HALF A CENTURY POEM


Have I ever told you about my grandfather

how nights with a drink in his hand

at a desk looking out at the used cars

his one kidney failing (that's all God gave him)

My bed has been cold and slow all week

the eyes in a kind of reserve

You might dig your hand down in there and find blood near the roots

One inch to the left and the $500 slab of Carrara marble cracks

close to his spine, my grandfather

rain on the windshields, and asphalt

and the street lights before winter he claimed calmed him so much

MORATORIUM


We do it, we go there and appear

like a man, I suppose, something hidden, and waiting

For what?

I want to stand in the shrieking of rain when the applause grows
ooounbearable

Give me your powder lilies!

and I don't care if you shrink in the pall of my loving statements--

Robert Palmer strokes his demi-gods

Rather I find you unabashedly having fun again

a flower for a head

The flamethrower's been oxygenated and waits in a cabinet
near the staplers and the gently incoming waves

Not even a shadow of Windows 7

What I like about Don is the way he appears in the halls with
ooohis head blown off--

the cabin's on rollers
and it rolls down the hill--

the Queen of Hearts near his coffee cup

no new little clam shells to get hyper about

Go corporate

You get to class--I'll wait here for the police

NO THANKS


your ten p.m. grace note--bugling naked boys

I was born
under clouds

they raced to the edge of the slop trough and blazed

the week just before I rode
in my pod through the debt of
some antique lover's perverse English garden

It got stormy

the Mayflower cracked Cupid's skull open

I woke up wearing a lobster bib

men wearing deck shoes

going from worse to plain sad

when they began singing

You ever want to just slap a stranger?

Let's welcome those slowly losing muscle mass to
oooOur Current Enlightenment

It's called burning the safety net

You and the boys

23 skidoo (I ate trees on that scream machine)

He stands at the end of an altar in Wellesley with a soft soft
ooocatcher's mitt

another trumped dream unfurling in Vestigial Park--

a travesty of veins reproducing

He drops it . . .

ORIENTAL PIZZA


or you might in fact levitate from all the saw palmetto

Devine drew it in an ocular circle of trust

Trussed to it

Baltimore shining with plaid bean bag ash trays and dog poop sitting
oooon a nice placemat

we stylize without undue regret

a pie plate shakes and a single black tooth hangs amongst stars

it's a neanderthal learning a word
so hard it's like giving birth to a saber

while a man of contemporary finance and a yearning for figs

well they stare into the abyss of the other's blathering canyon

each spitting arrows in a dream

but in the end who doesn't want a glycine and walnut aluminum
oooshed--

you're such a non houseboat--

and then a duck comes walking onboard with a cigarette

SEPTEMBER 26, 2009


The Vitamin D is good, the bovine alarm clock

"You don't have to be a slammer"

he woke up in a side lot after that bad dream

"I was a dentist"

But there is the slow current of a long what-if poem in full daylight,
ooothe water, and willows

a canoe with two arms and an upright knife

the deer sailing past in the sky spilling her young in your nest

(you canput them in a well lighted bathtub)

I translated those small burning owls

syntax of a toy piano
and a large ruined hand . . .

Even without the stock

the chambers filled up with bright lake water you could see
ooofrom our table near The Chicory

and in such a silence--

like where a river bends in your vaulted thinking--

the forgotten gun went off.

UNSQUANDERED


The thumb looked around for its bird

wet ring of a forest

they wrapped the metal around your head so softly so your
ooeyes could continue to see

at the other end of the makeshift end zone

card tables

and leftover boxes blowing over the tweny yard line

burning on a cloudy school afternoon

before this event one goes through a flexibility stress test

(c/o the private sector)

faces the color of sherbet looking away from the field because
there has been a comforting explosion

Train
Air Masses
Brunswick Corporation

But now it's toppling the yard ornaments like a locust screen

We've seen what to do all over the internet

bending mostly at the knees

the mind is a balloon full of bees leaving in the direction of your
ooslow leak

they cover one half of a head and then drip down

it feels that good

you're well on your way

now put a plug in the mouth

FROM BEHIND THE SPHINX


The walnuts roll into the alley in their green sport jackets

a crowd inside a stadium at dusk . . .

the doll-shelf has been immortalized (stet)

"He's got such long eye-lashes for a boy"

no travel money

no room in the Barbie hostel

PTSD

Place

Tone

Scenes

Details

I heard one way to get at the nutmeat is to drive over them
oowith a big car

WORKING ATTIRE


You want to put some leather in your look

try one unventilated shoebox

enough for your jewelry

because, let's face it

I need that jewelry to predict the weather

TIMOTHY BARRETT


You can easily refer back to those documents--or that poem

blowing around behind the walls of paper sheets drying

Now that papermaker's won the MacArthur

this does go back

lighting lamps on fire so I could crush the soul
and spread the broken elegance amour amour

shirts knotted to underwear

artists kissing other artists . . .

