POEM

Some days are like

bringing rabbits out of a hat.

Some days one must

hide one’s light

in a barrel. Some days

one’s heart doesn’t want

to to stay where it belongs—

it keeps going

flippity-flop flippity-flop.

Some days there are

unexpected pleasures

that leave you in a kind of

impressive pause

that lasts long enough

so that any random sound

will make you jump as if

gazing upon the nucleus

of the neurotic.

Yes, unexpected...

like over-hearing

someone say, “art gives me

the willies” or like tonight,

while flipping, or flopping,

through the Complete Poems
1913-1962 of E.E. Cummings

that I had recently obtained

from an antique store,

I discovered a pressed

marijuana leaf on page 776,

covering a poem titled SONG

where lines from the poem

such as “precisely ours /

is the now to grow” & “our summer

in fall / and in winter our spring /

is the yes of yes” befits my

inflamed discovery just as

“strolling slowly(mind in mind) /

through some green

mysterious land” caressed

the underside of the leaf

on the very opposite page.

& then I grew anxious for

more discoveries

so I flipped through the

thick book where I was

thinking that perhaps

I’d find money? a tiny birdie

with golden wings? & suddenly

on page 383

I made another discovery:

a four-leaf clover

that had perhaps been aching

to be seen again after thirty years

like a corpse that longs to be seen

in a wax museum.

ACCENTS

My thoughts are often thrown

through mill-wheels,

treading like

a secondary accent,

like one’s wisdom teeth

never cutting through.

The way that certain people

breathe, it’s like

they are telling fibs

through their ribs.

What could alter a voice

when one

“has a strong foreign

or regional accent . . .

the individual with the

less obvious accent

will naturally try

to mimic the stronger one”?

Was it the Toronto-native’s

eerie drawl that I mimicked,

or was it because

I sounded like

James Mason’s accent

in Lolita 

when he attempted

to delicately illustrate

his “mature depth”?

I speak in minimal scruples

when I am anxious,

like peppermints

melting on my tongue;

pearly taste where

taste-buds dance

as if at a polka party.

What of the accents

of eyes? Mental glottis, like

sweet scents of gardens.

A Beauty that is out-of-place

“like discovering a prim rose in a swamp.”

What of the accent of change?

the way that I spun around like

a frightened lamb this evening

as the dishes shifted like

the grounds underneath

a nuclear plant

after a major earthquake.

Should murderers be dipped

into radioactive lakes?

This poem may be about

accents, but it may not be.

This poem could be about

scaling up a wall

towards a window

(if I were that tiny)

where a fly buzzes around,

sounding like a dozen ‘copters.

The fly lands on the window,

cleans its antennas,

its legs moving as fast

as hummingbirds’ wings,

producing winds

that nearly throws me

off of the window sill.

However, I scale further

to get a closer look

at the phenomenon;

the fly’s multi-colored eyes

glistening off of my face

like a prism.

Has every accent been betrayed?

Perhaps Yogi Berra would take it

a step further, saying,

“It ain’t over ‘til you’re buried underground.”

Perhaps with a tooth

-y smile, like

a cobblestone road?

Accent of disappearing

from your body:

new verbiage for your

eternal destiny, passing

through, becoming

a “rookie” in the

Vast Unlimited shape

of it all, where

we are mere fibrils

in the

Universe’s body. 

MALE CHAUVINIST PIG

       I saw a male chauvinist pig today
with the distinguished head of a piranha,
wincing, fickled, adult-headed enfant terrible,

spouting utter nonsense beneath

an uncivilized veneer, Lord Chesterfield-like

in the eyes of emotional ignorance

like the government shutting down farms,

force-feeding their muscle-power.

       I saw a male chauvinist pig today:

his icy eyes glittering, an idol on a

giant cliff he placed himself, doffing

his cap in plainest language, like

The Department of Defense that is on

the offense, twisting every door knob

before tucking oneself to bed.

       This is our animal reality. The way

one's face may burn in the company of

strangers. Every chauvinist, male or female,

is stumbling towards a disaster; eyes

that feast on oneself like a narcissist Tsar,

"scowling like Jupiter."

