prevails, of heavy-breathing

incredulity, of almost outrageous nerves
pulsing just barely beneath the skin,
almost at a boil, almost ready to scream:

Blind man's bluff...
Let's play blind man's bluff.

FIST

Gosh, it's dark, I said,
standing in my soul...

I remember mie selfe to my Blunders
and arrange a proper time we should
meet again. I make a thousand dates
with my doubts and, like clockwork,

KEEP
THEM.

I remember mie selfe to my Sinnes
and arrange a proper time we should
revisit the failures and miseries
attending our miniseries:

AG'IN'N'AG'IN.

CHRISTMAS (LINED UP)

Yellow light slips through the slats
and on the naked wall it flips and
flickers like a voice through a fan.
Somewhere in the loft I cough softly.

Can't smell it. Can't see it. Can't hear it. Can't touch it. Can't taste it.

LOOK AFTER ME

My bones are sweating,
my mouth is unfolding into a long, wet tunnel
with no light at the end but endless levity.

I am the crumbs at the end of your Google search.
How many years? How many years?
The night turns bright red like SEX LETTERING:

my bones are sweating.

MY POEMS

My poems, like me,
are short and dense.

TWO SHOES

If Homer had witnessed King W.
ducking those fucking shoes
with the surest most casual smile he's worn
in eight long years at least,
how would he describe it?
How victorious was that single moment?

Those flying shoes are haunting.
I close my eyes and see
shoes of accountability
forever missing their smiling target.

LABORED BLOCKING

OK, you go over there.

Top this, Mr. Mahogany, Mr. Mattress-Spring,
Mr. Coiled-Snake's
kin oil,

rock out, knock your block
out the wall you built.
Two-bit tooth-bit telephone cord
swirltangle-for-brains.

At the pass my call was cut off.
OK, you go over there.

Mr. Answerprecludesthequestion, Mr. Myliege,
I was foiled in my toiling.
The hurricane breeze blew crocodilic words,
lisping into my brain,
some strange weather from the north.

Oh, I see. You stand over there.

ALL MY TROUBLED BROTHERS

I suggest you fall down in the leaves.
I recommend that you indulge in nostalgia
that causes breezes in your mind
and makes molasses of your stomach.
I advise you to emulate old people
lashed to totem poles of regret
who feel suddenly absolved
by the deaths of those they've done wrong.

All my troubled brothers...
don't do anything. Throw your utensils
in the garbage. Shout incomprehensibly.

Alternately, do what you want. Don't
throw your utensils in the garbage,
and stop shouting so loud.

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION

I don't get it.

BARK CHOPS

I.

In somewhat uncertain economic times
It is—perhaps—why you have been

Need another reason?
How about that you

Your first,
Each additional

Plus, for the first time ever

So don't miss out


II.

There's no real town out there,
it's all new money, honey.
Stay home with me and respond to the mail.
I'm drowsy from the very thought
of the voluminous correspondence we keep

with every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Sally
at this, that, the other, and still another
insurance company or complaint department.
I need you like a baby in a movie needs
a fella's face to piss in.

Who on earth am I going to bore
as I strain to regurgitate what I've read,
who will strain to appear to listen and
shower me softly with faint praise
through these clumsily abridged autumn days?

MARKET QUAKE

The komposite man can say
I CARE in all world languages
without feeling it
as far as feeling something
goes in any language in relation
to its motherculture.

If he were to say to you,
but then again no.
But yeah, if he were to say to you,

"WE have produced, by the assembly line of time,
the tarrable-featherable bosh-mongers
and lined them up before thrones

and this will continue
until the final star
drops like a lonely tear
and is snorted into the fat
nose of a blaq hole,"
then what would you do, mah darling?

Take up guns?

SOME DO IT FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
SOME DO IT FOR CONTINUITY

Magritte's Bin (or not)

I love it. I love FAIL BLOG.

ORIGINAL SEAL IS BROKEN

Nantucket Nectars cap:

Nantucket
was created
50-70,000 years ago
during the Earth's
last glacial era.


My response:

Bran ducat
buzz sedated
thrifty blue Heaven-bee grouse and tears to flow
boring Jah births
blast facial serum.

ARE WE JUICE GUYS OR ARE WE MICE?

Nantucket Nectars cap:

In 1837,
cobblestones were
laid in Nantucket to
help prevent wagon
wheels from sinking
into the sand.


My response:

Gin, late-teen dirty heaven,
bubble blown—her
maid, kin, tan bucket knew
kelp. She sent dragon
peels, gum blinking
Pinto—ah, grand.

THE DOHA ROUND

...these conflicting forces—growing
TO SHOW YOU ALL THE ANGLES but
she's also busy "tweaking" high—
Dudamel couldn't be happier. "It
has insomnia!"
And to think, most prin-

cesses—and actresses—only
left where a
rebel artist can
open up and
say anything
...such a bumper crop of

human bones and clumps of hair
the believer
and the infidel.
Bishop didn't drink or raise hell much,
of his comedy act, "I told you to wait in the truck."
ten opened and closed a

very bad book you're
the first Russian to relinquish power voluntarily.
Make that "Doubt,"
a pregnant Southern belle, whom she
called "Shrub."
We've talked since about moving.


(This poem is made up of bits and pieces from a news magazine I was thumbing through at the Cambridge Y. Probably Newsweek.)

WAITING FOR THE WORD

Waiting for the word.

Buzzing around my workspace

like a troublesome fly.

I like this: riding the choppy waves

in my jalopy of a motorboat,

I await the rearing of the great shark's head.

SNOWBOAT

ALL THE big fat birds swoop
into the specter of newscast past.
The end is a burst of COLOR—

Gods, dragons, free lunches—
these are like the eyeful of sky
I rarely catch but often try

to imagine, like starting a fire
with a spoon and a rock.

the sea no salvation
the umbrella no understanding
the restroom no respite

Gosh, it's bright outside.


(Originally posted on Rhetorical Vomit.)

THAT TREE IS FAR AWAY

That tree is far away from city life.
Even if it were not so far away,
even if its roots smashed up the sidewalks of Huntington Ave.,
it couldn’t hear the 808 bass bombs that blast out your trunk
from block to shining block.

I have a chalice
no one drinks from
(not even I do)
made of
cold sun sharpened air.

Some actions are preceded by long disclaimers.
Some people are preceded by their actions.
Some people monger rumors, war and sickness.
The time for vanity is now. Time to turn
the other, more viable cheek.

These deskbound blues ring true. Not too far away
I know life is being lived—not just lives.
I am desperately aware that the wagon wheel
needs not this component, this spare part.
Endless shivering applause? Coughing up clouds?

A dead stump grows out of the brown ice,
duct-taped to it, branches of spite, malice.
Is that tree really so far away?
Listen up: over the hill or over the cliff?


(First posted on Rhetorical Vomit.)