I awake to find my fingers smell like blood

I awake to find
my fingers smell like
blood--all metal and
musk and confusion.
Throwing off the covers,
I call out bombastically:
"What have I done?"
The silence yawns,
the cat yawns, I do
not yawn, but furrow
my brow and sniff
the air like smoke
and thunder.
I do not yawn, but
watch snow fall in
bright stillness out
the window until
I get up to wash
my iron hands.

what infection said

i am a temporary assassin

a woman folding over

underwater, floating

upwards, this
will kill you

for awhile, as

fast as Christmas

lights blinking

like eyelids

dripping psychedelic
goo and brave tears
more than sleep

sick like razors
we can heal you
we can heal you

for awhile, as
slow as winter
white spreading

like tonsils
dripping common
gray into our bright

cave, knowing
only: when we sleep
we don't know anything

and we like it this way

Chest Dreams

Robert got his nipple pierced.

He watched the ceiling stay white while they did it.

Diana filmed the ordeal, 16mm.

And there Robert winced, in miniature.

One thousand Roberts can show you

the stainless steel pinches on their chests. 

He can tell you it was strange and interesting,

but his nipples, they have nothing to say.

And yes, there was infection.

He showed them off to lovers, for years.

Back Awake

Roberta had her breast sealed.
She did not watch the floor turn black.

Donny was filmed at peace, 3 feet.
Nowhere, Roberta grinned, gigantic.

Only one Roberta can watch me.
The stained, rubber freedom off her chest.

She can't listen to how it is normal and boring,
and her nipples, they can tell you everything.

But no, it is healed.
She hid it from lovers, for an instant.

To Wendy, Burger Queen

When it snows, where
will I go?  Will I sit
still in the great, white
stillness? Will I eat
a hamburger while
facing a mirror?
These are foolish
thoughts, but still
not without reason,
like a hamburger wrapper
blowing with the season.
I would never write
the word "hamburger"
without you.

No Exit

Swans are boring, but they exist. 

In Kensington Gardens, in Nashville, 

and in children's stories, all beauty

and stagnant dead ends. When they

spread their great white wings, though, 

it's like someone cut the sky in half. 

You won't believe it, how much

even boring can do.  If you blink

you'll miss it, and then all you'll 

find is a beak, two ringed orange legs

and clawed, webby feet. One sky in

one piece, no rain or sun, only night

turning surely to evening. Nothing 

to yawn at, if you can live it. 

Ridiculous as it waddles, graceful

as it drinks. Knowing only this--

All of us are boring, 

all of us exist.

White People

Better to be wrong
than to be airtight in virtue.

If virtue cannot breathe, it
dies, just like me.

Someone says it's white,
the pure color, but

also the color of surrender.
You can see it if

You let it all in,
and wave the only

flag you were given.
Glory be, we live!

We breathe with virtue
and with bright, white vice!

Prepare for war. Truce. I give in.

Yet Another One from the Chelsea Hotel

Here it is, the last one
I'll write tonight.
There are only
so many love letters
someone can write in a day.
So it is-- My love
is tired and filthy and
thinks it might
have head lice.
Piss cups and broken toys.
"Yeah, this is my kind of
place." I dragged over
an old armchair. I poured
some of my Nescafe over it.
He awoke and drank the rest.
I marveled at the art
of cigarette burns.
My love, my love,
we are free.
My love, won't you
please take a shower?

Claudio, Forever, In Heaven

Poetry is not mortal,
He said. Gregory in 1971.
It knows the feel of your face
even before you touch it.
And it feels the face of your
knowledge, too. Pamela,
next door, 1972.
1975, Robert has a Polaroid
camera. It tells him
secrets in 60 seconds.
To a secret, 60 seconds
doesn't top off a minute.
And that (Angie Lee Kay,
1978) is the secret to poetry.
Our poems are in our bodies,
we know this with our eyes
closed. We know this without
thinking. Regina and Albert,
1977, 1977. Transvestite
siamese man and woman,
1977. We are still here,
all of us. We are young,
look, and we are all still
ready yet to walk from
real life into a poem.
California is the reason
we stay awake at night,
knowing that the least blink
powers it. Claudio, forever,
in heaven.