(avoiding Clem Greenburg like the plague)

The duplication was an inking process you undertook
while swinging over some buddy's roll in the ditch, watching
oooperhaps through plumes of white smoke

Le Lucky Strikes

Lorrie Moore had written Self Help

(it was all nicely predictable there)

paint splattered on my steel-toed boots

Jim Dine's "The Nurse" . . .

First time I look at the sun most mornings I have to sneeze

I remember my last day of employment Tim took me to Pizza Hut

(he was moving to Iowa)

Beating and boiling and wearing a bandana

those were the skills one needed


***

this previously posted poem refers to this same subject. Both
are for Mike Barrett (he's mentioned in the previous poem
along with Daneen Wardrop . . . ). Yes, Tim was just announced
as a MacArthur winner . . . Congratulations to him . . .

READING ELIZABETH BISHOP IN SEPTEMBER


A flag is waving in an indeterminate country

then the bus stops

on a corner of the screen and a small being gets out

It's a mostly deciduous terrarium

Now on the laminate table
a rainbow of humanity handle a bi-valve

You could own a better i-pod

There are rubles and paintings of pomegranates

I know better

I was sitting in the temple with Chu He
who pointed at my drawing of an old fashioned
console TV and bent the presentation

she dwells in a broader loft . . .

I was waiting to be crowned the 49th special inductee

There was a kind of sparrow I'd been wanting to dream about

It wears a bone cap at the feeder

like its head is a skull

the last time I saw one was in April

when suddenly there was no light left in the world

PISCES


The waves that lap at the gentle tan sand are user friendly

Everything that dies out there comes back

The pike with its head stuffed through heaven

My boat was gray

It doubled itself like an ache in the brain

Somebody wearing blue cotton pants watched me from shore

The fish darted out
of the path of the roar

Boats gathered and chugged

But it wasn't cloudy--

And nobody was singing

There were clowns everywhere

EMPRESS TO THE END OF THE WORLD


Every second Wednesday's functionality

It's bookmarked

Standing in the stain of a cloud on the tracks as the lindens moan

3:30 am's veritable correction
on a shelf looking like tannin

but throw in a worm

The invention of the wheel throbbed like an ability

How easy to roll one's trash

then they put the other stuff inside a hot dog

instead of his study on cilia and their reactions to light he put a
Penthouse in his saddle bag

big swollen turbines still humming

It's just really absurd

Con Ed needs a wet nurse


***
the title comes, altered by me only slightly, from a poem by John Hodgen

WRITING II


I don't know exactly

is it properly "mum"

all around the Texas panhandle the storms give their lectures

The blue-finned tuna speaks from its diaphragm

I hoarded my Friday afternoons

Write and then drink

I'd get in the freight elevator

A boy holding in a bag a human leg

it would bump into the world like a tuning bell

I wanted a lot of comp time

talk about being excited

James Schuyler on eggs with a side of hash browns . . .

then football season would end

NO MANNERS


There is a small basket on her bike,
ribbons where there used to be fishing lures

Arkansas was burning

Sometimes in the morning I appreciate the metal gliding

Cold water in the shade

Under a large shaking tent there is meaning going on

Value added

Like a bass with crashed hardware in one eye

When they closed the local hospital I burned that bed

The bike is cornflower blue

WHERE TO MY SON


Drag my helping hand to your house

You will visit the wonders of the ancient world

And shampoo way too often

I think we will sit in the long Catholic shadow of our present
ooobreathing
and watch my coffee-stained desk turn into an afterlife taxi

Just insert a disk into your edible promise

The quan-
tities

The shadow drinks up all the sexual tension

The sphinx finds its way to that outdoor concert

I'm there behind

A slightly tilted bell


***

Note: John Cale

READINGS

At Butler University, Indianapolis:

Jorie Graham, Sept. 23 (7:30 pm)

Katie Ford, Oct. 19 (7:30 pm)

Nick Flynn, Nov. 11 (7:30 pm)

***

An Ian Drury Song

OULIPIAN


Ectoplasmic, like with an early seventies hair wave

your child has a note pinned to his sleeve

Charles wouldn't celebrate the death of the author today

he was just sad about the flickering spider

you know

time to say good bye to the pig

he's a sensitive sort, frail in the shape of a Salingeresque mystic

the phone doesn't ring
it just falls off the table

I decided to know just that one thing

gives us all a moment together--everything's nuts

they hold each other's

a dream starts pouring out of the leather receiver

use the word toolkit in a nineteen word sentence

DEPARTURES


The dream Herb, I remember you

The aisles falling with dented canned goods

Oregon football in New York while it rains

A train rushes by on a hill
halfway up into the sky where sleep
begins to claim us all here . . .

