INNER EXOSKELETON

What has reinspired all of the original horror
like some tired, poor Statue of Liberty
cupped underneath the earth's garments

earth's grinning concrete, monuments of
former Presidents, their spinning effective speech
now as ineffective as cuneiform tablets

TRYING TO GET THROUGH! to everyone
is like eyeing a wide horizon, perhaps like
being clear-spoken in spite of oneself

like disobeying the radio's mouthy heritage
Who is the masked man between & behind
teacher & pupil that dims wages beyond salvaging

Spatial tiny nucleuses unfolded into
one's mirror-glass facades, rapid expressions
Tonight the roads are as frozen as the frozen

compositions of the smiles on the faces
of every woman during an Elvis concert
If you died in her arms that night

then you must now be a ghost singing about it
Snow came, snow turned to rain, then dried
So here it is, we protrude an inch from our orbits

What blessings our bones are to not be glass
like a memory worsening during conversation
Knock knock I'm There

Every day I shout with a treble-soft voice
against the opened ceiling as if to
synthesize contemplation where I feed my stimulus

even though my argyle socks may stink
to the very core/pore/bone & may droop
ones eyes low, lower like Baudelaire's forehead

in his later years, but at least there is
a radiance in my shouting voice
Silence provides everything with an

extended strangeness like O'Shaughnessy
who said that vision & touch are what instruct us
or perhaps it is plenty more at a self-distance

like the alien-like gaze of a bird that looked
into my camera lens this evening that made me
feel part-object as I reached out hesistantly to touch it

DAILY GRADUAL

I prepare for a collage the same way that

I prepare for a day: searching for the

impossible conception, the way a husband

may tell his wife to cut off the fat.

She responds Stoically & abrubt:

"Perhaps if I cut off your testicles . . . "

—silence always occurs at this stage;

silence of the human slug. So to speak?

My collages are the gastronomy

of Genoa. I rip out the warm elegance

of a master bedroom, paste it to the

railroads that may go through the Pacific—

a future slum of glue; a dab here, a dab

there (I grin concentratedly like a child,

feeling daring, less impressed by

my helplessness) filtering through

the alternations between engaging tempos

of ephemera & breaking them free

from their hidden epithelium, neighborly

hecatontomes. I pause to consider.

I unpause to reconsider, the way that

New York City is never phased unless

terror strikes, & even by then the media

plays pantomime, plays out, files away.

In art, disregarding rules is like NWA

disregarding police, except without all of

the symbiotic rage. Chunky protein collage:

essence of Klimt, sloppy Joe, faint cracks

in the absolutes of a scholar's pale face;

holes in his eyes replaced with replicas

of vantage points. The world around him

falls in the night; hard-bitten, an abyss

of colorful strips of folded jar-flung regions.

What is this collage, these collages, but

fractured bits of composition within the sum

of cranking parts? I stare near-sightedly over

the results, put a close to the downrush

of wild energy, can hear the closed-off

howls of a new creation as I walk away

seeking dinner, the way youth vanishes.

bARb

Techno-Impressionism or 17th-century motets—
where O where is
Barbra, O Châteaux,
Streisand?
Barbra
Streisand
is all over the place, even though she is no where.
While other actors & actresses are kicking out the
jams, I am wondering why others are not embracing
anarchy in this great mysterious
Streisand
cutting-edge ponderment. Imagine seeing
Barbra's
youthful face while one day eating a peanut butter
& jelly sandwich. Neil Diamonds in the gut.

(My father once said that
he would only prepare
one sandwich for me in my
entire lifetime & that afterwards
I must prepare my own.
Everytime that I prepare
my own sandwich, I think of him
while thinking of how
my grandfather, to this day,
still asks me if I would like a sandwich—
he leaves it sitting in the refridgerator
for me, wrapped in a newly-fresh
plastic sandwich bag.)