OVERLEAVES

Overleaf

A distant reflection cast with classicist leanings. 

I wanted to borrow that woman's eyes for a moment: 

viaticum for vestige. 

Overleaf

I am staring at you from across this page.

I am a cyclops with two eyes. 

The "Cy" in "Cy Young" stands for "Cyclone." 

I am a cyclone with two eyes. 

The Alphabet, in clusters, is jumbled in my gums. 

"On the double, let's go!" 

Overleaf

I see my great aunt sitting on the front porch fanning herself with long bony fingers. 

I still daydream of dozing off in a field of cotton. 

Every piece of cotton, like tiny cumulus clouds hovering inches above the earth. 

I must remind you that this poem is for you. 

This poem is a well-fed ox. 

Overleaf

How strange to see wood that would not burn. 

Old habits are kept like sunscreen that gets skin-deep; 

a re-charging of the body, as fresh as islands of green.

Overleaf

I watched a yellow butterfly flutter majestically over the top of a red car. 

Visions, stretched like dough. 

Overleaf

Is anything ever actually 100%? 

Overleaf

Too sudden our time slips away, like slashing off the heads of flowers. 

An oyster choking on its pearl. 

Overleaf

I could give you my knees. 

I want you to stand tall. 

I want you to hand me your arms as we witness the alpenglow sweep over the city,

like the tolling of a bell speaking of the passage of time.

Overleaf

The fervor of violence coupled with a thrust & counterthrust of the hearts of Men, thirsting. 

Spiritual throats swallowing all of the sorrow from their Tumultuous Whole. 

Overleaf

If our little lives are "rounded with sleep" why then do I keep awake like a giant colonnade? 

A fiction? 

A frenzy to be so alive like moods of Bach? 

Overleaf

I attempt to live in two worlds at once; each interpenetrating the other.

To turn a new leaf will be glossed at will. 

To tear a photograph out of mid-air. 

A work that is fragile & too quickly forgotten. 

YOU FACE THE DAY

with the radio on

the night before

is as silent as unrented rooms

No

make that

an ever-invisible satellite

scanning the heart's desire

in every room

"the only place not being occupied is the ceiling" 

I face the day 

as if blackbirds

beat through Bach

beat-boxing

The night before:

broken vessels

tissue-soft looming

tree's root's circulatory certainty

Flags might be flowers with ventilators 

Uncertainty

perfectly pancaked 

between your day & mine

We ripen the chosen parts

Everything else is rottening like momentary planks

except Light

Light is its own soft bee

glistens like orphans with a new family

Deathrow is lifelike

a weak arm like a broken window

An actor always "looks like"

someone else

blasphemer of life's emitted death

Take aim and be me

be me

To take every moment

as a galaxy

leading you into a waterfall

quite clearly

Arousal

Our Bio's are perfect circles

but who listens?

This is ironic

&

Irony is a Christmas crook

slipping on crooked frozen mistletoe

AN ATOM OR AN ATOM OF ME

"Catch" detail. A place where

light peeks into contours,

unexaggerated by a "fool's gold"

of mind-trickery, but rather

like a cup nearly falling from

a window sill; all of invisible

weight keeping it put, or like

a chair, half-turned, light

on its back; all bite

& no bark. Cat had my tongue, 

my wrist in her majestic mouth,

my hand on her soft belly

the way clouds lay low on a 

dewy ground. If detail

exceeds eyes, study dried fruit

under a microscope; train yourself,

the way things come alive for

different tastes. Blandness of blind

beauty. I noticed a man polishing

a silver leg brace; the loosening up

like an unraveled bow; a gesture

dangled from his eyes; his mouth

curved into exercise. Anatomy of 

every still or unstilled thing

is an atom of me. 

LOVE ME BEFORE

Love me before all of the snow melts,

Before the Great Sewer

Washes us all away,

Before the car bombers

Give their indications.

I squinted at a rooftop

Across the street in the October sun;

The dust behind me, tornadic.