haiku, 8:27 am

hair smells soft, like sleep
like waking sweetly, gently
without the alarm

Last Day on Earth, or Experiments With Time

this is a yellow day
a green day
a sorry day
this is a proud day, this
is the first and the last
day, these are the last
moments crisp and fully
saturated, lost in livers,
erased like bitter bits,
these are days without
memories, released from
time's grip with strings
and feathers to catch
nightmares, we dream
our futures, dream them
like stories, deeply written
scratched into cores like
collective breath, like
rhythm without time, like
precognition, we emit
green light, we know
only green light,
we are dripping
in green light,
we never were
and we are forever

The Mercy Runners

I am a good man
    in a borrowed world,
Said the mouth as it
Fluttered off the face

Connected to its destruction.
     In this case, a drug leper

     halfway through the
Upper intestine of
Lower history—Cleveland

Under northwest winter.
Everything is letting go,
     everything,
Including the snow,

    Which one-ups
The logic of impoverished water.
Letting go of itself,

Landing as unannounced
        and minor
As an obituary

That walked one year to another
And moved no leaf in particular.
Momentum is the drug,
A job, a trip, an arrow

Drawn directly on skin--
    arranges
Generations

Like the smell of closets
        inside clothes.
Appointments, cancelled, kept, with

Nimble hooks of one
     look to another—
Sometimes propelled

By the choices of others,
    sometimes freed for

Sudden leaps forward.

Better to be mobile and
    enterprising, alert

Than slow as the
Problems one can't
           wrestle.
       Kept in speed,
Too quick to be

Grabbed or touched.
Like the shark, racing against
the danger of its heartbeat.
        Circling there,
And in that
way, for what?

...below the surface, out of
Pace, in unison, legs: flowering
    a figure eight current

That swims in place, but upholds
Like mercy on the run,
            everyone.

Of Two Kinds

Real poets harvest like

        angry ghosts.

Unreal poets are

Ambassadors of

     China tea cups.

One can’t sip so

Easily from another,

Can’t be lifted or

      sipped. Their

Worlds joined by

      a poorly-lit

Siamese motto:

“The desperate are

       to be trusted,

Seek their counsel.

When asked for an

Opinion, they’ll deliver it

Like fate.”  Since they

Have nothing to lose, they

have nothing to

grieve from giving.

Their indifference a

Kind of intelligence, a salted cliff

Scaled by naked slugs

Entirely beyond their bodies.

Unreal poets invent the rope.

But real ones?

...Die and then don't,

Wriggle invisible, with head, on a filth pin...

        dropped from

Unpublishable heights

Onto someone else's sharp rocks. To

Yank, and shake, then stand,

     and climb again.

honeybee's haiku

stealing sweetness with
electrostatic pollen
all of us with wings

Offering Haiku

With fragrant virtue,
exalted smoke and flowers
I will not suffer.

Pageant in the Troposphere

Do you trust the clouds today?
Sky-wild and fragmentary,
carriers, adversaries.
What tired hands
beat for at the end
of the play, What
dancing men leap for
escaping a stage:
Lay claim, lay claim!
Wind-sleuths of absence,
burlesque nonsense,
Let it rain, ludicrous,
Let it rain!

Glory Be The Stars

Oh, Formidable day!
Listen--as sirens
drone ruin into our
tired lives and sun
beats bright,
blind salvation.

Oh, Contemptuous night!
Midnight clouds
fated to swallow
whole any daylight
mistakes, will sleep
not consume me?

Oh, Cosmic sky!
All of us, buried
alive beneath
you, all of us
in the same grave.

white squall

ten birthdays stronger

one day is just like

the rest of them, before and after

her thirtieth, pregnant
with expectation and, probably
a daughter--Elsa or Adele
she said, sons don't live in me

one day the wind shook the
house like bones and
everyone hid in bed
while the cats watched
clouds surge
past the window
like cinema

one day all is not lost
all days feel the same
but we percolate
differences, this is
called art, she thought
sipping dandelion tea
with Elsa
in her golden
kitchen

passage

i pine, i wilt
undoing the ugly
one dress at
a time
meanwhile, tirelessly
waning....

i confess, i desire
imagine sky up
call to arms, like
knife play face
up and
swallowed...

oh, autumn king
turning doubt
into crackling
fodder like
you can
chew it...

rejoice, queen
fall, collect
night harvest
grow daylight
like
science....

