I bike to Mentryville there is
An old house there
An old school and oil pumps

Pepper trees on the path
Then sage
And marigold?

I wonder what these are—
Flowers inside the canyons
Are new to me

The sun isn’t new
But it’s late not early
The sun is going

Down
Down
In and around Mentryville

The first oil was discovered here
In the 1870s
Now it’s all dirty and broken

Pump parts and sulfur
Abandoned things
You find in these canyons

Ahead is a broken highway—
Washed out by a flood once
Now covered with thick briars

I wonder
If I took a picture of this
Would you still want me?

This town is new to me and I see it
Feel it
Cold in the morning
I go out for a ride on my bicycle
Up and down the paseos
Into the neighborhoods

The houses sit like this | |
The days are rich
The sun sheer as cut glass

I could go back to my place and make a sandwich
Or I could call you

My best friend tells me

Santa Clarita
Newhall, Valencia

Like names in the mind
The whole valley is glittering with them

And when clothed the arm has rigidity
It lends strength to orders
It pushes the hand to destiny
This too is good

But I like the other end of the arm
The underneath where it meets the body
This part of the arm can be coarse and slick
It can be soft and smooth
Either way it is the truth of the arm
One of two truths

If I could touch you there
It would be something to celebrate

when you started / flying
i thought i would go deaf
and hear no more loud noise
myself the only loud / noise
in my life
and i wished for a cable to snap
from the top of the bridge
to fall down and smite me /
for godssake //

it was a damn thing
like Lewis and Clark turning
back towards America

you say I am sad
I am sorry
I want almonds

the tongue demands marzipan
the mouth demands bitemark

and you wish for milky syrup

voluptuous marzipan–

what would you give to eat it?

Tell me
If you see any kind of return signified
In the rosebush

That’s my own heart
I feed it with my own

I like bars too
I’m getting drunk in one tomorrow
Even though I won’t leave the house

I’ll watch you
Way up in the sky in your new panties

Shaking your ass for everyone

How would it feel today,
waking up inside this exhibition,
this late transition,
passed from hand to hand so much?

There is a goblet
that doesn’t want to be smoothed over,
there is a fetish like the afterlife,

that isn’t there when we want it.
And what would you yield to,
if anything?

How is it
this far inside the exhibition?
Do you write for anything?
And we are all miles from something.

We went to see the tree-maker,
the carver, who was gone.
When we finally reached his house
he had taken out the music,

one of many signs.

Mama, ooooohhoooooh…

The wise IT administrators here have blocked all the “good” websites so I guess I’m stuck here for the duration. Eventually I will probably break down and post that mean and ugly sweet and lovely poem I’ve been sitting on for about a week now.

My wife says you look like the inside of an egg carton, but I’m not so sure. I think you might be empty.

I sat with her down at the racetrack; she was beautiful.
I sat with her and we watched the sea rising out of the sea oats;
she was beautiful there too.
Then I sat with her at the mall.

We left her friends shopping at a record store and a book store.
I have to leave now she said. Goodbye.

Emmanuelle, you go home with me now, ok.

*

2

Emmanuelle walked into the kitchen and she made soup.
And just like that—I know her.
Here is where your things are, correct?
(Here is how things are done)

She points out all the apples, the pears the cinnamon
the spatula and the big wooden soup ladle that I use
to stir all my dinners

Mostly oatmeal

(Not all these things went into the soup, of course)

I—

I didn’t think it could be like this
What? She says

It’s. This is good.

*

3

Emmanuelle’s dressing in the window
Trying on one thing after another:

Things I bought for her, things
I don’t remember

I didn’t buy this I say

She’s just put on a jacket

She’s too tall, and pale for it
She should be wearing a pink sweater

I’m going to paint her
I’m going to paint her that way

*

4
Emmanuelle has a job in the city.
Or had. Today I’m telling her to quit.
The manager there.
They don’t appreciate all that she does for them.

Those boys.
Looking at you when you walk in.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want anyone else to be like that with you—you know?

Emmanuelle reaches for the light and I tell her
Oh don’t turn it off.

*

In a little hotel today
By the window

Stop

*

5
Emmanuelle says in the morning:
I really do think you should paint me now.

I agree.

So I get up. I go outside into the garden.

The garden is an old oak and it’s
Surrounded by more shrubs and available
water

I find a Blemish

The cotton is stuck on the tips of the limbs

I’m not a good painter
I think there should be more light
But it’s not
Not likely to be

Oh, oh garcon.

She puts my head on her lap.
She doesn’t even notice that I’m talking.

*

6
This is the way that I paint

I say

Sistine chapel lightning bolt belief
Belief-sys.
Bolshevik blood bloddy sock musk mollusk muscovite

Must, must open the gallery

hheathcliff

Heath
Heath

He
Heathrow
he he after

J Gleason pops you pow right in the kisser
the money’s on the nightstand
abracadabra
Open your bed

Mama
Mama mia
Momentous
Morning

Emmanuelle thinks that I am a little drunk
I am a little drunk, but it doesn’t stop me from painting her

*

*

7
Emmanuelle do you know me

I’ve just finished my coffee and third cigarette
Emmanuelle has been reading.
There is a tall book between her knees

Occupation of my fort
It looks serious

I really do think she should know me by now.

I ask her
Aren’t we happy?

Emmanuelle says
Will you take me out tonight?

*

8

We go to the restaurant and I have toast
Emmanuelle has fries
She puts ketchup on them and she takes a small bite

She smiles
(I do really like to watch her eat)

These fries are good she says
The waitress brings her more and I have some also

Delicious.
Emmanuelle sings in the dark glass.

*

9

Emmanuelle walks with her back to me
She’s sleeping, but she’s walking too
I’m afraid

She’s dreaming
She’s leaving

I’m dreaming too
I know her
She has her suitcase all ready
And she’s waving

Her legs twitching in sleep
My legs

She’s running
Far far or into or from this

Go on Israel

Go on Middle-East
Blow me up

Go on America

Time for dinner
Time for 2-dollar gas

I implore you
I beseech you
I’m really down on my
hands and knees here

Looking for change
in the cracks of the sofa

O amen
Hallelujah
Isn’t it a miracle?

Which part of your mother is
most high–the head, the heart,
or the stomach? (The brain–the exit?)
Frail, little red-arms, baby-bunting,
Where is your mother now?

Was everything always this ancient?
Dear to me,
I don’t co-exist with you anymore
but I co-inhabit—my bible
but I bleed
(I watch CNN a lot)

I think:
demise on another channel
the droll kings buried in the fire
(or if they were in ancient Egypt,
mummified)

They take with them
cats, possessions, hallways, human echoes
3-day-old meat
the only thing left standing
is the refrigerator

You sit with me
and we watch the result, right?
It’s foolish to talk about this,
floods and this.
The mullah of summer
is muttering about god and the clitoris.

I believe in it—like a factory.
The metic blue, the eye-shadow, so much
to work on.

I need a protective sling
over my shoulder blade,
a clasp/cover-me-up.
I need to be put out back
with the garbage.

*

In its fever you see the most perfectly impossible furniture: owls without heads turned into lamps; legless chairs; trees and alleys that go on to join roads and figures together. Bridges and outlets for Streetlamps, bumper-stickers, and all that shining bright sand. Beware of the snow. The snow sticks and sticks to you and there is no way to get it off. Not even if you dissolve your own skin.

When you leave you see a golden (wasp). And the wasp has its legs tucked under its wet beautiful wings and has just come out from a bush. So you know that it is a beautiful woman. And She’ll do anything. She has black eyes (and they are so wide and lustrous you think you should have to apologize for dreaming them). Sometimes it is a man. If it is a man it flies straight at you.

When you wake up there is no reason to wake up and nothing to wake up to, except the woman. You are the wasp and alone in the whole wide universe.

And the rug is brown.
The water rises to meet you.
I am. We are.
We walk around,
we burn someday.
This morning over our balcony
I hear a bird. A bird
shits out feathers on me.

But can it be really
damn

No, but you don’t suppose it is
It is the way that you have when you recall something and it’s not like it really was

The brain is like some hamburger but it’s liturgical

So what was I talking about oh yeah my third grade teacher
And once in the third grade, ….
Or later

I had a camera
In the third grade
And when nobody was looking at me I was looking looking

Looking at the back of her
(Neck, basically)
And (her knee)
And her hair was quite long in those days
so I thought that I might have to pull it

I had a good grip
Then

I saw her her face red
her red in the face and the face the face of Mars
The face the face it was the face of a planet but which one I forgot

(Mars)

Oh yeah
But I forgot

______ had gone away that summer and left us
My tree hadn’t grown like the rest
It was weak
I needed time

Nonetheless
I had pointed my camera at her
She couldn’t see me

The sun was so bright

It fell on her shoulder

(That’s my shoulder she said)
(Oh don’t touch me there
she said)

There is much trouble in this classroom

I think the wise voice coexisted
And then

And then my eyes wouldn’t hold the image…

****

Dust bowl prodigal

Lucky white thingamabob
 jalopy new moon

The face at the window is the face of a man who likes to make lists

Hera, Ezra, Esther
etc.

He says fa la la
Fiddle-dee dee dee

He has come to take you with him

***

Five time I tried to go back and fix the corruption

Four or five
Twenty

I am liars about sex

***

I am a child of the seventies

This poem made the carrots sad
They said, we can’t repeat it
We absolutely can’t repeat it

They took to jumping up and down in the stew making the potatoes and
meat very upset

They had to call in bugs bunny with a fire truck

Yabba dabba doo
And fred flintstone

We don’t know what is necessary

***

Wind or campaign

Intense map of the north
White heart
Sobriquet

***

Soren kierkegaard becomes a robot

Merriweather is a force
Is brains
She left my last sandwich on the windowsill and told me the magpies ate it

****

I want to make love to you on the back of a school bus.
This can’t be good.
What would our parents say?

***

Chitty chitty bang bang
Pink panther
Oz

****

The world is a different place, full of motors and spitches. What are spitches?

I don’t think my children will understand these poems I write.

Neither do I…

******

Daguerreotype: sleep

This shading shape should be your
Elfin grot
Should be your
(well-consuming)

Bit of fur

When you shaved it off for me, I thought it was an act of romance

*****

Today you are in electric barns

O hayloft here
Hayloft there

Macdonald

*

F Fellini the film director
Cast his wife
In the film la strada

She plays one good hooker
Baby

*
(Conviction, etc.)

Are you exicted
I’m excited

Maybe you don’t fit inside
the grandfather clock

*

My grandmother lived in the mountains

The poke salad
The poke salad
The poke salad

Sparkles with beauty

*

Poem for the old owners

I want to get Thai from the thai place

The green curry it’s the best ever

Bet you didn’t know that
Or did you

Guess what

I can play chopsticks
On the piano

****

(My lover as a Dressmakers form)

Time was, sleep made us all a little more hoary
We didn’t worry about the outcome, we worried about the income.
What the news from the war would be,
what the tendre sun

But the truth is, I didn’t want you
 To follow me
I hid you under the mattress and said that you fell

You said, I am a white foamy carcass

I said, could you Pop your shoulders in and be a little more real

The suspense here is killing me.

