___________________________________________

a day ago, the muggy heat

was a creeping thing

between the brainpan,

like a bombardier beetle

with its reactive chemical

compounds, raising its

temperature to the

nearing point of boiling water—

then the rain came—

then a dialectical spasm

of Cold brought a beautiful

muffing-up—table reading:

leafing through JFK’s death,

appalling nightmares—

what were my grandparents

doing at this time? I am trying

to grease the November night,

popping a star like a

celestial pimple; gumming up

space, as I space out

about everything aurora-like

& children are playing

basketball in the street

with sweaters on; metaphors

for Time as it sweats

through the pants-leg

of burning fabric, stinging

the legs, wasp-like translations—

what would happen if

the universe were alive

with the spirit of human life?

To question its authenticity,

verified by something

probably called   “           ”

—a question is often answered

by a response that

shakes the globe—

Underdogs of a war—

my grandfather was in the Service

but he does not like

to talk about it—no one speaks

of their past in my family

with such great emotion

& detail like that of my uncle,

but my Mother just told me

about a man who was

caught stealing electronics

at Best Buy; he ran out

of the door into a pack

of Marines, a pack of wolves

___________________________________________

                  .                                  .                           .                   .                             .
 .       .                                                    .                 .                          .  .            .                                .
           .                      .                           .            .                      .                         .               .
                       .                     .                           .                    .                                          .               .
 I just want         .         .                                               .      .                        .       .                                 .

              .                                                            .     .                                                 .

                                    to reach up        .                                         .

         .                    .                    .                                                               .                        .              .

                        .                                               & smear 

.         .              . .              .                               .                                            .         .                       .

            .                                                  .                   .                      the moon       .               .

.                                 .

      .           .                                                                                                        in every direction 

                          .                            .               .                                    .
                                         .                        .                .                       so that                             .

.                .                               .

                                                                        the entire sky      .              .                     .

      .      .                                          .                 .                                 .                        . .            .            .

                                 would resemble     .                         .                           . .        .   .    .

         .                  .                    .  .         .              .      .      .                .                      .                     .

 a popcorn ceiling.                .                                            .         .                                                         .

               .                                                               .               .       .                           .            .

      .            .                                   .        .                                                      .                                 .

        .                   .                                    .                           .                     .                    .                  

THE OBJECT OF FLATTERY

The Object of Flattery
assumes a figurative sense—

the feeling of fabric, let’s say,
on one’s naked body in a cold,

dark room (goosebumps and
moonlight) illicitly thought of

as ‘proper’ to be without another
body represented, so that the

Thought turns around an ample
amount of sufficient ideas,

which therefore suggests a disguise,
in pun, to the room in which

the fabric rests upon the body
of one whole living kinship;

pincushions of an active sense
of imagination; the brain, like

a bee’s entrance into a nest,
the blade of a tongue, a suddenness

of a decision as if pondering which
aromatic soap to “try” next.

Aromatic money-spending
spanking the globe. I once wore

clocks, or watches, until I realized
that I only need a watch

to watch me at night while I sleep,
ticking me into a dream, tics

in the fluttery chest,—the idea that
a watch is worn as if to suggest

that one has just come from the outside. 

BRAVURA

The nightsky holds me in its mouth

like a Kingfisher grasping a minnow.

I pull down the stars & staple them

to these walls. I will plant every one

of these sparkling diamonds,

like a milky-blurred background

in a black-and-white film,

into the overpopulated strangeness

of autumnlong quieted roots.

My hands like tentacles swipe

over the land of the season

as if I were Clockwork

flying out of an old diagram, ink-blotted

sumptuousness, Ciurlionis-like

greased color; an overloaded treasury

of conjoined voices. & the Truth is:

I view myself as a young boy

within a souvenir snowglobe;

the needlework as solid as premature

speech. Childhood is a fishbone

in the mouth of an animal.

I have abruptly left myself in my

own mind, stumbling in place as if

I have something to say but unable

to be as urgent as other poets.

I spew certain memories, their delicacies

invigorating interpretation.

Your particles still remain within

my inward valley; secret eyes, ripe,

like mail-persons reading postcards

before delivering them into the

fatigued mouths of mailboxes.

