For Rocco
Acid bark of petroleum too waste imagine never overhanging the city snake colossal hiss kisses armed icon retching sky too on feasting dawn i at the heart regret ever in this sour game the chaplain’s ten point star strewn too scenes too entertain too stretch too reflex too glacier too gamble too gone tossed too faithful.
god is
an alligator white
dunce cap common
supernatural they are kind
of fragile wicked mother
i said i don’t know you
reveal your in
cantatory power
vanishes soon of dawn
alligator called
maeve anything is yours
big smile looking
at leaves
going around
your big breath rattling
every baby born after
june 07
confused about cost and course
are you wind wisened
carried from child
to child in red eyes
we haven’t slept
for weeks drink
some of this
we need to talk
blockchain saprophyte
you imagine
not wanting to die
at cost
suddenly his girl
friend her
cadillac mania
smoldering munitions
return from orbit
burn bump and birthright debased
marlboro of denial
indifferent save a dream
david shields trashes
my bike the hourlies
and the salary men
hide like armor
ed doors
between you and i
and me confusing
memory with money
untold nights buzzing spent
the gin flower in my heart
explodes
killing myself
there’s nothing
i want more
than desire
be alive 🍼
see my alligator
grow up i was 14
or 15 didn’t know anything
in lieu of replication error
chomped a personality
by liquor light 🥃
and it worked
at immense cost
20 years
pry open my skull 💀
exorcise the inadequate
physical ruins of love 🫀
collapsed by mid-morning
one suddenly
recognizes
at immense cost
the crushing power
of Their jaw 🐊
dear oblivion
i hear you
shredding bone
in the golden
place
salivating
somewhere
unknowable
a man
grills
meat
a child
screams
what i mean to say
is this, dear oblivion:
i remember
the littoral darkness
of the rising afternoon
the light
never
having
been
enough
dear oblivion
i hear you
crawling away
for mouths. remember the taste of the burning dollar bill, the mossy ember. the inhale.
meant it differently than the other, but they were both beautiful men with spouts
one poet said, and then as if in response: charnel house, said another. one
search from time to time. in the dark off-ness, what does one find? charnel house
it was somehow meditation. felt nothing searched. still search. we still
die. later, on holly street, i used my hands to break plates against the wall and
why not others were doing it and if a man can — again, why not? and i did not
in relation to every man — an impossible task. when i was thirteen i did a thing because
that makes them special. i of course mean me, but think about my self
state of things the big ones derivative in their not caring much about anything;
i interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to wonder about the current
thoughtless deference to free men swimming by
who mostly don’t—though sometimes must—
respect the point of exclamation! / part and not part
[sirens wail] [she moans]
bean can and bottle top; variable dimensions
are we talking about the made-thing or the making-thing
drifts into reverie
bamoun duala ewondo gunpowder
igbo kikongo lingala yoruba sango twi
both; i am the rooftop bar
i am the school of fish
basking on the sidewalk; red neon
no tricks; implicated lion; times square
i needed a title so i stole one
i needed an image so i stole one
i needed a poem so i stole one
words phrases and acronyms
we know ied compression of language
tetric choices lean against acid blonde
miniskirt robed in telephone pole
we imagine dirt lipped centrifuge hands
connected behind cross-shaped crane
scrapes human tissue cloudless sky
I am not even vaguely interested,
though for a quarter I could be.
I was not allowed to move but when my leg went dead
I cheered it on in the first place.
When they whisper they ought to wear a lead vest.
Their lips look like personified oysters.
When they shout it is usually addressed
to the dead body who owned it before us.
We can safely assume one of them is born
every minute of the day.
When my rabbit ran away it was a great relief.
I could not say so—who would understand?—
So I cried for a week.
Source: Ruefle, Mary. “When Adults Talk.” Selected Poems. Seattle: Wave Books, 2011. Print.
subtle white clover
yields at dawn
shifting cubes of light
pliant suburban lawn
chase and repoussé
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but only therapists remain
and projected to have
no metaphors i am thinking
the impossibly large brick school building
the phone call and days ago
holding no metaphors
i am thinking about what i asked her
in first grade the therapist holds
the fragile invulnerable dictionary
spasms outside the hand and apologizing
about the boy i was
how my motherapist and days ago
holding spasms
outside this thinking exercise writing about
the fragile invulnerable world
about the boy
the impossibly large therapist
projected toward me
dazzle in bayonne
them i
spot the battleship a
brave
thing in me
but
better in college
baionnette
bayonne
diminutive bayon
i am a
human who
sits unlike a trough
purchased long at
the
academic front leaking
a long narrow open container
for animals
to eat or drink
out of
control
frightens
thought
thread-eye
rarely painted red