***

(My lover as Velma from Scooby Doo)

Idiot song

Come and rescue me in your van

***

My lover as a militant bitch

Like a child prodigy you could cut your fingernails short and bang
bang bang on the piano while Real Madrid played Arsenal in the
Champions league or Gordy Howe with the slapshot puck up ok
yeah ok

Flick-cigarrette-eyes

Saying it isn’t so doesn’t make it so/not so

***

Fists in your gown

The alternative poem
The derivative
Desire
Always exists beside you

Behind you

Lick me
Lick me there you say

where?
You say

**

I’ve forgotten where

she has gray streaks in her hair
& she’s a soccer mom
but she looks good at the PTA meeting
& she hands you a brochure
& there are the girls with the same ribbons

you like her eyebrows / so
why shouldn’t you want to kiss her?

But I thought about you and I missed you
I dreamt that you bought an RV and you and the bird
Travelled the 4 corners of the country giving poetry readings

The people adored you
(Almost as much as I did)

They lit an American flag in your honor

I burnt my finger lighting a fire in the fire-place

you feed on the milk carton
but the milk is sour

so what’s the word?
‘There’ is there for support only
a knee brace, nothing permanent
you like the pretty beaker but
you like the ribbon (more)
that falls from it

turn the light out
no, don’t
leave it on / open

Flies come up to me and
They lick your juice

They say No
No carrots
No apples

There is not a lime or a green tablet as sweet

(As your hand: on my saddle)
My post
Maybe my post

You must have misremembered it
When you got off

When you touched me
You spilled your Coca-Cola
All over my tail

Little steam pumper

Now

Like this

Now

Ride a bicycle
Ride a bicycle along the rim of the levee

And

Find a girl
Find a marshmallow, morel

Now

Give her a towel
Give her a tablespoonful of medicine

And

Take her
Take her
Take her with you

I don’t want to fuck you
I want to hold you
To make you semantic
I don’t want to hold you
I want to fuck you

Last night I dreamt that I was going to a graveyard
I was going to rip you open

I never got there instead
I found you in a travelling circus
You were up on the trapeze

You were sad
You were an amazing actress

I married you in heaven

She wants to pull up her panties
Into her asscrack
She wants to watch
She is reading
and she has long fingernails

They are friends
and they decorate their places with flowers and cupcakes

They have no regrets

They say to one another, when you leave you make me so sad
When you come back you make me so happy

And it doesn’t sound silly

They lock their windows, and they say
When you come home to me, I will take your picture

In your blue dive suit
You fall into the blue pail

With your Terry gilliam shovel
David lynch lunchbox

Blue mother purse
I skinned my knee mother

But you fall into the blue motel
And the director is moving behind you

He says I want you to push back
He says all the way back to Topeka

And There is the blue car
With the blue (fire) engine
(And the blue gravel)

But you say Sorry, sorry
I have another appointment to keep

And the audience is drawn
The audience is still

He says Lilacs
The smell of lilacs is what draws me to your body

He is smiling

He sends in the dwarf to murder you

And the robot howls

It’s unlikely to stop
The seizures feel too good, and besides, the night is a perfect
companion to his erection

He turns over and there is a clacking clacking of his internal parts
Why? why would you make me?
Why, God? Why?
I feel rage, you hear?

*

Meanwhile, in your dream
He sleeps on a granite slab next to you and puts his big metal hand
between your legs

Silver frankenstein
King tut
Sweet man

Oh
You burn
You secrete
You want him

There is, there should be, a way to get this into a language that you
could both understand

He presses a few buttons on his translator and the spaceship sparks
into a new black

*

In the morning
He wants you to go somewhere with him
He says let’s go to Coachella
Ley’s go to Burning Man
We have to get out of this black hole
Ok

You teach him to talk dirty
You say smile at me honey
Smell me
Smell my pussy

And you do
He does
Since you will both burn like a comet
And the spaceship steps are so cold
You don’t know how you could go back

There is not a place for me in that time machine you say
He says I know

He reaches out with his long tentacles
And he tries to console you

And, I missed paper. I missed it really much.
I missed the soggy feel of it, the damp inkstains,
and the way that the slush would run down from your legs when it was over.

Runny. White eggs from a snow or bulletin or confetti or banners.

Then there was a mountaintop
And a car crash
(No doves)
And an extra battery that seemed to fit (nothing) or only the last sloop
It rolled on the floor

Did you trip?
Oh. I know that you did.

You pulled me close and told me that I had to trust you

I’m going to Baltimore you said
I’m going to get a job

Then you stood up and told me that we had to go

I figured it would happen
Could you give me the AI at least
Or at least let me feel what you feel

I think I said that

Then you said
No, not yet
Put your head on my breast, and I will watch you

I remember him taking Latin in year 1 of University, but for the life of me
I don’t remember tying my shoes. Did that happen? In year one?

*

He sits on the bench and she opens up her notebook/heart to him

She says let me show you my diamonds

They are like travel slides from a long and difficult journey

Pink and brown
Red and even more red
She says they represent the land
Little pieces of me

Here is my engagement

In the middle she puts the clocktower, with its tall, perfect spires

*

Now, here is the real church
A birthstone

This is not a place you can get to before me

She says think of it as a leaf
Think of it as pristine

We must extoll its blessings

It is like a relationship
The way things partly worked out

The way there is a lack of devastation, over here

The way there are rules, there are rules, there are rules

*

It is sinister though

The look in the bagman’s eye
Tom Selleck or Thomas Magnum
Sent to collect from her

Hairy chest and mustache
His warm tropical shirt contrasting
With her cold gray one

Does she have money
What will he do with her
Will she fit in the back of the car

He’s contemplating the book cover of the book she’s reading
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Probably not a book he’s read before
Probably not

She asks, have you read this page
Have you read this page

He doesn’t think so
They go on and on
And meanwhile the jewels shake in her hand
And she’s not even sure if she can remember him

She says
Come back in a week
I’ll have it then

*

This punishment though
This stone
If she acknowledges it she is done for
If she ignores it she is a fake

There is the moon
It is her headrest

It is the hardest one
It feels like a fist

This bright calamity
That is what she would call it if she had a name for this thing

It is bloody, bloodred, blood blood blood
Blood blood-moon

*

What if
He’s thinking of her?

The way for example
The word “Trowbridge”
Sounds like the word “drawbridge” and it sounds like the word “troll-bridge”
But it is not either one of them but just a street I used to live near
And where I once bought a pint of whiskey for a party

This was next door to the drycleaners where I picked up my suit

My grandfather was dying
Where was my damn suit
Where were my golden cufflinks

We got in the car
We went to the Plaza and rode to the 73rd Floor

The room was spinning
I wanted to fly far, far away from that and find myself on a different planet

I think I might have forgot you

I got undressed for that night and then I forgot the feeling

I forgot what it was like to be human

All that hating and biting
All that wanting of this thing or that thing
Wanting as food

I wanted food

I wanted to eat the meat raw and the vegetables cold
I wanted to dip the mushrooms in sauce

Today, when I got your note I thought it said
you should eat me with your fingers

I wanted to eat you
I wanted to dust your legs in cornmeal
I wanted to fry you in oil

there—a sort of divine/semi-divine thing,

incorruptible; the corruptible down-river

there/not there where Ulysses hides.

Ulysses, counterpart to the real. He stands

at the river and prepares to swim. And the

river, it is prepared to become steam.

Because, all around (them) the crowd is

yelling, Fusion. And they are saying, Play

here. Or they are saying, Leave us. But the

Atman, he isn’t decided by what they say.

He is decided by what he thinks. He is, right

now, thinking of someone he is willing to

die for. And he isn’t that person. He is

thinking that you probably aren’t either.

And neither is Ulysses, that scoundrel. But now it is your turn. Standing tiny, with

your remote control extended, wax-on wax-

off, if you can break X number of boards

with your bare hands or open a beer-bottle

with your teeth, you win a car. Now the

interview can begin. The interview steers

clear of your qualifications—what your vitae

taught you, or how you learned to be a

good, productive person. Instead, they will

want to know only when did you swallow the

nicotine? Or how old was the girl? And what

did you say that you did with her? All these

things were never so hot to you. Because

this is everything that you went for. This is

what you must lie down with, you must be

absolutely sure. And absolutely quiet. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/12/a-stillness-and-a-stillness/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/12/when-i-first-started-working-at-the-poetry-office-i-was-17/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/12/when-i-first-started-working-at-the-poetry-office-i-was-17/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:04:45 +0000 David http://dummy.rentedroom.com/?p=320 Boy they say that Exephrastes is a fast runner

He is, he is, but right now it’s
Mongolia, ahead

Mongolia, he speaks about 50 million languages

He speaks them, but he doesn’t understand them
He doesn’t know anything about human nature

This is simple
I want you to make me some demon toast
I want you fine

I feel you thirsty
I lick your neck
I lick you, from just under your chin to right over your voicebox

That’s your throat
That’s your esophagus
That’s air

That’s

You give me a pulmonary embolism

I don’t think i mind it either

She whispers to me about the movie Gaslight
She likens Ezekiel’s petal to the petals on her blouse
(She says that Existence is
Something simple)

I want to crush my face against her
And fall back down with her into the sofa
And fall for a long time

Instead we’re floating

The room has many faucets
So many beds
We climb into the windows and wave to the families outside

Hello hello
Don’t worry about us
Go back to sleep now ok

Then Irene/Ilene
She opens her dress a little for me to see her
I see her belly
She has the tattoo of a small animal

I think I have seen you before I say
You did
You did
I was singing to you, it was your birthday

Oh, if only you
If only you

Could you watch me
The way that I watched you just before I watched you

Ehh. Can you kill a tiger with a 20 gauge shotgun shooting birdshot? Probably not. This disturbed me greatly in my dream. Perhaps if I shot him in the gut, or perhaps say directly in the eyeball? But then I would have to wait for that fucking tiger to get pretty close to me. I was envious of the boy with the deer rifle. And the man with the sawed-off bazooka that looked liked it could put a serious dent in some tiger.

Then I dreamt that I was going to be in a movie directed by Sydney Pollack, and I had all sorts of advice for him to listen to. Criticism really. His movies used to be so much better! I enjoyed the shag carpet in his guest-room though.

Mmm, that is the sort of dreams that I have been having lately.

