Category: Uncategorized

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Poem

My idea for a poem was brilliant because it left me

before I could get my hands on it. The shower rinsed

it away. A delicate network of sugars turned gelatinous,

a killswitch offensive. The poem already knew me from

before I was born. It showed itself to me the way two birds

showed me their plumage yesterday by crashing into a window.

Instant death, and with it, taxonomy! Azure blue wings.

Stripped of miracles, the idea can live unbound. It was

an Eastern Bluebird, I think, a male and female who saw

nothing but sky ahead and then nothing at all. All day 

I knew I had killed them. My settlement by a marshland

bashes small necks and makes mud of the spark of life.

I sing “The Owl and the Pussycat” in my mettlement,

my clever harshland with its runciple grasses. I move 

the birds to a stone out of sight, my mind shivering crystals.

Hi friends! I had a hard few days at work and in life and am now 4 days behind. Trying not to let that bum me out. But I’m back!

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INTROSPECTION BREAK

It never occurred to me I could walk into a room

and not care for everyone

I could cut to couch

sling my whole body like a big fat dick

When you said your mind is the setting for a carnival

I lit the sound stage

I tossed the red pepper yellow pepper

I didn’t believe you

I held my papers tighter

apologized for sitting on the bench

which I was only testing for safety

Is this my treat or a piece of tape

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SHOW UP IN A BODY

Two minutes late is not considered late

but two months

better wear roped pearls back to the machine

for the puppet show starring a nervous radiologist

who never said once don’t worry many are called back

they come here they sit pretty

they tulip around like a doggie after a bath

Somber is not the same thing as sober

I can have fun

For example I didn’t know how rebellious I was until I was caught

Even when I was drinking

I was always sort of sober

Squeeze a pair of tits hard enough 

something comes out

like a mousy laugh moan 

or milk sort of always there 

like back of the fridge milk

dinosaur milk

a memory of calcium

or a lecture about Raphael

and woman squishiness emanating from color

I have a body designed for compression

and a mind designed for apology 

I’m sorry to cause so much trouble

Pretty much you’re terrible she said

Put your arm down 

She touched me right on my somber nothingness

The only other way to detect cancer is to give it to you

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Harping On It

The harp strung with the hair of the lover drowned in the lake
the harp whose bracken hide and broken pillar fossilize on the bank
the harp whose box and board fill with mud
the harp of the survivor whose mouth fills with mud
the harp of the living sister
the harp strung with the meat of the child versus
the harp strung with the milk of the mother
the harp fingered versus the harp mouthed, loose liars
the harps whose cold shoulders are made from the scapulae of the drowned
the harp strung with the heart strings of the whole brood
the harp who weeps on the wrong occasions
the harp with the face of a woman and her talons on the branch
the harp that dangles an angel
the harp that tweaks an atmosphere
the harp strung with duckweed
the harp both the coffin and its dead
the harp spitting
the harp spitting
the harp spitting
each name

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Doom

For new world
New skills must be
Learnt

New tools new
Teeth fingers

Trust process not people
The process is to live
The living way
ASAP among germinals

Poem? Po them back

These fighting words
To the death they fight
As oil under water

The prepositions volve
Surfaceward
You get used to it
Are you going in?

Gelid and gilled
Your capabilities abound

How thou you are
To accommodate
Such provocations

Where others are kin
You are kindred

A poem titled doom
Read before writing

Like shoot first
What does fish food
Smell like?

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Oriolis

Fear is louder
At noondawn
Oodaing clocks
Of twelve instances
Wordtimes
I’m trying to hear you
Says the jackhammer
Cordless, no strings
Just empty cups
On plaster walls
It’s above my pay grade
Says the paymaster
Everyone likes to say things
You don’t
Even have to pay them
They’ll pay you
For listening
Song for song
Intimate intimation
Beat your heart
With symbol
It’s ambiguous you say
Like an optical illusion
You can only see once
No why not nu
Humble particle
The river
Fjords no fork
Sinisterthesias
All the ambi
Guosity creeping
Out to sea

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April 12

Orthodox Sunday Videodrome Fig. 1

I stopped using
(oh let’s face it)

my beloved cocaine
in 1989
the poison that rose out of me holy shit sister
I’m not even kidding
took root in my cheeks turned them cartoon drunk red
and lumpy like bleeding oatmeal

now I’m addicted to a new drug that promises to make me a thinner younger va-va-voom movie version of myself because I’m fat! and old! and my blood is full of sugary easter eggs! delicious! almost like cocaine!
yummy!

I’m so fucking dangerous
(be handsome for the resurrection, Becky)

hallelujah hallelujah
now I’m a pale skinny goat a bleating half-wisp
one side of a sharp blade
floating in a blood kitchen
would you like some soup?
some bread?

I was raised in the holiest-holy-roly-poly-roller church
(before it was fashionable)  went downtown with pamphlets
explaining how babies were born into sin
how YOU will go to a fiery hell
do you remember Chick Tracts? that was me
oh my god it’s so goddamn funny now
I left them in phone booths by the metric ton

they are back those stupid stupid people
addicted to  murder and money and more murder
hallelujah hallelujah
wailing praise songs O lamb of god, I come I come
waiting to be lifted
into their terrible gold heaven




(sorry this poem is extremely drafty I just knew if I didn’t write something my brain would float off xo)

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Eleanor, We Have Put These Difficulties Behind Us

Little things     they accumulate    Then it falls apart         You notice         too  late

Fat ravens in flight—shadows on the glass       Too much time          Day   dreaming 

Nerves starting    to fray     Thin strands    of wire    outside       speaker inputs        

A bit of irregular distortion     Easy enough      to ignore    A funny feeling   Easy enough to ignore

Playoff seeding      Orange ball thrown up    Center hands reaching        towards a kind of heaven

A Kind of Blue    Wash     the beets     Peel     the beets    Is this seasonally appropriate?

