Dal verde immarcescibile della canfora
due note, un intervallo di terza maggiore.
Il cucco, non la civetta, ti dissi; ma intanto, di scatto,
tu avevi spinto l’acceleratore.
Tag: poets
wikipedia poem, no. 14
“…of their surroundings’n
their phones
and
tablets until their phones
and pointed it acrossed texting and
nodody sees this. Thefakeeson of
their phones.
“These weren’t concealed movements—the
gun is
very clear,” said the District Attorney
in an
apparently random
encounter.
“very clear,” said the District Attorney. “These
weren’t concealed
movements—the
dozens of their
phones.”
morning, 040820130548
Total darkness, like youth
is a beast to be eliminated.
Dread beauty crawling east
across county lines, red
ripped hands and ragged knees.
A thought here, dilated in the past:
Her fading eyes swipe at the horizon
Like the loose threat of a rising sun.
One Long Fucking Question for Michael Robbins
What I’ve learned about long walks of course
Was taught by the whiskers of a reservation man
Lashing a horse
Sterile tracts of pale kentucky blue grey shale
Don’t take them
Or take them seldom by mail
Stretching out like a dying dog
between
The pickets and Queen Anne
For a loss
They can’t
Be beat
The beat
Across the lawn
The lawn along the limb
Where does nightfall end
And daybreak crown its gin?
Engaging with The Homeless
let’s trade
this water
clear, common, clean and cool
for an unlit cigarette.
no backsies.
American Womanhood
i see her sipping tea
she wants to write
the Great American Joke Book
about consumerism
sour-milk yellow sniffling yolk but
they get in the way
the hardcover wesleyan
in a cable-knit sweater
the canadian monthly
masked in a methylin-soaked love letter
hands up baby
hands up
“But if I said it was the only thing that mattered
That everything else was play, was yarn, was
A 40-year-old Knock Knock joke, would you”
their theories enjamb me
up against the wall, headlines
like licorice fingernails
like bricks — she draws blood
the thinking woman left to only sit
and listen to what’s left of rain
sweet and silent, waiting, pried
loose by synthetic rubber.
“Proof that cinema is 50 years behind all other arts,” [draft]
The brain function!
each line flirting dangerously close to each above
suburban new jersey tan
sandy sandals skin cement
The patterns repeating!
another handsome man
illuminates his jaw
foreground becomes background
the first assistant cameraman earns his sleep
and Fellini’s big toe is bleeding again
On the third re-write:
“Terrible!
the cruel bees have sucked
all the life from these poor flowers.”
The camera pans, eye follows
think cribward, lens exposing film
light through the apartment’s curtain
sounds at city dawn, as an also-ran theatre
absolute silence; safer here between
her blinking lash against yr ear.
“Ricordati che è un film comico”
good verbs that aren’t
I can read & read
& read
but mostly
fingers slick with natural oils
or grease, one could say
(as if sneaking across the DMZ and speaking of the enemy)
nothing comes. The tip snaps off
under some enormous privilege
singular, impregnable
& now I’m stealing words
slick
from Philip Levine’s poem about pubic hair
(I once read that his poems —
(slick and stark —
(are about … people! a collective gasp.)
but anyway, the tip regenerates
a process more painful in full measure
snaps off again by some impregnable pleasure
the whole thing pinks
like the volcano long ago
by which some insufferable Italians
are snuffed out — tell me more
about the Italians — their terrible
airplane fetish, their terribly boring
crystal balls. Just so totally wrong.
Yesterday while reading I don’t remember what,
I thought about my diet
being chased through the Temple of Doom. Look
at the fat, pink writing tool whimpering
(absolute, admirable
(though thrift-poor and truly profit free)
“You don’t
like it but you get used to it.”
I know now
