Spice XXXI

--For Benjamin B.


congratulate the specie’s
epic use of dirt / the follicle's
thinning / only so much of a
field can be exposed / as matter
& electrons shitting light / honed in
on a frequency the same color
as a tree expiring in dust

WHERE I LEARNED TO BEHAVE

get outta there get outta there get outta there
please

north coast built up
beached open motor with a pool
in it at the edge, four feet, of
what sky
it's seen for months
children anticipate chucking
what rocks for this purpose into
scheduled to abandon, both

you're only in even sediment, leant what's
on loan to this particular echoic strand
in stuff people make these elaborate castles out of
and what an echo this obligation, this loan, is
and this pool
gull extras
cod
  
not separating the sea because they're further up
than the boat, beached
also getting rocks
should I pass women up without words
because of

held hands with a boy with
a stern bucket in each
hand

when Draco came up
with measures
to write about rape
like a swan a flying either ruined
transport or boundless ruin

right eye right bicep, left eye right forearm
left eye left bicep, right eye left forearm

know, in other words, your elbows
as places, having got
solace right as
surface not envelope

dark joints
you head to

I visualize this room
not that it's evoked
but that I want to be here
to hear this

mutual elements as of a store
and of labor

I Am Jealous

of my drunk friends
who are off somewhere
still stranded by the ocean
or near a musical place

Dear Brandon Brown,

Your meat is illuminated on that city’s
loose, rusty rim, as the water flows out
of her hand and, man, can you believe that
as I caught a glimpse of the parallax
gang sign the whole damn block started
puffing it’s chest, like what hella wheeze

I seriously only think about buying
bowties and what I should be reading
but am not about—oh, I don’t know—
a hundred percent of the time!
Like when people read the bible
and think it’s real stuff in there, other
than snakes beating at the door
that is also your heart which is also
on fire and in the desert? Gawds
most oh-so lonesome ground, scorched,
with laymen dragging their knuckles

How is it the banks have risen up
against thee, who is really in control &
can you tell if the people stuck in their
cars can really feel any genuine heat
or reflections of self in the glass or of what
meaning self can be contained in a reflect,
and if we are products of the work we
commute to does that cause us to wither?

And so, the singer sits in front of a panel,
on the panel a bed is painted in white,
each hair on the singer’s head fades
and fails and withers, it runs through me
and the owl above us wails, it’s all
like that Tom Waits’ song where
the bows hang low but everyone still
fails and becoming and being the lost night

Doesnt’ this look like the dark
yet or can each panel of sky be removed
and place above other heads which are
also reaching up. So says that low moon,
we tilt our necks for, to slice and to make
of us the winter’s withered paw we wish
to be.

And Dear Brandon Brown, I’m sorry.

This poems has gotten away from me. This
is not the epic to you some would wish it
was, but I am but a humble servant of god
who only wishes simple rubies to form in the
palms of my hands for to melt all those miserable
fucking people in all the cubicles around me.

Randomly Found These Three Poems

I found these poems on a poem a day blog I kept with some friends. They were all three written in 2007. Nervous about the line "an academic who owned a frog." Can poems tell the future?


We got to the Borgo Pass just] [after sunrise yesterday Morning


Now to the Historical
a zeal for Word Salad Oh
well, George Herbert wouldn't
care so neither do I
On a whim, whip, a widespread
flower greater or equal
to sexual activity.
Back up, Math.
This is the story: An academic who
owned a frog and lived in a
house across from
George Herbert's coin collection
starved herself and her puppy
for fear of Obesity. It was a gothic and whooooooo
went the wind
and whoooooo went the leaves
and who do you think this academic is?
It's me, Mina, she whispered
through the floorboards.




When I saw the Signs of Dawn][I got Ready for the Hypnotism

Mina, lying down & etc,
it is such a rustic cabin
such and such
was why the embassy was searched
and I was a Secret Agent!
"Formal Poetry leaves me every Day
The Witch held out her hand and asked
what herbs I would like to Purchance
there are beads
in that container."

Mina, giving birth and etc.
It was a mansion made of yellow stone.
and such that I was holding the secret
of "Formal Poetry: Which flower
do you eat for these cramps
there is blood
in that torso.



"take care you do not"] [disturb it"

last night I slept] [ but i did not dream
the baby woke]the dog[was "lying down dozing"

whereas a new fear comes] in corners[we were trying all sorts of new forms as

her daily tasks---at this point she read aloud..."certainly not a poem"

because he walked with god, he wanted to study zoophagy
which puzzled me a little. His moods change so] [rapidly that he wanted to study "The New Fear."

