23 Poems for the Web
One poem per chapter from my critically ignored formal confessional language flarf performance art epic
Eventide
In the half light I can only remember
Whether yesterday follows tomorrow
Or if Amarillo blooms around the corner.
Upon awakening I am already four
When the future lies forgotten as at dusk
And shadows lie in puddles neath the trees.
Near dark my mother cannot unpark her car
For our memory of machines dies empty
In the half light I can only remember.
A Little Too Much Reality (Day)
In every direction it's the same damn thing so
We close our eyes half way to avoid confusion it
Limits the scope and keeps out the sun just
As our hats hold back the sky but
Nothing can hold back the wind even
The cattle get carried away now
There's only the road and the trucks and
The dust and the sky and the sun.
Repeat
I never turned around I
know who you look like you look
like who you were looking for
sound like her too sound like her
suspended in the doorframe
caught in an indiscretion
no I never turned around.
Vigiling On a Hill All Morning in Lynchburg
Normally I stand
over my weight-bearing, child-carrying
gently-curved left hip, my running,
kicking right leg thrown to one side
like the unrelated
afterthought it usually is. Unfortunately
Thomas Road is steeply slanted
in the wrong direction. The Baptist Church
across the street would have me stand
over my straight right hip in agreement with
my facial hair, leaving the apparently
shorter leg
dangling
hopelessly
disconnected
from my ground in the damp October air.
I would be much more
comfortable
turning my back on the pain.
Tree Series Continued
The sidewalk outside Commerce
Square on the North Side of
Market between Twentieth
and Twenty-first is written in
small square blocks, sixteen inches
on a side, fifteen squares from Square
to curb, and along the curb
every sixteen squares in
a grate-covered square of dirt
four squares on a side (sixteen
squares, for those of you who
are bad at math) a tree
is planted. The symmetry would be
breathtaking only
trees don't live that way. In
Winter, deprived
of warmth and sunlight, they
reluctantly agree to
the overwhelming conformity of the
sidewalk, barely managing to contain their
fractal branches within their sixteen
allotted squares, but in Spring odd ideas
pop into their heads and by Summer way
up above the small square blocks where
the rules cannot reach them they
mingle their leaves indiscriminately and
sigh with gratitude.
Age robs some of us
every five minutes
fingers stop working
and each time it's a
new sensation the
last incident crushed
in the wheelchair tracks
while younger each year
by the second girls
self-denied transfuse
their bounce to others.
For the Walt Whitman of Her Generation
Flakes once removed
like cousins from
the tiger box
claim their cornhood
refusing to
be continued.
Above the Formal Clasp of Hands
unapproved unrecognized
works of the Holy Spirit
mysteriously engage
illicitly angled forearms
soul energy exchanged through
hairs alive nerves unending
prayers of our joyful silence
From A Single Margarita
A pair of geese stand apart
on the low flat roof of Eight
Seven Five First Avenue
watching for community,
their plaintive honks echoing
my portent of two weeks lost.
Love is never sensible.
Light bounces off the shallow
surface of Swann fountain my
toes cold and wonderfully wet
the happy posing couple
in long white as the pulsing
spray traditional gown and
something short and salmonish
feminine, but not frilly.
Downtown Buffalo
eyes abandoned
trolleys vacant
storefronts empty
skyline hollow
a faint promise
of Canada
Victim
Bus window rides to night face
obviously sudden "I
cannot model fatherhood
of God" freedom unwanted
passion's sorrow phone replaced
uncalled home safety future
must teach our daughters better
Call of the Enlightened
wandering the warm
march dark lot ki on
high beam all amused
all is home why go
don't you know they don't
see not me pass through
breath power coming
nower nowest In
In Here breath ki stay
live need want breathe stay
Standard Issue Crazy
All this chat of deer and trees
Michael Phelps a deity
of all this chat of all this
of all of lossness faded
mania uncovered wakes
to stalk young Earth in seasoned
hell taste the mind of heaven
face out to draw
utter foreign word for boots
re: in force stepping device
supported on two stocking
profile New York personage
would be vanishing mother
browns or scattered sleeves puffy
white what do they whisper you?
Recreational tourists
late-summer garage smell rests
thick on the ground my childhood
visits to people who lived
car to driveway face to road
slow-melting rubber drizzled
with crude door raised enough roll
under and hide like a man
Weather
The fake hunting lodge motel
in Happy Valley must have
been early September wind
insinuating sky chilled
like today and the rugby
sideline air traffic grounded
two fighter jets on patrol.
Mimesis Happy Hours
Liquid in the solar glare
formerly crystal drops fill
screen grid space solidified
as we spin forth to shadow.
How many meanings counted
by accumulated snow
fall further to undefined?
Wheat/Chaff
requirements wall projected
strike pose The Guru Summoned
(And He Shall Purify) low
cut upcast dims the houselit
her aggressive anecdote
shared Isaiah Seventeen
Thirteen owns The Threshing Floor
now i understand
reusable coke bottles
exaggerated winks in
preprogrammed elevators
fight the power graffiti
waitresses without English
wind farms on the autobahn
giant bratwursts, tiny buns
Two Seats Back from San Diego
bungalow crows you object
stalking terra cotta tiles
to small baked fruit of knowing
The One True Giant Rancho
Bernardo Lemon Queerness
Vulcan Mad Men Story Time
Coloring Book and Flash Cards
lapine hardware
my father raised rabbits when
he was a boy when i was
he fried them for dinner i
kept playmate pictures found in
third floor halls and discarded
cartons you were nibbling on
carrots during the meeting
Kelly Drive Post-Exilic
Deliberate duplicity
fosters complicity, thrills
inner lane polarity.
Recline by Saint Joe's boathouse
a case of special pleading.
Everyone needs a crisis:
"I don’t know what it is yet."
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