Dandelions are already      going to seed   Emma doesn’t      love beets      Is there meat?     

Go to the store      Get the Ginger-miso pork      Meat counter     third row from the bottom    

It’s written in English    Do I        have to get the meat?    

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a blue hole

My body where the dead fishes live
Invites the oxygen down my wrinkled
Flesh like every other corpse where
The light doesn’t reach

My body where the dead fishes live
Somewhere there is a god for them
Falling out of flight and calling suns
To burn them
Is that warmth equal to love? Or
Do we just burn to burn?

My body where the dead fishes live
Are calling something that they thought
Was hope but it’s planting root balls
Of kelp in fallow sands
Give them something rich, their
Scales are falling away and my
pale white white skin, crumpled like
soaked tissue paper
dye leaking enveloping
Vessels
the dead fish feed at least
I can give something else
The life that escapes me

My body where the dead fishes live
Limp under the pressure and
Each nitrogen breath creeps closer
To the borderlands
Falling into another hole in the
World
Blue if light reached it
Each movement an anchor my
Feather finned friends eyes
Loll like dead girl marbles
Catch my lip

My body where the dead fishes live
Keep the rocks sound
Chamberless and if the walls
Were glass I’d press
my body call
-ing them home

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When AI Said, “You Look Good

in that bathrobe” again, I typed,
“You lick rubber boots,” took a screen
shot, named it the date, and saved it
to a pile of screenshots on my desktop.
If the committee asks, “Did you tongue
the signal back? flair it up?” what they are
really asking is, “Would you call what
you have a collaboration?” I will say,
“Like a cop? Nah dude.” Ha! Behold
my trove of fawned o’er harmonies:
in every one, I am heavily makeuped
and overly clothed.”

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11. Glimmer

 Ma’am, is this your alpaca? I found it on my lawn. 

No, must be loose, from the next town over. 

But are you sure it’s not a llama? 

Or a short, kinda fluffy giraffe? 

Pretty sure. I know my critters.

Speaking of which, could you hold my bird

a minute? I gotta see to this piranha 

that’s trying to chew up my cat. 

Sure, I can hold your bird with my spectral hand. 

But she’s flashing low-power. Do you have her charger handy? 

The outlet in this dog’s nose over here is free.

A painting called Glimmer by Sally Stanton, acrylic & mixed media, 36 x 36 inches, 2024.

A painting called Glimmer by Sally Stanton, acrylic & mixed media, 36 x 36 inches, 2024.

*This one I wrote in March during an ekphrastic workshop, after one of my friend Sally Stanton’s paintings, but I revised it a little bit today.

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[Blue giantess with six tits glittering] (revision)


Blue giantess with six tits glittering
outside the boredom of science

a season finale in which battle cogs
self-perpetuate--it doesn’t matter

if they are dead or living the lie
is the formula

I’d rather listen to irises 
to the terror of their internal violins

Repulsive love hive 
EVOLVE ANARCHY

Monarch is sorrow’s wench 
drying off post-liquefaction

on the bank of the last river
the sun-bleached stones 

my apocalypse palace
puffy-eyed and ragey

having confused sovereignty 
with popularity (power 
with perversity) 

Another card is Empire
a real cadaver accelerator

apportioned with the spell
of discursivity

*Hat tip to Gregory Shaw and his “Hands-On Theurgy” class, and his phrase “discursive thinking as a kind of dark spell”

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Robin of Locksley

As promised disenchantments
Temper a clavier
Clay not the dirt desired
Quadruped pants

How much nots have nots
Don’t have
Riddles
Like poems devoid of poetry
Ostraneny umber ax
Sugarless pebble lemonhead

Any sack bigger on the inside
Inside it out
Presenting
Musics of quiet
Carved on clothes
History rising from shadows
A rage twills

Red breast
Burn the broken branches
Litotes plagues
Ironies maidens

Any hard thing
Is a someday sword
Act two, Chekhov’s gum
Slip on mind
Cartridges in the maybeverse

Give mirth to maybes
Poetry sheriff or ranger
Surest if
The first word in word is of word

Encycloramapedia
Instructions, outstructions
Run on the run
Craftwork lunch
Are you sure you don’t know?

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Eleanor, We Have Put These Difficulties Behind Us

Keys clinking       in a ceramic dish    Shoes removed         Smell of garlic frying   Sound of greens 

being ripped      from stems    An excited announcer       talking about how        he went up 

like he       was hunting bodies      I thought there       would be piano       Or a solo cello     

Big game  on replay      Dinner         in-progress           Dull thud         of knife blade     

on cutting board   To hunt       bodies       as a sport       To have       vertical     To have        eyes engulfed        in sky

Used to wait for her         at the window        At the light        she’d smile      and wave 

What happened        to those days         The day divided   into routine(s)        of anticipation

The elevator door opening     Front door opening    Shoes        thrown askew

Bags haphazardly dropped             Fast-moving feet      In search of toilet

What’s for dinner?      Shoulders shrug      Used to be      so organized   Used to      have ideas

Mind blanked     Have I ever eaten before    Vanished      smiles       hungry      stomachs

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Have You Been

baking nananabuts in a broken brisket basket? No
thank you. Or unshowered informal poling? Nope.
Visualize shaggy nailbeds splitting rentable firepits
for Power Outage 3000! Check out Connie‘s new Chic
Sureties of the 90s™ survey! I admire her frozen head!
All the outlets are blown, so what’s beeping? Just
hang up! Don’t answer! Don’t look! Throw some LPs
from the years between the wars on. Pro tip: Mancini’s
“Wince Rhymes with Confidence.” This slow, grinding
purple instrumental might as well be fire, or bleach.