A red truck had passed.

A shadow moved in an opened window:

     my aching heart.

I could have waited for a sniper's bullet,

The way Spicer said that the Plague

Swelled them all to dizziness in Berkley;

The way Ferlinghetti was charged with

Selling "obscene literature" in the mid-fifties.

If you love me

I will leave a crevice open in my chest.

I will be standing after the nuke hits;

A skeleton, a white-wash board in a desert.

Rush to the scene, gather me up

Like the dust that I am; hang me on

Padded Hangers.

Love me before all of the snow melts,

Before the Great Sewer

Washes us all away,

Before the car bombers

Give their indications. 

SCENE

Do I exist outside of a photograph? 

Does a fisherman exist underneath the flat-bottomed

boat?       The moth drew to a flame

                to escape the confines of clustered polluted air. 

                The flame in my heart this moth vibrates. 

You are there; a radio, blaring in my chest.

You are there, as a moth is there, or as seagulls

                      explore a vast shoreline. 

Sunlight glistens off of the docks of my heart; 

dew-covered boards as if inlaid with diamonds. 

Outside on the street I see three boys throwing basketballs

upwards towards a powerline where a lace-tied pair of shoes

hangs. Their failed attempts make them slump-shouldered. 

The sky, duck-egg blue; 

spotted feathers of clouds,

like white ceramic. Blackbirds

hang, soar, maneuver quickly,

leaving traces of sudden blurs

as if scratching words into the 

calming blue sky with goose quills.

Winter trees, barren, with skeletal

fingers nibbling this scene to 

sharpness. 

Contemplative. Meditative. 

I exist outside of a photograph

giving breath to all that I envelop. 

ROOSTER

Mysterious motor in the rooster's throat. 

The sun, rising over the horizon, blinks,

twists the ignition, installs itself into every

screaming shadow; the rooster waits in 

any weather, beardless, could hold lambs

on its shoulders, nothing able to crush its

projection, this platform of crystal morning,

& like a dam breaking, at first, a soft silence

reflects the storm to come, like a flower

floating in the wind, comes the rooster's 

great crowing--atomic lungs, breath 

splitting dust--like an epochial alarm clock 

for someone, deposited throughout the

vibrating verisimilitude of the land: Living 

wax works coming to life, feeling the rooster's

howl lending its song to the wolves in one's

nerve-ends. 

______________________________________________________

Does one not brood over
whatever mayhem comes
abducting coarsest sub
stitutes to the coming

of nearest Fact not yet
seen? Staked out—like
lingering fingers unstitching
one's coat, like touch's

nectar—this runaway love
having gone through every
horizon of one's heart,
spoiling the thus-and-so

of one's delirium with the
intent to shake the prairie
into unclear space, hobbling
along like a horse with a

broken leg, pushing through
pretending to progress neatly
without a devastating pinpoint,
like squashing squash blossoms.

______________________________________________________

I refuse to make a prediction, so I'll tell you a story. 

A man & his ego walk together hand-in-hand, until

he's humbled by what he had feared the most. 

He's now bleeding on a gurney with a bullet in his

stomach while police officers beat on his wrists. 

He's tied down to a hospital bed. He begs the officers

to stop the abuse. They refuse & keep hitting him

& and the doctor rushes into the room. "Stop them!" 

the man on the gurney yells to the doctor. The doctor

responds by telling him to shut up. The officers keep

beating him, spitting on him. The man on gurney begins

spitting back at the officers; lungsful of blood 

directly into their faces. The officers run out of the room. 

The man passes out. 

DANGER STANDS BURNING

                          Our pistols are hungry
                          Our tempers are short,
                          We are the cops of the world...

                                                       --Phil Ochs

--danger stands          burning         let's place the

ashes under a rose bush            The "Remembrance Book"

under vigorous attack              smoke curls romantically

from the chimneys of every bedlam-laced "patriotic"

action of "leaders in office"        i.e., ANIMALS THROUGH

GREED & SELFISHNESS DARKLY    & the water is muddied

"ahead of its time"         The circus animals should be

doing the training (braining)      learning that we must

plunder & never remain "lifeless"     (a simple injection

of the simple & effective)          "Should I smile at 

strangers?"    "Desecrate their beautiful landscape?" 