RULE OF CINEMA

each worker and every early work a platter

on which the head of latter work is dwarfed

and secondarily carted and second, can

get you something

I am thinking of Lazarus

pears gone out to remember themselves

jeu on a board, home

each scene activation of its next

and century has and but one

eighties, know's

to be appealed enough to by it

to make a list resolutely of words

the muffin decent only, the cello

a horse

exertion

to be there to help with assumption, this,

of presence

surrounded, covered by the astonished

“Woah!” go kids, I mean. the rhythm

turns out that of passing cars

louder the bigger. their parents

out scold them, they cry louder

than before the very

definition I should think of being “rewarded

with your defects”

dark quickening (not “earlier”), reasonably

nuts or out, cam chat Cocteau erasure

of names in chalk but all lost

last which is as by tradition only nat

urally Cocteau's

hand gesture

definitely not music

but call it that and Cocteau's

either back, forth

as done right by anyone has no identity.

I remember her but I want to be on the floor.

skin like wheat durum.

field of deal of shining satin

wood. First,

rather than

who how and how simply

the body was losing heat standing

where “there” was

withstanding what's remembered as “amorous

nightmare of delay” a saltpetreman balls

dangling tub and an inch

up, scent being not yet lost in water

but forgotten like clothes

I don't know maybe you bathe

with clothes on

and so remember to

an ear melt crack

ling turn to, around

as profane perhaps exemp

-lar,-t however long

long spring

awaited and lasting

to, want, refer, form, of trees

roundly either each other or

dare the self distance

already and covered in

scents of co-, in-, ex-habita

tion do measure out, too plainly fetch

hey: fetch is not to have gotten back

but luxuriously watch the animal

so luxuriously watch the animal

throwing rope, the arm pulled

not thrown forward as pressure

against stationed reachably columned

triggers, set fetched in pressure

accept that: there

by no means simply one

animal itself thrown back

disorder, observation

's only that

its complexion its rushed no

stalgia (same)

activity of brushing

spent in or on eyes

a Benjamin scroll of ground's across

better come as you do

than as you are

about a plain regard

got in a night

with a big skull

bird in it

sublimity religion's

he of what's gathering

to this

to hate

smell of semen

busied with cornflowers

's gathered liability

dears tripped

form which's like circuitry

as a leaning system

or good poetry as great

why! any year

notched hunger to

last out our action

dung of yo-yo string

pulled from weak bites

unknotted taught

as past teeth

have kids

have they have

why won't ramona yell it is

because she's heard it

bonneted, meadowed inri's must

I say pastured

boon over

all of like it, whose

line's on first, do go

through structure its light

twigs eyed patterning

in abscission gaining what

scars peel as upset

on a room

like Gibarian's scrap

meal (only to) look and straight

's eaten, scene yes seen off

on the eye, but abide em

ulated body oak be

haved to not slop

this job

of the oak

the jug its nature

she hustle

look to inaccurate

activity's all

like it boon

she picky

fit

pop(o) the rawer sex

Meximericana, each

other's where to die

dripping you go, the he

that's fit into

that's she's fit into best

squared off or taste pan

agrammatic salt to wretch

as does a film its piggy

shot

the long way, skinned

off camera slit as anything long's

an inventory so an old man

kept good looking even

use now of Erbarme Dich toward

a minimalism (not of) spectacle

at once

you'd rather say “zillionth dream”

than admit immateriality

from a connective clog

that's our good long look

say down a pig

an a-causal fidget par

donably sick

hot if not, let's pithy, flat pan

cake strat

egic amountless memory

of carpet

bare cornered, the pep squish in

back seat to

get the weekend father's

order

material from connecting

material, leather, from plaisance

day form piss on park oaks

form life the mas musici

freud ezra marx capital

herm a stud an am oney

roa roasted peanuts boston publi

hunger hamsun oot powder klimt

don't give me place

I'll get the place carpet

laid out

see someone pouting waiting opposite to cross

and they keep on with that passing

there in a fold

“music makes [something] worth living”

Stravinsky recollecting a tune

's better than any memory

anyway, that

no they were very polite

like nothing'll stop

to process rain or the rain will

catching up to Cummings

as if, that is

her politics like Schubert on a what's today

January 19^th, really that

it's enough or not to sign

have the other three

(as in Winter Light, the hand run through

on the cross) fingers

or two, cut off,

by, like, kids, or?

an image, anyway

how too one genuflects by accident

circumstance, if – and the question – anyone's looking

also an image

a broke knee

pastor squeaking the wood floor of his office

a sound like gas and then the cold

season Linda honks, soft skinned

diplomat thinking things up

to derisively call romantic

people walking around plants draw a gulp

down past point of acceptance being

as Rushdie's said of money, meaningful

fine. good riddance your better, do not die

they say, a few ways to feel eyes move one

shut on with a palm, covered, some hysteric other

ways

one man rubs his eyes. there are no

garden hours.

horny without or with them, somehow

in california if you want to you

can have a better mom

alternate, and can be for some the better

with all the women. I

hate that I not celebrate the delay. or

stay it late during. if

you can imagine coming in a cup

for posterity, whatever's constellatory

but so contained, reasoned, alike.