A neighbor uses his rake in some leaves

Looks close at how the tines holds them

I smell cigarettes

The love grows wild

It started to snow early that last late November

DREAM SPINACH


you place your head there, a knot on the horizon

dreams, insects

your late great face flows down like a root system

there are light bulbs in each of the eyes

restless, on and off (in the dark), like the elk you hear panicking

platitudinous cormorant, picking through broken shells--

spring-fed church of water

You drive out of the Missouri hills

the Alfred E. Neuman chair of sliding folk studies

Good Evening

I'm not Edward Lear

skullless, the safety counts for blue points

around where the sinister ankles need no echolocation

OCTOPUS


A reconstructed bowel, schezwan fried rice

your parlor talk

it belongs in the museum of high colonics

split into notes like a vibraphone

but I'm waiting by the phone with a wistful gaze, pick it up

set it back down

put the whole phone in the refrigerator

Today's daily affirmation . . .

I remember the Stations of the Cross enacted by an ensemble cast
of little brown bats just north of Honor M. I.

you should have seen the serifs on that guy

your cousin, the finalist

enough botulism to kill a recitation

it gets in the spit, the rattle of aspens as the lawn grows still
as a laundromat

HANDYMAN


he took up exactly one quarter of the weather-smelling trunk

blasted with air pressure

Chad drilled a hole through the side of Becky's head
while Seth posed the critical question

under the water where the bricks drifted like hair

several human silhouettes
like clown fish

he can't leave the trees untrimmed, can't sit down for five seconds

manifest destiny clotting like carbon muck

the sky poured over the corner of his final bedroom

Glass Puncture

he thinks we might talk now

who was it--his father?

anthropologist of a face stuck in that transom of aggravated sunlight

POETRY AND BEER


Sitting out in front of the sculpture garden

honking the horn

the wings are torn straight off the birds in a gale

I am getting angrier

the sweat is mixed with blood and made into a paste
ooowith this gunpowder

I have a meaningless question:

he had these asymmetrical antlers and the wrong teeth?

(my stocking is brimming with flak jacket)

Henry Moore dreaming aerodynamically skids past the moon

when she opened her mouth I could hear a propeller

LEMON PLEDGE


The twilight falls; I listen to the murmuring through the furnishings

somebody just lost her insurance

Here, just sign your name again

the chemical hijacks your own blood cells

over in the royal garden

forms are not inclined to experiment

you know how beautiful the wind is blowing through the sassafras

almost a consoling

computer paper rising up and out through the top of the chimney

human noise


***
James Wright and Edward Weston

A WEEK FROM FRIDAY


He stood five feet away from the bus

soporific as talus

a cicada looking in the bathroom mirror

He doesn't want a soul

as if thinking things over, adjusting the newspaper

then sighing

no intellectual color

the mother sitting in the bathroom's passenger seat stabbing an
apple with a complimentary nail file

"Somebody please answer the telephone"

I zzzink you're beautiful, the antelope says, before rejoining
ooothe inaugural festivities

OTHER BEINGS


Here is what we do to stave off death, he said

Better the idiocy, glamorous and free,
of the wild turkeys crossing in front of our bus, I thought

We have no vested interest in the long pause, and he stopped
to sip some watery gas station coffee, with its uncertain outcome

The eyes in their settings turning to emeralds

Come over to my house then, and we will calibrate death carnivals

Uncertain at best, he concluded

The horses, though absent the comfort of their flesh,
breathed through their stone nostrils out in the pastures,

I dozed, half-dreaming . . .

I did see a cockroach waving its antennae like it was conducting
oooan orchestra, though, earlier

This was kitty-corner from the Kalamazoo bus stop snack bar

I turned to a woman who was reading a book by Junot Diaz

her eyelashes white as snow

I'm going back to AA starting tomorrow, I said

She laughed

"I've got one from South America in a cage"

Now she was about ten rows back

I woman in the aisle across from me struggled to keep her infant
ooohappy

all along the open country road
huge metal contraptions arched over

the cornfields and rolled incrementally toward sundown

shooting long, intermittent tunnels of water
out into the solar system . . .

"Pedro," she'd said, standing up with a smoke out, holding a lighter

"Excuse me?" I'd replied

"Pedro the cockroach"

The bus whined down against resistance, slowing to merge
onto a small highway, along which I expected to catch a glimpse

of Lake Michigan, before closing my eyes to try to figure out
ooowhat to do next

FOREIGNERS WILL OFTEN LIE


Right there behind your molars, the popcorn
machines, that yellow dust squeaking so the saliva

bursts from the depths of your jaw . . .

The one you are in photographs strolls onstage

with a set of rules in his back pocket

while in some paneled back room
divots of light blind the engineers trying to arrange them

into something meaningfully profitable

or for the love of a well-intended and purposeful beauty

But you picked up a paring knife . . .

