APRIL 25


Can I mostly talk about yellow throated warblers? I don't know
what happens. That small dancing gray and yellow shattering
period of light. It ignites all of my senses. There it is: on a runnel
of mud. I've been on the job. The sentence I keep hearing around
these parts lately: "I'm tired of crazy people." I don't know about
CRAZY--there are a lot of high maintenance sorts. Thank God
one can plunk down $700 and get some new struts for the car,
and it is then fixed--the craziness GOES AWAY. But then there's the
problem of the money . . . Too much rain, but I like when this rain
comes with embedded thunderstorms. It's a light show from the
house on the water, the skylights filled with light, the choreography
of bolts dancing down to earth then back up into the sky. I need
some dinner. I've been reading Chekhov.

MANIA SUBSIDE

A needed break here, from most things, but not teaching . . .

Phoebe took three Dictionary sonnets today, which reminds
me to mention into the big wide open air that I'd like to do the
Dictionary Sonnets as a chapbook. There are, I think, thirty of them
at this point.

I need a nap.

I will admit I found Franzen's piece on Crusoe and Foster Wallace
in the current New Yorker extremely interesting reading.

It snowed today, in this part of the world.

DOCUMENTARY


I'm using some twigs, a piece of drywall. By the year
2011 I had taken to watching a muskrat through a pair
of binoculars as a way to control my blood pressure. Now I'm
just boiling water. It soothes me, frankly, all that leaping, each
little cry for help. I go downstairs and I go behind the
partition and I come out in my moth outfit. I prop the small
wall up with a twig, sit down in the shadow. A forest populates
the spaces opening up around me. Now I forget about the
boiling water. I live with a family of camel crickets. They come
out when I'm sane. They're beatniks. They gather in a
group. One lights a tiny cigarette. They start playing jazz.

LODESTAR

It's Sunday afternoon

He slides suggestively into her space

Remember, sometimes the past is just awful

She's aware of the many layers . . .

Windows and atoms, the roar of a motorcycle, various ideas
and problems that plague the purity of the physical

Nobody gets defensive

If you get hit hard enough you see purple splotches

The mind spills light onto the screen of the skull even if you don't get hit

You have to remember to look though--

When you enter the human cave there's all sorts of soft machinery

The ocean grows smooth around Catalina . . .

In fact afterward you close your eyes--

Birds of paradise fly from palm tree to palm tree

Suddenly there's just water, and a wide yellow sky

She takes her hand and smooths the place on your knee
where you were damaged so many years ago

You swallow, keep sailing out deeper

Her body smells of the beach

PUBLICATION DATE


Since there's an official date for the book's release I'll
put it out there right here, just as an early reminder.
The Coldest Winter On Earth will be released on October
29, 2011, from Marick Press. This book includes poems
written as early as 1998, a year after Downsides of Fish
Culture was published. It also includes poems written
as recently as 2010. So the time frame is unique, at least
when compared to Orphan, Indiana (which was written
in three months (tho some revision took place later)) and
The Nervous Filaments, (which was written over the
course of a single year (2007). Some of the poems available
online that will be in the book are "Arc," "Turning Seventeen,"
"Affliction," and "Antimacassar" along with "Thirteen Trees."

URGE


It was an eclipse after all

You know what I mean

One is doing some business

Then one is chewing one's way through a big chocolate cake

“That particular model comes in red”

(At this point flex a little bit, look like an ex-athlete)

It’s available in cream

The sky turned the queerest green, gaslight, the small of her
back, chlorine, the slightest accent of a shadowy past down inside there

(Everything, give me everything!)

Then

Six forty-three . . .

You loosen your tie, drive home

The moon needs a drink

A slight burn on one knee . . .

This little relative of the naked boy is usually such a peaceful animal

CABERNET


I was blindfolded. I was
In the middle of caring deeply.

Reduced, I imagine, to biting things in order to feel anything.

Particularly myself.

What are you, arms like the necks of things, your mind
reaching over a fence like a bottom jaw?

It was a long week in Coopersville.

Some parts were over here.
Some parts were over there.

Locked down on something,
the eyes do water, the blood is dispersed . . .

Tossed into a sunken room with other blindfolded inklings . . .

We're not so different!

Skin is a really large organ.

It goes twice around things, then comes back.

I thought of her in northern Texas, menstruating . . .

Not snow, not sand.

Teeth form a circle, right down to the bottom--

The bellows of an accordion, perhaps?--

Ironing over the folds until the soul and the pain

are no longer avoiding each other.

ruined

big straw heart sinks

into the lake no it's the

alarm clock the shed next

door is on fire open all

the windows as wide as you

can take a shower with

the burning/sinking

swimming through but by now

you're remembering

THE BROTHERHOOD


You sit down at a
Picnic table. She
Had her baby. Some-

One had one any-
Way. I hear these things
As if they weren't

Important. High up,
The gulls circle this
Wal-Mart parking lot.

You draw some parallels
Concerning nature
And garbage. About

Once every three
Months I stop and sit
Somewhere ridiculous

And smoke a cigarette
I usually bum.
This happened in fact

Just last week. Man wearing
A Cleveland Browns jersey
Shook me out a Newport

And he lit that Newport
With a fine gold lighter,
Said he was waiting

On someone. That's cool, I said.
Then we sat watching
The people and smoked.

GARREN CHAPBOOKS They are available. Write checks for 12 dollars made out to Indiana University and mail to: 42 Miles Press Dept. of English, Wiekamp Hall 1700 Mishawaka Ave. PO Box 7111 South Bend, IN 46634-7111

THE DEEP END


I can see the faint
Blue--it's parked in the
Center there--where one

Might say, not unkindly--
I can dive--I can touch
Bottom. Her thrashing

Otherwise is written
In Pencil. I could
See the vein fill blue

With night. It doesn't
Snow. The arms and legs
Are hot. Heaven is

Gigantic, empty--
It awaits entry--or
It's this scramble of

Smooth beech bark, soft hammers
In a piano--
Teeth, that is, each seed

Like a ladder. The
Bodies--one to one--
Masks in place . . . This makes

The soft end even
Deeper--bathing suit green
And painted, then pulled off.