Rules speaking to other rules
Speaking to codes
I can somewhat relate

I see smoke and cinder
I see Barney Rubble

The virtues are all twisted
I think I have suffered inside

Despite the barca-lounger
And the open can of diet coke
My brain is hurt
I need a new prescription

When I hear about the orange
And blue pills
My toe starts to shake
And I move my lamp

The termites jump in the foundation

I see a man on TV eat a scorpion

2
I see you clad in a red dress
And I think that the fake trees of
Bermuda are flowering
Maybe they are

Maybe so, maybe kings are sometimes
Knighted in the churchyard

Maybe that’s the way

A bunch of your friends
You go out in your black gown
And the minister sings

Out with your back pain

But for me, no, not really
I need more armor
Need to be more armed

I think of your protection
And it’s something I need

Like a word
Like a splash or baptism or branch or OK

*

The postcards are on the edge
Of the freeway

I know what this means
I have to pick them up

In my previous dream they were
Pills or prostitutes
But I get hung up on beginnings equally
As endings

I need them

One by one I call them
Juggernaut, I call them head-in-space

(This is what I would say to you
If I had you)

I’m not so sure that I’m convalescing
But maybe

I’ll wear a white robe
I’ll wear a white robe
And try it

3
Therapists are looking in keyholes
Looking for more notes

Looking to put more rain
On the cerebrum
Looking at us more and more

They know that things are always
Wet in the basin
And always too slick/shiny

We have an adult razor
And an immense bar of soap
Grocery list with supplies
And this porno/doggy

They want us to be really really real
Etc

To me this translates as dry oats
As endless heartache
As tooth sickness

They admonish us
To drop out the details
To assassinate

It’s like they were teaching us
The secret ceremony
The private handshake

And I don’t know it
I don’t know if I want to know it

I was out on the ice
I was put there

With my beer cans and my litter
My TV and my radio
My empty refrigerator

I found a broken party telephone

I was so happy to call you

of the money, in spite of the New Year.

The engines were stopped. People just sat

on their seats watching. “Just put it in the

pile with our other attempts,” said the man

in the black hat, which was another way

of saying what the people had just said.

Then the sun went by or the sun went by.

Meanwhile, nothing looked as good as you

did. People, when they looked at you they

said, “Alors, this is my beautiful attempt,

my dollar.” (They couldn’t decide which

one you were.) They pointed at you and

held you up to the light. They covered

you in the ground. If they couldn’t see

you, then they pointed at the sky.

more and more. Crows in the wood.

Castles. Why do you still want me? (Why

do I still want you?) Here is a twenty,

here is a thirty dollar bill for the pizza-

man. When the delivery comes—just give

it to him. Or: buy me some fries, buy me

a soda. I’m going places. (All of them.)

I’m three pennies twisted in your sides.

I’m one and altogether. I have a night-

barrier. I have promised. Where have

the highwaymen put my shirt? (Why—

are you one of them?) There are two sides

to everything. The most important thing

to remember is: I fixed you up, I put you

in a dark suit. I wanted you to make it.

Dream-doll in your pigtails and

freckles, eye-liner and high-goth black

lipstick (lipstick) you dress like an adult

version of yourself. And I–I’m an

adult version of myself too. Mannequin-

man, accordion man, ostrich man with

bionic suit and power tie. Now we’re

both actual, paying customers. The

waitress, when she sees us she says, let

me begin by saying how nice it is to

meet you. She brings us our plates. She

hums into her apron, humming how

much, how much will they give me? To paraphrase: the menu. Stuck under

the dandelion’s right foot. Houseling the

glands and teeth and hair (and teenage

wisdom) within us until the breath went

out of us; we became human. Didn’t you

feel it: swimming alone in the porch-

light, camped out under the trees? Now

there is an eerie glow where our eyes

used to be. Now we’re zombies; now

we’ve no heads. The real thought of a

therapist isn’t helpful. Houdini? That

park is thick with liars. And they are

more brutish, more than happy to give

us answers. No No. No No No. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/09/with-soleil-moon-frye-at-the-international-house-of-pancakes/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/08/the-past-like-most-lessons/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/08/the-past-like-most-lessons/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:10:58 +0000 David http://dummy.rentedroom.com/?p=313 Or the water—what does it have to do to

be safe? When it lies down with you when

you see your reflection, and—you

want to see it. She says, you can’t catch

cancer from other people, but I don’t

trust them. Then, I felt overlooked. I felt

drugged. I felt like my insides were

cooking. Now, after all these years, how

do I find myself all tiny again, all seated

at the table, at the table with my baby-

doll St. Agnes Moorehead, St. Agnes

Moorehead? (And they have a tear.) St Agnes? The left eye is a little bigger,

or the right one. And the kohl doesn’t

help. She begins to wonder if she’ll be

gone by the first scene. And sometimes

she is gone. Into the first-class cabin,

into the cabin, into the sleeping-car of

whatever vehicle they happen to be on.

She doesn’t reach for her vehicles. Of

course the water is a vehicle: there is

The Pride billowing : The Pride. She

says, I don’t want you to see me like

this. I don’t want you to see me. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/08/the-past-like-most-lessons/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/08/antimatter/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2007/08/antimatter/#comments Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:06:08 +0000 David http://dummy.rentedroom.com/?p=312 Don’t arch my face, you make my scowls stick up when you
Run in your underwear
Down to the lake
A map so fine the stars silver
Moon the outhouse cut-out (like fine lace–but who put it there)
This is a place that you should know but
Thank you for not undressing yet
Thank you
Let me talk

The dirty old town was barren and without soul
And you were barren and without soul
And the night was hot
You ran through the wild deluge
You ran to the lake edge
The lake of fire had its stars stuck on
The night in reverse, and they were very black

You shook your fist

And though your feet were not yet formed
Were clay

You said
This is not a place where we should meet, because
nothing ever comes here
Nothing ever dies

And nothing ever came there
Nothing ever died

That was the birth of a planet

(Come over a cloudbank and aha
Some tiny towns are
Really big towns, that way)
Of course you don’t know that you don’t land there

But everything looking postage-sized and pretty
Oh god

It takes Real towns and roads to make forests remote
winding that way
a river with some canoeists on it
a bridge with some canoeists on it
No, Ants crawl
up a table leg

I mean Needles
Pine needles on picnic tables on patios
Are (invisible) real good
Viewed from mountaintops, real good

Except, that when you take a picture
there comes a crowd in a bus
People
Am I late
omg

(With jealousy)

The museum starts to call at 10

Come in
Come in

Tintoretto Seurat we have them all

The travel itinerary
You don’t remember the rest of, its been a long day
(Fog taking you back)

So you take another picture,
go back to the coast

And there’s a sunset
The hotel rooms’ pictures ablaze…

And, is this the earth?
Well
Well the earth’s arms are so immense
that you take the hands off
You put the hands in a jar

And then you dig
You dig
You dig for a while on your knees and elbows

And Roommate #1 comes in, with a bag

And there are some groceries
By the stove

And You put the stuff up
that she bought

Together several cans of
Soup fresh fruit and
Bread possibly…

(Mixed in with conversation
About the day
Your day how was it was it good
Tomorrow we’ll have soup
can we get a dog)

Then you make a hasty dinner
It’s late

Something for two people
sandwiches
Ham tomato

The door is open and I can hear you both laugh

*

The library has a ladder
Into the tops of books
  You go

  when you disappear
Where do you go

  upstairs

(Into the shower) or where
There is another room
I guess

  all the interior lights up

I see you hold your head

Now at a fireplace
the color of arms

No hat or a shirt

What are you doing there where are you
In the ironing sheer
Late in the sheer
And it’s Late it’s late and

Less of the things are coming true

The lights are knocked off
In the window
And I don’t know
  where you are

*

—–

That afternoon that you called
What was I listening to
Basically no one
You forget

Stone hearts are like that no one likes them
An obscure band

No but I was Listening to movies in the background

I was at my window

And you were singing

*

I just wanted you to go on upstairs
And turn on the light

Perpetual harm. That’s the state I liken it to. Like all of life’s a condition–not just the words I say, not just affects. Like there is no past I can remember, without the broken leg. Or a past where the leg is allowed to heal properly, where I don’t go around stumbling, screaming for painkillers.

Because, I think I used too many. I think they might have been real bones sticking out. And now my umbrella has turned inside-out in a gale. Unfolded. It can open doors in this house and scratch names in the dirt and drive rats from the cellar. But it’s useless against the rain; the rain continues to pour in sideways and climb to the ceiling, wetting the plants. And I’m screaming for painkillers.

Today I find them with the map. Inside the map, there’s a man, and the man is writing a book. It’s the story of his life. There’s the time, one night, he felt the patterns crisscross under him; here’s the T where the vehicle slammed into a field. He left the vehicle. The body tumbled over and over and sensed itself flying as the only solution.

Q: Why were the poems turtles?

A: They were chasing the bleak mountains.

*

Now now
Not so harrowing

But how do you get polite out
Imagination in
And still make it work?

(A dent)

In the cheap societies
In the cheap seats
With Palsy, and ms abstract

She has a private eye
He has a letter opener, a leer
And scuffed shoes on the cement step

She says
Draw my portrait
Make it nice ok

And he has to
in the library there are the
Bookclubs meeting
In the Polite small rooms

Addictions and self-help

How should it be
Recovering from

She stiffens

the small formal maze
continues

Outside Sweeping
ladders against the book shelves

With silver and gold books
That are not much help
And not much read

but it all seems OK well it is OK
There are some people
There is Champagne
And they are celebrating

She looks over the balcony
There is the future coming

*

But what about this?

What about terror in the backyard
The house with the chickens
In between beauty and
Madness

The tall oversized shed
With the garden rake
The Shovel covered with a layer of dust
the blade everything worn to a fine dullness

Or could it be more obvious
Despite the oversize brain good breeding
Good territory

There is a boy
(There is Ice)
Marking every last fucking fence
This is mine

This is nobody’s

(Nobody that you’ve read about in a book, anyway)

No it’s not polite
You couldn’t say this
Do this

Take every last fucking drug

Put the pantyhose in her mouth

And listen to the jawbone
Crack in the night

*

Or Walk with her in this dream
you and you
Take you to the car

And you oh
Wait for the police
and they are there and she is and you are
Sharing the hard ground

And you listen

Shh you listen

Or do you not plan for this?
Does it not seem bright enough, to you?

It looks like this:

(Diner, that is. My poem is mainly black and white.)

So he has a funnel instead of a penis
and has put his mediaeval pianist’s hands
on the thighs of a contemporary romance
listening to Brubeck at Birdland. It’s just
too very very. “That’s one for the apple barrel,
you can feel the North Pole kissing the shellac.”
I wear a hook in my look to be sexy, the two
of us mucking the fast in a bush. He puts his long
fingers into the wet mandolin precious with lotion
and stringy. Helplessly clandestine, that’s
my song that I sing to the dark people, the
confederate spies when I’m singing them code
over the tongue’s turnpike, dub-a-dub and
shit for your momma. We thought you were driving them
out of Finland, but St Anthony flew with his herd
of lepers and made us lie down and come. Sic
transit gloria. O make our hearts so like to Thine!
And they dried him out and hung him up. My, he swung.
Blowing his nose for the lovers; forswunken, forswot.

