THE NERVOUS FILAMENTS


Reserve a copy, I guess. Or wait until March.

THE END OF THE ROPE


The last two poems were written on fumes. Like when the lawn
mower falters--you know there's a thin layer of gas left in the
tank and it's swishing around, not getting down into the feed
line--and the thing surges a bit and then dies. I like how a
week ago some of the strongest poems came--or if not strongest,
certainly different. I need a week in a hammock (I'll string
one up inside here, and shine a massive SADs light in my
general direction).

At least I can't compare it to the way the Chicago Bears have
simply coasted bumpily down a dirt side street after a mildly
okay start to the season. Then the wheels popped off, the
radiator cap blew sky high, and the doors fell crooked on
their hinges. Poor Jay Cutler. He's really made a nightmare for
himself. I have no doubt what's happening isn't reflective
of his talent, but it's reflective of something emanating
from Cutler I could do without. Of course, I've suffered the
abuse of once watching--I must have once hoped something good
would happen although I can't recall such a thing now--the
Detroit Lions, so maybe my judgement isn't so hot anymore.
The Lions are playing Cleveland in a duel for worst team (in
any sport in any country) this Sunday, and it's been the best
reason to watch Detroit since the day they broke the record for
worst losing streak, I believe, ever. Poor Matthew Stafford.
Poor Barry Sanders before him (at least he bowed out quietly
and never dissed the team). Which makes me think of
Matt Millen, who now appears to be everywhere--on Monday
Night Football, and in the broadcast booth on NFL Network.
No shame.

It seems like a decade's worth of waiting, but The Nervous
Filaments is up at the University Press of New England
site, waiting to be made real. Here's the link. Jordan Davis
has some ink there, and there's a sentence by Christine
Garren, and the quote they are using--I shit you not--from
my text is the following:

"may I suggest you seek the advice of a mental health
professional"

All I can say to the person who selected that line is thank
you. How could anyone resist buying the book now? The
line comes from the title poem. The cover is from a photograph
by Brad Miller (thank you for the pic Brad). In the meantime
Peyton Manning is flooded with good Karma--witness last week's
game against New England. (Enough of this blaming Belichick
crap already.) The Tale of two quarterbacks--Cutler and
Manning. Just how good and how bad can it get? We'll see.

Good stuff to read--Graham Foust's new one. Leszek
Kolakowski's Modernity On Endless Trial, and Padgett
Powell's first "novel" since the year 2000, Interrogative
Mood.

INTERLOCKING PATTERN OF BIRDS


At dusk I tied a tarp over me and the moon

The light moved like a boat to the center of the world

Pear trees for miles

A gas pump that doesn't work anymore behind a plain white building

And the rolling hills of the lawns heading in every direction

The houses are dark on the inside and light pours over the outsides

And blackbirds purr in an ash tree on the one wooden lot

Someone's sprinklers sputter on, then shut off . . .

The flowers, in the window boxes, die slowly

Now here comes the black filling in the stars between each snowflake

Cld U bring home a latte


It's amply Wednesday, amply tugging on my cockles

That's of the heart, or inside it

The way the dream spills over the sand

Two people are walking down a beach with sea salt in their hair

The man on the left has not yet learned his lines

Evenings, a kind of ambrosia (with words)

There's a connect-the-dot chain of continual human love
from shore to shore across this twinklingly electronic country

Along with prisons, and hospitals

He thinks he will see what the moment might bring

INCONSEQUENTIAL


Yes, the man wearing the red bow tie . . .

Mr. Lee, when do you expect to publish a fifth book
of card tricks given the current political climate

Mr. Lee pulls an ace of clubs out of his sock

The city spins, sluiced open, slaughterhouse, the empty museums

I used to be a cook in the cafe there--

Then they'd place the wind tunnels over the paintings

I'd wade into that texture with my apron on

Or back in the nineties, a map rolling like thunder pulled over
under the Dan Ryan Expressway, nothing but kindling in
oooyour pockets

I lived in an electric shawl--a hummingbird factory

The man adjusted his glasses, "You mean in the garment district?"

There's a certain roar to infinity, he'd memorized

But instead he remembers tapping eggs with a spoon

The feathers on his fingertips

I watched the fire separate his body while they stared

The air kept lambing up my breathing spaces

Your honor?

