>For K

>Where hides the walk’s invasive math he died

eyeless
now there dead
nothing in focus he forges on
rallying for the market farsighted
feathers nod deeply know what he knows
there each should remain
though bite by bite dim eyes
follow a weathered path from the crawling sun
ten of them at least to share, share
what they found that Crow could spare.

>Untamed Fig

>Pulled flat like confectioners’ sugar

settled by a light low wind one leg kicks

over the futon’s shoulder
drops beside yr prophesy like a body
beneath the stars
you lured in crickets laughing
they’re home under the untamed fig
all night you refuse his sweet song
but pluck and pluck and smiling pluck.

>For My Daughter

>Imperfect mythologies

swallow studied now bitter
sweet waves from where
Gone missing Dante’s crunch
no accounting footprints in ash or
Chaucer his village
Proletariat and idiots beating
rice paddies thigh high
water syrupy with snakes
Jain my daughter
her child Maude
just fallen
Out of style again
in a chrome stroller
Jain of no command
Wishes many things
misses her father
will she know
The Jews cover their heads
the rich eclipse their eyes
I wore a circle on a chain
Rippling musculature black
rivers crashbang cheekbones
I wore a circle on a chain
Broadcast 9mm DAO
isolation blue hirsute
sea moss a society of
& afloat on a slither
bullets ripple unrung
what wild purple figs
Everything is out of sequence
i have made the world this way for
you
Are my
Daughter
my god
Daughter gone now lost
to her own precious only
biology etymology tautology
History Grand Daughter
no traceable sniff no sugar
the R from 53rd Street to White Hall
My own enjambment bored
beating endstops.

>waiting room #1 / blah blah panic

>

Waiting Room #1

transfixed by me-ness

the uniformity of actualization
“Represent us! Dance our dance!
These here our potholes
Need your attention, now!
You may ignore the other
(he is
(she is
Not our handicap, nor is
(he
(she
Spread upon our 12-grain bread
Hand us that knife, and be prompt!”
Panic

There’s no reason to panic
keep yr heart, bottle
& ball yr fists, now what to do but
explode, uncoil, strike
venom on this child’s tongue
Do not panic, do not
it’s more like a bite
now-then curl up,
let the screaming circulate
none of the smallest will survive.

>demoralize, train song

>i always begin with i

keep off immortalize
slow hands in the dark
red eyes type a mouse
quivering mouth, i don’t
want to begin with, i
what is on your teeth?
where might i go today? i
know how to get there.
the shoes with the weathered stitch
i do not want to immortalize you, i
let the sand swallow you, the sand
must forget you, move on now, to where
yr new black hat round rolling rocks
underfoot whimpering glass from the sea
a nagging, louder, louder louder
second hand, Bach rising from the dark
the senses’ curtain falling into the bay
i crave, i crave, i
crawl, i demand i
immortalize only i

>Ms. Dog

>Key is justify nothing &

I’ve learned from living here
Harden yourself but don’t
Be bull-headed, I know poetry
& my art will spit in yr face
Surprise! It’s poison! Or
It drips. Either accomplishes
My task: I know pantoum,
Villanelle, sonnet-sad phrases
I know Ms. Dog, blood running
From her fingertips, jumped
To her death to save her art
Which is not my art.
Most, Anne included, do not make it
Over the ledge
Without a field of daffodils
Filled with cotton gloves
For real
The only thing
Worth dreams
Is brick
Stacked
Snake-high
Over the river.
That’s a wall, That’s a bridge
If
A cigar can be a cigar
Then
Anything at all can be a wall
Logic and ledges meet here, where
Ill-tipped teeth scoff at common parlance
Knocking fingers idolized in railcars
In hollow things floating down stream
The black kid beating the sugary silence with his lips.
Here the dream meets what it is not
And the wall is just a ledge
Again
The flowers are yellow there and there
And there, but not
And
I don’t remember anything rhyme
Where did, what did mother teach?
There is no reason to spit
May I call this afraid?
My back to the washed cave wall
Here there are no drawings or songs
Cities or falls, there are daffodils implied
Just inside the suns comport
But
The meaning of pastoral, ode wanders
That we unlearn
and that and that, that
Our heads swing wildly
Again
Beasts beyond chalky thought
We emerge hot and fast, redouble
Our thousand eyes blast the horizon
Cracking, baked beasts
Ledgeless & so far from Anne, now
Mired in an hour of night
We dare not describe thick, scum-like
The river beside out home does not replenish
It is a bridge, it is a wall, it is a bridge
It is the many hands of a friend, it is
toe-to-heel, toe-to-heel, it is curling
about the bed we share, just once for an old friend
and then, head swinging wildly, shakes off a dream.

>Stealing from Macy’s

>JS is write teacher

to. Loosen up! That’s it
Now, associate thought
with one day when i was
a kid i found a blue
dis. What really words
Can do how they patter
like rain in my hands, cool
become hottt drops in a real
panthers bound to catch
thr. Patterns of loss cracked
Something will dance where
the air gets in. I’m blind
from punishing my eyes image
-eyes-
the air get sin, rottten
tee. The best we can do
Eponymous, lasting handsome
hands fault line-e-eye closed
-in-
finally we feel what we want
drizzle detritus now that’s loose!

>I’ve Eaten Nothing

>Where is our future

If you keep giving up
I brush the rock, new fingers
inhale, digest dirt under our bed
stop writing bad checks
brought my looking-glass to the bank
bounced the tiny yellow ball off every
wall ceiling floor in our progressively
larger black room
cut the crud from gummy sneaker soles
Every nut’s cracked open now
I’ve eaten nothing to see
Breathless so long on the stage
under the cheap seats
at the Opera House (Which must orbit, it must!)
Catch packs of penguins trapped at the zoo
without the foggiest clue what to do
the chord in your eyes
humless and numb
the hammer hysterical abseil
willing so-willing among eyes
swept back
like patterns pattering like
“Everything will be okay, I promise,” … “Yes, I promise.”
And then sound
brush over rock
steady breath
blue ink.

>The Point

>is that climbing a rock

will eventually put you at odds
with gravity, hand crushed inside
an infinitely loving mother’s, you
reach a blood-shaped moment
where grinning fatality sticks and bops
the dry, prickly seed cowardice
rams down your throat, and without
justification but cold stretch toward
the nobler path. the attacking face.
The point
is to command advice
and shove it up your lover’s ass.