ABC.1 + 2

1.
Awkward baker crumbles donuts early Friday,
groaning hours incandescent, jumpy knees.
Loneliness makes no one perfect:
quietly re-sorting sweets to unrequited voices,
while crisscrossing your zenith.
2.
Absolute bird chaos
delighted erotic frolicking
gangly hanging inverted
jostling keeping aloft.
Maybe ninehundred old pigeons
quite ridiculously soaring
telepathically
under vivienne’s window
excited youthful zeal

I’m

On the upside of a disaster tonight
In the company of smoke and fire
Burning my way up to the sky
On the downside of a dilemma tonight
Interrogating desire
Holding on too tight
On the outside of the end of the world tonight
Truth is I feel fine
With that weight on my mind
On the inside of invincible tonight
Looking for someone to [...]

Low chronic flight

Though the scenery disintegrates
Dandelions don’t forget
To coordinate color
With the sun.
Rivers linger along avenues.
Skyscrapers avalanche.
Pockets of clover cover manholes,
Staining the boulders green.
Flashlights look like
Stars in a dog fight.
The great liquid earth lunges
Without empathy over everything.

You are a coat

Sometimes you are a coat
too tight in the back.
I’m trying you on for certain weather;
hanging you up and wearing you out,
I take you on.
You are a cloak somedays
and I am mysterious,
hiding under your collar.
Or you are leather and I gleam.
Usually, you’re a warm wool itchiness:
shoulders stuffed, bent lapel.
Matchbooks slip through the holes in your pockets
and [...]

Family Business

Tonight around four a.m., after yelling,
stumbling and crashing had ended,
I went downstairs to inspect the damage.
A table had been overturned again;
broken glass and flowers, food and wine,
plates and napkins all over the floor.
While I stood there, a neighbor came to the door.
“What the hell is going on in this house?
How many people live here and [...]

The end of time

The house has been tired for years.
Grandpa painted it just before the cast came off.
Way above the shutters with one plaster arm
hooked in a rung, he yelled, “Grandmother’s gone mad
and your aunts won’t do nothing.
Your uncle don’t even matter. But it’s okay.
See, the rollers are better these days.
It’s easier than it must look from down [...]

The day I went into the city

It’s time to think of years
like a child thinks of days:
instead of stairs,
there are flights,
instead of shots,
bottles. Like whole things,
one is for nothing,
another is for love.
Tomorrow we’re building,
but today is for play.
Now it’s a field, not a blade.
Surrounded by too many days
that keep getting too small.
I’m getting too big,
stuffing days into boxes
and burying them in [...]

Co-workers

Maybe the finest thing Fredy ever
did was show me how the cruise ship
turns around in front of the city
like a dancer in front of her daddy.
Between two bridges on the lips of Miami,
the January sun glares off of port
as the ship dials east on a dime.
It’s named Imagination, but,
more like an elephant, it spins
with a [...]

The Captain

Part 1
At the beginning of the rainy season, my old boss called to tell me about the Captain. He was a sweet old drunk that lived in his van in the bookstore’s parking lot. The day before, his van was towed away, and that rainy night the Captain slept in the dumpster behind the [...]

Afterschool

After I stopped crying
and realized how quiet
it was in the lunch room,
and how tight
I was holding my broom,
I stuffed the kid’s poem
in my pocket and went
to get my bucket to mop.

Wild ancient

wild ancient trampoline schizophrenic gasoline
forgot to keep the engine clean
asphalt dreaming on a blade of green
peel your fruit and dig the hole
dredge a hill to fill the bowl
reams of comment undulate
catch a breeze and bake a cake
wild ancient losing speed
along the edge of what you need
fabric heart attack you’re on
strip center traffic favorite song
that along [...]

being carried away

Then I didn’t feel the ground.
Just a shoulder in my gut,
an arm around my waist,
and a steadying hand on my ankle.
Blood throbbed into my face
with every careful step. My hands,
dangling down past your belt,
reached for a world that looked
so weird from there.
I’d never been saved before,
Never seen the floor before
from such an awkward angle. It [...]

The barnacle

Black jack elastic the waiting task
I imagine for years we’ve tried
to get that kind of love out of you.
All this time with your thumb
up your ass mulling over nature and jesus
and never did you think
that we might want to hear
about the ways you go about
getting on in the world.
Fact remains, the old sturdy burl
stuck to [...]

Our wall

We share a wall
and some sounds.
I can hear
your cat pounce,
your phone ring.
I hear you sing
in the shower
when we are sharing
hot water. Everytime
I break a glass
I imagine you might
knock to ask
if I’m alright.
You never do, though
maybe you might.
I think I’ve heard you
having the flu, smelled you
one whole Tuesday afternoon
preparing a stew and apple pie.
Heard you cry [...]

The doll and the dog

The doll baby in the back dash
might have been sleeping,
but the shepherd was certainly
dead in the gutter
This guy, waiting for the light to change
in the beater in front of mine, must not know
how to handle dolls. When she was tossed back there,
she struck an uncomfortable pose.
Her hand-me-down dress
covered her face. In her nap
she was mooning [...]

Dawnwalkers

1.
Shops unlocking.
Morning drops.
Cream and coffee.
Ruined stockings
on the way
to the office.
Breakfast missed.
Slept in.
Grocery lists
unfulfilled again.
Bank hours.
School bus,
bullies, bruises
and bad dreams.
Bad teachers.
Blossoms.
Birds of paradise.
Bacon.
2.
Blue water in the morning.
Fluoride.
Floss. The postman.
The cock. The dew.
The old. The lazy.
The dawnwalkers
swinging their arms.
The drug addicts.
Morning alcoholics.
Men in suits
handling the news.
The blues
lightening up
after a long night.
The jazz musicians
looking for
a good joint
that’s still [...]

