Yes, a Roadrunner

THE THOUSAND ISLANDS

                    (an Ashbery erasure poem)

Keeping warm in life
we scrap
what is
strapped to us

the mass
a hanging--

to understand the flesh . . .

*

Your eyes reflect a promise

extracted, gladly

this limits nothing you are grateful for

*

No one had imagined
the possibility     behind glass

that a meadow might melt into necessity

your idea  

                 (condensation of bone)

the permanence of what's already happened

the eye is a surface

*

He bends the face
to slightly smaller
than real life

*

An old satisfaction, the simplest smell

the horses slowly escape . . . 

the approach of a subject, an aphrodisiac

in separate lengths brought down

the useless mystery again

UNTITLED

                      (May, 10, 2013)

It's impossible not to know the
truth. A condition of consequence . . .
Get up, he'd said, from under

his umbrella, and the lilacs bled
downwind to me. But he was
a ghost in even this, hypostatic in the

bloodied air, some of this sheering
off into the talkativeness of friends . . .
We were hardly friends: he was only

a concept--not pollen, not water
underground--as when we'd given up
in that final suburb, absence to absence.

THE UNDERSIDE OF YOUR THINKING


The approximately 700 calories
of the BK Fish Sandwich evaporates

in the glow of a little
gaming action. Is that the case?

Put away the helmet, or, if possible,
change uniforms now, alone, or in the mist

of starlings, while the water's sludge moves
greenly past beneath the structurally

unsound bridge. The white bird dies
in the dark, a little bone x-ray or a character

yielding a pick axe, a bad feeling,
no two ways about it. You need to retool.

RUNNING TIME


Affixed in space, or
my letters stashed away
in the library--

the page is not a person 

I shot ten minutes of film

under the ocean--
the softest flesh,
and sparks . . .

There was no real light anywhere,
which was the whole point

Touched my mouth, backs of my hands,
my closed eyelids . . .

the universe is closed

I came up into this otherworldly evening
from inside the smell of said ocean

Egret and Heron

I NEED AIR


This, in the South Bend Tribune. I was one of the people
trapped in an elevator, as mentioned near bottom of article.

"SOUTH BEND -- The lights are out for more than 8,700 Indiana Michigan
Power customers in the South Bend area this afternoon.

The outage started shortly before 4 p.m. According to a statement from
the company, an equipment failure is to blame for the outage. As of 5
p.m., the company website listed 8,731 customers without power in St.
Joseph County, 9.5 percent of the utility's more than 91,000 customers
county-wide.

The outage prompted officials at Indiana University South Bend to
close the campus as of 6 p.m. All evening classes and activities are
canceled, according to Kathy Borlik, IUSB spokeswoman.

Borlik said a few people were trapped in elevators on campus when the
outage first occurred. However, they were quickly extricated without
further incident, she said.

The campus is planning to resume normal operations Friday, Borlik said."

frogS

ORBITAL

          "Love has transfigured me" William Bronk

All things being
equal, the bulb
that flares, goes out . . .

We shift under
the willows, the
sleeping world. It's

night, democracy
of sound a blur--
whatever crawls from

the mud to urge
us all on . . . I
can see, under

the branches, there.
There I go, I
think, merely one

amongst all these
others, others
that are more than

thought, but it's a
deer I'm watching
through my window.

swans . . .

 

Kingfisher and Three Ducks

HANS BALDUNG GRIEN

 

Another martyrdom walks past. It’s pro biotic. You’re going
   to look
down the barrel of eternity. Not forever. The cemetery’s glow’s
   an intimacy . . .

Cold-thinking stones: dying your hair to “shaved” is today’s
   urgent

What’s next? The photographer stands, piled on a near horizon,
   facets

of glass, a toothpick falling from a skyscraper: I can’t hear over

   the clavinets

on the moon. Or one could think of it this way: I’ve been
   enduring

an apotheosis of sway; a sudden rupture exhales the room: too
   long

blending with a flower. I’m not going to placate you I can see . . . 

 

from CINEMA TAROT

Elaine Equi

"Marilyn Monroe wasn't Jean Harlow.
Jayne Mansfield wasn't Marilyn Monroe.
Anna Nichole Smith wasn't Jayne Mansfield.
Thankfully, there is only one Britney Spears."

THE SAME CIRCLE


A turning record
no one can see--

it might as well be a globe,
don't you think, pressed until

there is only the slightest
whiff of burnt rubber?

It makes no sound as it
spins . . . With a knife I will

cut out the shape,
a hole around the existing holes,

the eyes. Another layer of you,
a representation (a map),

the boy with his head bashed in,
hung on the wall, as the

man now recalls it . . . It's not far
away from the apple orchard

(what's left of it),
the search for soft matter,

a representation as well--
hidden, blind path to

no words . . . There is another
world but it is inside this one . . .


_
italicized from Eluard

JE NE SAIS QUOI


Is that what you think--
we love the little children--

Christ wandering alone
in a field in order

to be alone? It hurts. It
doesn't matter. I am in a

constant state of becoming
something I imagine

you can't imagine. Incendiary
device; the clock is spring-

loaded--where He walks
in that purest of fields, his

feet are cut on the jagged
stones. I saw the reflection

in the tabletop between
us. I cancelled the meeting.

STAR FORMATION

If we were to flip
each other--you can't quite do
that--forest for the trees;

meet me in the meadow;
I breathe this in--
white blood, dirty, dirty

access to what's not thought
until the touch occurs;
then the pressure rises

inside her. I hear this
first--the invisible stars
pissing on the leaves.

OZYMANDIAS

Ocean voided
the dead red
lake.  You've got your gulls

blown inward,
serious sincerity of her
X-ray; I imagine

such sphinxes;
sea salt as desert snow that
hides the world . . .

like a droplet of milk
blooming
at the tip of a stethoscope . . .

Writing

GEM Electric

NEW WORK


Two new poems are online at The Fiddleback. Both will
appear in my forthcoming book, Animalities (Four Way, 2014).

ASPARTAME


Aspartame is pretty horrendous stuff. I don't consume many
sweets, but I used to chew gum, and one way or another I'd
consume little shots of Aspartame. Without getting into
specifics, it was really fucking me up, and discontinuing
Aspartame in my diet has had a dramatic and positive effect.
I don't even drink soda, at all, so I can't imagine the side
effects some must experience from this chemical compound.
Here is simply a random link to an article about this so-called
safe sugar substitute. Sucralose (Splenda) is another bad,
bad thing to ingest. I'm serious. Aspartame is also called
NutraSweet btw. I learned this the hard way. Stay away from
these poisons at all costs.

2017 MILES

The stars are out.
It's day, there's fog.
Some's frozen on the grass,
a closer distance. Farther out
I think I can see the sand, the pink
flowers in another dawn, quail living
out in the open, sunlight warm on the
adobe wall. A red spider the size of a
fissured thread blurs, grows bright on
the water, and disappears right in front of me,
a swan and then a second swan, and then the empty sky.

Mr and Mrs Merganser

Armature

Another one of those cat pictures.