I place one cheerio in my mouth and suck my lips I look around and moan I chew no teeth another cheerio in my mouth I stir my hand around the silicone plate my right hand a fist in my left hand I pick it up the cheerios with index finger and thumb equally with the left and right the index fingers rub across the silicone I pull and it doesn’t give another cheerio I want out of my high chair another cheerio I use my small hands to push off I’m choking I have resolved the choke to push her off from the table a little bit more the high chair does not budge chewing slamming my hands moaning a small smile eyebrows raise a gaze I laugh at my ugly father some coughing though no choking another cheerio grabbed in a fist another cheerio a pincer grasp I’m mumbling I like the noises I make I reach for the milk I pull up the silicone mat I push a cheerio onto the floor I push a second cheerio onto the floor I’m looking for something oh I see a roaring noise roar I bring the silicone mat up down up I hold it in mid-air I flip it I chew it push the mat make mouth noises flip it one arm up one arm pulling the silicone mat moaning pushing a quick drink of milk a raspberry I flick the nipple I intimate as though I want milk I refuse the bottle I pull my father’s sweater the wrist the arm I poke I poke I poke I bite my father no teeth dang it cough I scratch at his new tattoo scratch right hand left hand left hand scream scratch my father pulls his hand away I reach for the water am I drinking I’m drinking I pull the straw from the silicone cup and gag myself I reach for the silicone cup spill it across the table the water drips slowly from a small hole that has been inverted spin the bottle unintentionally I want water do you want water I drink from the bottle like a big girl I retrieve the cap from my father I groan into the silicone cap I push air and vague sounds from my throat I chew the silicone cap some more no teeth I drop the silicone cap on the floor more water drunk most swallowed some dribble down my chin
one in three questions is serious two are small hands grasping in the wet-dark for salinized water
hewn stone or a mustache arriving at customs before a tour of the great pyramids of vegas
i am obsessed through collage but that’s behind him now
a flashlight / in a closet / at the bottom / of the aegean sea
You’re a nag. You’re a liar. You’re lazy. You’re selfish. You’re deluded. Stop wasting my time.
he is a craftsman with beautiful rough hands full of calluses like truth with crete between his team has prepared marketing collateral and sand fires for every possible occasion
If you don’t like it, you can leave.
in fact i think you should go freshly shaven chest like a great royal crest give the world what it so depressingly craves space
in its arms this generation bears time or place drowning my hands around its neck long and slender surrender
Everyone agrees with me.
trees sorting themselves below birds
You should be ashamed of yourself.
great figures inconceivable if not for sky
I don’t need you, you need me.
nothing neat left in this moved-on world
After all I have done for you, this is the thanks I get?
i don’t want to do your work do you want to do your work work is screaming at the dog a terrible person who can’t be bothered with other people the dog lays there right there her allergies her anxieties on the leafy greens and onionskin and cries not at me she’s a good girl at the baby nursing on her belly little heart beating so fast i don’t want to think of the hummingbird her fragility her natural work her glitter where’s my glitter there she is right there
A hate passed across generations over borders an ex-vast desert
here
a black wall scars the landscape i do not know what i am in it
what it gives me destroys me i do not need it not today not tomorrow desirous alien interior
crown fortune its endless skull walk exposes the delirious face grabbing and shaking-down of who or what anymore and goes away from the island dune with a tavern of warm milk and upside-down memory of friends and if a place is too familiar it removes its visitors like certain meteors from near constant travel i stand at the immense black wall and scream in wind at the constructing god
here as in under my feet here sheathed in goat leather as in affronting here as in without fear of description discipline or performance
idiot rush at the gold farm gods open your terrorist wallet trap the house of esplanade and swallow god
black camel mahler stops death can be a poem he didn’t have to leave though i demanded it with my hands and bleak words i hoped anyone could understand the desert media or what remained drew up plans my intentions my privilege like a deep wind-up across sand and i wonder how he’d bred a modern aesthetic echo the private world of containing wishes: no black river neon bootleg nothing ashamed of … as a poet i dream about him buried deep in the sand in the lungs in the lugs
deep enough to have had enough of other people’s worlds woke up screaming bronica barbacoa bankrate like that would fix anything and here i am the white noise cresting the horizon she said looking back one final time
and beach dragged back hands intracoastal churning snatch from impossible tides certain hopeful loneliness imposed the bodies of others i thought i saw an iguana at the gates swung open manna bornfrom a factory i scratch the wall first with stones and dried plant matter and stones then fingers beguiling consistent
fingers bleed wall remains black black black
through travel we charge the scene a belanced knight tilting at god these innersee references insufficiently sophisticated inflicted upon us by lesser
the job of an arrow is to brand the world what puts the reader to sleep — that is you to sleep — passes for a story between hands the simultaneous wall do you understand do you have this inside you?