Vulgars of Glory (Close-Up)

His hangover contraband

    From last night’s

Kentucky Breakfast—a little

   Face-on-face violence

With his dead breath coming off

The mirror. Pulses like he’s

    Got as much steel in

His head as Phineas Gage.

    Michael, he blinks, why

Did you do it, why did you enter

The Dark Night of the Beer?

    Snow swirls outside

The apartment window like

    Last year’s fall fashion.

In the summer pregnancy

Of the Queen Size, Marie

    Rolls to her left side,

Wrapped in afterglow placenta,

    Sheets and comfy sighs

To herself: she sleeps in, he

Gets out, lead by alarm clock

    Tether along the undead

Tightrope, bedroom to

    Hall to kitchen, to man

The sarcastic gargles of the

Coffee maker. Lucky M..

   She’d stayed up till three

Toking DVDs to her heart’s

   Pleasure while he lay

Skating on black ice next

To her. If she spied any bad

   Dreams on his scalp,

She’d nit them off and, with

   A flick, dash them by

The dozens on the movie

Laptop. Annoyingly sweaty

   And pig hygienic as he

Could be, she liked having him

   There, lightly snoring at

Her mercy. Last night in

Particular, he was damp

   And squirmy. It was like

Five hours of him pissing

    From every pore…when

Had he downed so many

 

Glasses or liters? What’s worse,

   He stank like rye bread

In a sauna. She had to sit there

   And be the victim of

That smell—the spoils of

Too many at the bar after

    Dinner. These are the

Kinds of oversights you

   Make in Minnesota. Not

In a Vast and Indistinct American

City: drive home under the

   Reasonable spell of a

Few stouts, fumble at the

   Door, lift arms and

Command the clothes fall

Right off you. A guerilla

   Striptease to the ironic

Horror of a wife or

   Girlfriend. Then in

Bastard boxers, climbing

Like a fish with arms into

    Bed. Marie sneezes. Their

Flesh jiggles. Then A.M.

   Alarm-light splits his

Young skull like a saumari

Demonstrating his sword skills

   On a melon. Pain is

The tractor beams of routine,

   Pulling him to be

Impaled on the salary needle.

Add to that a cannibal headache,

   Coughed up like cud

To stand and dress—in full-

   Body migraine. Out of

Love and patience and

Generosity, all virtuous

   Verities, she makes like

The snow and drifts. One

   Spare cheek exposed

On a pillow, to be kissed.

Vulgars of Glory

    Sick wine drinkers
From the Holy Forest, rollers

Of empty bottles down mountains.
          Drained of
Their gallon spirits they
Make a funny tinny sound,
    Like cricket bagpipes,

As they hit a rock
Or fallen limb on their
           Way down.
Coughs, snot blown on
        Shirt-sleeves—
Not unhappy, just plum

    Blotto, flu-stuck.
Only the great realists
Believe in love. Only the

Great ninjas of touch
Exercise its possibilities
    Honestly.
As men and women,

Believers in gravity
   And vino.
Even that hill below, that

They roll into themselves
   And roll down,

Is less natural. But more powerful.
Why else, given the
     Dangers
Of growing up, four out
 Of every three adults

     Behave like bottles?
Since there are highs and lows,
   They will exploit the
             Disparity

For significant, but rough travel.
    In their bodies
Romancing the difference

They find and live out
   In each other.

Supplicant

Face elastic

night supreme
we worship in fits

He feels like an
underling at
the altar-

everything is perfect once again

no kill
no change
i will not starve

i will not starve
honeybee
queen sir

sweet like
muzzles
albatross

eyes drink
living
typewriters

sunshakes 
still hungry
like fleas

How To Disappear

And what they sing so lovely and so meaningless
may urge itself upon you with the ache
of something just beyond the point of being remembered
the trace of a brave thought in the face of sadness

-- Craig Arnold

Justin Isosceles chose his patsy

And promptly faked his death.

Motives set, blood smeared,

No longer just a thousand pounds

In his mother's living room, he

Did not say goodbye to anyone,

Bribed an official in Mexico

City and hopped the border.