Imagine time-lapse imagery of a middle-aged
B.S.
while she writes saucy letters to you & later
gives you a stunning topaz to swoon upon.
Imagine seeing
Barbra Streisand's
face on your neighbor's flower pot or perhaps
her face in your window at night, & then lightning
flashes in the background creating a halo around
her head, in which she "mouths" the following words:

"Hunger is a monster,
disregarding every law, it can make
a cannibal out of the flower
of our highest civilization,
& neither Jay nor Crow
nor human creature is to be
punished for what they are driven to
by starvation."*

Somehow you are able to decipher
what she has said. You had been
starving, had been reading a book
about birds, had been thinking about
how uncertainties are more raw
than a wind-worn ground-growth
or pinkish-winded mouth, as dry
as stale biscuits.

____________________________________________________________________

* from What Birds Have Done With Me by Victor Kutchin.

The clouds are living, like the onward

Rush of all things. I pay attention.
The only stars this night
Are street lamps. I am here
(perhaps with you) exploring Idea,
Exploring & finding the chord-y chorus
Of Language (it is mounted for
The sole purpose of being disembodied
With no obstacles & no conceptions)
As if all words were lying back-up
In a field, like the death of Robert Walser
Whose familiar Spirit creates
Snow angels in that same gaping spot.

___________________________________________

After Alexander conquered Egypt,
he probably wondered through
the green hills of Perthshire
& thought of Americana
& "the blonde ambition"
that would soon come.
Ladies, if your
doctor gives
you
anxiety, sing,
"Die, Die, Die, My
Darling!" into his ears
while he "checks" your
heartbeat, as if with the
hands of an unmarried man;
a holy chalice under the tongue,
juice of black red cherry. I have
been inviting more howls to
rescue the air, the air you
spoke of, the air that
gave me majestic
goosebumps.
This winter,
I had not
known
what was
to come, again:
tenseness of skin,
of heart, I have become
an out-of-focus snowman in
liquid form. What does the plant
adore? Corpuscle adornments.
My rheumy previsualizing.
I am not confrontational.
I feel like the end of
a rainbow;
treasure
is flat, like
water without
waves or droplets
anywhere in sight, like
the way dawn can diminish
a candle's glow. I told Tatiana
that certain doorknobs are doped
with whispers & blended
visual gestures. Forget
the shattered past.
It is said
that
"The Golden
Age" wasn't particularly
gleaming with gold. It would be
like a Renaissance Period without all
of the regrouping. Open the night,
celebrate its closing by awaiting
its opening again. Black &
white is like a distillation
(click to enlarge them).
Plot holes in this poem,
or pot holes in this
poem. My soul
-chops are like
God
-dard.
“soul is total
vocal freedom.”
Perhaps like the animated
dancing woman in silhouette underneath
the Make Less Than $45,000/year?
advertisement. We should all
beware of safety. O Canada,
come feast upon America's
vulnerabilities!
Downward
sweep
of an axe.
Of a Moment's ass
-ociation. "some of my confusion
was just unfamiliarity" like a stuffed bird
in kingdom come. No voice is raised
against the deaf. Embrace the
complimenting monsieur
that is at odds. I speak
óbecause Because
without a
surround
-ing
we
would all
become ticklish
wenches a-laughing
in a certain place, perhaps
in the gaps of Saint-Chély-du-Tarn
& speech would always
give-way to correction
like a king correcting
a joker. I am a joke
-r. I would have
slugged
the king,
would have
been like a dreadful
child that knows what is
coming: possible intense scornings.
Months fly by in a blur. The calender
goes blind, nearly honourably, heels over
head, like a brute beast; like quick
-sand, becomes groundless
& prejudice of the sacred
abstraction of
each
day.

________________________________________________________

Instant silence in every instance.
—or so I'd thought.
Chopin's piano is a phrase in my vocabulary.
—or so I'd want.

Be far. Be a far booming noise
unlike anything else. Be the far
fair individual. Go ahead,
contact your voice.
Remember color, remember personality
—& as is, as was.

Of, of, alike, resemblance of
the animal. We begin as a flock.
The boy who cried wolf
was really a wolf himself.
—& up up up his echo carried.