the sky above the city is the noun constantly reintegrating parameters these are the questions made obvious against a photograph but what about the outreach the compassion the drama of it all otto had the look of a killer big bald head dirty lederhosen someone nearby spinning out the color of green apples big black eyes quiet let his friend do all the talking not the type to confuse numbers for bugs (or vice versa) had many famous friends now none
c. 1400, “make impure by admixture,” from Medieval Latin sophisticatus, past participle of sophisticare (see sophistication). From c. 1600 as “corrupt, delude by sophistry;” from 1796 as “deprive of simplicity.” Related: Sophisticated; sophisticating. As a noun meaning “sophisticated person” from 1921.
Poem Can’t Defend Itself
they are gone out / they are beautiful / they are never enough
DESPITE a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up around me a community rises up rises up rises up DESPITE i sink into community into community into community rises up around me around me around me a round me a rondo a nonce an ounce of community in my pocket a pound of trounce in my hand a ton of electronics on my back DESPITE a promise to tend to the garden to the garden to the garden tend to tendencies tenderly a garden a garden a garden worth guarding tenderly a community DESPITE rising up around a ton of electronics tenderly gardening my back DESPITE an ounce of rondo in my pocket
Ounce of Rondeau
you ask yourself: is the next minute enough? enough to pull you into them? to keep you there enough? is its plurality of negations enough to keep you reading forever? independent of the men in caskets we come to the incinerator or from the incinerator — there’s a world through this door
poetic form necessitates a poetics of absence less attitude more altitude reality holding your hand we walk backwards down a fall of steps individualism into the chopper i wrote myself a letter in sand no i will write myself a letter in sand no i must have forgotten not writing it with precocious expectations of a strong handsome noun on my knees at the wall with obscure eyes the letter didn’t say west of here is a nice mass grave and east of here is blue smoke of otto more violence more opiate i wake up wanting
survive make friends at the inn at columbia tell stories
whenever i hold my child the hair on my body turns white noise white heart welcome to the world it’s just me you’re ok oh my god you’re ok
Ounce of Zuihitsu
the moon of thicknesses and texture of papers one for photo one for text quality absorption two i’s a k and a p pile high like huey dewey and louie in a trench coat attempting to purchase pornography or an assault rifle or enriched uranium galk the image is gone he’s piloted guys chariots into the sun melted melted axle horse and hope alike the image has dispersed the boy my stand-in meditates on his describing destruction and finds opportunity for new life to bathe its hot fault lines there’s an emoji for that the old phrase goes
when i lift a palm-full of warm sand i feel it coursing through my hand though i see it still in my fingers the sense receptors haunt the skin wrapped around muscle bone breath the warmth of the sand the atmosphere of it of them our misunderstanding and inflate with metaphysical charm surreal pleasure undeniable expression the inward experience of what kind of story is this story
the menu at the storm is written in an alien language that looks like begging a stranger to buy your underage-self violence and sounds like the opiate state protecting your fragile body on offer are the powerful horses of a new god
I don’t know how else to tell you there are problems with what little soil remains problems with what little oil remains problems with the spoiled chaos of which there is plenty the dog-boys expect one in every tribe to make a mistake i put the beginning at the end and pray
c. 1300, despit (n.) “contemptuous challenge, defiance; act designed to insult or humiliate someone;” mid-14c., “scorn, contempt,” from Old French despit (12c., Modern French dépit), from Latin despectus “a looking down on, scorn, contempt,” from past participle of despicere “look down on, scorn,” from de “down” (see de-) + spicere/specere “to look at” (from PIE root *spek- “to observe”).