I remember that when gone

wrangling she compared him coming

with schools what burn down wit, corrupt none

ritarding the sense of that slowed. to

leave knowledge upset, when

to the plants the man as if somewhere exciting

made walking motionless. created

stillness there without mimicry.

that I not celebrate or remember the fairest search

what made the afternoon breathe, a femme clerk hesitate

taken as that man

in, hate when gone that I not

celebrate when I remember one

or if when I stay but corrupt the late sense

suffering but not die like, yet, behind the worthiest person

feel, not attending as plants, late

to afternoon or when that clerk says

by midnight of some date

a chafed cat in a pool, lightening

its measured strain, all event of floating

what's as no side to the moon more waned act, or

mild shapening of circles like the pool

without evening that's from that neck skin

surfaces as days they're during, the chlorine

's parboiling anything, any ripe dish that's

some balmy mistress' in an Hour Detroit still

on one side, fatness blessed quiet

as someone else's, as earlier, better comprehending

scum on her breast'd grown

and appears in the city like it

freezing earlier

but a late, loose, not often looked at

anyway trusted arcadia let alone

thought I could live there

at least poor enough to think it is

maybe not words keeping me though

like an enemy I think stick

a fork in me because I am

deserving of some trusted thing like that

Poem

You are going to come into my venerable life
And tell me that you love me.

You won’t care what I’ve built.

You will say, "Sandra, your shadow
is shaped like a daschund."

Huh?

You will pretend that the center of my body
Is an empty gymnasium

Like this is middle school
And you were the last one picked
To play on the team

Because you were not
Very strong and wore glasses.

When I think about the past, the only
Thing I remember

Is the history of my body and even that’s
getting fuzzy.

(For example, I remember that I was always happiest
Plump and alone.)

But this is what people do—they walk into you—

Just as they walk into you on the street
Because they are looking
At someone else

And sure, they’ll tell you they’re sorry,
But that’s the extent of it.

I think that all of my poems are going
To tell the future
Of all of your poems

Thereby conjoining
that future with an emptiness

so clairvoyant
That it keeps reversing
Its position

in midair
like pure data

And that is why we
Will remain enemies forever.

Lament for the Makers

Today, I just want to write a lament
For today since I’ll never
See you again. I have to stay
Late at work to do this.
I hope my family will be OK with it
But I’ll do it away. See?
I’m writing my lament.
But the thing is, is that just because you want to
Write a lament
Doesn’t mean that you’ll get a
Lament. Let me start by saying that
I am so tired of the false language
Of life. Light has a language too,
But it is not false, it is
Truthful. So light is not human,
It is ethereal but, then again,
it only realizes
Itself when it hits the flesh.
Stupid sun, I so am tired of you.
When I think about the spring
All rolled up on the horizon
The fear of death does not
Disturb me. It’s as if from that
Phrase, some flowers popped up
And started reciting their lament
Like this is a cartoon or grave.

This is Such a Simple Poem

I don’t think that anyone should read it.
(Well, it’s okay if Ben and Maurice
Read it and also
Jess.) In a way, it doesn’t deserve
To be read by many because of
Its artlessness. In that sense,
It’s like a woman getting dressed
For work, or a woman driving
To work or a woman in her cubicle
Looking at the drawings her toddler
Made that are scotch-taped
To the wall. She has taken a break
From whatever it is that she does
Over and over. And her child that will
Replace her—now you see him
Doing what she’s doing
Over and over except
Now the world is more
Crowded and people
Are looking for clean water
And people are building people
Over and over other
People pretending that
they are machines that can be
stopped by pulling a lever
And then the cells keep moving
Into position like right now is the
Exact moment that those cells
In the far corner of the
Cubicle are becoming an arm
And then a kidney or eyelash
Now falling from the woman
Into her can of Diet Dr. Pepper
That tastes lifeless and remote,
Like watery eggs, like what one
Would imagine the prehistoric
Seas tasted like before love.