The crook of her
(crook)
             the door to
the small room under the stairs

The man had said
Little piggie let me in

The animals were in their pens
They said

Yes we do have a language
Here it is

Here it is
Wheeohhhweeohhweeohh

Bastard
Cheat

Inner thigh
For no reason
I want to touch you
Back of the knee

Kiss me
Kiss me Shirley

I don’t care
I don’t
Even if it’s a small one

Even if

Touch my stomach

Oh god, you’re so beautiful

and St. Peter’s
feverish
at the potter’s wheel
while the wheel spins
in the potter’s mind

so I feel I have hard heads
hard words
knocked down in the pit
drugged in the pit
in the pit

while my brothers played
numbers over me

who am I?

*

who are they?
who they were
who do you think you are
turning the furnace back up
exploding the Chinese Brothers inside

exploding
little Shadrach Meshach Abednego
little Solomon, chopping the dog in half

of all this energy
did you dream
did you dream
did you dream
of the woman again?
was she taking something from you?

*

Dance with me, hard head
little kiln
little egg, sticky-egg
white egg, Faberge (egg)

so for the days we’ll have off
Lady Fatima’s fortune-bread
the dough before it’s baked
sticky with ingredients

egg white
vanilla white
sugar white
salt white
water white
flour white

incandescent
head you’re broken
take that

Sense of shared space, shared purpose
(A help meet, a garden, work to do)

Destiny, to drive us
More destiny, more desire, hunger to drive us

Some stock
A larder

Common enemies
or none
Invisible
The good will to keep them invisible
Separate

A fence

Scruples, for when there seems to be no purpose or way,
before a purpose or way is found

Some time alone in the PM, before dinner after lunch
Also in the morning, just before
Different projects to show us that we are accomplished
individually as well as jointly

Proximity
(At night esp we must sleep together it must not be unseemly
uncomfortable disturbing in any way)
At other times, perceived closeness but not actual
(For what is actual but easy perception:
I just look around and you are with me)

A pot for my black moods

A pot with a lid (a seismograph) for yours

A dinner bell

Courtesy
(Borne not out of diffidence, but respect)
Mutual concern/care
Affiliation

Tenderness

Attraction

Physical attraction for one another
Strong chemistry
(Like the attraction of Arethuse, or Penthesilea)

Attraction for the universe

A mountain
Reality (your thought should be like a mountain to me, you are)

A bowl of soup
Rice
Two bowls
More rice
More soup

A kettle to put all this on

Driftwood

More themes: more times: more locales:
Sandals
Atlas
Mesopotamia

A boat, to carry us in case of storm
A snowplow
A harbor
At the end, a haven free from worry

A room in the west, a room in the east
Secure against wind
A haven

Good restaurants around the corner serving hot food
24 hrs
Fresh

Quiet/classical music

Songs to make us forget suspicion
To make it go to sleep
To rouse the cloak of invisibility that we align ourselves in

No interstates
Or fewer
Less clocks

Much less despair in each other’s absence

More time to think it over

Overeager imaginations
(like dogs)
Intuitions (like cats)
The ability to read fortune cookies with the highest level of optimism
(In bed, in the dark, in the forest green)

And humor
Eucalyptus leaves for your back
Vaporub for your chest
Chapstick for your lips
Visine for you eyes

A balance of phobia like in the (animal) ‘cat’
That will run before predators
That will scratch and hiss
That will shed its fear, when cornered

Appetite for more things

More types of music
More art
More/different ways of seeing
More beliefs
More bodies

(More passion)

More comfortable silences

More
Books in all corners
Still lifes

Pots of paint

Open frames inside frames,
no pictures as yet
No faces

Tubs
Lush with scenery
Candles and grapes
Augmented portraits of bodies in relief or profile
Picasso’s blue period
Nothing clear yet

Praises for one another
Your raiment is fair
How like unto the lark is your voice

Meaningful vows

Readers who don’t infringe on us
Friends, neighbors, colleagues who don’t

A renewable and a year and a day contract
Renewable annually

Renewable mutually

Renewable
Held votives

Bath salts

Sundry items like:
Clothespins, needles, ice, ice-chips, matches,
cinnamon

Chewing-gum
Coins

A house with a central staircase and a vegetable garden
Two pretty dormers
Wraparound porch
Porch swing

A park sitting next door
Lake out back
Two lakes, or a fountain

Or something by the ocean
Something modern
Where we can speak and listen

A balm for forgetting
Rest for tomorrow

1. The bogeyman
(Come to witness)

Skin, 8 lbs in a mordant tub
with eyes and teeth and hair
The bloody organs

That I dragged back from Graceland to Ephesus
Because you asked me to get something.
(because: I forgot what you asked for)

So I plopped it down on the dinner table.
You said, take it back.

You wanted a kiss.
I brought back an entire champagne bottle.

What had happened to the arc, though
the arc of the eyes
that thing coming down from the

Coal chute?
Where was the unconditional,
the golden goose?

What was the value, in fact?

(Didn’t I want to touch
your body? didn’t I want it to be
a real body I could touch?)

They said, you’ll see.

It was all overcast.
I wanted to tell the architect of that thing
“You’re doing a great job.”

2. Sears Catalog
(To have and to hold)

I forgot which sect made this heresy
The Manicheans or the Pelagians or the Arians
the Donatists, maybe even the Marcionites

but it was fallacy

To test the scripture
(will it be whole, will it be broken)

To cherish the beloved
(Will it be beloved–
If the scripture be broken/whole)

Since no oath could resist questions
Since no word could resist
quaestus, quaesitum, quaerere ( to seek/to gain)

(The etymology of things being simple
The plain sense of things being
Mechanical)

And since there are things here

The things that you see on page 20 lingerie models
blue and green chemises
purple camisoles
beige and white
full-figure, 24 hour, cross-your-heart Playtex

Page 150
Garden tractors

The men who ride them more Determined w stamina than I
More Balanced/robust
(Stronger)

And trust me

Nor could I refuse (to see/k you), when they read me the note
you left in the copula

By Zeus and Hera

By her sister

By the twin sheep of Solomon
Recognizable as teeth

I could keep fighting to find a home in that mouth

I could be a garden tractor
I could be a model
A Weasel
You could use me to cut your lawn and
To drag the dead carcass of the dear

Out into the daylight (where it now sits falsely on the steps, buzzing
us with fake plastic flies and brimming over with a safe kind of
confidence: w/ stoicism, w/ idealism, w/ menace,)

And then skin it

A rug for the floor of our motor-home
Hope/Vestigial

This thing not seen in a long time

3. Familiar
(Hermeticism goes underground)

This note seemed to be excommunicated.
Ex-Commissioned.
In code.

I am your friend.

Fundamentally, though, you are branded. You are always wrong,
but now you are wrong like a child, you are perverse, you are again
the prodigal who has not been forgotten–although you yourself
have forgotten–to close the latch. An important object, in this case
a coat, the entire coat of a derelict lamb, a black-lamb lamby-lamb
I am a lamb dost thou know… must have escaped.

As punishment they consign you to the dump (the purgatory)
where you are paid to continue your experiments.

Alchemy 101:
Beaker on beaker on alembic
Surfactant on hydrosol
Black - white - red

The clean with the unclean
godly with the ungodly

fish of the air and fowl of the sea

Matter into unmatter
something into nothing

Something, into miraculous

Aspired to in the apparatus
Conjoined to look like

Liquid
as the state of a gas/
(water) at approximately 39 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level weighing
one gram per cubic centimeter

Our Medicine given to him to whom wee ought to give it,
makes true gold and Silver

The twin horns of sleep…

This doesn’t make sense. Aren’t you a man, don’t you want to perform
your experiments in secret, with a woman? Aren’t you a woman? Don’t
you?

Lie with me
My Life is over
I’m doing a little
It’s complicated

4. Death Penalty
(So horny)

The interventions never ceased, they just turned into other categories

Terror campaigns
Acid rains

(The ivory gate, the horned gate:
Which do you prefer?)

And worry. Worry all the time.

Worry
we were all as chattel to the one high church.
As bloated lambs, as stock
(a flock) constantly led up a green hill

and down

Where was that wolf
how many owls
can you leave the light on
oh god

Much later in history
came history, with George Lucas and light-sabers

a fierce cry for the public good
the private interest
full speed ahead

(such interest)
(notice the light-dark shading his works,
The permanent value he assigns to the village)

Thus spake the Death-Star
the incessant, mechanical chimera

Thus spake Darth Vader

(As opposed to Georg Lukács
James Earl Jones)

everyone in front of the camera

Thus spake the police, too
(Whether they knew it or not)
Protecting us from other disturbances
And distress

Protecting us

O you were fighting a dragon
You were fighting Grendel
Grendel’s mother, God,
Captain Ahab,
Jack Sparrow,
Brad Pitt as Achilles/the Devil,
Chuck Norris and
Jesse James

Now Jail. Now Real terror.
Suddenly, when they need a vein, a Judas, they can’t find one.

5. Medicine
(Besieged)

Enter the speakers.
Speakers we are tired.
Speakers go home.

The ways we would go on speaking.

Yes I will call again
Yea, verily, a whole system against the one or two of them
who protest

Floodgates
Larger armies amassed
We might lose our jobs

The cells:
Call soon
Call

Call poison control.
Call it won’t hurt you.

Call
the thing we are doing we need
to do
Call
they are climbing the ladders
They are here

Imagine that man in his underwear.
Imagine that one.
Imagine
that little role and the frightness in the
(Imposter.)

Imagine the frightness and distress they will feel
on opening you

Yea

Verily, a
White Little Cavity in you
A Parturition

No ache

: No/ Arms.
:/ Excess.

Now the pill-poppers and the pushers
Are jaundiced
They are throwing everything back-up

Prescriptions are no longer Hi-jacked.
This world not

Thrown up perpendicular and hided

Out of our skins

we are lifted

(Or that was one possible end)

6. Topical Genie
(A Redux)

Take Care
O someone to claim you
When I am done with you

O someone / not Onan
When I am done with you
How no one

Has an idea
Of what pleases you
What you might agree to

When you’re not afraid

There are some things you just shouldn’t say
but you say them to me

(How do you mean it)

Unremembered are drops,
Gross vapors and the excellent light up there
which failed to materialize
So often

(Some words are distilling in me…)

These are the drops.
These are the drops.
(Now some planets.)

Now I fear I am going back into the ship

Now I can see you

Now say goodbye

Oh Jacob,
When I think about all that air in a jar it takes my breath away.
I swear, I fall flat on my back.
Not a single false note.

there is no motion in the lake
so wet there is madness in the ducks

so these geese do not fly yet
or me

we’ll all fly later

much later

we have no abilities to talk about
that we can’t see anymore

soaking

I saw a strange man
in the water

for three days

he became a happy man
a fat man
blossoming like a flower

face-down
mesmerized
by the symphony they were playing

feed the Christmas tree

santa, the red fat man
passes vanilla candy
over the burgundy-
and white-striped
tree-skirt

ask him where
the clove-peppered oranges
the orange pomanders
peppermint sticks for the children

we’ll put icing on the children’s faces
it will be great

I’ve bought you a gift
star anise for your wedding

After Hours: Stalking the Real

Now available: Episode 3, featuring poems from Sacred Debris: 21st St. Notebooks.

