Ultra Joy

I walk in the summer all the way
to you: full of laughter and fluid.
I'm ready to free you from all
you keep from me, and the consequences
of desire which are really just stories
we tell people about.
This story is: We are in a huddle
living to tell the tale by placing a finger
in the middle of your belly.
"It is here" and the bed
raises like a large glass plate
to reveal all that we do.
I'm glad that my apartment is a bus
because we are going somewhere
real like 5th Avenue
or the Himalayas.

Give the Lion a Rest

It might take a year of rest
to incur doubt the seed in the middle
of green fat a body with trouble
that shakes the soap into the drain.

The robust awash a saddle
some basin to fill with plum wine
and a fork to stick in a thick set
vibrant and shiny you planted a tree.

So live in it thin meadow with milkweed
scooping the insides out of a doll a layer
of dill the tug of germs escapes the couple
on the floor a demand or a rug.

Venting comes in breaths then an opening
lit up to make bent what stood straight a gash
in the tent and then again a slit
opened up the question of solids.

Seep inside you fill your belly with
winners salad spice looms aches asleep
your arm asleep your dry dreams
cast a wide net in the smart class a likeness.

A humming bird or a bear I really need
to take extra care I just wonder if there were
a number assigned to each day how many
if we were counting down to something a figure.

A Year

I am clear and measured
as a key dropped in a bowl of whipped cream.
My platform of song and dance
supplies energy and joy to friends.
Looking for ink and relief that the letters form
by passing on the airy side. I climb the stairs
each day with a little bad mood, if it is not erotic
mourning. I defend nothing and embrace all.
I walk in the sand that
I'll never fall. My tongue is round
and delicate as a red bird hopping on a stick
in the mouth of a bull.
I was so glad that I just
rolled on the other side. I did not need to prove
to a person anything for now. My teeth were priced
as "a lot." I won't be falling on my face anytime soon.
Now, I will give one week's wages to people
to remove the nerves and block the negatives from their homes.
It takes a strong wind, the air of clear
days, so I embrace you all, because these words can alter
significantly. Thank you all, it was a very good year.

Deer Vase

Madeira/Liz Colville

This is a track by my dear old friend Liz Colville. Enjoy!

Godard

Chong Gon Byun

Roger That

Spring fed by the dirge of the platelet
shifts, ringed in gold, so a peach hangs
from the curlicue necklace of the embalmer.
Letting the gravel crunch where it dips
into a vault of lipids, hankies of raw
silk. Slithering into the cosmetics on
volcanic misery. I stoop into a cheering
section hidden from the crowd. Let the
storm clear before we feed the petunias.
Roger that, and so we continue in a vaguely
satisfying way all the way to Florida.
Ringing the shore into view from a machine
built from the low milk of the aqua-tree.

Memory

I used to enjoy remembering things.
When I could remember things I would
use my memory in such a way
as to conjure up stuff in my living room.
The dust on the bookshelves
is really our skin mingling amid those
stacks of things, so you are over there.
We’re sort of hanging out
with the dust from us.
It is Thursday,
my bills are due.
Brooklyn is waking up.
Somewhere you are walking across
Court Street or simply cradling
a cup in your lap.
You could be doing anything
and I'd still be trying to remember something.

Farm Pond. Sherborn, MA. Dusk

Tonight

Tonight I will shake your hand into butter,
curve around you until you're maple,
climb the soft pieces of you with spikes,
insert a vibrating dial, and conjure you
in living goop. I will slip my hand
under your belt and lose a wisdom tooth,
make a necklace of it, and hang it around
your neck. My gift of light will shimmer
on your smooth throat and all the institutes of longing
will permeate the landscape with medicinal
cloud formations that disperse calming
solutions of tingle water and kink spray.
I will secrete a secret mud that enhances
your ability to thrust your hips into mine
on a bed that is damp and purple.
You are smooth and redolent with amber
pressing against the sheets so hard
that when you sit up you leave behind
an impression of your body. See you later!

Farm Pond

The bacteria count in Farm Pond is too high
to swim in. The geese must have shat in it
one too many times. Their barking songs echo
off the water and sound, at times, like children barking,
and at other times like actual geese, barking.
Being sleepy but unable to sleep. The moment
I think I shouldn't clear my throat too much,
I clear my throat too much. Mosquitos the size
of my thumbnail. A wooden table in the kitchen.
The fridge sounds like an ice machine in
a hotel. Blue and green framed by the porch.
Kale poking out of a brown paper bag. Olive
oil, oranges, a little white bowl of salt,
a squeeze bottle of agave, Super Orange Emergen-C
packets, Bread Alone Granola, Quaaludes, downers,
uppers & poppers.