ALL MY BEST FRIENDS BURN PROUDLY UP

also for Sandra, after "poor poet mothers"

yet hit by, coming into
the fact as it is, the hawk out
to words

everything manipulated, as left effort
's where my eye goes
what I acquire, getting up

half as brittle, what occurs
and what would sooner so
both our properties

and separate in a way, compared
to a black heart, that will before finished
compare the moon and so the moon in our figure stays
fact, cheap and transforming

only so thou art not got out
this evening, not nothing, anywhere
and say nothing more endless broke

tough land stays
illumined yet with me, I'm in

marriage, bid it say less
stuff while I'm seeing grass stay
finger tops, or it being a circle, be lies
rings not of this stuff except in name
my friends operate

and oh why should her thumb
come in, this in which
faith that she's with me
comes out

soon broke, preciously lessened
which art since
I'm on

who not loves it to be justly proud
but would break it were
I not in

I helped this way
the harshened possesion motherhood is
and a left effort

SINE TALIONE (recomposed Donne + Scalapino)

for the computer cut in my car


I am in towns I know
fools order two bullhorns
people for saying so peak outside
brown and pale seeing and loving
in whining inner day
the moon opposite
 
isn't poetry but where's everyone that excruciating physical-wise man
would not be that pain on?

if only she would not also deny day
pale limitless crooked then the others' junk
narrow theories she learns as the lanes, earth's,
they do

theories salt away flowers' inward sea
then water's fretful

I thought the motions had existed before their pains
to do, that night's horizontal
is also the sole blackish blossom
I could draw my grief through
if without, half in before child rhymes, pale people I hated

in them, they're not existing
without, those being present motions, he cannot be them
should its intellect, later, brought to
that vexation as at only numbers,

but that cannot allay that fierce verse
not be so it fetters in, for it tames him later

Space Is Only Space

for Sandra

the robin’s fidget
& the metal weight

a subject lost

in HTML and glitter

also the stale taste
inside your mouth

this new morning lost
in so many others

picture the man alight
with electricity lines

across his face
the ghost appears

II.

& we build our ghost towns
around parking lots

our mouths stuffed
with rubber & moth dust

Sad Burrito Song Nº1

after the Flying Burrito Brothers

it is still 12:07 next to my empty plate
do you know what it's like to smile in 16-bit
at people with boats in their eyes
/
tangled webs of hip-hop ingested fruitfully
I hear trilling finger nail clipping
dance off in some nearby tributary
/
& so but detached from the bone the tigers sing
very quietly now b/c the sun is setting
on the loneliest tether-ball court in the U.S.
/
the image’s sharp edges masquerading deep
but only holes persist out and from
thus becoming a reoccurring image in sleep
/
panning out and away from the scene
now we are presented with an animal at rest
its work done it lays in a quiet way

CREATIO EX EX MATERIA

(from Donne's Woman's Constancy and Scalapino's It's go in quiet illumined grass land)

to me comparing one sky to what thou, say, leavest now
hast mind because one sees magnolias thou hast loved whole

the day or tomorrow when thou will say
to antedate sky wilt vow actions thou new made,
but comparing peoples, wilt thou then say

or that now to war outside that moon
is in, or to, space

we are not, then, just those persons
were that oaths or made fear
in which we, reverential, apprehend, or
love any evening ferocity, may forswear behavior
even of his wrath, and any true reason there was no
one as deaths, marriages, just from where as
lover's contracts seem so bewildering
or those images of them so huge
if it's in them unloose, till sleep
death's indentation to justify that end
but owns your image, so they're even

or to bind one having no multitude is 'bewildering'
for purposed behavior-evening, evening change             
you can have no space but to any random event               
's a falsehood way to true a falsehood and be
vain lunatic against these 'scapes I could
dispute and conquer if I would
which I abstain to do
for I think tomorrow may be so too

TO BE ABLE TO FIND

dress so crucial as to be executive
it's a pool
where you're at's hopped in or float there, an
after function

like a gallerist does afternoons
the walk not wide
the gait is leered at but can leer on back

I like him
he doesn't complete me without being inadequate at
what posture that is, a held nape cut down

it's hard to talk male genitals with some mystery
the body to it's beaten or taken a sort of stance but

this warm, I feel enough a woman to step out with gals
big boots on, nobody gonna tell me it's wrong
omnilibidinal crutch quiverings of an eros hurt but pulled through
or at spending good three protracted days spent after that plus days of sex, glad

but truly it's a mad post that does so good and accepts such shit cases
like tenure t notes
prom seats
which're where you get
the most

overlooking san francisco bay
world
we accuse you
what buoy lost
wet ruffled up silk waves
still yes you undergo still
skirt to the sagged rack jacclam bush
for kids later to ruin, either, in tugging