I’ve tried living in peace.
Making lists.
I’ve even loved the pictures.
Some of them are lovely; they are.
The surfaces of most things
are lovely.

But this sofa.
I mean this stage.
Bars of my cage.
I haven’t been able to pull them apart,
not for a long time.

I go clowning through my life.
What do you think of the sad lion
that you see before you?
Are you my keeper?
Are you my keeper?
Are you my keeper?

just never felt that the lobby could hold
You sleeping and me sleeping
Still in our chairs this much later
After the gondola light of downtown pullses
into the glass doors.

At ten o’clock. At 2 o’clock
The Porters’ carts
Brush by now and some are
Neatly arranged by the elevator
(burnished glow in the elevator
door,tallow,You going over/upsetting a lamp
)

I’m trying
I say now it’s no crisis

But the out-of-town couple ready to check in
for the day
They’re looking rather defiant. Happy

you say
Everything is set
Give me that key junior

He has his hand on her neck.
She’s not backing into his knee, exactly.
Not backing.
Though we couldn’t tell, very well,
from this sleepy angle,
whether they were walking,
Or waltzing

But 20 stories above
It’s Less confused
The clean sheets and the hot water
The good view
not a concern of ethics
Not many colors;sculpting
Reds and bronzes
Same in the tapestries on the walls

And on the walls
Which are just
a few feet away

If you have any suggestions for other words to look for, let me know. (Unfortunately the query isn’t smart enough to tell you the words; it only counts the numbers.)

I forgot which sect made this heresy
The Manicheans or the Pelagians or the Arians
the Donatists, maybe even the Marcionites

but it was fallacy

To test the scripture
(will it be whole, will it be broken)

To cherish the beloved
(Will it be beloved–
If the scripture be broken/whole)

Since no oath could resist questions
Since no word could resist
quaestus, quaesitum, quaerere ( to seek/to gain)

(The etymology of things being simple
The plain sense of things being
Mechanical)

And since there are things here

The things that you see on page 20 lingerie models
blue and green chemises
purple camisoles
beige and white
full-figure, 24 hour, cross-your-heart Playtex

Page 150
Garden tractors

The men who ride them more Determined w stamina than I
More Balanced/robust
(Stronger)

And trust me

Nor could I refuse (to see/k you), when they read me the note
you left in the copula

By Zeus and Hera

By her sister

By the twin sheep of Solomon
Recognizable as teeth

I could keep fighting to find a home in that mouth

I could be a garden tractor
I could be a model
A Weasel
You could use me to cut your lawn and
To drag the dead carcass of the dear

Out into the daylight (where it now sits falsely on the steps, buzzing
us with fake plastic flies and brimming over with a safe kind of
confidence: w/ stoicism, w/ idealism, w/ menace,)

And then skin it

A rug for the floor of our motor-home
Hope/Vestigial

This thing not seen in a long time

This software is supposed be more secure. It certainly has all the bells and whistles. For instance, I can prevent folks from using certain words, like ‘puppy,’ or ‘cherub,’ in their comments.

Excellent.

For submission guidelines see here:

http://avatarreview.net/submissions.html

Lord Lazarus looks
in a little white door
Sylvia Plath comes through
carrying her gown

she says Lazarus,
Hello
they soon lie down

after a while
they rise

meanwhile, here on earth
i’ve begun to bear a false witness
to my life

i feel there is some justice,
there in the fuselage
in the wheelspace
in the wreckage

in the wind
or the tree
or wherever

but the city is shaking
and i’m unable to stop that

how to make this world safe
for my children, who might want it?
how to make my lover hear me?

oh lord
you hit me (you hit me)
at the ah
the ah
demonstration

there were men, women, and children
each with banners proclaiming
some right or another right

there was a grocery store next to a car wash
there was a traffic light
i was there
i was just there being myself
wondering if i had a right

not to exist
but to change

it would be the very thing i liked about you
the thing i most wanted
and always talked about

lake effect snow….
if this were the sort of town to have snow
i could be buried in a snow drift
i could be buried in a bank vault
with some snow

oh, Chicago
there is snow now
town of euphemisms
to show that world a difference
to show that dog: wag

that he’s not got ticks anymore
but dandruff
that he’s got
cocaine
and a head of wind

once more Ye myrtles brown,
with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries
harsh and crude

but what is snow?

as interference, the poem’s life’s inside snow
but not mine
i need the weather man too much

i need white
as a blanket condition
as interference
in the television set

the factories are covered
with white crowns

i go for a walk
in the snow

bringing a snowman

but where is the Angel Jesse
where is he

he bows, bows over (it is gratifying)
the gavel, the gavel he says
quiet
(and it is quiet)
and the man gets up
with his house and his possessions
(he takes all that he is good for)

and the man is in good health
so he starts following the Angel

and the Angel Jesse says, Wait here
if you are a disgraceful merchant
you may not pass

and then he begins to stamp the ground
and the ground opens

*

meanwhile, the drug-dealer starts shooting up
the playground
(the schoolchildren)
and they start following
nobody

earlier in the day
they were learning about Beethoven
Ode to Joy

and they were singing
or not singing, but just about to
(they were talking, before they could sing)

and it was
fa la la

but it’s not good
not good at all

so where is that man Ulysses
where is Jacob

But other times I might be singing the blues. I might be singing to the traffic cop, Hey did you see the light change it went Blue green red yellow orange indigo, and violet. Or maybe blue yellow red. Or maybe not blue at all, maybe just green yellow red. Or maybe glassy… tears…? some color that is just, just real because no one has seen it before. And he says, My sister called and your color and my color, etc.

But what I and he both mean is, our wives. Verde que te quiero verde… Or how to make them understand the new rules, which are not so much like rules, but more like ideas. How what it means to be like, how it might be like something. Like a bloated jacket album cover. i.e. Blood on the Tracks, Blood on the (Exile on Main Street). Blood on the (temple–and I’m singing a song here and it goes temple temple rags). And he goes too.

There is blood on the outside of the body

*

which has gotten away from the inside of the body and that means it can’t be cleaned off–not like spaghetti sauce or ketchup–but war, real war. And he says that since there’s nothing that seems to be quite itself here, it is true, we might as well be arrested. But that’s also true of your house (where you take off your clothes: your clothes: like an inside-out sock). And since you might as well eat me or take care of me it must be a little better in your belly (in a windsock) for at least it’s clean there. Oh how it feels to be

in the wind and how since there is no light there no air here but a jar: a fridge: the refrigerator. Where I am hopping and you say weapons: how you are next to one but you don’t like it (but you do like it) because I tell you the truth and you smell good (and the truth goes a long way, like butter–or if you like, if you are in a relationship, like a life jacket) since

for me and your mouth, especially, there is some truth, still, to everything (everything, a little, how it feels in your mouth) so I think I can still go (still go, inside the mouth too, if quietly) inside of your mouth and I like it there I have known it and that is a nice place for beginning everything which I’ve said there really welcomes me. This has no beginning

We needed some directions
to the glass castle sleepy with fish.
When would we reach it?
(Would we reach it soon enough?)

And what will you do for it, and what have you done?
Will you back up through your life?
Will you outlive, did you betray?
Will you stretch? Did you foam at the mouth?
Did you

complete? At least once did you?
How will you fare, when asked?

It isn’t as easy as pushing the cabinet around.
For there is a coffin in the room, gets in the way.
The coffin you know is glass.

(suggest that you face it)

It only happened one night, but it happened to two.
It happened, the night with the most number of stars in it.
The night with the greatest fear.
The most desire.

Or it failed to happen.

For there was someone with you, there was someone
always there that you might have gone forward with

there was that someone you might have had

for there was someone, there was
the person clearly finding you

unappeased

there was that someone, who knew you,
who found you in such a state

in such a condition

and asked you to recover yourself, and you did not.

II.

And where are we in the story today?
Page 200? Page 50?
Is it past, has anything happened, are we there yet?

I was told that there would be a crossroads soon
but I don’t believe it. For I was walking with you
yesterday by the house and you disappeared.
I was walking and you just disappeared–

Pfft. Into the air. There you went,
around the edge by the back porch…

When that can happen, when you can just disappear
into the rocks, the briars, the spring bulbs–
when you can just float off whenever you want–
what good is a crossroads?

We left the woods hoping we would discover
something in the museums along the way,
something useful that we hadn’t seen in the woods,
something that would take a little more time to understand…

and it’s true–we did gather a lot of strange noise
in the museums. We learned to use words
that we had never heard before,
we learned how to interpret, how to collar, how to be

taxonomical. We learned the difference
between the tactile, and the certain.

And we remembered our string.
(Of course).

But then, what good is a crossroads?
What good is the light?

I might be mistaken,
but I don’t think we are going to be able
to find our way back without it.

III.

Won’t he be surprised?

Won’t he

Having fought over their bodies, having worked their bodies
into the wall
and Having been so skillful to kill them
and Having been so
terribly excited

Having been through that, having been so courageous and
hacked up and fraught through about that

and all them bones won’t he be

Won’t he won’t he won’t he

but first
If the king and the queen are both dead
maybe we should talk about them

maybe, if we can see them from sleep
how they sleep
how they fare, what they rate
what are their points-of-view

exactly, what could be the drift
of their problem, what could it be a problem for

how could we know

Like, all the policemen will want to know
if it was a single boom, or a boom-boom,
that we heard

but still
I think he will be surprised

I think
I think
I think I just think he will

For every way we tell this story it is clear

For maybe they do it. Maybe the chair is passed. Maybe they think it is so fine
to be dying that they just kill themselves before he gets there.

only it’s real panicky

kill me then stab me through it talk to me do it quick

and we think

if the queen should not be scolded could not remember having loved
before
if the king could not be slumped
over his body

then even this
is a moment we can prefer to lose focus on

and so I think he will
I really do I think he will be surprised

for there is a child now here she sits

she goes back of the door

and she rises
and she is wise and she is wonderful

she climbs a ladder
and she goes up, up, up
Hurry Hurry

before disappearing

IV.

I’m having a vision, he said.
Go away.

We went away.

That night would be hard to forget.
In every town, the story, working.
The King and Queen were going to die.
You and I were going to fall out.
The Prince was going to awaken Briar Rose.

You remember Briar Rose–
stuck up in the castle
with almost no time, almost.
And the Prince had no choice but to be
Superman
and scream and scream and scream
half the world
to a more reasonable halt.
Oh, Lois.
Oh, Hello, you monster.

Well. That wasn’t in the plan, but
we heard it.

Meanwhile, the whole length of the walk back
you were skirting the issue.
You were making the cliff look silly.

I said, don’t fall.
Or fall.
If we’re in a labyrinth, it won’t matter.

V.

Does this picture hurt?
It hurt me.
The first time I saw it I wanted to jump out a window,
run under a passing coach. I wanted to scream,
“I have fallen from a great tower.”

But that’s just the kind of person I was.
I thought that all of life began on the front row.
I thought that it was personal.
I thought that if I drew you tight enough
around me, if I made the circle wide enough,
for you, it could be more personal.
A world on the rims in the ruins of our field goggles.