Movie Review

In the movie, the nurse
kept kissing the hands and cheeks
of his patient in a way that indicated something
like an indicator on an elevator
indicates what floor the elevator is on.
And then, when he smoked a cigarette,
he held it too close to the tip
of the filter and that made me think
he was just pretending to be
smoking. Later in the movie,
during a meal, the nurse took
absurdly small bites from his sandwich
while he talked on the phone to his patient.
I thought, yeah, he was doing that
so he could talk on the phone and eat
without his patient knowing. So there was
that. But then I started thinking perhaps
he was taking such small bites because he had
to do a lot of takes of the scene and if
he ate big bites he'd go through a lot
of sandwiches pretty quickly.

Lake House

Lift your face up so I can see
blue bird, pork roast, lavender.
The small of your back, humped
skin, goose bumps, baby hairs.
Humidity sticks to the ribs,
like oatmeal, or sausage. Content
in the smeared landscape, a lake
with blue pudding water, dappled
with light. I caress the tungsten
oar and push the boat further afield.
City trucks are a memory now
almost erased by bare feet, a wooden
dock, the smell of Coppertone.
The fever of forgetting everything
what was I thinking before you?

tUnE-YaRdS - Fiya

Thanks, Liz Colville.

Drawing a Breath

I drew a breath
and spit a spark
delay the onset of dementia
with various vitamins
and amigo acids
go all stove pipe slacks
and green muscles
this message has
a serving of rare earth
your hands are lashed
to the crest of your bangs
a mop for your ache
with warm wishes
I stoop under a feather flag
finger gentle maps
to your California bone
lippy little fuck
you've got the glassy punk star
to grease now.

The Future

You might have confused me with someone else. Because of the nut from the gingko tree, I’m capable of seeing everything someone will do in a room before I’m there. I’ve been drinking milk since this morning because it decreases the intensity of my future looking ability. I can’t stop knowing so much about the future, which is becoming quite a burden. When I meet people, I already know how our relationships will end. I know the day of my death, and theirs. It’s like carrying around a heavy weight that I can’t set down on the grass. Eating chocolate, oddly enough, helps a bit. Once, in a moment of despair I resorted to inserting a hunk of chocolate in between my cheekbone and cheek, which only gave me a frightening swollen look.

I wish only to forget that which has yet to happen. I smell like burnt gingko nuts. My fingernails have the brown dots of roasting heat on them. In the future, I looked into the eyes of my fellow workers in long sleeve office wear, chinos, and pantsuits. All of them in their varieties of humble abundance, shuffling amid their workstations. We all have bruises on our shins from bumping into office furniture, and they look like plums. If I sit here much longer I’ll turn into butter; sensitive not only to the heat, but to the faces of my fellow workers making eyes at the end of the day.

The gingko has given me such a good memory that I can see into the future, a sort of “pre-memory” before the event has even occurred. This has caused me a certain amount of unease, so if my name is brought up again at a particular table, don’t bother telling me, I already know anyway. Just like I know when my name will be brought up again and under what circumstances. I know some other things, but I cannot divulge them at this juncture, not even for cash money. I will not reveal your fate by peering into the future with the aid of a nut from that tree. I’m swooning with future thoughts. I remain in the future.

Two for Monday

Unrest - Suki (Live 1992)

Stereolab - The Black Arts

Stereolab - Stomach Worm (3 Times)

Yes.

Blue and Pink

I'm not sure I found what you said,
the text of it, how I stumbled. Thick
with a paste-like regret, I deposited it
in the bone in your head, a soft finger.
Implacable as lemons rolling in the dirt
of the day, I took care of myself
in the truest sense. Walking to get coffee I was
struck by that memory and reasoned what,
if not out, of the cycle of your woe.
Notice how the day passes so quickly
with just a few duties, a dust pile here, a bag
of trash there, and then you're sipping
mango juice and watching the sun go down,
blue and pink stripes across the sky.

When was the last time you cried?

What a beautiful night.
Do you know her? The sweet and low
side of sunlight, blissful orange matter.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
I like what happens to your face in the twilight.
I scrub the throats of the most loved
species. From the outside it all looks
rather dashing, especially if I lift up
my head a bit. Three times a lamp. I know him.
What a beautiful night.