GET KNOWN

GET KNOWN

not a safe set-up in any sense
of the word safe
or up
         nausea come to the machine
         car in this season, set

it is pretty warm right now
I can hear water from inside the house
that's running on the street
forced to concede it was
that much

like to not stage gestalts
if your lover's a blind eternal person visible on a corner
bothering to wear you out

dogs don't do things for uniform amounts of time
like for forty five minutes in a club call us retinue
so City Lights would be impossible in winter

my eyes writers lapping velodrome trials
and other fears miscanned beans diminish
ment contrariety that's kalas and chronos and cetylpyridinium chloride
a fender beam and life ladder in one which serves as a life ladder
mounted on a wall surface of a quay or the like and extending

I have known deciduousity in pulling coat sleeve buttons
from being tangled against your part in a closet, hanging down
I'd get started rather than a crawlspace there for it

Screen of Broken Links

Hello. Welcome to my website. I am literary like a cantaloupe. When you cut open my fruity skin, guess what you will get? That’s right: more cantaloupe.

I am going to give a reading at your funeral. It is unfortunate that you will have to die first. Will you please let me brush your long black hair when you’re in the coffin? You are so silky and good.

Sometimes they make coffins in the form of a toy car. Sometimes a coffin can be shaped like a strawberry cupcake. You can eat a coffin, I guarantee you that.

Do you want to be buried with the moon I want to. Do you want the moon to drip fruit juice over your dead feet? Would like to wear flip flops or flats?

I don’t know. I never think about those things.

I am too preoccupied moving the green tank to the left part of the screen with my toes; I want the green tank to shoot Saturn.

Today my son fed some boiled chicken to his plastic dinosaur and then he held the dinosaur up to my breast indicating that he wanted me to breastfeed his plastic dinosaur. That’s sick you say well yeah of course it’s a cantaloupe.

Every time I see my picture on the internet, it darkens a little as I breastfeed the dinosaur.
My face has the look of a mother who loves her son.

Is my son a mother or a is there a coffin on my website? I want you to remove
that coffin you put on Saturn now. I don’t think you have any idea what it’s like to push a child
through your webbed feet. It’s like the history of paper money. (All those paper leaders with their hoods on.) Everyone wants gold—but there’s nothing to exchange.

The Runners

My friends are runners. Their muscles are like the maroon currents of a muddy river taking them straight into the circumference of our city which is the eyeball of spotted cow that will soon go to slaughter. You must water the eyeball like it’s a seed. That’s the only way to keep it alive. When you do, it will turn blue and gray and swim from you like a small fish.

Our little city.

It will not obey anyone. In that, it’s like a runner or a friend giving you advice that you turn into a strange massage. Don’t worry, it’s not sexual. There’s a garden of statues in the middle of our city and if you kneel down before the tallest one, an angry man carrying a bag of marble fish, and look into his stone eyes, I think you will learn one of the secrets of the universe—

Sometimes they run under the torn moon
like their world is something that they are going to leave tonight.
They want me to go with them, but I am not an angry man carrying a bag of marble fish.

How will I excuse myself from their dinner table? I don’t want to eat their porcelain cow eye even though it is blue and pretty and there are mini rainbows coming out of it like this is a breakfast cereal.

They run so fast; there’s just no way I can keep up with them.

LAX

The airplanes are my enemies. They splash around like black dolphins w/ death wishes. They make sounds like metal against the sky or metal bifurcating saltwater like a nose dive which is dolphin-like and full of fuel and lace-shaped flame. This is the underwater agony of being underwater and trying to talk to you but you’re on the other side of the oval window and I’m ashamed to be scared of being so far above that cultivated field and anyway, I’ve always been the pilot.

The airplanes carry friends away into death playing Ravi Shankar like that is supposed to make it better. What am I saying? I don’t have any friends. Wait: there’s a row of friends at the bottom of the sea and I am counting them. I have gotten up to 4,000 gravestones today and it's only noon.

Isn’t it strange that some people carry buckets of saltwater to the ocean and want to feed dolphins airplanes or ride on their backs? I don’t find this very amusing, do you? Sometimes groups of people amass around the shoreline because they are afraid that this is a tidal wave and they want to crush the dolphin bones into their memory systems.

Does anyone here want to see an airplane crash into the ocean today? I do and the answer to your question is deep inside my body so hold on a second while I figure it out.

I hate it when dolphins grin.
I hate it when humans make dolphins
grin and show their teeth.
Dolphins are not tigers, you know.

They don’t want to be treated that way. Neither do these airplanes. It isn’t their fault. They are who they are. Leave them alone.

None of these creatures want to be the fictional ferrymen who take you to the underworld or across the Pacific Ocean or into the tree-lined day you were born.

Lyric Poem Written on iPhone Stopped in a Tunnel Between Two Stations of a Metro

The modern world is killing me:      My ringtone couldn’t be more Delphic.