Now the nest is different.
Now I have to leave the room when we fight;
when I lose control, I count ten.
I say dissolute.
I say Mirror Mirror.
I say Mirror Mirror it is chaste
it is the kind of thing that you
say to someone.
I say it.

I feel like nothing should have been taken
from us, and yet,
it has been.

Where we were going
our sleep became such a cruel rapture
we had to be cut from the tower.

Only one of us reached bottom.

VI.

But really, does this picture hurt?
It’s missing something. It’s missing
a limb. It’s missing a tooth, a nail, a letter.
It’s missing an arm, a dirty arm. It’s missing
a hand, just the hand, the fingernails
cut back to the quick, honeyed palms/sugared palms
over your mouth, rough fingers that dig in
and grab you.
It’s missing…

Snow White, Snow White.
I pulled out my tooth and there was a garden
in the socket. I pulled out my garden
and there was an arm
waving, waving…

Hello. How are you?
Are you missing? Are you?
Push a little ballad from your garden.
Push a little.
It’s quite a garden you have,
my dear, quite a socket.
Push a little.
You could seed a whole set
of false onions.
My, you’re quite a lettuce.
You’re quite, quite a woman.
You’re some Rabbit.

You see, I pulled out my feelings far
in advance of everything.
I pulled you down
and then I huffed and I puffed.

VII.

If I were a healthy person, it would be a different story.
It would be the story of you and me.
It would be the walk back to the house
with seeds in our pockets, down the familiar road.

It would be about how we drop our sticks and agree
to talk a little
about action/reaction, about making use of the available light
while we are still in it,
about how we should hush again (how we hush)
when we pass the motorcade
receding down the bright hill; how,
when we reach the open lane,
the beekeepers beckon in their invisible nets,
the zookeepers in their huts;
the climatologists grow cooler weather,
and the lion tamers sit on the cages.

Otherwise, it’s just hard, too hard,
with the bristling of bees at the edges of vision,
to separate.
And so we keep on going until we reach the final house
to collect the orchestra.
At the end of that road, (I’ve heard)
the baby stalks grow skyward,
and we might have been able to laugh, once

meet me in an envelope
in a bag
in a little seed bag

but our aversion became such an aversion, it fed us.

I. Get Up and Go Out

Time to go to the mall, OK?
Just put on your clothes.
Put on your shoes, your make-up,
your Nez Perce necklace
that allows you to find everything.
Find me.
I’m behind this fence.
I’m setting apart the broadsides.
I’m making one kind of a tool
that will open all the locks.
I don’t want us to get lost out there,
in meaning.
In spite of the heat there have been
reports of bears, a solar system
pulsing around the parking lot.

II. How They Tried to Kill Henry

Drive-bys are converted from drive-ins
which used to be ‘theaters of sex;’
you don’t see many of these now.
All the sex takes place inside;
within walls, with the plumbing
it’s literally whitewashed from the scene.
(Said your ideology to me…)
It takes goods, it takes looks, it takes friends,
flowers from a regular joe.
It takes his freedom and it says to him
“there’s liberation in judgment.”

–and we believe that.
Now we have a bed: who’s hiding
underneath us? who’s there?
After all, these fields are pickets,
are fence, are incongruent. In dreams
you go on watching them forever…

III. Let’s Go

Do we grow in the mall?
Can you try on a few more shirts while I pee?
Yes, that looks good on you–let’s go.
I’m dreaming of Demeter while you–
hold it–I’m dreaming of Demeter.
Yes, the whole thing looks good on you.
Now can we see that movie?

Stay in line. I don’t know if I can evoke a sauna.
But I can dream. Where were you in my dream?
Oh yes. I had found a convenience store.
I bought green tea and a Snickers bar.
I crossed the grass. Demeter was reading,
elbows against the back of the theater.
Yes, I mean outside. The lines in those days
wrapped around and around the buildings,
millions of us outside.

–I thought we were surrounded. Let’s go.

IV. Doctor

Do we need a cortisone shot,
something to stop this itch?
I feel like I should stop.
Or you stop. A glass slipper?
Would be sweet.
I want to hold your sweet parts.
Lick your dirty foot.

There is a prism,
a billboard. Time. And you realize,
the Novocaine had no effect.
It was like the negative–
no sentiments.
It held us up, it threw us out,
caught our image and tossed our image
to the glass.

But that was just seeing.
Beyond this there is another
picture.
Beyond the drape

that is true, impudent.
A most charming picture.

V. Teaser for Anne Boleyn

Tell the other to come out of hiding.
I’m awake. I’ve had thoughts. In dreams
I’ve pulled you down by your ankles;
I’ve grabbed your throat.

So we’re not in the King’s retinue anymore.
So his pavilion slips into the water,
gives its shimmer to the greater shimmer.
So it bleeds. We must not mind this.

Follow the gaming pattern.
The steps lead to a sunny room, an apartment–
with three sides open to the audience,
the outside, the lush wildlife retreat;

the fourth kept garish, oversized, flat
with windows and knitting which presuppose
an alternative purpose. Something
was killed here something wild

out of neglect. Finally the chessboard
which means next to nothing which
(although it is small and sits on the table
between us) opens

along a central fold that keeps the two sides
as far apart as it can.
Do you know how to win this one,
Is it even winnable?

VI. Just yourself thinking about me

Look at your formatting.
Demeter is not appalled by this.
Demeter knows.

                                   I talked to her in the car
                             about her sister. I sat in the car
                                   at the top of the hill

in the police cruiser.       I said       (her daughter)

                                   I said that we were lucky
                             to be thinking about the same thing–
                                   that was rare.

And the moon the same moon.
I asked, whether she had parted ways
with her garden, or not.

*

I sat in her garden.
I said, I know.

                                   the picture will hold you up
                                   the picture will arrest you
                                   you will not be able to forget
                                   the picture
                                   the picture will argue with you
                                   from the wall

*

She had no talent for miracles
she said
(just for the mirror)

                               I said       that was a lie

I was a musician
I said

*

try music.

now Two things:

Thieves
in the New American Gothic
have a tight grip on the handle

and the woman, she
isn’t smiling.

*

What do the others know about me?

I see the animals are well-fed though–
especially the fish.

The fish had better watch out.

I am like a pond, unstocked, on the other
side of the lawn. The unclean spirit,
the house in the woods.
They put me out, they see I have no magic
in my pocket,
no fat, white rabbit
to yank through a hole in the backyard,
or into the wide windows of the diningroom.

Oh isn’t it wonderful?
Everything to become dinner…

Now, with the whole family seated to say grace,
who will say grace?

*

No, first we had sex. Or I dreamed that we did.

But this happened in a dream, so if we had sex it would have been dream-sex. Or perhaps not. Perhaps only the dream of sex is the dream-sex. The camera in the camera in the camera (in the camera). All my thoughts are like that lately, more and more obfuscated and repeated. As if they had been put into an alembic, and left soaking. What happens in an alembic? Is that right? Is drying what is left over? Is the process even large enough for a dream? Alembic. All these objects, symbols that I don’t even know the purpose for. Like most words. Like absolutes especially, like ‘god’ and ‘sex’ and ‘death’–and ‘dream’ itself, and many others. Like, what color were the pills?

*

In a dream sometimes you eat candy and it tastes like that. Like bark, I mean. No, not bark. Not bitter. It tastes pink, but pink that is coarse and woody. Like bark, like cotton-candy full of spider webs and praise and a graininess that dissolves quickly. While you forget the outcome…

I can almost hear her describing it in that way, holding a finger up to her mouth, shushing me… Darling, you’re a fool to believe in this…

Except of course she didn’t say that in the dream she didn’t say anything. People in dreams don’t open their mouths often. They are very meticulous, very careful. What they tell you is often beyond your hearing, and beyond your remembering.

*

She was very private about it, though, very sweet. Very cordial. That’s the word. The phone might have even been one of those old fashioned rotaries that used to hang on the wall by the refrigerator. The kind that, you know. Had a cord. A corded yellow phone, symbolic of butter and eggs and relationships.

Or come to think of it, the phone more likely would have been mint green. Mint being the color on the other side of the color wheel, the color most opposite from pink.

*

Dream symmetry. Dream for the dream-symmetry. Like a piece of the puzzle you complete me and so on and so on. Only the opposite colors and objects don’t join except via transitional pieces. Without much pushing and shoving. Without hunting. Without the whole dream.

Throughout which you keep on flipping the pieces over and trying them into the beautiful open positions. And finding them more beautiful. And turning… and still turning…

Is this a transitional piece?

*

I slept on her sofa and she drugged me. Later we had sex. It was good. And although we were both probably drugged out, she was very penetrating in her insights.

Let’s go on the roof, I said. This could be a grocery store, and you could own it. I do own it, she said. It’s a candy store.

But really, all the while, we were down at the beach.

*

I grew hostile. The colors are shoved up under a wet mat decomposing on a green stoop. A bus goes by. The bus is yellow, not pink. Nothing is pink, except for the storm, except for the broad green grass, the leaves caught in the storm drain. Through which blood trickles.

How much longer can we take this?

*

I keep a key. I mean, she drugged me while calling my wife. I wasn’t ready for that revelation. I should have locked the door tight. I should have crammed my yellow mitten under the door. I should have been able, with my mint-green mind and my yellow mitten (my peel my banana my way of being a cool one), to keep that part of the dream quiet while I sorted it out.

But the room was pink. Everything was turning that way.

*

Besides. If you scream in a dream, it means that you’re dying.

*

We had sex and then she made me tea. The tea was green. The tea was green with white leaves in it. The plates were pink. The cups and the plates were.

I said, this can’t be sustenance. No, no it’s not that, she said. It’s just tea.

It was just tea. I drank some. I felt better.

*

We had sex. I said that her breasts were pillows. I said, magic beans. I said that, although I knew it to be untrue. All metaphor is untrue, an approximation at best. A gesture is sometimes sincere sometimes not. Sometimes you get caught with the windows open.

Sometimes.

I could die in rapture on those breasts.

Learn Spanish.

In Walgreens
there is a like a small fortune
of the loose ends
of the world’s detritus
on sale.

I love it.

There are umbrellas.
There are walking sticks.
There are gauze and tinned meat.
There are saltines

and about a million magazines to read.

In Spanish
there is leche
there is agua
(la leche, el agua)

There is a TV stuck on channel 27…
on fuzz.

I’m excited.
I’ve taken some drugs from the pharmacy
and I’m going to wait for you
under the angled mirror

over by the hairbrushes.

Learn Italian.

When you get here
I want you to take my picture.
I want you to snap me up
with one of those disposable cameras
on aisle 11.

And then say bene, molto bene, muy bien.
There’s been no mistake.

What word can I put in your mouth? What vision? There are soap-slivers
in a jar in the bathroom. There are razors by the claw-footed tub. Behind
the medicine cabinet there is the tiniest of nails…

in the tiniest of holes.

