Monday, February 28, 2011

ode to politics in america

Whoa boy, don't you think
there might be an easier way to get a subscription
to Time Magazine? There's always the
conscription of services from newspapermen
of a different age: the space age
or the nuclear arms race
would set the table straight.
Porkpie hat skinny black tie short pants
would work but you just want the magazine
not the swimsuit issue, which they don't do
in Time anyhow, no boobies in Time,
just political crimes new lies
new reports on the possible litigation
of doobies, got lots of pattern recognition
from them border stalkin rednecks
and no reason not to, neither
-- Goddamn
sometimes, I wish I was born a Canadian.

Friday, February 25, 2011

the right stall

Can a man in the toilet transcend?
The bathroom pulls dignity groundward,
pulls emotion through pipes
that lead to assholes, ever downward,
ever bowlward,
ever toward the awkward word,
if someone were to open your stall
mid-business - the slapping of hands
down to cover the balls - and the importance,
of choosing the right stall
and then, if that's impossible,
not checking the length of other men's missiles.
But what of my question? Is it possible
to see heaven whilst shooting yellow piss
into a urinal? No. How about shitting?
Prolonged sitting at the tribunal permits a book.
A book permits the momentary look at God
provided it's great shiterature;
God smiles. God nods, waves,
and sunshine bursts right through the ass!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

not as infinite as

Your drinking too much
is not as glamorous as they (the poets) thought (it)you was,

not as funny as
sitting in the middle of the road despite the approaching car

may be, Jetta though it is, haha-ing as a speeding train,
not even as effective as your going guts over brains

over barbed wire over depleted phone access
to friends and friend and ladyfriend you couldn't have

last winter, or previous winter, allwinters
exist in a contiguous line

of damning anti-poetry, not as infinite
as answering machines may be

when you are as sorry for yourself as
you are now, a dream in a loop

about doing maths, eating pi

Monday, February 21, 2011

dream a beautiful leap

Dream of carrying a letter to Switzerland.
Go ahead. Climb the Alps,
write your own Mont Blanc,
comb your fingers through her hair.
After everything that will have passed
in those dark spates your faith
can barely think of.
Passion does not give out
so quick as you think
or fear

(the turning toward the car door,
silence that stabs the gut as it spreads,
the goring dull roar of boredom)

no: The sick winters have gone;
her blonde hair braided
will become the wind
winnowing your inner ear, a
bracing snow; a blind leap
into the sheer
steep light of the unknown.


Sunday, February 20, 2011

Love is
the song
we sing
even if we
can't expect
to receive

Saturday, February 19, 2011

questions

I do not know when I became a stranger
to you. The amniotic fluid
glistened on my skin
so new in the first moment we met.

Did time blossom for you then?
Did my eyes see you?
Did an angel sing in your ear that this
flesh of your flesh
was now your son?

With my first scream the world must have
crushed in around you like water
bursting through a dam.

Was I strange to you then
as I am strange to you now?
Did we, could we have ever
known each other?

You were a child's giant,
bearded friend.

selva oscura

In the selva oscura,
I made peace with my scarlet cardigan sweater
and buried my dog Sam in the river-bottom sand.
I wrapped him up, buttoned all five buttons
around his brown fur body, fixed
his ears when they flopped inside out.
I dug out the hole
with my own two hands. Then,
in my great red plastic canoe
I paddled down river and left him.
The woods swallowed us
after I closed his eyes.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

overcoat

Sometimes they dragged his body through the wheat
mostly when the field was covered in eighteen
or more inches of snow.
The red coat he wore turned to ice,
then his body and it became one.

Even after his coworkers and friends were done
and he thawed out a bit,
body and red coat were still one.
The snow receded, they used his feet
to dig the hole
and then his body went into the ground:
body, blood, overcoat, one.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

lolcats

I gyrated among the tomcats,
the tawny cats, the lady cats,
and I waited for them to hang
my bait above me, not a carrot
but rather a steak
on a hook
not a string.
It stung. I was that lonely. And.
Wasn't a cat. Couldn't catch a break.
The king of cats wore a turban
and the queen wore a shroud.
I drank beer from a pitcher
and sure as hell wasn't proud.
The music got louder and louder;
the cat orgy filled the room with sounds
of rude laughter from those at home
watching with their computers, click
by click and youtubing
laughter the cats enjoyed as they prowled
from sexual partner to cat-hookers
they paid in pale pink catnip
and dirty looks, feigned ambivalence
and unfeigned apathy. And I thought:
with these kids if you can't not give a shit
then you're probably doing it right.


Sunday, February 13, 2011

the movement of diapers

I write you not a poem of torque
and squalor, a poem
to turn the inside of your asshole
into a beautiful riviera,
a rushing woosh of intestine-cleaning,
bowel-moving beauty: what then
do I do? I write for you
a poem of nothing: no squalor,
dolor, tragedy, or even masturbatory
depth of self. I write a poem
of niceness: much shit
and much repetition, almost suitable
for insatiable toilet fodder
(much like cannon fodder)
but not quite, nope: a poem
for your educated liberal intuition
it treats you well, sits you down
on the seat with a thin-paper-disease
preventing-protective-coating
and says: "Shit you out
all your fears and depressing thoughts,
all your disobedient parents, children that pout,
your balding dog, old folks (especially the old folks
who've made the movement of diapers,
more, worse shit and less knowledge
of the shit than newborn children)
and flush and wipe and flush and wipe and flush;
you will then have made
the movement of the poem, O
knights and knightesses of the faithhood,
but come back, you! Your constipation's
dilation must be alleviated (even soothed);
dictated, not beautified -that's not
what toilets are most useful for.

Friday, February 4, 2011

in response to a new york times article on "sustainable relationships"

1

Once I spoke to you about the sacred art of ball-throwing. Now,
I bury every depressing thought
in the underside of your brain
and close the coffin
of your spine
like a book.


2

I drove west through the red dirt oceans
for three days just to get here.
I drank from a pothole:
I failed to purchase a pot (at Wal-Mart)
so the hole held some things
holes are not meant to hold.
Some things in the water
made it bad for drinking:
Rogue amoebas. Tar. Bird shit.

Some things without etymological roots.
Come down on routes not
made from words - like my pain - not from words,
not from you either, but drilled in you
while I drill, as the New York Times tells me
I should drill, for self-expansion, for my own
colony:
For my own damnable happiness:
If I can't find sustenance in you
or your body
then I'm just not digging deep enough.


3

There are some things in the water.
Dead raccoons. Hairs from the bellies
of dead possums.
Help me.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

travel books

I could write a travel book about Omaha
in under an hour.

No one's been there,
or lives there,
or for God's sake
is going there.

I'll just lean me
back and take a hack.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

someone has a birthday this week, and this is for her!

Laura,

you know how a good meal
really hits the spot?

Real good-like?
Like when I think of good fun:

fried chicken with gravy;
or something (good) for you:

stir-fry with tofu, mushrooms,
a dish with pine-nuts,

purple-black balsamic vinaigrette;
or sprouts.

Well, in other words - you should know
what I know:

You hit the spot, sweetheart.