Don’t want to go to Delhi       & see a man hit a mad cow mad

With a trashland stick,     or watch the prions devour this megalopolis.



I don’t want to go to Beijing      & listen to the Hello Kitty machines

Zombie chomp on hypothalamus      and mouth and foot

and mouth disease        so please be body scan,

be Brillo-pad, be vintage      adding machine, be not rigmarole— be star.



I don’t want to go to Greenland    because all the morgues there have thawed.

I don’t want to stay here either.   I don’t think we can get along.

The modern world is killing me.     How can this be more clear?

I don’t want to do anything        except get a pat down, disappear.

NOT COOL TO TAKE OFF

NOT COOL TO TAKE OFF

studio sitting after helping pack
is it boy-like to not want to pay men?

take off, the mind's a belt
is taken off, not cool to
deal: "ground, floor"

shinola was a shoe polish
and milton was (he?) an anglo-saxon writer-poet
and my mixed berry emergen-C riddled with saved Ike's

what if a horse carriage were
on this street as on a river
thinking drunk of crashing four horse carriage
into the plow every studio's becoming?

each horse a tier?
boy-like to shuffle grinless past the high woman?
how worse bodies'd be
come packed up because you moved
if they were of use

("I want to join you", to that woman
taking it some fifteen exclusive ways
not. cool. to.)

figures because my hands are
more the feet
my brain can reach
feet the feet
hands can, there's

a rat dead in my left sleeve
because we moved the couch

off wasn't "not working" until 1861
it was basically regarding distance
not that you weren't working but that
you were away from the work, were, here

a jerking boy circle is particapatory how?
it's the distance: getting off, to "this is home"

to two sided blonde wood in fences (boys)
la veloce dita = la dolce vita
moving a couch you move
when your friend moves
I'm a sad slouch rolling
how helping
you're held back, you're
off
  
on my way to work in boston
a sympatheticist approached me saying

he should, a shrill epiphany, stab all faggots
sure he just meant baristas
which I get

The Cowardly

There are so many people
who live life in a cowardly

fashion. I don't want
to be like this ever. Oh these

people, they might as well
be figurines

that you buy in a tourist
shop, figurines

of great, cowardly leaders
who wear very expensive

jewelry and go to parties
and look like they

have never breastfed
a child or fucked

a lover or picked
up after a dog

named Milton.
Maybe these people believe

in God, maybe they
don’t. Who cares.

The worst, though,

is to aestheticize
cowardice and justify

it through art. Kafka might
have done

This but that’s OK
Because he is Kafka.

It is never OK to
Aestheticize cowardice

Unless you are Kafka
And you are not Kafka.

You are a tournament
Descending on the Rose Parade

Presented by Honda.
You have created a float

At this point
In history

Because you were asked
To participate because you

Are a citizen and you
Are not cowardly like a rose.

You are centering your
Participation like a Zen master

Wherein you find the inner you
Entertaining as if you are

Watching a million floats
Glide by on the street.

You are now Elliott Smith
Singing Rose Parade

Because you live in Los Angeles
And you are high

And you have gone down
To see the funeral of the Rose Parade

Even though Pasadena is far
Away from your house and your boyfriend

Won’t be happy that you camped
Out there like a loser. You are sort of like

A float in the audience and everyone
Sees you are participating

In a cowardly succession of plants.
Somewhere in the parade

A mother has given birth
To a RAM which is a symbol

Of peace and promise.
The RAM would never be afraid

Of society. The clouds bunch up
Like the fist of... father time.

Any minute now
A bolt will strike either one
of the participants, the Ram or you.

You really need to get back
To the warm cozy feeling of rain

In your apartment in Los Angeles.

At some point the RAM
wilts away and so do the tigers

and other animal-
flower mix tapes.

Even flowers presented by Honda
Just wilt away why is this?

How can a Honda wilt
It is so strong and uncowardly?

How can a corporate speeding Honda
Wilt like the audience members?

Now everyone is crying
At the beauty of the floats and the rivers

Of people are moving
And being moved by Hondas and

Pure sentiment.

You are in need of a Honda Accord
To bring you back to your boyfriend

In a faux Swiss chateaux on Melrose Ave
So you page him or

Something like that who
Can remember?

New Mexico

What good does it do
a hummingbird not

to have a human hand
to hold out to it

in New Mexico
where there are so many

hummingbirds and wolves
breaking the glass ceiling

of the mountains in
the background--beyond the yurt?

And then I looked through my files
and noticed a diary

where I kept all of my
secret complaints: there was a sketch of

a wolf
holding up a glass ceiling and trying

desperately to kill
my domesticated dog named Milton.