Instant silence in every instance.
Yes. The way I had dropped
at your feet in the cold grass.
The way you cupped my head in your arms
& caressed me untitledly.
—or so I'd thought.

THE SUREST DEATH

is unsure of itself.
She is a brute of an ox.

Daybreak smiles
as soon as I am out

of her sight.
It is like being naked

in a stranger's sight
or anyone's sight

for that matter,
the way the body feels

bruised, the way I feel
like walking out into

the snow & rooting out
a worm so that a bird

does not have to.
Birds need Googlemaps.

Nevermind instinct.
I just want to help

nature & wildlife
before the Surest Death

becomes too certain
of itself, before it catches

an all-too-familiar
glimpse of itself.

________________________________________________________

Here's a clue. Take it & smother yourself.
The heart is gray. Why am I nervous
day to day, night to night. Why am I not
an extra-extrovert like say Jay Leno
who drives motorcycles wildly as if he
were a Hell's Angel. Why can I not
at most have the arrogance of Obama
who is like a Drill Sergeant that spits fire
through his coaxing lips. I have done thirty
in a sixty-mph zone while feeling pressed
for time, pressed to the chest. I hope
that I become more attractive the older
that I get, perhaps it will start now.
As soon as I am finished writing this
professional poem & enlightening
the world, I am going to go look into
the reflective-glass & diaphanously reflect
like a sty, dumb with horror, staggering
yet grinning.

________________________________________________________

I roost at
a favorite spot
by the heater.
I am still,
silent, real.
The sea
is a torch.
Architecture
is frozen poetry.
I am both of them.

________________________________________________________

QUESTIONS arise, like Augustus Simmons
in my spambox, wasted energy, who creates
the time to send spadonic spam of paralytic
& bat-like blindness. Waste. This is all that
it is. Waste & more Waste. America, brave
& wasteful, peddled, straddled & unhinged.

Arthur Rubinstein died the year that I was
born. Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat. Rusty
magnanimity, the floor this winter day is
damp. The snow glows, even on the darkest
of nights, speaks in a foreign perplexion
like some lunatic in an impromptu script.

A scurfy maiming of mind. Marat/Sade.
If I come back before I return to this
ideology, please tell me to wait. Puff-pasted
non-clouded skies. Turbo love. This is the
unmoving surge of cold that laughs like an
exhausted vocalist, scruffy throat, nearly

goat-ridden. Now, a final letting go. Cellist
of sight. I scratch & sniff the bottle of
Recluse juice, straddle it, flip it up, turn myself
inside-out for the wrong reason. Look at my
innards. All Nerfed. Touch me like an electric
piano of ragged neglectedness; re-invent
my second nature, like a Star Wars geek,

& take the breath right out of me so that
when I return myself to outside-in
my lungs will yearn, will burn with a passion,
to be swayed aloft from your thieving my
air passages. I am a crocus that blooms
in the shade, keeping my petals closed.
Don't move. My heartbeat is a shutter lens.

Pizzazzly Possessed

Love is all I bleed.
What is sharper:
curvy roads or blade swords?
I hunch forward
like Glenn Gould would
over his piano keyboard.

What is cozier than fireplaces,
can it be any nosier?
Like going outside in spring
& thinking of Mary Moser.

: when I think of flowers
I think of my grandmother
& Mozart & Satie;

: when I think of being a man
I think of a Swiss airplane
that crashed off of the coast of Nova Scotia.

Ah, dear justice of peace,
your experiences are
peach-fuzz puberty (lacking).
I live to bring out
the best in others.
Who could ever love like Patton?

My mother recently told me
that she overheard a little girl
tell her mother that she is
afraid of automatic flushing toilets.
Tiny aspects of life like a missile
in the wind-swept sands
of the Middle East.
A duellizing engagement!

My sister tells me that she
is lounging within
the spiral of boredom.

: when I think of boredom
I think of Christmas Eve
& the day after;

: when I think of meeting new people
I think of brushing through anxiety's hair
& an iconic “Iron Curtain” speech.