Dawnwalkers, cont.

3.
The washer.
The dishes.
The hair dryer.
The curling iron.
The sudden sirens.
The traffic.
Napkins, straws,
paw marks, safety pins,
cuffs and hems.
Biscuits and gravy.
Fog. Waffles.
Long walks
after midnight
turned into hikes
in the hills.
The brakes.
The spills.
The shakes.
4.
The remnants
of argument;
heartache, mascara,
lipstick, hangnails.
Relatives in jail
enjoying the morning.
The sunrise.
Time.
The rails
all full of trains.
The rain.
Defrost.
Appointments.
Lost.
Checks.
Toast
and butter

Sound of you reading-

The sound of you reading.
A whisper every eight minutes.
Sound of you sucking your teeth.
Deep breath unsettling your chair.
The nail of your index finger against
the grain of your blue corduroy slacks.
Like an instrument.
The sound of your scanning eyes.
Your motionless mouth.
Your cheek
lit up with light reflected off the pages.
All dark now
and quiet. The books all burnt up [...]

Neighborhoods

1.
How much we are like buildings,
and the alleys are the dark, cool gaps between us.
The streets and avenues are the ways we meet
and leave each other.
And what about the gutters?
The bricks, just like skin,
shed shadows and hug back memories,
while I hold a warm battle in my mouth
like the endless muffled arguments
leaking from the penthouse.
2.
And when [...]

Making music

I can hear goosebumps
spreading
like a field of toy pianos
played broadly by the wind.
Pinch in the percussion,
flutter in the tongue. My ear is not perfect,
neither are my thumbs,
but I’ll practice everyday if you let me.
Face me and kneel,
arch your back, touch your heels;
you are a harp
while your stomach beats baritone.
And your hips,
something to give Stratavarious
dreams bordering [...]

Outside

I think the next time
we should do it outside
in the sunshine close
to the ground amongst trees
we could be honest
seeing each other better
as animals
as creatures
we could be loud too
and look
in each other’s eyes
or compare our lives
to clouds
and wait
for night

Slide-

Along the fine edge of your body,
I am too often
about to fall
into the shade
that is neither one of us.
There are things
I don’t want to know about you.
You are ugly
somewhere; a birthmark,
or some scar that requires a story.
I’m scared that maybe,
when we are bored with each other,
you won’t leave,
and I’ll be forced to carry your ugliness [...]

Terrific gravel

Terrific gravel horseshoe
and hounds hair slumber
with jack the knife in spades again
escalating vibrant denizens
flooding out the holes
of apelike aisleways
black and freshly paved
sticky lascivious waves
hours at the wheel
orientating.
Furious scope sting
electric rope swing
unbelieveable hope sings
taking out the trash
pale and pastel pinks and blues
babypowder midmorning hues
easy candy steady breeze
dandelion nap trapeze
focus broke
as the joke was passed
and the ground [...]

ABC.3

Art car
Birch divot
Crumpled envelope
Drunken forester
Estrogen junkie
Fallen highchair
Governing indigo
Helipad jostling
Incandescent kangaroo
Juniper larceny
Kingdom macramé
Linoleum nightmare
Managerial oracle
Newsworthy pessimism
Ornamental questionmark
Pirate radio
Quizzically serious
Systemic umbrellas
Tv
Union wage
Vicious xylophone
Wailing Yellowstone
X-ray zoetrope
Yawning zees

Casing

Six cars, we go out of the city.
Where there’s houses, we cruise our blocks.
Just drive and listen to the baseball on the radio and read stories.
We’d catch our cousins for lunch at construction site sandwich trucks.
And we would nap in the trees eating fruit. My father, always with binoculars,
watching the lazy avenues for imminent vacationers,
learning [...]

Grove running

Like you don’t get anywhere,
running through trees tall as small houses.
Black trunks lined in steady small pilings
like the white, gray stones of Arlington
like a million telephone poles
one million deep, along a fast narrow road.
Haitians, shade sitting on orange crates,
smoke, with sticky fingers and wet mouths.
They get lost in the shadowy room under the tree;
black jeans [...]

The end of time

The house has been tired for years.
Grandpa painted it just before the cast came off.
Way above the shutters with one plaster arm
hooked in a rung, he yelled, “Grandmother’s gone mad
and your aunts won’t do nothing.
Your uncle don’t even matter. But it’s okay.
See, the rollers are better these days.
It’s easier than it must look from down [...]

When moving

In the clutter of these things
I found a photo:
you and I
with smiles and tired eyes
from waiting up all night
to see the sun first.
The camera was in my hand
looking back at us.
A stickiness to our teeth
though we hadn’t slept.
We stretched our lips
for the picture.
There are holes top and center,
because I pinned us up on walls once.
Then, [...]

Dent

Art is a dent in the world.
I saw one once
near a little stone wall in Ireland.
From just the right angle,
I could see it from the hill.
A pane of heat shimmer
the size of a soccer ball
floated about three feet off the ground.
Just a dent, perfectly smooth
and not too deep, a shape resembling
the bottom of a wine [...]

ABC.4

(Found in a Lightpost in Paris)
Dear Eddy-
Foley got hit in Jacksonville,
killed. Leo’s money’s not our problem.
Quietly resurface. Send Tony you’re vitals.
We’ll exchange yen and zen again.
Best,
Chuck

Orchestra

Music of my own movement
against texture and space,
my breath brushes through
the whiskers on my face.
And the rub of my clothes
and my joints punctuate
the time I have to wait.
Music of my own mind
in a dark without edges
or gaps between the parts
of some subliminal symphony.