Looking back was not an

Option, so he never did.

Iceland, Bora Bora, Paris

Misinformation, Disinformation

Reformation

Mobsters, Sky jackers, Cuban

Revolutionaries

Glenn Miller, Heinrich Mueller

Jean Spangler, Lionel Crabb

Weldon Kees, American poet

Left his keys in the ignition

Of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Airplanes, Alcatraz,

Abductions, swimming in

Surf, Peter Winston,

Chess master, missing

In New York City after

Winning the biggest

Match of his first life.

Kristen Smart, after

Leaving a party.

On the side of the road,

At sea, Outside

Shopping malls, From Railway

Stations, On her way

To work.

Slovenian girl, Spanish

Boy, Swiss-born activist.

Hoffa, Hadwin, Holloway.

Jim Gray, database pioneer,
Off to scatter his mother's ashes
On his sailboat, Tenacious--
Vanished, Traceless.
No sign of
Gray, no Tenacious.

Last year:
A curious poet was swallowed
By the Mouth of a Japanese
Volcano. It is said
Once he realized

What was happening,
He let go and
Cheered
The whole way
Down.

What Stillness Said

Where cliff ends and sky
begins, I meet you. I meet
you where I want to--
under rocks, inside television
sets, on the eye of the needle
of the phonograph record while
Dollar Brand's piano rolls,
on the black spruce b-flat of the
unplayed piano. I meet you in
chimneys, in unmarked cars, on
the central incisor of Daniel Van
Dyke's open mouth. On the ocean
floor, I will meet you, with brine
and with gills. On the ocean
floor, we will speak of water and
darkness and when all there is
is water and darkness, we will not
mind. I will meet you in the center
of the glass eye where we will
see what glass sees.


We can meet here--
in the empty
cup,
in the sap
of the blue
spruce tree,
inside wild
guesses,
at the root
of the explosion,
between the
inhale and the
exhale.

But
if you call me,
I will not
come.

Lunchbreaks of Vallejo

Another open hock in Lima Louisville, Infant Fall

   from a tree of one hour

And my eyes, kaleidognostic, scan the trash leaps.

Doubled in shop windows, mentally black

In the eye of business types, and there we are: noon’s usual

        halflings. How was I born to

Avoid one or the other? Yet to sense it

    in their bodily drift:

               because I look at them

Like so much information, I have more than

My share. You, Alzheimer One-Arm,

   or you, Rehab Wraiths, problemsmoking in a

Heap by the wig shop—my balance, casual,

          socializes the passing

Edge you stand on. Human beings as

Motifs, recurring offices, it begs us from bed.

But I would never make to remake it again.

These things best contemplated when warm,

Even they, even they once had an uncle.

But that, my friends, is not what I meant.

Those are not directions I would ever take.

                But these ones.

On the brick promenade where work aphids

    like myself skeletonize

Their sandwiches, you, skinny man, I

    walked past you shaking your dreadlocks

    over a trash can. Your organism, so

    roachy and flogged,

And mine, more comely,

It bore food

To do careful thinking between us. My clothes,

You noticed, wore a fear of money. Yours said

                   your mother

                                              was cleanly

Your mother. The vanishing siamese scissors 

Where one person begins snips another.

   A spider-mouth to chew skin-laundry.

I was walking, though, and you saw it.

The action of walking, happy.

It lead me past the TARC stop at 4^th and Muhammad

Where a man-wad spoke, with precise rationality, to his belly.

Continued at a pace, one that

    ate itself

And did not submit

To be eaten. You, though, unmanned you, hybrid, fasting

On the luck of the rest, stunted like chores in the shallows,

What you see is what I saw, all in a claim of sleep.

There is that difference between us.

And that, my friends,

                                is called

The Untrained Skin of Factual Feeling.

Some dim and some healthy.

Some busy, locked to benches.