Do not worry if you feel as though
you will not be found married alive.

Look on the bright side,
into your own inner-sky.
Sing yourself into a
carpal-tunnel audible-tone.

Our world is wire-affiliated
& wireless-affiliated;
an enormous angry cur
hiding beneath the soil.
Transition, transition is
happening now.

: when I think of transition
I think of a two-faced vampire
& an aneurysm in the cheetah-gut;

: when I think of brainy chicks
I think of lugging around loose paper
& unreadable Python codes.

Recently, a five year-old boy
fell down an elevator shaft.
I heard the echoes from here.

I recently saw a photograph
of my father. We have not
spoken in years. Seeing his
pale, plumpy flesh, like
spongey adema, saddened me.
I could throw a pledge
but I am out of breath.

SCIENCE CLASS

I remember a friend
in my science class
who asked me if
I had gas because
he felt as though I
"resembled nervousness"
by the way that I was
acting before preparing
to make a presentation
in front of the class.
He was very much right
but I denied it.

________________________________________________________

Yesterday I stood at the front door
with runaway eyes, not a metaphor.
I thought of you, perhaps amongst
the regalia of the forest as I dwarfed
along the perennially naïve notion
that you would appear in more than
my head---a drum's hallway. I am
inside of your roman à clef, an exagg
-erated egg in the yoke of these
"burning bitters." An astonishing flower
-ing of the overly familiar. & still,
no metaphor. & still, I stand at the door,
the back door where the moon-rays
drill holes in my sockets, arm-hair rising
to meet the illuminance, the way sorrow
rises in the heart's unstitched jungles;
rainforests of Borneo, an abandoned
bird's nest, & now I niggle when I
should be nestled in silence, in peace,
à la the tiger moth in a bright, neon
green garden.

Farewell

Mother-of-pearl perhaps derived from Renoir,
a songbook, a radio station playing the same-o
same O! my blistered units, the curtains are
nonexistent, inducing fields of light. I hear breath
-ing, I sense antlers within the eyes of certain ones.
My dear darling, your mirror shards were free
to fly, flew directly into this heart.

Farewell! This film has ended with odd harmonic
collisions, the rain fell & fell, your onions peeled
into my eyes, standing amidst the topless sky,
swelled to reflect, to refract. What have I become
but the stars that crackle in the night, a lamenting
smoke, a clogged aorta of a silhouette in reverse
infused by the giant ink-blot of your rubbing me out.

________________________________________________________

The shapes of the words in my mouth
Are heavy glows.
A garland of unweighty indistinguishable
Mass.

What happens to the diameter
When the tonsils act
As a Blockade---
Words bursting through my throat,
My heart swelling like a sealed environment
That becomes like a dangerous draw-bridge.

Life can be snatched from our midst.
A cockroach "catches" the mist
On its back; spins & spins, rotates & battles,
Curls & flips; confusion between the shell.

Geography should be "personal"
Like fifteen minutes of fame
For everyone including the Unborn.
We could bend rivers
Into small populated places
& like God, we would know
Where dust settles.
The pursuit would cease. Cat
got your lung?

________________________________________________________

Nevermind the mainstreamists that
misinform the world about poets;
we leap like paintings from frames
on walls, we raise our eyes to threaten
& interrupt certainly not a Sisyphus-like
torment, not all with poison fangs
& fiery breath at the very root of hell,
but instead we’re like dinky
grandma patches—heavy globes
become weightless under our thoughts.
Peel the layers of earwax from your
audible-gates. Pity, not Hatred;
Admiration, not Disgust; & where
is Fear but within the foul fiend?
Look beyond these lunacies! One has
made a trumpet of one’s rump
when one has grown savage, even in
thought. I have eyes sharper than
Leonardo, my poetry has rendezvous
with me & I could throw it all to the
wind, laughing, scarcely suited
& privileged to know nothing.