There was also a man who
talked a lot a lot a lot

about the ins and outs
of the New York

publishing world. He
invited me to meet

an editor who opened
up a metal platter and out

came a tramp-like hummingbird
who held in its beak

a secret diary with
a sketch of a diamond yurt

and a glass ceiling
in the background

because when you're in
the mountains of New Mexico

it's important to keep
an eye on all domesticated

pets for their safety
and security.

Boy, I tell you,
it was powerful.

Everyone at the campfire
who read from the diary

was very impressed by
my long list of publications

on railroads, irony
and natural disasters

such as Hurricane Katrina.
Someone asked to publish

the diary immediately.
I said yes. Then

another man asked
me out to dinner but

I said I really don't
think it's such a good

idea considering
the fact that hummingbirds

contain so few calories.
We ended up in a modern storm

because we are modern
lovers prone

to modern excess. All of our
poems were drenched

and then we watched
the whole thing

just collapse on
the internet. All of the

text was intercepted
by all of the other

text was intercepted
by ghost children

pretending to read
the diary that contained

heavy metal roses
you sometimes see on

the tattoos of the
pathetic or at

grim shopping malls
covered in virgins.

Someday I plan
on moving back to

my native city
but for now,

I'm comfortable

sitting on top of
the chandelier

on the mountain
where I belong.

I Sleep So Well

I Sleep So Well

but it is totally ridic--
I mean ridiculous

that I should sleep so well. I should be
absolutely ashamed

of my beautiful sleeping habits.

There is no logical reason
that I should not be taking Ambien.

I think a Dr. should prescribe
some Ambien for me right now

even though I have absolutely
no problem sleeping.

I want someone to figure out
why I am so full of desire

and good sleep. Someone cut
me open. Someone give

me the best surgery
possible or prescribe me

a bottle of gemstone
Ambien because I am a red jewel.

I want you to give me
an antidepressant

right now even though
I have no depression

symptoms and on a scale
of one to ten my life

is raccoon.
Someone tell me how

you can dream your way
through the childhood

gates right into the sun.
If you don't tell me

what I want to hear
I'm going to forge

a prescription for Ambien
and try to get the

necessary sleep
I do not need.

Your dream of riding
on the back of a

tropical
fish is ridic.

Your dreams of
riding a tropical

fish through
a tropical snowstorm

are even more
unrealistic.

You are a very
unrealistic

person with
shitty dreams.

Your dreams are
impossibly

idiotic. I'm going
to prescribe you

Ambien.
I don't want you

to ever see
the moon.

I JUST ATE

I just ate a mini pack of Fritos.
Why?

Everything in our food chain is made of corn
so why eat corn on

purpose? I just ate a package of mini fish.
Why?

Everything in our food chain is made of
fish food nuggets and/ or flakes of

corn so why eat
fishy corn chips on purpose? Why?

I just ate my own anorexic flesh stick horns.
Why? Everything

in my childhood is like the body of sound
you hear at a theater

far underwater like the utmost
forest floor w/ velvet chairs and dog piles.

Do you ever think about wind farms?
I think about wind farms

when I think about Iowa
when I think about corn

and your abdomen
that is an abandonment theater

and sinking
like an orange

coin face through
the last chance of atmospheric conditions

(as in gnostic thoughts of leaving
everyone alone.)

Do you ever think about solar energy?
I think about solar energy when I think about

black semen
and astronomy.

Do you ever dream of eating the flesh
of a ripe Tiger Shark?

I do because
I'm indebted to the ocean.

EVERY FOOD IMAGINABLE CORN
hey, shoot, corn
not ear of, nightmare of
corn wrapped in hypnoerotic alarm clocks
an unmoving target like
there's something for everybody in my apartment

I look out my window
things look like they would close up
what shit affect all up in Charlie Chaplin
that imaginable corn gait master
with care he reads how you're driving
because you're driving
and where I sit

here, corn, have
I am all Chaplin
chaperoning so you can't not deny me mine
I never sat for days once
my prom theme was if you hold it in

Poem

I want to tell you this secret so bad.
I have been keeping it in
the privacy of my heirloom because

I thought it would be best to pass
it down through the Human Genome
Project. But then I reconsidered because

it's not mandatory to recreate
the species through..duh... fried chicken.

And then I reconsidered my position
on mating with the Human Genome Project.

And then I reconsidered my position
on the DNA of the Peoples of Iceland.

And then I reconsidered my position
on my heavy use of the word 'I' as

well as the fact that I write these poems so quickly.
Writing a poem quickly is unmotherly

and unwomanly. Well, maybe it's
okay for sluts.