Monday Night

Visitor

Fleshy Wedge

I'd like to get delighted
with you, jacked on the glow
of someone smoking on an airplane.
Fling elbows in the air around the living room
to approximate flying. Make a Vine
of it, and send it out and about.
Whatever we make is out there
in some realm I don't quite
get, I participate. Slow at using a handsaw,
slow at turning a wrench,
slow to appear to be working. At the end of the day,
you are made of all you can't put back.
I want to be able to cheer for someone
as they don't walk to work. Dance fiercely
whenever possible, a fleshy wedge
is good, and reasonable.

Self Portraits

Who Let You Go?

All the people are getting familiar with my
panic button because they are revved up on
capitalism. A battering ram at my door like on a cop show,
with theatrical urgency, because they know they're being filmed.
I don't want to wake up to that, ever. It's good to mention
what you feel too but what about my door? It's fucked.
An eagle on a nature show eats some fungi
and mistakes himself for a fist with wings
(he flies pretty good for a sick eagle though).
Oh, for the days of simply whistling while I floated
down a river with my ass planted in an inner tube.
Oh, to never again frisk a litigant, or sell something
to someone I don't even know. I'm trying to be fabulous
all the time. I've ordered some super special diamond dice
from the internets that are just for licking, you. Of
wetness and the bridge of your nose, of workers
knocking things over, of dreams that show
no signs of beginning. Oh, who let you go?

Season in Hell

Stately Manor

A lamp was lit to ward off pestilence.
The way he reclined on the floor, just so.
Still, there was the matter of his neck,
which ached from the angle of the screen
when he peered into it, like a window
of some sort looking onto a porch overlooking
the yard of a stately manor, he thought.
Meanwhile, the helicopters transported people
with vast, if not enormously vague incomes
from island to island. Looking down, they thought
who could live there amidst all that traffic
and noise. Asleep at night, he heard them, the
helicopters, and the endless streams of cars
and motorcycles. Drunken strangers babbled
on the street, alone, except for them, he
was wise. He's glad he noticed that, felt
a certain gray sense of the day start to recede
and darken into green and amber. Fist pump
emoticons lay limp on the banner hung over
the wrought iron railing. The lights, how they change
in the friendless sky, when the skin of the day is
pealed back: lemons. All in all not a bad way.

Thursday Top 10

1) Pierre Matory The Landscapist. (John Ashbery translation)

2) "Twenty Feet from Stardom." A surprisingly good documentary about backup singers.

3) "Cutie and the Boxer." I'm excited to see this documentary when it opens next week.

4) Shave and a haircut.

5) Antonio Gramsci Selections from the Prison Notebooks.

6) Paris?

7) Lizard Skins Bar Tape.

8) Hibino Sushi tonight.

9) Tie clip, dress belt, fancy socks.

10) Dancing around my apartment like a total jackass.

Season of Stars

I couldn't remember how to start caring again
so I got all the notes, brochures,
marginal art, and went to a type of
wooden rocket, or a cabin in the woods.
It was like camping when I dabbed the ceiling with my thumb.
Breaks in the distance of my light trance, but wonderful,
your cherry belly. I moved, for example, I chased the day away
from adults who were particularly elegant,
though a little stiff and calculated. Do I smell smoke?
Is this a reason to panic? I prefer to use
things at a distance from my face which protects me
from the explosions of everything in the world that confuses me.
Tenderness is a problem I have with the world,
and not the details of the people in the world.
I love to pick up the pieces of my life and put them
end to end like a series of bright blue dominoes, each
deep fat. Fear makes you tight, looking to bring the heaviest
star to this season of savage stars.

Summer

The sun flips the bird
out of the blue. A medallion
of hot gold nestles around my neck.
A red beating swallows me whole.
Ripped in half to the tune
of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

Guillaume Apollinaire

"You'll mourn the time you mourned you know
It will be gone soon like all
Time past
too fast too long ago."

From: "In the Sante"

Guillaume Apollinaire

La fenetre s'ouvre comme une orange
Le Beau fruit de la lumiere.

The window opens like an orange
The beautiful fruit of light.

From: Le Fenetres/The Windows

Lies About Bananas

I'm a little tired, so I might just
repeat the lies the National Fruit Company
has told us about bananas. You know, about
how they're chock full of vitamins and their
yellow skins can be smoked for a pleasant
if not slightly debilitating "high." Also,
what about their supposedly rich carbohydrates
that add to their creamy consistency
when they are just ripe enough? Sorry, but those
are lies. How about the gas they use to ripen
bananas and how that gas gets out when you get
home and open your bag of bananas? That gas
gets in your space and clothes. Think about it.
Oh, and another few things: banana bread, banana
splits, banana daiquiris, banana omelettes, and
then there are all the pratfalls performed with
bananas in movies and on the stage. I'm over them.
Don't even get me started about plantains.

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