Memories, with age, are often trimmed

tinier & tinier. A memory

is a peephole, a visible tongue "airing out"

attempting to land someplace

the way a bat inhabits a geography

by sense of Feel. I recall the out-of-body

experience as a child, without thick description,

as I hovered from the window, & then

brought back into "place"---a barely visible

individual standing at the foot of my bed

glaring at me the way a familiar spirit

may create disruptions & bountiful messes

within the orbiting realms of a home.

My meditative spaces need no redemption;

wings of every meaning, sonicspeech

on the tip of my tongue aching for

a "second before," the way a tear

seemingly moves in slow motion,

like resin seeping from a Pine,

like I, thinking of you

in this utter nighttime silence. 

___________________________________________

Cut the motion picture at mid-reel

so that I can swallow the void.

I am hearing sounds coming out

of the angry cat's mouth that I have

never heard before.

A smile simply "seemed."

Suppose we

bind ourselves together

preening the wind into our tiny wings.

I think of you like a song

that is continually upon my lips.

This is not a poem about a film,

this is a film about a poem

promoting its production in textual-form.

You, the sweet satyrian,

vineflowers of my day.

The soundtrack begins like a grunt--

the way one may grimace at a pawn shop:

one's gold-value sopped

by the oppression

of an inflated economy.

Our song is ambient, dear. I move

into a reflection, filling the holes

of every salty stupor.

She's staring holes through me,

sterling pearls hidden in the throat

of the clamped oyster shell--

"Music's only secret is silence"

& the ocean's silence is Music,

or a woman wearing stilettos;

the echoes filling every hallway.

I am illuminatingly observant

when it comes to my surroundings,

like not stepping into puddles

when they reflect a sky

but stepping into them

when they reflect the face

of a person: a splash, an uproar,

sassy ripples ripening one's composition.

___________________________________________

My cat drinks water    W               out of the sink 

next to a pile                  h              of bronze bullets & 

a turned-over bottle         a            of handsoap. 

                                        t

The sun is on                      T         vacation for the night,

the moon, well,                  o          it just beams 

through the window          m          as if it were crowning me;
                                      o

as if, yes, tomorrow          r           's noonday light

will soon be                        r         a cranium

fit for a king.                         o

                                             w

It's nearly                           B         one o'clock

in the scorning                  r            & I'm thinking

of nineteen eighty-eight       i          with sweaty palms

                                           n

as if I could be                   g         six years

-old all over again            s           mirroring              
a moment                   I                 a time
                               s

where                  N                     even at this hour

I long for                o                   replenishing
the years gone by.     n                 Thirty 

                                   e

approaches            O                  quicker than
a Hello.                     f                Are the neighbors
as anxious as I?          M             No,
                                     y
they sleep                W               & await their daily

shifts, they drift           o              & await their next 

ship                              r             as I sink lower,
                                       r

lower into an undertow,      y       as if to mimick
the doomed Titanic,                   as if Possibility
were nothing more                      than a bank statement, 

as if Optimism clung                    to the carpet
like velcro,                                  where I flip through 

a worn diary                               of scribbled text,

taking it all in.