{THERE WAS AN ABRASION IN THE SOUND SYSTEM AT THIS POINT}

Lampblack, cortisone, lilac stones

ADJUSTMENTS


"In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much
as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the
common experience of depression among the locals. The
snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers,
to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to your
psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor.
The past soaks into you in this weather because the present
is missing almost entirely."

oooooo— Charles Baxter (The Feast of Love)

HOOVES


What it's called--hoarfrost, anger in the fog

Delicate as sweets

a tea cup and saucer--we'd find the back yard tantalized by

Why? Why won't he?

Sprockets turning inside the toaster

God's breaking chandeliers, she said, because He's unhappy with us--

I thought about that--the deer I shot
dripping on the snow there, while it dangled from its antlers

The smell of marijuana spiced by frozen spruce

as if we were eliminating the curvature of the earth then stopped

I removed his eyes because the windows were rushing forward

It was beautiful--the yellow-silver of a dirty winter rain

I sprayed lemon across the small of her back

Shivering toward April

THE MEETING


It seemed the world went inside something--

there was no real reason--bright green ferns glittered under
ooobare trees

The heart, bluer than red, was cut into slabs
and placed on a table in a nest of wax paper

A single deer approached, cautiously, as if to the edge of a slow pond

And there were lemurs in a nearby room, sea-lit, primates
ooowith squirrel DNA,
most with tails that belied the ostensible mood of the day
which had been deemed "somber"

Dark glasses covered the morning

A pair of cuff links chimed into an antique ash tray

I picked up my cigarette and sucked it until the filter turned
ooobrown

Yellow leaves flowed through the windows and into the turned
ooodown bed--
the birth of a comfortable coffin . . . a forest to die in . . .

Snow, like a fountain, began spewing from the mouth
oooof the child who
was now almost buried there. He was attempting to
oooenter the future again.

THE VERDICT


The stars--

In a hundred years some woman writes The Stars

The empty courtroom
is lashed by rain and wind

The stars leaking down her cheeks

Curled hair licks a fingertip

I absolve you of responsibility, is not a thing a person actually says

The jury with their endless eyes all rise . . .

So these are redwoods, I whispered

Sea worthy, shadows falling in columns of silence

The stars in a stream on leaves

Her red toenails

I'M NOT NATIVE


We're talking trees with no eyes--the big dipped sea

A prop plane and the helmet of the kindest fish . . .

It's approximate to jolly, dullard lagging in his pissy cups

Even while you worked the paper cutter

We stand at night on the ledge and we breathe in deeply

"I might be a symbol" 00000(oh please!)

Then the wisteria crumbles, the warehouses weep in Big Rain

This is going nowhere, like you said in your diary

Perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps

And then a gargoyle explodes

I rode a sort of arrow from Newaygo all the way to Portsmouth

As far as I could tell the toilets all still swirled the same way

And then that letter hit my mailbox

THE CHALLENGE


I used to play the cornet, going from first to third chair in a week,
And for that I am not one bit grateful

Gazing at a sheet of music
While the sun poured in through
The Blue and Gold framed windows

Tapping my stupid foot . . .

At night I'd walk down to the Mona Lake channel

Once I still held the knife I'd threatened my mother with

The design goes bad, the gulls circle the ponds, the cormorants
Start losing their minds as the moon starts breaking

I threw a dime near some minnows

Nothing

THE TREES ARE NO LONGER GUESTS


I know--I wrapped the moon up in that blue blanket

And still the cat remained dead in the road

The bridges shook

I slowly drove back past the pool hall

Now only the cat's skeleton shone in the mirror of dusk

This is an industrial town

They heat the water several times and blow it back into Nature

The windows in the factories weep, and crack

A dog fish swallows an egg

I could feel them watching in my nasal passges

I cat rises and walks up the stony hill

All I can see is the train engine bruising the hot air bending in waves
oooall over the surface of the harvest moon

