Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer
I think he might’ve been our only decent teacher
Getting older makes it harder to remember we are our only saviors
We’re gonna build something, this summer
— The Hold Steady, Constructive Summer
“For either to have expressed desire, to have / reached, would have been to offer the object of desire // power. It could not be done.” Frank Bidart
let me tell you a secret:
i’ve discovered something
in the conveniences of
mass consequence to ensure
mine would continue to bear
neutral
green leather black light
pitches back
leather clutch discovers light black
leather
clutch discovers
something wild
rushing in
cow sacrifices its skin to ensure mine
the new world bears
a neutral green light black leather
rolls back
leather pitches back leatherette that
participation with the fender of
the sacrifices
of
the sun and squeezes
loud lives
conveniences of a motorcycle
what i mean to say is
the convenience of the barking
bike living alive and dies
leather
pitches backwards to
stay here
“There was a blue rug on the floor of her room, one chair, one chest, and a narrow bed. Stockings hung in the bathroom. A curious luminosity from the garden, where a lush red magnolia peeked in through an open shutter. Sometimes at dawn the gulls would come and walk busily about on her windowsills, jerking their little bodies like pigeons in sunlight. She began undressing immediately, while he murmured stray strands of information in warning tones, about the cellular panic soon to inundate the world. ‘Madness. It’s pure madness. They’ve broken the locking system which gives form to matter… My dear Esmerelda, they are about to overthrow the principle of creation itself, dissolve the lovely structured essences of nature until only chaos prevails. ‘” from “Antlers in the Treetops” by Ron Padgett and Tom Veitch
dead resting ice daily and loved you sleep without words will all the mottles claim staying did nothing about straying without all the uncontrollable head space beside takeout ambulance words will the large black supple magazines sunglass in the night sun kabloom swiftly he needs to know how small is this husbandry in the supermodels brain of god it is not dependable all this blue flailing for medicine beef commercial value? what quaint earnest wanting to survive as one of my ears my ass into the thought's claim it's intensely leashed with expensive exception action i couldn't have known how i would act in the future tense new paltz then as three-headed corporal air perpetual tumble machine between car frame & car frame the fragmentalist's dead of tiredness
a brazilian mountain top
bonnie parker’s three-headed snake ring
a large black shirt and
a medium grey shirt because
i don’t know how big i
am anymore
“They fed the roots, / climbed through its leaves / to soak in sunlight … / and so, she told me, / I can see.” Tyehimba Jess
for Paul Beatty
they clean kotten awa break apart appear naked especially intelligence of the moon identifies dance i am a poor rabbit if we killed enjambment be a rabbit skinned in my beggar's heart dirty in kotten awa break apart appear glowing in top flight pleasure yourself a moment of corrective punishment waking all the moon identities dance the dance of i am a poor what if we killed enjambments be a hare in my beggar's heart dashed again in kotten awa break apart appear glowing in the news? — no deceit in my beggar's heart made whole in kotten awa then break apart
by election amphor ice multiplicity polaris jail amphora whit north star scorcher bailiff nibble horse race willemite slab sonneteer imbroglio house coal black truss nymph triviality seed pearl suspicion youthful lot alabar alabar nibble horror scale sizzle amendment charlatan chord cost d scruple nuisance c minor coğazköy council of chalcedon skyscraper felony grumbleful megalopolis scorcher sword extremote in a snit
to rescue to operate on
the marks of infinity to be
transcended against one's will
time rubbed into lather
for your opponent every deck
underhanded or made gape
i'm less
jorie grammatically
buys a vowel
your immediate opportunity tomorrow
fidget spinner i promise
it's not you it's me this working problem has
your poem
wants to be bleach with its brief
heavy handed whitening as declension
suicide i'm still
novice be let bezos-loose
keep it just write deep mystery
new tooth shapes become octuplets
holding hands ripe bipedal feelings
unbruised "skin the concerned"-essential
is this how surprise
tastes? great
all my new deepstate teeth
shaping edits
a poem but
it has a point: threatening
your own image/experience of the stuff
and when i wouldn't make your art form
how weird
to be bleached
on the castle keep
for posterity
“In using a certain expression to refer someone to something, you are trying to get them, via the fact that you are using that expression, to think of it as what you intend them to think of.” from Kent Bach’s “What Does it Take to Refer?”
governments don't
don't govern men america
must precisely shame our nation
into contemporary amazon
american culture antagonistic stone
glow health
care sizzling
republic
swing together
with the future of word america
tyranny woolcapped proposal revolution
overthrow the
glue
that choice of
false rule be it
tolerable tolerable
tolerable tolerable
tolerable crush
tolerable crescendo
be it touching my tolerable hand