___________________________________________

MAGNETIC ELEMENTS in this room, staged, but real, pain-staking inking of pressure, like an elder, bent over, unable to revv up the chainsaw, so he kicks it, breaks his foot & thus we enter foolishness, even as youth is a rare treat, a wasted summer watching 18-wheelers drive by carrying goods or flattened vehicles. On an overgrown path (like Leoš Janáček) I rise to see a little child sitting on a train next to a window, his head down, a palm against the pane. The sunlight is as conscious as an armed MOD; a zebra hiding in a wooden crate. United States flags seem to hang in every window of Plumber shops in Texas. Each night I dance amidst the light of the utility pole as if I were a comic strip. I hold my ribcage in place, mouth open under the moon, waiting for a planet to make off with my energy, set up a tent in my backyard & gaze back at where it once resided.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH is spoken into existence by Almighty God & not by brainwashed corporate sponsors. Nor aliens. (Stephen Hawking is alienistic.) A hawk mistaken for an unidentified flying bird. What is there left to understand? Mental-demolition. The human cell, more complex than New York City at rush hour. That is a real page-turner! There are sixteen framed images of senior citizens on the wall someplace in Middleville, Ontario. I see this kind of thing in dreams or in nursing homes. Why am I wry? I see myself in each frame on the wall like a near-conclusive film. I see my father in each frame on the wall & I see my mother as the wall, holding us all tightly, but with a menacing appearance, the way a submarine longs to be a jet, coughing out air—me, six years old, a bathtubful of Army men & foliage. Wintery cragged ice, as if in Norway. The result of staying in the tub too long. Derbyshire is where I should be, as cold as ever, standing beside a woman in a pink sweater, a flower-patterned dress & carnation ballerina flats. I could be the plump girl standing hesitantly beside her, wearing a beige skirt with squintedly-nervous  eyes, as if annoyed. Double-eared audible-spear. I ask my headphones to listen closely to me. Anyhow, I am very male. Sheepskin fur & all. Do soldiers always “keep the peace”? Male or machine, female or machine. Machine or machine to machine. Overpopulated Renaissance. Some girls swim with their Barbie dolls. They lay them out to ‘sun’ with their private parts covered. Here, gravity denies us, kisses the sky, the mind as ruinous as graffiti walls—des Grands Ensembles—toilet-set tongue, near-absent, or near Absence. I ache like a chef in New Orleans, with bodiless architecture, as if oil were classified edible, now as neon black as a politician’s gaping mouth.

TEMPTRESS FASHION advertisement in the background where two attractive women stand side-by-side both wearing skimpy Patriotic attire. They smile, clinging to one another, as if to define “plastic.” Down the street, a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man with tattooed arms, a thick, dark black Fu Manchu, wearing a Grim Reaper t-shirt, looks like “Mister Bad News.” Sergei Prokofiev’s “The Fight” gushes into my ears. What is more unique, a stream of silver fish or a photostream of half-naked women? Overture of too-many-questions. No time to answer prolifically. 

___________________________________________

Materialized within yesterday's clouds,
I now erase the faceless fog

to face the distractions of loneliness,
like departing slowly from a fisherman

as he throws his line into the river
again & again.

I peer into a mirror
as if I were flying through a space
outside of Time.

Here, it is like an endless sunset
on the horizon,
rose petals in streams

wedged to the nourishment
of a landscape's eye.

If the moon's pupil opened a bit wider,
the sun would gasp with rapt attention

& reverse every memory, every photo,
so that all light & life would become

an absolute anfractuous shadow
sunken into the infinite mire upon
the pressed lips of the universe. 

The stage is too gigantic to trip on the surface

so I descend over it.

I am in control of my own displacement.

There are thousands of miles of depth
within a ventriloquist's tongue.

I am stepping into Antigravitropism.

The climax of the circus comes to a pause
& the animals weep silently.

I hear bulbous whispering.

Disappearance of clowns,
       disappearance of stage-sound,
              disappearance of Pantheon-sized crowds

becomes an apron
for the isolation of my making--

the amalgamations of. 

SAFETY

He said, "one of the few places in China
where it's safe to take a deep breath..."
referring to a holy peak of mountains
in Hua Shan, Shaanxi. Safety is a cavity

in every corner of the world, where
sudden destruction encounters those
that chant these padded desires. The dollar
sinks into oblivion, underground Morlocks caw.

Your gold & silver is as useless as braille
without hands. Very nearly we become
scattered leaves in an oracular shrine.
The identical wisdom of elephants is within the trees.

What Oxygen is to an Emergency
is what Safety is to an Unnerving Atmosphere
is what a Subway Map is to the Scene of a Crime.
Stop there. Feel your wrists as they pulsate,

extended beyond limits. Think of your
position, the way an angel may rise above
you; continents shifting out of place.
Think of safety as a sense of urgency.

You keep returning to it, over & over,
like placing one's ear up against the torso
of a cold wall, listening to a bickering dialogue.
Person-to-person uneasiness. Safety coils,

becomes like labyrinthine corridors,
half-hidden scenes, alternate realities. You think,
"There's something schizophrenic about safety,
like a room full of files that are stuck in a limbo."