TEN MINUTES BEFORE THE FIRST SNOWFALL


They placed the mantle on him, his sage reputation

Lies lies lies

You drop anchor in a field of wheat

The serotonin is that sweet, blessed clear blue sky above a desert

But then the other sponsor comes about--

His silver watch flies off, skids down through the blue ice melt

That's why I like to sit up high, where I can see the olive trees

Taste the mountains in this glass of water

I know your eyes dilate when the knife tip touches her throat

It's nice and cold in this bed--pure as famine

The wind moves silently over the pasture land

It rushes around all the outdoor furniture

CAUSE AND EFFECT


Well, that's right--if the telecommunications industry

But Walt Disney just blew a big fart
In his grave--the audience is frozen

I think, and I say this with the utmost compassion,
your sonnet is a problem

But then I find myself in a room--

You and your leather and dirty boys all over the girls

"Well, it's more like they let those girls happen"

She taught me how to blow smoke rings next to a lava lamp

Let's hear it for the Gipper

Look up out of the grave--are you okay with this pep rally?

And I'm not--don't Twitter me--I'm not okay with it

NO ONE BELIEVES WHAT THE TRAIN REMEMBERS


What's wrong with him--what does she mean?

It's not a small world

The occipital bone corroded right through--next block over

Rain slammed down then stopped

Sun, and he held where she broadened, his lobes pulsing

Sometimes it starts in your teeth--darker than night

I can't hear you!

So many stations half realized

Static of the leaves coating the windshield

the tongues meeting in winter

Or a circle, the eyes there in the head of the inward one, watching
ooothe breathed-out air in horror, not moving a muscle

Then nothing--a pulled muscle, the gliding of joints--he finally
ooostops talking

A WEEKEND IN GRAND HAVEN


They put a trout on the cover, and peppermint grass

He sprinkled cocaine so so softly

Right there, in a little line along her cheekbone

If there were a camera in the oven
one could watch the bread swelling

What planet is that? Will Robinson asks Dr. Smith

That's who I feel like sometimes, running
around with my unkempt hair and jeans with ink spots

Dr. Smith with his anxiety
and delusions the world's simply not cooperating

I could see the green in her iris as I snorted the coke

It reminded me of Jupiter

COMPROMISE


Brilliantly shining despite our lengthy concurrence . . .

The poor man has a head like a peanut and tonight's
His big night

In the grass plants, nearby, lubrication . . .

We call what comes out of the anus waste
And yet this feeds the whole world

Okay, okay . . .

The concert's beginning

Which is why I'm just fine with these plastic utensils

CANVAS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE


I came to in the middle of the sermon. The house flashed
in shadow. Rain fell in the street. Every lawn in the city
soaked up the sounds from the working buildings, the churches
funneling water, the hymn now I was camping under.

I fell another day to waking, where lines and fire seemed
an essence of the rain, falling before compassion,
soaking up the trees and cities. I put my work aside and stepped
into the rich, cool grass, somewhere a radio still dreaming.

The preacher wearing furs and rags stopped speaking. I felt
my heart in sleep, glassine. The animals and kids were eating.
She covered my mouth, the rain had never been, the buildings shone
as light through window, the bed now damp but cool by evening.

AIR TRAVEL


I hold up three fingers

They're what the hand should empty--dirty gestures

The cow flops home on a Monday

Wringing that neck for the sweat that's dripping out of the empty eye

That got their desks in a neat little line

The cleanest toenails you'll ever see--palm trees up to His ankles

The man thinks, and then moans, decked out with wood

Another looks right out of its head
But with no eardrumsooothe chaos extremes

Police set up shop outside the school of no chances

The bird runs on land, long necked, as you arrive at
ooothe bankslashairport

Three fingers in space means "W"

SLEEP

It wasn't snowing, and we sat under a heat lamp
watching it rain on TV. The constant metric of living
in pairs is an almost irredeemable human
phenomenon--fire trucks blaze past at two a.m . . .

*

You can tell the men had grown weary, no bridge is worth this . . .

*

In the sunlight, by day, we read pamphlets designed
to ameliorate mental disease implementation.

Sensible as farm, was one. Liable to be hypnotized was another.

The smaller of these animals, heavy of incisor,
sat in a harbor of lamplight reading individual sentences.

Ouch, she said. Or Oh my God.

*

The glass of seltzer left burning on the mantel released a few
fissures of crystallized vapor--very much like taking a breath
or waking in a stranger's bed and opening your eyes to two glowing
sky lights.

*

After that, after your own face, and the faces behind you, have
ooobecome
more obvious than is a pleasure to oversee, you reach for the switch
that makes it start snowing inside.