________________________________________________________

Flood
the secret.
Find

the silence,
the symptoms
are

a kind of chess,
a kind of Tolstoy
character

within
the extremities
of movement.

Hits you
like a
pyrotechnician's

miscue, cue
the touch
eliminate confusion

Confucious
was having
coffee

at a breakfast
din
-er when

I
walked up
to him

and
handed him
oak tree acorns

that
I
had collected.

The clouds
walk on
themselves

this evening.
A shortage
of sunlight.

The shadow
of the earth
moving

upon your face.
I have found
the silence,

it was behind
the hanging porch
fern. I have

found the secret,
it was behind
the water-front

in your throat,
it appears
excessive.

I take your words
minting them
like coins

into my heart.
words
alight from flight

had burst
out of my heart,
flewn up

like
a leaping crowd
at a concert.

it all recurs
sanguine to start
all over again.

I am
bearded
& all a-clam,

driving through
the garish city,
the lights

blazing
with glam;
midnight blues

of
the nitty-gritty.
Caught

in
the pillows
of your precious

-ly sarcast
-ic-elastic
mind.

what
is more than
imagination,

a kind of
super-realism
collected

in conversation.
an echo
returns to itself

to reflect
to be upheld
by the results.

________________________________________________________

Gratefully, morning repeats. A mounted flame
of sunrays I see through the white blinds,
an epic adagio of light, almost a narrativity
of explicit vocal personage (sunrays of Scelsi).
My eyes rise with the light, irises improvise
acousmatiquely into awakening---it has become
a yellowish-violet bruise upon the thigh
of which overwhelms the whole, or hole,
in the valley of my waking in the melted candle
of memory---of where you rest here in the
blossoming buds of my mind. A night
we remember,---shake smutty-hips
into my image, deglamourize these scenes!
I let the events of our Time pass through me
so intensely that I cannot close off
my patterns of thought, like repeated assertions,
surgeon of the eye, rescue me from this
tugging pull,---pinch out this possible cracked rib,
a strong affinity for the Future upends the Past,
but the Now needs milking. I rise, wearing a
sharkskin suit, silver sparks from the bedpost,
grunting & displaying remarkable transportation
from here to there.

THE PHYSICAL UNCANNY

The physical uncanny
hits
the enemy's muscles.

They begin
swearing
at high rates.

Prolonged foible
of feeble
blade-tongues.

A default
of thy throb,
all is clear

from
east to west
this day,

the cat
stares at me,
looks down

& then
back up at me
again.

These furry
queens. I
drink from

the breast
of this day
so quiet.

A Threnody
springs into my ears
like

a great
national figure
on the scene.

Doubt
is
the prophetic voice

of rehearsing
for Surprise.
The winter yard

is iced
like a crust
of makeup.

My perfumed wrists
electrify
like south-winds

bringing forth
life, a sunshine
of scent,

as this day
all-bright;
the big invisible sinus

of carrying a burden
with the force
of a waterfall.

To interrupt a soul
setting sail
while I need

to find a way
to get up
off of the pine

& get dressed.
We the people
are too laid-back

in this world.
We the people
are too cradle-song'd

& last-drop-of-milk'd
in this heated howl
of a world.

Our chairs
should be
STONE CUTTERS.

Earlier,
I
realized that

I
hold my
computer mouse

the way
Alexander Pope
would have.

________________________________________________________

Never consult
the Genius--pre-Socratic
philosophers

of life
of desiccated, steep
learning curves.

My great aunt
is now deceased,
I approach it

as knowing
but I
am no Guru,

a
naturally-bizarre Bee
-thoven;

the "fleshing out"
of a character.
Focal hem

-ispheres feared
to inadequately bite
impressionistically.

I
am no techno
-scientist

but vision
is creeping
into the B[leak]

with
a particularly
keen eye.