THE HEART

Unattach the valves from my heart, feel it now as it jumps around in my chest.
Fill the open valves with your luminous vibrations, your regenerative descents
deep within me so that knowing what pumps through my veins is more than
mere blood, but instead is an actual feeling, an etching, a notation, a gateway
of an invisible pressure that could levitate my body near to you as if I were
a passer-by in a dream.

Glasses on a person can only stir the intellect,

therefore the eye parts ways with vision
to commerce with the ancient statues of memory's ruins.

A horsefly bites the leg of a child.
He ponders said event moments later
when the darkness of the sky is illuminated by veiny light
-ning, & therefore he asserts that
eyes are emeralds, pearls, similar gems
for discovering & examining & observing
the windows, walls, shutters;
the trees, innumerable fungi, architecture.

The cup is empty.
How clever to be thirsting, like silence, for the air,
to be eaten as prey
by the pressures & stink of life,
to be "fit" to know better
& spy out the formulaic downfall
before you're cleaned out, left in-place
as the anathematic shell of your former self.

Lugubrious thalamus, "on" the nerves,

when certain individuals enter into
my atmosphere, my florid gravimetric.
    High sky, yellowable uterine,
demonstratable allergen. When the blood
begins to flow, I'm like a Mamaluke,
ancient castles with florid flowers
of oleanders, dolce far niente, narrow
nasal, nature-fakers like Al Gore.
   Where is that obese zombie fumbling
off to? You cite information regarding
the fact that Humans have Burning Questions
about circus contortionists, but leave me be,
I just want to hear the violin & piano--
beaux art--hidden within the yashmak
of my apelike limbo.
   My erstwhile disdain for spittle-flinging
mouthbreathers is not quite adequate,
for who else can be this sizzingly happy?

___________________________________________

Sunset remains the same, the tilted earth,
the slanted autumnal sky.

My eyes mistake nothing.
The book in front of me is white & red.

Maybe, just maybe,
I'm the president at this moment

reading from a teleprompter,
except that I am reading my thoughts

as if they were significantly expanded;
grand architecture in a weary pathos.

Underwater, at sunset, the fish
feel less tempted, so they think.

Tempted fish, only those that resist
are happy; the other fish,

they meet their destiny with a snag.
Reeling, ranting, this is what poetry is!

the way nostalgia barks up
my eternal tree, exits out of me, enters

into another memory that I have yet
to run into, but is soon to be revealed

where even the wind cannot reach.
Remembering certain girls, like the wind,

a frizz, a fragile gleam in their sparkle.
I have always wanted to say to each of them:

"I am not supposed to know your secrets
but your eyes keep revealing them to me."

Snag! baseless substitutions of reminiscing,
like substituting color, the way a school bus

drives by, or was it only the bright yellow sun
running laps? Or a starry sky reminding me

of reaching into an old, fragile jewel box
with eyes closed, feeling for the spores

of a time long past. These thoughts free me
from an atmosphere containing oppression,

containing an always-aching mother--
back-aches for the feverish. And here,

I lay out the "slaughter rule" & kiss
another day goodbye. 

___________________________________________

Oceanic spume    lit
by your eyes        glistens
like thick snow in sunlight
    Blinding    Buying time
    Burying rhymes in a
nearby park     a poet's voice
blows in the Autumn wind
throughout the pasturage
    Flintlocked tongue  
    Benjamin Britten spliffs
of ear-gate melodies
My hopes are high      (a blank
webpage appears
in front of my eyes
says "Page introuvable"
    My purpose is to dogmatise
the rules of translation
    "Ride out" like Don Quixote
& howl like a coyote
    Face like a butcher's block
    My love for you was once
against the stones of grave irony
fossilized like losing one's
sense of color     like looking at
a rainbow & mistaking it for
hollow piping     A poem to
stretch to infinity    shrunken down
into "a drop of water
from the belly of a sturgeon"   
    It's mid-September   
celestial sparks of memory    
         the heat still rages
& burns my voice
before I utter a word

