Jungle Riddim

When it got too heavy
the canopy fell down:
the cats pawed at confetti—

Rain fell with it, and San Franciscan
bands of fog to emend our lists:
errata, one, and corrigenda.

I inhabit these too deeply:
thin disguises, broken glasses,
water bottles, table textures,

hoarse falsettos, soft tortillas,
shrewd predictions, cauliflower,
mandarin waffle irons,

gray amazing paper scrapers,
lasers with an eye for fashion
cascading rather like an onion,

ears for fears, A Love Supreme,
my alter ego in a dream
(where I was played by Johnny Cochrane).

I wrote a poem when I was twenty one
in which the moon in horror shone.

I Was Worried About You, Tiger!

I was worried about the tiger
and played my blues upon the lyre,
my worried blues, my sickened soul's own song,
I worried about the tambourine and gong.

The water poured like coriander blue
if the spice, that is, could pour like water true.
Gnu chew phooey silo full of glue:
I worried about that tiger like it was you.

Margin Poem 3: Wack Brackets

That's a lot of
dragons
in the water
low & stagnant,
I'm asthmatic
& pragmatic,
but I lack a
strong aesthetic.
In the pool
I spoke too soon,
& drew, w/in
my heart,
a gun.

Margin Poem 2: Long Triangle

Do you give
them the same
amount of time?
Of information?

I want you
so bad.

Equal time,
would you say?
One of the policies.

I want you
so, so bad.

You don't have
to blow
the student off.
"Knows in advance,
how much time
they need to
devote to you."

I want you
so bad.

Margin Poem 1

Do you feel
love--can
you trace it
to its source,
its fountainhead
where the warm
water braces
itself in holy
expectation?


[Written in a real margin.]

Ethical Lyric

As a fine print is matted my hair is matted
and like a gefilte fish I’ve been gutted.
One sweet Sunday I went to the pictures:
stir-fried okra, stillness, scripture.

Have you heard the name unspoken?
Not Jon Hamm, not Kevin Bacon.
Segue please. Can I get sponsored?
Am I a boil and you a lancer?

The basic rules have been restated,
the truth, like parmesan, been grated.
Fresh bananas, cookery flocks,
chicken or hickory-dickory dock.

Stuck in the mudflat the MIDI chimes
and signals the start of some boogaloo games,
no shame is attached. Mahi mahi from Maui
allows me to bow over sorts in the galley.

The cool void exposes a quiet eclipse,
just a kiss away, dead on the cusp.
Gilded, bewildered, filtered through process,
but not clear enough to be swallowed by phosphorus,
coiled in fortuity, famished and prosperous.

ACCIDENTAL TWEAK

My mind is not silent.

In real-time I hear the same peppy chorus
repeat repeat repeat
plugging direct

into the center
of my attention.

I drink from a yellow cup
and my thirst cannot be quenched.
The digital clock is the sun,
which no cloud mitigates.

I cannot be overcome;
my thirst cannot be quenched;
my mind is not silent.

THE SNOWFLAKES ARE GETTING BIGGER

A flutter of ghost roses--look--
sink through the gelatin of time:
fake, fake time.

Patton Oswalt is on TV, kicking ass.

IT'S GONNA RAIN

From the second part of "It's Gonna Rain," an early tape loop piece by Steve Reich.

Glory to God--God!
Had been sealed.
Couldn't open the door,
Oh lord!
They cried, "Just open the door!"
Couldn't open the door,
but sure enough!
Hallelujah!

NOT WITH MY BODY AT ALL

I just misread a quote as: "Cordiality is fear of the unknown."

I don't know what the actual quote was, but it couldn't have been that.

Enjoy the ambiguity while it lasts.

It was muggy today and I ate ice cream after the rain:
"One Sweet World Series," which comprised the following major ingredients:
coffee ice cream, caramel and Heath bar.

Do you, will you, like it?
Bought gum at convenience store,
heard "Hips Don't Lie," first time in 3(?) years,

laughed but not with my mouth,
not with my body at all.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

As you see, we've come full circle, surround.

IDENTIFIED, MENTIONED

Scrapescratching through the index with icepicks,
canoeing the interstices, as I’ve said,
videlicet, the spaces between related concepts
that look so minute but yawn into fabulous maws replete
with snatchme rubies &c. that dazzle the old brainski
and bid it to stay here a while and look around, enthuse
and be dazzled further until the train completely derails,
or your bigboss snaps fierce fingers in your face,

and it’s back to work son: as always, the profoundly
sharp song of ginger ale bubbles in your nose nearly draws a tear,
then the mellow, pedestrian(!) taste brings you back from the brink
of I-don’t-get-it-yes-I-do-style ecstasy and down to where the roots grow,
and that’s OK: you shake the dream out of your ear; you pick up the icepick
and draw your wild connecting Xs, Ls and Ks, your complex asterisks, your Zen Os.

MAROONED

"A severe pang or spasm of pain"
tore up the straightaway, the blind ridge road,

sneezed hot dust as it ate up the rumble-strip of the ribs
until the way was not so straight, swooping deep

down into the dank valley of armpits and out again.
Decidedly, this is where the metaphor ends.

You see him, his busted specs and turnip cheeks,
calling out any name he can remember.

He's not starving yet, you can tell;
and his handkerchief whips and snakes
against the wind like a black flag.

TREE

I am a triangle of wood
and if the wind whisks me
everywhichway every bell

in my reach
shall sound

a bright
red
or yellow
sound.

I know someone
who lives in a tree:
waits all her days
to be touched

by the light dendrite
of a fat root's finger-
nail and so be crucified/

vindicated,

to top off a life of
squatting waiting touching and rarely being touched,
kissed only by breaths of the horniest breezes.

...DELIVERS A VALEDICTION

half the day
you smite your
self with

lightning

the other

half your head
is a kite
tied tight
to kaput

under no circumstances
did any survivor survive
but he craved the pome
granate seeds of a weaker
or more fortified mind

it doesn't much
matter which

i accept nothing
forgive nothing
and still wonder
who will love me now

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.