And yet there is no culmination of vision. Vision is misguided; it’s not
even the right sense. In the wallspace, the seals come apart. The wind
whips. Or it rips. We take off our clothes…

ripping
more ripping

I want you to come
I want to come
I want your come
I want you to come

inside me
in your mouth

more and more ripping, more

back on our heels
and rocking
not fighting ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/05/avalanche/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/05/travelling/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/05/travelling/#comments Tue, 02 May 2006 11:24:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114656915750024198 Announcing the release of Avatar Review 8: Travelling.View it here:

http://avatarreview.net/AV8/index.html ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/05/travelling/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/04/this-stop-or-the-next/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/04/this-stop-or-the-next/#comments Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:09:34 +0000 David http://dummy.rentedroom.com/?p=255 The gradient doesn’t see as much light as the flash. I mean the flesh. The steps, I mean, how they point. How they point up or they point down, depending on where you are. And how the light doesn’t hit but on one side at a time–so that it looks like a white plain that you are flying over as you view steps from a high building, but if you are standing facing the wall of an art gallery its steps are graffiti that you see as a tear-streak slipping out of one corner towards your shoe.

Or it’s ice at the molecular level (which is water running too slow) that you don’t realize you’re in until you slip and fall, until you perish, a small black patch, and there goes the banana peel of your radiance–which until only a moment before you had been keeping in your shirt pocket in hopes that someone would ask to see it.

Although it hurts the same, and everybody is illegal in the end, which makes you always want to scream–which makes you, always, screaming–that it’s uphill it’s downhill it’s windy there is no choice what choice do we have there is no corner we can hide in, no savior, do we fall do we give up do we rise a little to be converted into the light, do we look for the angle or try to land on both sides of the prism at once?

your house
in a hall down the middle of your
white country house
and the wide windows flanking the front
beneath pretty dormers
but where is the porch-swing
where is the swing?

I see only one way
up the staircase
so I’m breaking into your room now
I find you writing a poem
I take it it’s wonderful
you say that it’s not wonderful
I say it is it’s wonderful trust me
I know about it

so give me your hand or kiss mine
Assassin
here I am falling in your place

Haven’t healed. Did I say that I would?
Did I say that I would be able to
push the color back in the pens,
the ink in the tubes? Sleep with it
in me? Did I say it, this spring?
This spring is too old, then, we have
had it before. Compared to us, not even
the eagles in their nests can change.
Not even the baby eagles, swooping down
terrifying the seraphim. Not even
the screaming bugles. Not even the lambs.
It’s all as we imagined it would be.
The field in flames. Running, the lambs.
Didn’t we say that they would be?

I know you. I know you are walking, I know you are having a bad dream, I know your heart, just past the crossroads, you are lying down on it. I know it was a bad decision to leave the ocean. I know you were intent to make one. I know what martyrdom tastes like, it tastes like ash.

What do you feel?

I feel you. I feel you yearning, you are alive as ever under your lab coat. I feel you gleaming under your fetish suit, you wear stockings, you are wet with scales. I feel the bites of the buttons of your lab coat, I feel you quake under them. I feel your gills, I want to pry them open.

What do you remember?

I remember you. I remember frostbite, it cost me dearly. I remember biting your fingers to keep them warm. I remember your eyes, one on each side of your head. I remember they closed because I knew the passwords. I remember there were four kinds–the first one let me in, the others were up to your daemon.

Contreforts
for Anna K.

We’ve run out of licorice

Will you take off your shirt for me
will you take off your towel, your dress
that ring you’re wearing
will you take off your red turban
will you take out the sticks from your hair
will you undo the top button of your pyjamas
will you take off your pyjamas
will you slide down one stocking of your stockings
(just one)

We’ve run out of milk

Will you take off your Timothy McVeigh
sweatshirt, will you take off your
‘I was there at 911′ T-shirt, will you take off your
jaundice-colored backpack, your bandanna
will you take off your red turtleneck
will you take out the pencils from your hair
will you undo the honeybun from its wrapper
will you feed me one bite of the honeybun
(just one)

We’ve run out of oil

Will you take off your hat for me
will you take off your gloves, your scarf
your pretty nails
will you take off that sequestered look
will you take off the favor that I owe you
will you undo the table leg, stretch it
will you take out the rags from your hair
will you hand me one earring from the table
(just one)

to show me how you wore it, and the color

and your body, the real one, stuffed with these and starting
to form opinions

4. Now, Miranda

Safe from the literal shipwreck,
now we find it, our spot of rescue,
here beneath the palm tree,
beneath the naked plums.
For this is the twenty-first century
and we get everything we request.
Even the bing cherries. Even
big as your thumb, if we request.
Perhaps we’re not even so sure
about the rescue, now. Do we want it?

No, it doesn’t seem like we do want it,
when we talk about it.
Let them come, or not. There is no one
to blame for this damn thing, you know,
this honey thing. No one to say
what we’ve eaten.

Moor-bone, little jaw of me.
Big thing or little thing,
answer me one request. Tell me
what can I do for you
in the twenty-first century.
Tell me so I can know.

Because, I brewed some tea for us
yesterday, and now I feel I messed up.
Did we argue?
Was it a lovely argument, over tea?

I don’t remember
if you were singing, or even
alive, but I don’t see how
you could, couldn’t have heard me. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/04/napowrimo/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/just-like-the-moonbror-something-i-cant-touch/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/just-like-the-moonbror-something-i-cant-touch/#comments Sat, 25 Mar 2006 02:24:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114325361413324266 I want to see you
burn body burn / body
burn dark / dark
burn far / bright / miserable /
burn on the wretched failing
scumbling as you go
toward the door.

For you would never tell me
if it felt sexual
if you were annealed by it

and whether
if I had the majesty
you had the right
to die.

Meanwhile, the fountain behind us continues to spume:
we sit with our backs to the water and eye the plants:
and the plants eye us. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/doors-to-door/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/some-questions-for-the-weekend/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/some-questions-for-the-weekend/#comments Thu, 16 Mar 2006 01:24:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114247280114471984 Love is an ideal, isn’t it?
Like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony,
like John Cage’s four minutes and thirty three seconds
of pure silence.

It doesn’t seem to have much to do with how we linger
or don’t linger over our famous nights.

And I would agree with you, that we aren’t
elastic enough for this. Our suspenders/garters–no good.
Too loud. Yours are black/white/black–intellectual.
Mine are grey and slap the footboard–
anyway I don’t wear them.

But if it’s not written, is it really like
standing in a fire–or not really–
more like burning, a species of self-immolation? ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/some-questions-for-the-weekend/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/death-poem-after-rilke/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/death-poem-after-rilke/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:49:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114244145316736800 I expect a good death. If I get it,
love will hold the door for me
and I will go in.
It will be my house, my place
of possession, all the space
that I waited on.
I won’t be afraid.

I’ll walk through my
house and try each door,
grasping it and slamming it,
the fit and the jamb
designed. And where the rooms go
as if for the last time.

That’s when your heart will break–
little basket, little stopped-up
barrel of wheat. You who without a door
1000 different locks will click
shut forever. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/death-poem-after-rilke/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/poem-with-and-without-legs/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/poem-with-and-without-legs/#comments Sat, 11 Mar 2006 00:30:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114203733104572194

Jellyfish goes to the auction: and Jellyfish finds his legs there, 2 for $10, or a little higher if there are other bidders. Jellyfish has to borrow an arm, to lift the felt paddle which signifies “I want you.” He has to have the paddle the arm that is the important thing. For the sea has had pity on him: he wants to sell her the legs back and soon, soon he’ll be able to.

Did you guess? Maybe you guessed. That is where he keeps them: tables & tables & tables of sharp knives. That is the showroom, the flea-market stall. Here is a customer: Can you get it for me? Oh yes, be careful. That one, the little abalone golden-handled one in front. Give it to me. I want it. When do you see the living?

]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/poem-with-and-without-legs/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/downhill/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/downhill/#comments Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:44:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114187956479572729 after Popa

1
mammary gland
discarded pituitary
dislocated thumb/broken thumb
neatly severed pipe

at the edge of the shrapnel, like betrayal
you’re quite a coat
look, look, look, you– sneeze
out come the soft bits of your flesh, the bridge of your nose
look, a thumbnail

no really
where is the rest of you?

2
how strange it looks, turned inside-out
all that meat

but you are the bone of a hard head
you are a lesson in advertising
a bad aircraft

you are stuck in the middle
of the afterlife
your ankle floats in blood

by god
is that yours
it seems to be

get up get up get up

3
no more | no more
move
he(art) | he(artery) | too bad

but you aren’t near to them
nearby you aren’t

you are a pretty long way from them
you are a bodiless head you know

you are a hollow stem / the
shrapnel like betrayal

you are a stuck reed

4
nothing happens
you are the last one to call shots

you fall down
nipples, prick, hand
you fall through the sky

you become supremely neutral
like Switzerland ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/downhill/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/autumn-sky-poetry/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/autumn-sky-poetry/#comments Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:29:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114183959867112241 Announcing the inaugural issue of Autumn Sky, a new pub edited by Christine Klocek-Lim. I really like the idea of this one and was proud to be included in the launch.And look–there’s a poem from PaulaWings too! ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/autumn-sky-poetry/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/babys-breath-and-the-heckler/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2006/03/babys-breath-and-the-heckler/#comments Sat, 04 Mar 2006 17:06:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/114149216777397506 I said I wanted a baby.
         There is no way we are having one, Budweiser.

Half-open, are you afraid?
Are you a quitter, are you a quitting
kind of a door?
Are you cracked? Are there cracks in you, are you exposed?
Bronzed, armorplated. Steelplated. Loyalest oak-
plated. Of sweetgum, of cedar.
Where is the latch, the secret needle
or the letter?

       Excuse me, pea-jacket. Pocket of grapple.
       Put it back.
       The yarn is here; take it from your head.
       The field all woven into. A thirsty history
       stretched into (me). With my name like a giant rail
       or fence. Runnels the place where. Your hand, a place where
       I go. Red in the corner.
       I sit.

   She has no recall of his stenciling talents.
   He has no information.
   Things could get easy, or sublime.