And some left, l ike true residents, in stomach t-shirts, to digest

The unencumbered waiting of their own.

i watched them sit for seven days

i have run out of moments, so
i will steal one of yours, and then
his and then hers, and another
of yours, my trees blessed

with blood-tips, rustful and
flame-licked, your tree sings
to birds now, my birds thieving
tree-songs, my night has a bird-

sky, countless and sad-songed,
this poem was eight-days long, and
three of them are mine, this
poem is eight-days long and only

one of them matters, keep me
out of your coffin, this poem
should be ours, but I gave it
to her, she kept it for five

days and fed it to her birds,
her birds are for daytime, my
night-birds are screaming, their
morning is coming, your coffin is

open, my night
yes, my night, dear
is waiting
for eight
falllen
mornings

my night spilling tinctures, my sink
is for drinking, your sink made a
potion, and this I stole while you
were sleeping, your drink gave

me powers, but, really, what
am I keeping, my sink-night
is sinking, this poem should be
empty, but I gave it your

moments, I stole it, my ghost
is a person who sleeps through
the mornings, my ghost haunts
a stranger instead of my lover

i wasted my moments, so
I will steal all of yours, and then
his and then hers, and at last
I will sing
my way
home

Nap Ode

A warm bed isolated from job,

    Country, and family—

Sometimes a kind of calm sex.

To be nowhere at once,

   With no reactionary thumbs

Pressed into your eyes,

In the grand utilitarian blindspot

Of a room refreshed behind closed doors.

Sometimes one body, two

 Heartbeats; sometimes

Two bodies, one heartbeat; and

    Junk clothes enough for

Ten people sloppy as

De-spined stars on the floor.

Quilten camouflage. Bunker

    Absorption of

Windowlight in a pillow. Smashed

To save the hush from

Being tagged by eyes and ears,

Though the racket they’re

   Attached to

Combines a living face it would kiss.

Just fifteen minutes. Still and

Stripped to anonymity beneath

  Three dozen covers. One

For each year put to rest.

pittsburgh, cold and descending

in the Allegheny twilight glow, autumn came
on like a terminal illness, certain
to cancel the best laid plans
on the funicular, creeping slowing
down Mount Washington,
she gripped his distant hand
Listen, she began, you've always
been a great father to my boys...
he stared wordlessly into
the city's river reflection
of summers spent on his
mother's sister's farm, sunset
hills on third degree road, Aunt
Grace kept chickens, and while
she cooked breakfast (fresh eggs
scrambled with herbs from the
garden, biscuits, soft and dressed
with butter and peach
preserves) he would sit in the
hen house, while sun breathed
through wood slats, at one
with the birds, at peace
with his life, in those
days, in those moments,
he would think
and he would know:
this is what it means to live

On The Final Words of Famous Disasters

  

    Robert Brasillach’s last

Sarcasms were worth

Their weight in Fascism, but

It took the overeducated

              Ounces

Of his body to say it:

“Long live France anyway!”

The pounds he gave up

    Were enough

To earn back the conscience

Shortage shaped as citizens

During the Vichy years.

   In 1999, the corpse of

George Mallory, preserved youthful,

   Was found

By climbers on Everest’s

North Ridge. “Because

It’s there”, he was famous

For answering, when asked

Why he would attempt

To raise his ice pick at the summit.

Men who have fallen from love

Have answered better.

“Top of the world!” So much the

Better, to view the bottom.

When the Americans found him

He’d been waiting for rescue

Seventy-five years.

nepenthe

without pointing,

let me show you

what chemicals

can do

we could hear the night

approaching so

we readied the evening

with warm

reassurances,

a three-angled foothold

and battening hatches

born of

an agglomerate

accident, on a path

single-minded

not choosing,

but chosen

not empty,

but open
.....shining,

soft and frozen

moving as
if disasters
do not exist, not

an option this

is pauseless and

which heaven is this?

is Eden inside me

as heartbeats and

knowledge, a light

that is dimming
but not

disappearing
just steadily
breathing

afternoons are for sundays

belinda o'bottoms
ravaged, releasing
a week's worth of fury
in the hours between
sleeping and supper,
her beleaguered husband
went crazy
trying to contain her,
telephoning her sour
sister for some new
what-to-dos,
he got nothing from
thelma, the rants
continued, by evening
no sleeping would
grant him relief
from tired tirades
his beloved belinda,
deep into sundown
played theme for a
jackal on her warbled
accordian, whooping
and weeping, until
finally, since sleep
wasn't coming,
he chose instead
the Mayan
Underworld....
down he went,
disappearing,
leaving belinda
to lash out
alone

As The Mayans Do

Gentleman animal, Gary, wakes in 

    intimate Xibalba. 