"Consider themselves no better than the milk man?"

"Do you believe that people who have odd or private

interests must be snobs?"     The days of living

"stretched out" far between neighbors with room for

lawns between houses        is over     Humanity placing

its short-term satisfaction ahead of society's needs

"non-socialized individuals increase in number"

ending up in chaos or a police state     Some say

The White House has become a brothel

with the acclaim of its "generous hospitality"

& casserole informality     Where is the intellectual

sterility?       There's gasoline on my hands

The motor inside of my head revvs       prevails in

much of the rest of the country        Others say

that The White House is "haunted"

Sir Thomas Browne said that one could

locate a "ghost" simply because of the

"sulphurious" furious smell            Think of

Carl Jung who adopted Philemon     "servents

of the gods"  in Greek Mythology      as his

"spirit guide" with whom he claimed to have carried

on conversation         just as Socrates did

with his "daimon"   &    Cromwell with his "personal devil"

Is it any wonder that there is such confusion

& misleadings?    A man strolls along           threads through

a block of Marxist engineers who are learning to be ants

learning calisthetics      learning to put together 

their learning: what else?     Rumors echo throughout

the block about a drunk Marxist-Leninist white woman

who is ranting & raving about how her husband 

has been untrustworthy        The entire town is on "alert"

The Commander-in-Chief "makes proper calls" 

from a resort from a hot vacation spot & warns that

the woman may be an "alien with nuclear weapons"

The elasticity of such a "warning" provides unforced

assurance that the odd ominous cries of a loon

from far off may or may not be diluted by

foreign missle-blast-sounds off of our nation's coasts

There was a time where there were tendencies

to prefer an Insider's outlandishness to an

Outsider's merit             Too easy to be content 

to be excluded from what one had regarded as

effete      stagnant      & undemocratic

I dreamt that I visited Seattle          I jumped out 

of an airplane & I still haven't landed

Patterns are set in one's childhood        Those whom are

against censorship often repeat the argument that

no one was ever corrupted by a book                 postcard

beauty of crumbling cities       Must we hammer-out

the remaining coins from the Piggy Bank? 

Something (unseen) in the sky rakes over us 

like lighthouse beams

WINTER SONATAS

Winter sky, white-grey

giving breath to browns below--

inside:  coffee's enigma. 

*

Your fingertips, like

Charlotte moss; testimonies

of my serenity. 

*

What could be far-fetched

if one fetches it closely? 

Vulnerable breath:    icy. 

*

Wide-eyed cat, watch

-ing leaves out of wind

-ow: crackled iced intercom. 

*

Who turned off the sun? 

Night's syllable in every

breath:   Romantic teeth. 

*

Your character is a rose

stroking her gently, full

-blooded performance: 

too weak to open your

heart: a rustling hulk. 

Your initials engraved in

-to her heart of sinorous

wine--our forest of leathery

-green leaves, like baseball

bases in the vicinity of

the equater. We, meaning

You and Her, are well-merited

errors. I, like distorted

corridors, submit to the

age of the wind; sharp 

fangs in my swollen bosom--

sharp as winter's glancing white

foresight: impenetrable earth.

MAN ON THE CORNER

A kind of subculture               a man of fine age

     standing in front of the corner bar 

with his acoustic guitar            This moment

     like a strobe-flash as I drove by

with kinetic action          I parked 

     I must have resembled a cubist 

walking towards the bar with camera in-hand

     hoping for a familial harmony        a greeting

enhancing an unchanged ambience     a direct

    language       an impression            Maybe

he'd play his guitar          sing songs for me

    as I photographed every surprising detail

of his timeless face        like constructivistic

    line structures        or would he feel distant? 