II. Ariadne, Shucks

Lesson: the marionettes wiggle onstage
Lesson: and there is music

it happens
drama is easy

1. from a man or metal chair
2. raspy as hate

I’m thinking of something and a metal fob
I’m thinking of (a highway)
with something average
(a highway)

missing though like the ocean

exits: sands of scorn, isle, atoll, we know how all this ends, amen

                                               *

but this as we’re getting up out of our seats and whispering
(the last dialogue we might hear from them)

I wanted to roll you up in a carpet, one of those Persian jobs, put you in my car

                                   no abuse me come back no
                                           guess what i can’t do it here
                                               by myself

then this goes on endlessly on and on and we’re on some train to Madrid

III. Pseudo-Dionysus, not Theseus, Already

but before that could happen

(a voice)

speak expert hope mechanical frailty
shameless you deserve a good whipping
hard in proportion to your bitterness

you deserve

Agamemnon
Libation Bearers
Eumenides

Absolom Absolom

how do you come
to the mercy
of the threshold
or kill the stronger one

I once thought I was flying
it was dangerous to move
without you
but you didn’t exist

(shocking me awake
then I was)

a myth, a song, and a good one

and also, an aria is a torn coat–
as much the head, as much the brain
(that museum of persona), however the heart is rent.
the arms that go through its sleeves. backwards. inside.

so you go on to the sea: enigma, riddle, girl with a choice to make.
Thou shalt not board a train. Thou shalt not be a choo-choo
or caboose. sine qua non. I don’t deserve this,
but the light that flew up inside of you was excellent, my god. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/08/so-long-aria/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/08/funeral-processions-in-rain/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/08/funeral-processions-in-rain/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:16:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/112285588711783133                                  How do we know which cars they are?
                                 Are they the slower cars
                                 and should we pull over now?

this happened to someone before–
arsenic, a clammy death / not reversed in time,

       ghastly, the room
wet            he carried his romantic self                              she lay in a fever
             in a fist
of dried flowers                                                                         flying
              full                                                                                    was not expected ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/08/funeral-processions-in-rain/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/redondo-beach-furniture/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/redondo-beach-furniture/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:18:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/112260736375508699 It’s still (here) but
you do what the lights think of
better–seize in seize in–
limbs clear as steel wands
(for you know how a peach
can grow up and be a tree, too)
you don’t save lives

I’m telling
you’re invested
in the coming and in the going
never the walkers or the joggers
   the strollers
everyone looks approachable
the serious woman
come back

Believe in how it treats you
the sweet amenities ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/redondo-beach-furniture/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/for-all-the-romance-novels-in-the-room/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/for-all-the-romance-novels-in-the-room/#comments Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:01:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/112250904838291092 No. Yes. The ship could be half-full and still I’d want to
crawl up into that room with you. To face that terrible seal.
The heart-trapped-rhythm. Sewing-needle. (Lipped.)
Where the girl-hero explains: waves. Explains: sorry?
Deceit, desert / Sudden noise the woodpecker grapples
with. (Absolution? Tell me…) Mascot. Little-bird. Little-
hater. You’ve shorn your head. Tinkle in your downstairs…
pianissimo, plaster. Dream: a pit in my stomach, girl worn
down by a storm. There are no windows in the house 

and I won’t mention the armoire, but for one last time,
though I could, I could…

                                all this while…

          owls, the
              cars start to fill a lake

                          yr mouth

Edsel
Corvair
DeLorean

                        3 or 4 stars from here

                                      Boss 429—-> Hemi—> GTO

                                                                you don’t
                                                             understand
                                                         why don’t you
                                                                   shut up

four on the floor
suicide door
rumble seat

*                               *                               *

God that makes me feel old.

Wanting nothing, watch this, old man, matchbooks and habits,
washing machine, bald tires
(you’re especially fond of old, bald tires)

                                & look up into yr
casual beliefs, blankets, bag of
popcorn, bag of chicken, bag of
             tootsie rolls, dark-blue     dark-brown     old man socks

the sound of yr shoe in rain, the squelch
on, hum                    something maybe native, something
within the cells          the dryer lint, and a receipt for pepperoni

             the list caught     left-right     left-right                  & our DNA is what
is the racket          like the special way that
you don’t approve of music               or treat the mail nice
to see who’s taken what               or thrust what

                                                              or hold that
I feel yr pants pocket slipping
& so

*

we say it gets
ugly, you’ll say
                                   but still you’d like to take that road out
                                 in yr gum blue truck and buy

                                          (the list, mama)
                                                                              watermelon, pickles
                                                                                                        ice cream
                                                                                 Henry Ford,
                                                                            and the cat with trees
kids glove
pistoleras
give the butcher some money

(boucher)

how nice

anyway

it’s so harrowing harrowing harrowing

*

now get the fuck out

———————————————————————————

postscript: remedial like a picnic

the sign said $300 fine for dumping & so what. the idea of flat rocks reduced to stream fodder, the idea of ‘mill’ given to old baptisms & weird hymns sung until labor day. the idea that in a minute there’s nobody where the men were. & the girl wasn’t yr problem. though nobody wanted to see her, you wanted to pull her out & pull on the eye-shadow & the lipstick. & make her & then take that tube o that aimless slim thing in yr hand & wave yr flag: o good boy. ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/falling-out-of-a-ford-galaxie-at-40-mph-on-a-hairpin-turn/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/sorry-pablo/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/07/sorry-pablo/#comments Mon, 04 Jul 2005 04:18:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/112045189043603148 here’s an Italian trans. of a Neruda sonnet i did a few years ago.
i think it probably sucks, but it’s troubled me, nonetheless.

because:

A) i think everything (i think) sounds better in a foreign tongue. almost always. (especially in Italian!)

B) i never really ‘learned’ Italian. so this was almost like rote science, like math or some shit. which is (or seems) very different from notions i think most of us hold about the liberal arts. and esp. writing–creative writing–and esp. poetry. isn’t it supposed to be some sort of privileged (i.e. hieratical) dookie, perched up there? ahem (cough) well isn’t it? i mean, read the last couple of issues of Poetry. good lord.

C) i really like the last line better in Italian! (it even sounds like f***ing)

hence, i think Dante, et. al were really some lucky fucks…

LXXVIII

Non ho mai più, non ho sempre. Nell’arena
la vittoria lasciò le sue orme perse.
Sono un pover’uomo disposto ad amare i suoi simili.
Non so chi sei. Ti amo. Non do, non vendo le spine.

Qualcuno forse saprà che non tessei corone
sanguinante, che combattei la burla,
e che di verità riempii l’alta marea della mia anima.
Rimborsai la viltà con colombi.

No ho mai perché distinto
fui, sono, sarò. E in nome
del mio cangiante amore proclamo la purezza.

La morte é solo la pietra dell’oblio.
Ti amo, bacio sulla tua bocca la gioia.
Raccogliamo la legna. Faremo un fuoco sulla montagna.

***

for those of you lucky enough to speak/read Spanish, here’s a link to the original:

Neruda: Soneto LXXVIII

and here’s an ‘ok’ English trans for the rest:

I have no never-again, I have no always. In the sand
victory abandoned its footprints.
I am a poor man willing to love his fellow men.
I don’t know who you are. I love you. I don’t give away thorns,
and I don’t sell them.

Maybe someone will know that I didn’t weave crowns
to draw blood; that I fought against mockery;
that I did fill the high tide of my soul with the truth.
I repaid vileness with doves.

I have no never, because I was different —
was, am, will be. And in the name
of my ever-changing love I proclaim a purity.

Death is only the stone of oblivion.
I love you, on your lips I kiss happiness itself.
Let’s gather firewood. We’ll light a fire on the mountain.

–trans. Stephen Tapscott

Ahh…. the new Literary Salt is out, with a cool piece by Paula, and some others.

Looks like a fantastic issue, I’ll be reading.

O big-believer… bug…      stone mason
minor summer
                                                                     taking yr airspace
caterpillar on the oak leaf
                                                                     taking yr airspace

campanology
making you something
wanting something from you something
that nobody guessed you’d
had in you

                     the veil
you’ve slept in

                                                           as sleeves
                                                           requiems
                                                                          …drums
                                          sometimes sliding along a dam

as owls
                                          putting on the robes for a change

                                                   (not the hospital-
the room which makes you look older than
you)

but the misery
(the light
little stabs of it)(you guess)

but you are the
wrong kind
you are not the
right kind

of tree:

It has two fangs; it has sharp teeth
and it likes to chew.

2.

but sometimes, pebble-that-can’t-fly
are you avoiding?
are you going to, sortof
fly away, spray, anoint, thrust?
test your wings’ purse?
(anyway)

what is it to be an actual crawler?

what is it
to tell the
fall out of the period, the stupid
period before the book hits

(the period)

what is it to be like, 500 shirts?
what is it to be one, worn
snug over the body

not just any but
the body you meant for

what is to be strict to invade space
yr body
yr very strict
body put up

3.

governor
your honor
what have you sewn into you huh?
particle
what are you made of

are you like this already, the last ex-?
(!)
do you like lots of things do you like bugs?

easels with stepladders?

(pretty girl should sit here and paint. at one o’clock she does that)
(at six she gets up and goes home)
(she paints bugs)

webs are less artful than radiators
exotic vizier, thing-that-can’t-fly

cool, cool

(she looks up)

could you do something                  could you do something
for me now

could you marry us
marry us in silk and hurry hurry
(could you) while we learn something about this really
really anything that we can catch about this, lots ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/basic-spring-poem-stone-caterpillar-hospital-gown/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/the-making-of-eve/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/the-making-of-eve/#comments Sat, 25 Jun 2005 05:04:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/111967611768705271 A vehement fig, ok?
A geek tome, VHF-in
Heaven keg-motif–
Fat, meek, given oh,
Nag (evoke them if
He tag five men, ok?)
Gat knee five ohm,
A fee hen, GMT, IV, KO
(EEG met a VHF ikon)
Gamete five honk,
Fake even got him
Taken, gem-hive of
Meat, fen, keg, Oh, IV–
Heavie f gment, ok? ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/the-making-of-eve/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/tarot-tarot/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/tarot-tarot/#comments Fri, 24 Jun 2005 12:45:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/111961720334633363 You are the Fool card. The Fool fearlessly begins the journey into the unknown. To do this, he does not regard the world he knows as firm and fixed. He has a seemingly reckless disregard for obstacles. In the Ryder-Waite deck, he is seen stepping off a cliff with his gaze on the sky, and a rainbow is there to catch him. In order to explore and expand, one must disregard convention and conformity. Those in the throes of convention look at the unconventional, non-conformist personality and think What a fool. They lack the point of view to understand The Fool’s actions. But The Fool has roots in tradition as one who is closest to the spirit world. In many tribal cultures, those born with strange and unusual character traits were held in awe. Shamans were people who could see visions and go on journeys that we now label hallucinations and schizophrenia. Those with physical differences had experience and knowledge that the average person could not understand. The Fool is God. The number of the card is zero, which when drawn is a perfect circle. This circle represents both emptiness and infinity. The Fool is not shackled by mountains and valleys or by his physical body. He does not accept the appearance of cliff and air as being distinct or real. Image from: Mary DeLave http://www.marydelave.com/

Which Tarot Card Are You? brought to you by Quizilla ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/tarot-tarot/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/lxxviii/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/lxxviii/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:39:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/111937196069864027 ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/lxxviii/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/back-of-the-envelope-solstice-ditty/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/back-of-the-envelope-solstice-ditty/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:22:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/111937143202461129 red queen
grey moth
white delivery van

how long do i wait for you, how
long       do i fold       the green dollar in half? ]]> http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/back-of-the-envelope-solstice-ditty/feed/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/melic-26/ http://dummy.rentedroom.com/2005/06/melic-26/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2005 14:24:00 +0000 David http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8772976/posts/full/111832715195231260 The new Melic is out, with a couple of my poems.