THE SMILING WORKER

Negated by your
Black stripes, I guess, hand-
Painted, trembling other

Side of what's wrong, the
Same few gestures--get
Real . . . Debrided of

A surfeit of essence,
and posture, o' myth-maker.
Come to the corner store

With me. Be my accident.

THE COFFIN


My dearest, I am a
Bird made of wool and
Melted plastic, a slender

Rod from an old filing
Cabinet, eye lashes,
Fluff from a cattail . . .

The soldiers hide behind
A record player (it's
Made of corkboard and

Various tabs and arms) speaking
Into the shoe from
An old Monopoly

Board game. In the morning,
When the sun pours through
The slatted blinds, it

Covers their sleeping
Bodies. Kestrels and
Titmice smash into

The glass of the window
I am speaking of.
Sometimes I tire of it all.

So I crawl into
My shoebox and lean
Way back and relax.

KEY STROKE


Every time I
Hit a letter a
Dollar is removed

From my bank account
Via direct
"Subtraction." I am

Exiled in the name
Of what? The truth of
Watching a man hit

Another man with
A bag of broken
Lanterns, this mean-

Spirited auto
Mechanic? Shy and
Cowering--that's how

We perceive the other
Two characters.
One wants love. One wants

Methamphetamine.
What does the third one
Want? Let's all write many

Book reviews. In the
Final verses the
Soul shifts silver and

Black like window wind.
Now for the novel:
Nobody wins, or dies.

THE WALK


Snails, mostly without
Shells. There was the rain
And the red brick covered

With ivy. The water
Illuminated
The blue frame of a

Schwinn. I'm tempted to
Mention the octopi,
From which, strapped tight across

The ceiling, plunged a
Smashed glass love seat
Scattering—concentric—

A dazzling chandelier.
I could practically
See myself in the cue ball.

Fingers, everywhere
Is what I recall,
Bundles of rubber

Tubing, Freddy Mercury
Singing In the land
Where horses born with

Eagle wings and honey
Bees have lost their stings
There's singing forever

(To you). One's hip, for
Instance, to the
Incense, and the garage,

Later, flaming with
Orange blood. There's an empty
Seat in that basement—


A voice, a boy’s cruelty
Impaled—so sad to see him go—
But it was written

in the Mambo Sun . . . The snails
Were leaking rain, or they
Were sobbing, down, down

Into the eyes of
The sow bugs. I knew
Those gentleman from

A previous engagement.
Nine-hundred directions.
I hit the eight ball

So hard the sky
Flipped backwards. This much,
I thought, and lit a

Cigarette, is enough,
But I waited. The bats
Were dipping through each

Other's paths. I struck
Another match. I’d gotten away.
The street was bright with mayflies.

LEGITIMACY (L dictionary sonnet)


Principal, the shore a human paradise
And culinary vegetable. The soldiers walk
Or crawl, smooth and connected . . .
One, having the seeds attached (usually white
Or brown), is driven to rise in spongy seas--
Animals support one nation (Marvelous
Or romantic) in which the heart is held
Authoritatively, past participle, a LEERING
Blood sucking device (part of the worm)
Split into halves. Like the parting of sons,
The wind blows over the prepared skin of
A physician: easy to read, great sleight
Of hand. The merchant's account pertains to
The human onion, a book, one who lectures on a shelf . . .

RATIONAL QUANTIFICATION Apperceptual/Image drunk in your/Frame--the curves so spread-//Ably close to the/Brain's back and forth with/The nerves. In my new//Calendar of waking/Dreams the tree trunks flow/ Down out of the branches//And leaves. That sculpture's/Got such heated lungs/We're all arranged in//A triangle--spleen,/Intestine, liver--/You know how the ex-//Ternals stink just a/Little. It's enough/To make one set up//A dinner table . . ./What do you need you/Don't already have?//Animals, connective/Tissue, nothing so/Much as a diffusion//Of sunshine captured/Inside a bottle/Of piss, seeds bursting//Their hulls, some lipstick--/Seive her bath water/(Re-use it). The sky is//Rippling with concepts/And billboards--our failure,/Our money,/Our propaganda--//The subjectivity of blue . . .

ALBERT YORK AND JOHN BALDESSARI I'm waving over/ An arc of water,/And there a bus squirts/ Under us--Good-bye,/ I'm saying to my/ Grandfather. I don't/ Remember meeting/ Him in real life. I'm/ Heading off to paint/ And live like a bum./ I write BIG CAPITAL/Letters on my bills, the/ Few I generate,/ RICH ENOUGH? And other/ Such sentiments. Who/ Gives a rat's ass, as/ They say. Birds, birds/ Keep throwing up in/ This dream. Are they going/ Out of their minds? It's/Not a real question./So I keep waving, and I'm/ Waving. Three boats criss-/ Cross under blown strips/ Of clouds. The bus stalls/ At a light that's not/ Working. I get off/ With my home grown and/ Sense of adventure/ Intact. I buy some/Liquitex. I picked this/ Location because/ It's utterly unremarkable.

GOOD TASTE


I don't know about
Taste all the time. In
What instance? Just keep

House, I say, a little
Or a lot. Push the figure
Off to the side, cruel

And disfigured. Or let
A simple thing stand. Fish
Line or lace both adorn

A body to good effect.
The smell of a night. I like
The rhythms to linger.