Sleep had tried to make him

    on its earthen way,

but, gored by a rum cake, 

he got dumped in the lost & found bin

of an antiquated Mayan underworld. 

Leopards and panthers guzzled 

   zilch wine

from the clocks of human skulls. 

Baron Samedi, on loan from Haiti, 

chomped a mealy, time-mangling cigar. 

In his underwear, Gary sluffed the thoroughfare,

the bazaar overstuffed with worship booths,

lead by nothing so certain

as the instinct-grail

of his boner. He
scratched his belly. Measured
his progress with belches. But an hour of

honorary wandering 
   turned up only one 
horrible, bland truth:

in the land of the dead, 

there is no bathroom. 

To relieve yourself, 

you have to do 

as the Mayans do. 


And hope for no return
for water.

of arthur and dark water

not a poem,
but a warning
exile turns
sleep into worship
but don't you know
I have a boat
and the water is still now
you have to learn
from the inside
what it feels like
to float
these are silent
lessons,
untaught, indulgent
under midnight
blankets
a man with a family
can do the most
damage
his actions go farther
than we really know
twice removed force
to punish the
evening
distant, unreaching
east of New England
in water,
forsaken,
listening
from below

Herr Fable

disbelief in power is power's best
friend, a friend once told

me, on the eve
of the Ides of July,

and then

knowing when to let go
is of particular importance, when
he said this he was sage-like,

particularly earnest

don't beat a dead cocktail napkin
and don't kick me when I'm gone,
now laughing, mouth gaping,
face facing upwards

you can't push inside what
has flown out, Pandora's
deterrent, now wry like
a mother,
he whistled a most
irksome tune

a day without worship
makes workers feel
nervous, terse-faced
and wild-eyed, he sat
...........down,

floored

treat disappointment
like a notch on the
bedpost, now his voice
had grown colder and
he went

horizontal

all of your chickens
are speaking in
Russian, is all that

I gathered as
he puttered out,
..........drunk.

Trickster

   What hits a person here, in a white

G-shirt, scalp in nub knots,

Materializing in your blindspot

On the corner of Fourth and Chestnut?

Walking alongside you with a hand

                   out, exerting

The calm of small-change magnetism.

“Hey fella, how’re you doin’?” he

Grins. In the jab-and-feint style

of predatory

Gregariousness… so the hand is taken.

He grips,  shakes it. And you look down.

Shreds of brittle dried blood where

According to mundane scenario

His fingernails stare out.

Jags of cauterized sauerkraut, mangled.

Your hand leaps. Vomits his grip.

     (Gut fright is the king of judgment.)

Off at a faster pace than he can laugh.

Street crossed, eyes belt and bursting.

    Boy me, is there nothing funnier

Than a white boy who can outrun his money!

Kitty Day

Honesty is always homeless,

   Like a spider. All the

Architecture it needs

   Is buried in its belly, an itch

To bridge the blank most things fall through.

So Kitty, full of mini-creatures

Of self-observance and

                Gentle cleverness,

Assessing the state of her luck

Leapt off her homebody doubts

To take a chance on herself, that she deserved it.

Like the microchip intricacy of a web

All residents of Colorado woke up one morning

to find

breezing nonchalantly across the Grand Canyon:

in one day, at her nap station behind

  the counter of

       the boutique her

friend Dot ran, two men

walked in, wasted

five unconvincing minutes

at the shirt-racks feeling up the

                cotton of their ruse,

and, then, shaking in their individual species of shyness

asked her out on a date—one for Friday, one Saturday.

Both of their names were identical: Ben Wellman.

How is it, in a city as tight as a flowerpot, there could be

Two singles with an eye for her, named the same?

And what were the chances they’d step through the

Angel-dunced bell of the door

The same afternoon, frisked by loose rain, and nervous

To align looking and talking where they wish her?

Weekends are indeterminate and happy, she thinks, folding a sock.

This one deserves a little paper hat, in fact,

Some origami moniker. I know. Three nights, two

Days or not, I’ll call it:

Kitty Day.

Let’s see if they both kiss like they felt it.