In what
is being touted
as "dark times"

is
only suppressed
by lippy tangos

& unfruitful
minds.
My aunt's

warm bodytrails
still float,
still scamper

amidst
these walls,
spotlight

on
the "catching up"
of facework--

learned dormancy,
automata
of omitting,

inseparable
meaning of
blithe indifference,

"Why Patterns"
like Feldman.
Death

can be
a heartbreaking
seizure

in the chest,
or a kick
in the face

to substitute
a phrase,
but truth

is not
individually physical.
None of us

lives apart
from the land
entirely.

I
know exactly
what God did.

God
implanted
a poetic device

into my chest cavity.

SEE NOTHING,

SAY NOTHING.

Even then,
on quiet evenings
it is like

a bomb exploding
in a theatre
like from

a film scene,
a Hollywood explosion
making me cringe,

a hollow rung
in the bone
of

regurgitating disappointment--
a mental jack-screw
resulting in nothing.

PIANY THROAT

for Rae Armantrout



Take each poetic fragility
& crack the whip.

An Inlaying
of a thick map.

Now I am only trying
to impress,

the way I sketch
skepticism on stained

glass. Decorating
the front door,

a greater chance of
peeping toms.

I go on a "hunting trip"
every day in my mind,

reaching into my earth's
magnetic shield.

Consequently, I may
be able to name it

a completely different
name, with(in)/Correct

body alignment.
The compass

builds reaction
more than direction

(polished jasper, sub
-conjunctival hemorrhage)

like the “full-blown”
unification

of Literature; messless
& unrelenting

as if becoming
a wall decoration.

________________________________________________________

Pull out

my larynx

From now on

we will speak

in heart beats

THE B_IND

The b_ind h_ve deaf ey_s.

The b_ind re-inv_nt shape.

________________________________________________________

No one really dreams of a soothing cocoon, we gather
ripest memories loved best & turn the volume high
like radios by poolsides in the prime of summer afternoons.

Underwater depth, your gentle affection is fully-rooted
in mysterious ways—Unknowns, like a sleeping lion—
those depths, deafening me with your majestic coral caves.

I blend into your silken mouth. Alas, we blend together;
perhaps flayed, perhaps a harmony of opposites,
the spinstress of warmth. Go on, hide me, but love me.

Love me before I become bokeh in your background,
& if I do, cut me out of the pixels with your hatchet,
inform me of my predictable mishaps without a sound.

Stand on your tippy-toes while whisking me away.
Climb the sycamore like Zacchaeus the exact way
& remember me when your heart begins to starve.

ADD A HYPHEN FOR CONFUSION

for Non-confusion

I think too often of interrelated metaphors.
I think too often of the despoliation of nature.
I think never enough of bonding & reinvention.
I think never enough of being soft & bodiless,
weightless. I see your glow shining through
(waitless) every chink & keyhole. We hover
in Whole. Contrast can adjust its shape.
Plurazing themes or plagiarizing dreams,
verb-squeamish steams, add a hyphen
for confusion, so it seems. I investigated
the poison of poetry but it was all static.
I view myself in a mirror the way a cat would
like quantum-mechanical Schrödinger's cat.
Newspapers are dying, economy is crying,
my two sisters on the verge of alcoholism?
I ponder it like the credit bubbles displayed
in my psyche; moving text like a "marquee,"
black holes of disassembledness, waves
of the uncanny. Failing body, like an unenriched
alleyway-entrance, rooting for rot in the fruit shop
of the mind, a gassy muffler's neuropathy,
interference of passers-by. The spontaneous
mechanical collapse of the cryodeposit layer
is not the worse of all worlds: epic pet peeves
never fail. The earth is producing nothing but
monsters nowadays. A video of your Secrets
will play over a large screen & will begin in
twenty-six seconds in two segments, one of
which will contain repetitive ads for the race
of mankind. The Monolith will land on the sand
& we will continue to starve like a wax-candle
waiting for a match. I am losing myself in this
high whirrition of pithful contemplation. A doctor
is not needed. He would merely say, "Just bestir
yourself and pick fleas from a carpet. Slip inside
an object. Diminish from the slow peel of light."
Advice is remembering. I take it & go forward,
with or without hogwash; spurs within the eyes.