Strapped into your flying chair,
mirrors mounted in front of your cheek bones,
words are droppered into the slit of your mouth

through the mask on your face

Only tears make it through the excitement or rage

sumac and poison ivy rimming the cliffs
surrounding the quarries you rattle on through . . .

Until you wake up looking out a dark window at the shifting of
ooobranches

trout dreaming near the top of the spring-fed pond

but now things are shaking again

there are G-force warnings in the area tonight

Some of the members of your dream sit in the room with you

they also are too alarmed to say anything

SPOKANE


Or somewhere under the mountains

the paragraph floated on me

Sheets and dishes flowed out the front door, the sun stayed speechless

I imagined the table of books and pages

small dog-eared car
with pop bottles and shoes

Even the blackbirds look different in eastern Washington

The value of the landscape was latitudinally stichic

but in a dazzling, empty way

A hitchhiker is wearing a pair of rubber gloves

Men sit in their tabernacles of grief
stealing an add to the blaze and drown

of what's conceptually old armor

A bit of Under the Volcano in your nine foot syringe

you and your buddy hiking out through the snow peaks under the
oooliteral cry of a golden eagle

you just can't make this shit up

the moose with his calm beard of weeds

I put that key in the cup and the pen on the door

I could have written that letter to anyone

THE LAST TIME WE MET IT WAS IN HEAVEN


Capitol H, Capitol A, Capitol P

class action this

you might want to leverage

you have a swell sexual appetite

Then they came and put in the special bathing tables

Dear Poodles the Pup

You are a small business owner

no more stars shot through with vodka after midnight

(unfortunately?)

just put down the prop pistol and go sit in your car near Mona Lake
and listen to some Ric Ocasek

I really can imagine it

the soft chairs for the pet owners

Music in the bathing room c/o The Tragically Hip

(indoctrination of canine)

Get a job what for I'm trying to think

Order. Order.

And imagine what you could do there after hours

(one of you possibly barking)

But now I'm exhausted

I've got Little-Place-of-My-Own Syndrome again

Capitol P

You can see how no one vacuumed under the furniture the
oooentire time

Let me give you my card

Refurbish Inc.

The stars light up as the trees slow down

the empty white building steams in the evening

handicap parking sign is rusty

This is where a blood bubble popped in the middle of this man's
oooshort life one day

***

info (title, & line 17) from Mr. Creeley; line 16--the B52s

THE THING LOOKED IN THE
WINDOW AND I WAS ITS DREAM

Synchronizing our developing rituals

Standing in the ghost-lit alcove overlooking the lake

That's some closet

alpine freezing in the balmy mountains . . .

Oh, precious

You remember it, too, claiming the space under shingles

Blankets, like love

A hippopotamus in a washtub laughing over the sudsy ocean

Five dollars flying out of his swimming trunks,
a gift from his grandma

A little box of Sun-Maid raisins . . .

You got a Zebco fishing reel for your 6th Christmas . . .

*

Then suddenly it was night all the time

They installed four speakers

This was the motion that fed you

Airplanes landing on a snowflake

Lurching like you're all hind legs in this box of insects

Nipples like hoses falling through the ceiling

Her hips swaying like a cradle

The blindness of those fingers made blunt by dew

The sweet sweet taste of canned peaches

The shifting telephone poles . . .

I can tell from your face you've been talking to God again

PROBLEM SOLVING


That's telling them, folders and Obama pins,

the softest contours of a body

care of perfume overload . . .

Out in the parking garage we threw two barbells back and forth

Me, and that other guy

the maintenance supervisor

Just stopping in front of the big ticking problem is a kind
oooof intimate

eyeing the plastic and heated metal

touching a U-joint

you might go to sleep then, invasive as loosestrife

a cork stops the gold fish
bowl stuffed with crushed grasshoppers

water keeps flowing over a smiling brook trout's simple brain

All over the Bowflex last Sunday

the avenue opening around a shivering cloud of Shasta daisies

sunlight drips down the small of her back

I'm talking to you from outside the house

watching the clothes and the compound fractures

2nd and ten from the Baltimore twenty

the sun is down

the buffalo graze near the freeway

BRIDGE GAP


not necessarily by virtue of spruce

do not use MAO inhibitors at dusk in Newaygo County

suggestive of cattle

dirty, cracked, improbably spinning dishes

a pair of twin cats marks my new gated entrance

one by one we untwisted
held onto the plastic
watched the slices of bread sail over the water

another 18 headstones

to stack in your shopping cart

another fat duck in your dream about being chased over an empty
ooofootball field on a hot July afternoon

animal husbandry

we're going to furnish the laundry with the echo of years

ropily pensive, we might say Grounded with four of them even

hooves, or white heels

the thing you grip hard in your hands

the pine trees shatter . . .