I don't know. You decide.
I'm leaving it all to you because

I am passing everything down
like my fat cells sliding through

the body. I have been known to write
terrible poems about

anorexia and fat cells
and bones. That's all in my past though.

Have I been eating you ask I don't
know have you Sandra?

I microwaved the Styrofoam.
That is my secret intrusion. It was so globular

and funky. It was like an airplane
to Mars or Venus w/ tax documents

from 1994 and 1995 and 1998, 1992, 1973, 1943, 1964, 1975, 1954, 1955 and 1996.

They will tell you that toxic chemicals
get all over your hands and feet

when you cuddle the microwave but this
is disingenuous. You should cuddle

the microwave when you
are lonely and you are longing for

brief miscarriages.

They also will tell you other things
that are simply not true

or truisms--you decide.

Someone ask who "they" is now.
Someone get a priest in this room

immediately. Sometimes my
son asks for corn. He calls the peas

corn. He calls fried chicken
corn. I'm talking about my dead son

now. He calls every food imaginable
corn.

To The Prom

Today I am going to the prom. The prom is in a meat
Cellar in the prom.
I promise to prom
Properly. I have been going to the prom my

Whole life because I am fluffy. I owe you a candy bar
Because I have been going to the prom

Since I have been elderly. Today I am going Target to go to get the
Hair pins and fluffy towels and rag dolls so that I can be

Prepared to prom
You because my body is a meat cellar on
Principle. 1. Because I have ethics etc.
2. Because I am not wimpy like the Dalai Lama etc.
3. Because I am primp etc.

No wait: I am morally compromised because
I have been bleaching my car and also I have been calling
You to ask you out on a date

To the prom with me so please ask my arms and legs
And bleached truck.

I want to go to the prom with me call me.
Do you want to prom? The prom will
Be held at the Santa Monica Airport
In an airplane hangar or something like that.

The sun is like Morocco.
It is sheer tenacity.
This is what it’s like to be at the prom: you taste like Moroccan mint.

I have been chasing down Babyshambles for 6 months now.
There have been difficulties.
I think he has knowledge of my bleached truck.
I think he is going to rip it away from the sun like
This is a horizon or something.

DRAFT TO THE DOORBUSTERS

DRAFT TO THE DOORBUSTERS

   a year is like the price of time

   the draft of what I did

   surfboarded torts, or

   bad tudor fortress

   til the roadbed fort rusts

   gets back with my favorite

   's unreadied dongs
   Jeep heated baddest

   fur rotors for two trusted days

   Mr. Flatscreen at three fifty ready

   by four, forbade

   his turds rot, like so much

   aborted ford truss work, so

   much gar faced substrate

I'm Not On the Internet

I have been laughing for so many hours.
Just laughing and laughing.
I am so funny with laughter.
It is insane how much I laugh and the planet Mars.

I laugh when the planet Mars is around.
I laugh at Venus
because I'm laughing at Mars because of toddlers.

Toddlers are laughing at the laughter of Mars Bonfire
who wrote "Born to Be Wild"

and, yes, I sing that song A LOT.

I am wild with laughing trees
like the wilderness and elephants kept in captivity.

Elephants laugh when they are hit on the head.
So do tigers. So do hippos.
All zoo animals laugh and laugh at Mars and Venus.

There are so many zoos in my body.
I think you would be much happier if you were kept

in a gated community like
a Christmas ritual.

I love to laugh and dance
like medieval times and show girls.

There is so much inside of me waiting to emerge.
I am emergent like the phenomena of truth

and I fold everything into
my oceanic secrets.

I'M NOT ON THE INTERNET

 there's a gaunt, hella smart (but
still, her picture) Aunt Lille
exposing what does an effective
classroom library look like

you'll be surprised
unless you dream regularly
of muscoloskeletal cover letters

she's a manager
peak of wear
the dime you dare pick
from the lint

manages from months
from now a gypsy sea cow
but damn

I'm Not On the Internet

I am a Christmas people
with a crumpled horn because of my literary tenancy toward------>satisfaction?
I am FATHER TIME
wearing an orgasmic grass skirt like I'm Hawaiian or
Lilith Wayne Fair w/ Alanis 6 FOOT 7 FOOT
and mid-1990s funny dresses w/ marijuana---------------> bow ties?

I have a shih tzu. Do you want to name it?
It is my vagina.

I have a shih tzu.


I have a bonsai.
Do you want to name it?
It is my vagina.

I have a bonsai shih tzu vagina.
Do you want to name it?

I am intrigued.
I am intricate.
I have a Pomeranian.
I can be "cool" given the right----------------------------->parameters?????

I have a Pomeranian.
Do you want to name it?
I have a mini pom.