The prepositional sense “notwithstanding” (early 15c.) is short for in despite of “in defiance or contempt of” (c. 1300), a loan-translation of Anglo-French en despit de “in contempt of.” It almost became despight during the 16c. spelling reform.
Blacking Thee Impossible Art
some men are large others are sharks but all men have their cut coming what price what playing harmony what origins hungry submissions layered to the ceiling like dried newspaper waits for spark a wide lens saturation cranked creamed laughing fringes pissed the windgreens that fill sinuses this is indirect incorrect take the first viola on your right and go straight on til the measuring tape boils oh see can you say it like he sees it will you allow the worries to tell you no wrestling nude in the sun people blacken me blacking thee impossible art life i’ll tell it straight no surface artifact artifact camera aims his gun at the sun a diagonal field sailing memories the means to be an artist dearest exponent YES! i like top ten art as much as the next guy but here in the desert there’s only survival
i don’t want to hurt people that’s the point i guess jane the fried of the west said the best you scream when you know jane didn’t say that i said that no not that even i’ve acquired it put it in my pocket like a write of passport it was born here what do you want from me screaming burnt hair test the limits of the dog-boys laying there depressed dried out next to their dreams of milk next to a soundscape of rolled up death that gives way to the blackened mind
in the wallet of the last quarter century don’t know how to spend it don’t know that if we ever will
the data bears this out the data proves popularity is a marauder straddling a spreadsheet from station to station the numbers are bright and clear as the moon ticked on the ocean wall in chalk the countryside evaporated by nuclear strike like a crow like a crown like a clown from the diving board insert yourself here transfigure possibility and cliche
the men he met at the wall and they were always men displayed no dedication to the pilgrimage no ambition to elide its infinity they plant their feet in the hot sand and shed blood an ear upon a pedestal this masculine beauty
so we waited seven years anymore how do you experience cold it’s not cold to be uncomfortable would it even register as cold or just certainly not a breeze a sensation experience an external sensation register as different from in your belly proximity to celebrity on this the final day of the final april
what is this crocus trampled inconvenient bottom boot beside the dog-boys’ leftovers in the sun warning our flesh some listen some tilt listen i’m thirty seven trying to get to the under of this big wide doing so far so guilty so unwinged by the mage or the architect or god the builder send me a picture of there
“Frustration has become a key response to certain recent art. Frustration because the viewer is looking for a complete “idea” and is foiled. The notion of completion (i.e., self-containment) is at fault.”*
Mel Bochner
March 2021 — A vast sucking sound invades my consciousness even god dies many men are god over and over again and again confusing the prophecy smile with the pissing of one’s pants horrifying child reach down into the worksheet subconscious and pray for us — reader and read — spit the stuff of life into the dry bed of our hair
Herd of wishes tiktok cartwheeling in the 2021 pandemic rain
Look out now into the field of the poem:
An invasive, patriotic pan into an urbane shopping center in praise of everything average fire from the gods every popular poem of the last 400 years a streetcar sunrise eventually finds time to name check chicory and sage this one begins with blood moat pikeways spectacular arguments theory of riot like a match/strike and riot literary technique milk as cologne rot as physique reason generates contradictions being the moment of fixity decaying protest protein establishes work as crucible
“When it examined a work of art, materialist criticism was accustomed to ask how that work stood in relation to the social relationships of production of its time. That is an important question. But also a very difficult one.”