___________________________________________

Science moves to the back-burner
as arctic crystals maneuver
achingly into vast ocean-snooze 
(oblomovshchina)
    Blood pressure       Heartbeat rising
while standing in front of famous paintings
    Intensest spell      
    Too many people with half-disciplined eye     
but aye   Genre dissipates   
& that would be a great quote to have cut
on my tombstone       Where can I buy an
authentication key for my wow?
    "War helps us to love more" is a lie   
    Mel(waukee) & I comment'd
about berries in bowls   
¹she remark'd of a wine-drunk bird
singing to the face of the moon   
²she would rather be a bee
than a withering huckleberry
    Me   like a cannonball buzzing fleets  
    Should the wise ask for reasons?
    One thing for certain
is that all things appear primitive
to those that are busy nursing their
selfish desires with fever'd visions
    Noggin noise       smug       a sighting
of cabbage      or wait    no    that is
that is someone holding ambergris
    Sympatique daydreaming
developing like a ripe film negative

_______________________________________________________________
¹in a birdcage by the bowl of huckleberries ("a crashing like Hiroshima Day").

²honey from blood ("a vampire bee, especially").

___________________________________________

The world is a quagmire making us
                                                    hobble,

like a similar rubric as if with orbital
                                                    wobble.

Fragments come to occupy the place
with which they hold in the present.

Undo the day,
keep it as it may.

The excitation energy
can be lost by obvious touchstone.

"Someone took a taxi to rob a bank this morning"

Careful examina . . .
unavoidably lost gale, pale . . .

epiphany uprooted,
a dead cherry tree, figs picked
by my Grandmother's hands of chivalry.
                       Plucked, cleaned, canned, frozen.

There are many thoughts in me,
                                just there.

Herein lies the phenomenon
that tramples the individual voice--
not mine--phraseology
of the half dissident
or some obscure window
like an opened redundant letter;
anti-modern impulse many long a-day.

Last Sunday I spoke with people
old & anew;
recondite voices 
as if Occidental,
bursting out of the aura's halitus
like a vigil Prison Guard flat on his face
while the cell-door hangs wide-open.

Somewhere, a private world

is where I need to be,
with a revolving head,
with extended takes
that moves like a time-monument
receding out of the frame
of circumfluous ambiguity.
Today! Sweetness of wind,
begin, will you? Overcast,
rave-fast, fade-to-slack
in the backyard; the sky
resembles calculated
smoke-emissions. What am I
but snared with the power
of a Knight (royal posh).
Call upon The Terrorists
with Eisenstein-eye.
This isn't Photoshop physics.
I adapt to the Real
stitched into a great spearing.
Cacti of throat, like an
adjoining book-case.
I will be a duelling dragon's head
skimming through milky white websites
full of Russian text,
palette of disguised philosophies.

___________________________________________

Grist mill    lithographs    embonpoints faking the fat

"like a diet"     I saw you dreaming just like me

    Can you come into my room for a moment

    Don't worry      I won't bite     I want to

enhance your appearance       enliven your

chance of disappearance     as if this were

    as complex as a Gaussian process

blinking with full attention       Yes      I feel v. silly

It may seem posh enough    Anonymity of grey

must come with a domain for aerobic digesting of white

like a district court's analysis about how a pig

turns into a pig   (not pink)    Originality is originless       

Sleet before the harsh snow    now    is tomorrow

because someone ahead of time is trimming

away "the" clock       There's nothing left

to photograph         Too many clavicles      much

of the same subjectory           a  cut  copy  paste

re-arrange    borrow    

                Every camera-eye

                                              should

                               have the glow

             of Tapetum lucidum

                               The pictures of the winds     

I bit my tongue        Nosferatu moaned

notwithstanding with cheeks         distended

Richard Strauss melodies in my airy allegro

tonight          Tehran is pushing Hizballah hard

to attack Israel           

Oddly enough (or a routine passes my life)

what of the dire to puncture a hair dryer

    What of

to push me hard     to tear me into     layered strips

like a wax museum sculpture holding back laughter

Oval light illuminating the ceiling          (in a funk

I searched for Horror Monster trading card #45    

for my uncle         (unfound               

            The calender lacks character          (rages

Daily life       my life       reflecting its Privilege

The windows seem to be echoing tempers

of Yeatsian echoes     I respond like a Grand Pianist