Walter Benjamin
My Pietà
Encyclopaedia Logica negatively rational complications of basic machine translation abstracts from the fact that every few days I dream about the staten island ferry terminal — never the ferry — cavernous poisoned with workers worriers and weasels red corona around time’s neat little rows like
I’ve taken the ladies heaped on our generation’s greatest writers and turned them first to dust then to paste then tipped in my photos look at us here in the margins singing out loud like
With a shark knife this isn’t magic but middlebrow slight of hand I hollow out the differences between things the car is always parked comically far from the party my hands are always full of papers I hope will contain valuable information my shoes are too big no one likes me I am alone my mode is survival shame let’s do the time warp like
Alive on the internet baby snails rabid preteens snapback starter caps wreathed in mycelium the message is clear get ready to floss billboards are no longer optional avon barksdale whistles like
The results of a promising life come back negative so the reader fingers across coarse vellum begins to trace the source of the information back to its etymological roots stainless steel web of memory no one will rent to a poet the dog punishes the cat anymore for being slow small and weak captain communism strikes again like
How many cows have to die after climbing into a tight high attic — red yellow green blue pink — ALL OF THEM the inscription reads SLEEVE NOT CUP followed by an 11 digit phone number not magic but martial disorder I was just looking for the bathroom but he was an entertainer with a high iq i know boo-hoo no one has said anything good about me though memory is incomplete and what is complete is corrupt like
Hallucination as savior my Pietà of language crumpled but full of etymological life in arms I watched the four, there, in the delicate black corner sprout wings no flight but possibility and strange other outcast the deep uncontemplated darkness of the eye cries like
Market Bug (Rhythmic Chirping)
I can’t stop repeating the words astra and zeneca like an incantation to our collective effigy is it big enough this elegy said brave but meant careless mad dissolving head the poets like gruesome biblical angels want what’s best for it/god
For us the hotel staff provided drugs and provided thousands of pounds of rooms but no hallways no keys the elevator was controlled from the destination floor hooligans frequently mashed the nauseous fast button mother and the first man were there Adam cut the safety line mother watched
The poet chirps rhythmically yes I let the dog bite me I ask the influencers what do you do for money and get no reply bite chomp rip stomp I mostly think about a long vacation one year to justify who I am or was meant to be a lie a list a liar a black market bug electric fingertips the kind of person who doesn’t as vocation
Og-noid the Flagrant
All we heart have beat breath hearth and got here we turn to need & formalism I’d rather buy it cheap than learn it hard Og-noid the flagrant turns toward the busy sub on main street and aims his psychosexual power What he attempts to resist what I also attempt to resist is easiness how gorgeous the hands of the clock pointing at nothing I dream of vesuvius fists against sex workers impotent rage of soldiers of consequence ponytailed picasso woman’s blood in steerage on a stream ship from Italy on canvas bills on florescent future oh heavenly heart welcome to New Jersey
The child quits as the sun provokes birds from wherever into the rhododendron below an eastern cottontail and just about a diesel truck delivers a box full of lithium ion batteries every cow walks around with its leather milk and beef eyes for the buzzards discarded bits for tossing into the dog’s bowl companionship it is spring not a symbol of spring you’ll remember this haircut long after I’m dead
We let things die and eat our friends and family
Every photo ever captured contains at least one suspect. A photo of a fish contains suspect of fisherman. A photo of mountain contains first ascender. A photo captured by code contains its coder. Every actual moment in a river is success, every photo is frustration of that river.
—
*”Frustration has become a key response to certain recent art. Frustration because the viewer is looking for a complete “idea” and is foiled. The notion of completion (i.e., self-containment) is at fault. What is thought and what is experienced continually replace each other. Nothing reveals itself without at the same time concealing something else. The concealed is the source of thought. And thought, which we hoped to use to “fill in the gaps,” is in itself bottomless or … incomplete. So every work is only the residue of thought’s attempt to simultaneously close itself up and its frustration at not being able to do so. The artwork, whatever “form” it might take, is the visible center of an axis connecting intention and disappointment.”
revivified cicadas end dormancy fans outside the garden at night saying the stars hark an advertisement for more stories from today’s affronted vases flank new eliminations of doe queens of canceled revenue a screenshot of the dead lie three men inside a high rate of speed burn cash as others stay grand at kill station & terminal statistics colorized cells from an oyster of city and state support us or die (repeat)