Does he already feel distant?        From a distance

                                                             I squinted

                                                          through

                         vivid light

My eyes                                                  as "fixed"

as the gentleman's in   

                 

Gordon Parks's Portrait of the Harlem Story

our eyes                                                 all the same

my eyes                     spotted

                                 a blank

                 space

now in front of the bar                     Disappointment

Where had he gone?             Entertaining angels? 

or angels entertaining me? 

Was he a mere Metaphor for Life itself?  Many harmonies

        restricted by an ever-changing body   mass   experience

the recycling of shadows      stretched to exaggerated forms

This man, following me in my dreams

PRE-RIBBED

Pre-ribbed before born,

Pre-Trib    ululation        I could live

with you in an ordinary home

at river's edge     or in a golden city     "of the Rhone"

Road's island made splendid     undull    snap

-shot     "drive me off of this picture"    sum-total

tonal light      You are always the "scene stealer"

Noble with a laughing face    I may seem dull

at first but give it time       brickwork blocking

light     Build the wall       I'm not as flat as

sponge cake made with real sponges     Cue chorus-y

droll     (I get a kick out of you)      "How long men

have lived in this region is a mystery"

World full of evil Rochefort's      Could comb your

"locks" with a diamond comb      You're my Major

apex of Appalachian-cragged history      it says

"I could repeat myself"        Alps capped in snow  

I picture Bob Ross in Marseilles in a flat terrain

painting everything in sight        A marshland

where bulls roamed & mosquitos rose

in clouds         into clouds      Swarm me

like thick stone slabs out of nowhere

rolling down from a craggy mountainside beneath

sacred oaks bringing a curious absence    solemnity of

frontiers     nearly clairvoyant      nearly engraved

by your gaze       that could wield iron swords

rough abstractions      like the way

every photograph sees differently         like

looking through Galileo's telescope

at a star-strewn sky that scrapes the Eye

of Certainty      creative containments

"ethereal bubblegum"        A wide empty void

is empty only because one's ignorance of a Creator

We're throbbingly-alive     You & I     who else?

Throbbingly-alive & kicking in the mind's

underside      like Memory's image      like aban

-doning the armor         Cobwebbed dungeons of the

past still echoing strongly in the gritting

teeth of three-ton bulldozers       A world seen

through the abuse of dirt reflects riffs of

barbarousness     but of cultivation       Centuries of

calm follows until the unwritten language

of man's manners prune the vine of

a selfish    ravenous    rage         desires symbolized

through a kaleidoscope of tears         The days

smiling with cold lips        without impassioned

applauses      definite umbilical ties to evil

like the lies of paganism still seen in stone

sarcophagi      Les Alyscamps        The

odd visual intents of the cathedral of

Saint-Trophime     Supernumeries       a world

full of inventory shrinkage           In an early

morning gig in mere suburbia I am somewhere

feeling restricted & overwhelmed       "Information

Age" can heavily-heave       like the Gauls

being crushed by the Romans        This, a classic

episode of my mental "master performance"

"Keep your hand on your wallet & a grip

on your sanity"         Where are you "accumulating"?

Hm?       Rubbing sleep    not far from the eyes

but from the stalwart core of being dominated

in over-populated dreams         I could be

wrapped in another time      another place

elegiac cornucopias          vehicles getting guadier

& guadier      The voluted columns of my

heart     like a transatlantic steamer       Every

age is a gory content              Nth-born

gimmicks          Think of Woodstock:    those couples

that were sharing their joints & cornflakes

now have crackling joints & are perhaps flaky

with corns           Same "Headlines of History"

Nth-born gimmicks         the way a woman may

line her thighs with goodies if she wears

unstylish baggy elastic-edged underwear

Native population of setting booby-traps

i.e., public embarrassment being profitable

"I heard that" someone mumbles

Evaporated I become      feels like long

-winded diary entries but I reflect "feeling"

like contours of hills outlined in colors

Pottery    poetry    silked-spice    inward wares

unawares    I gather mirrors in the center

of our explanades      the ones where more is

more   (music from a jewel box?)     like

a palace of atmospheric-neutrals      You could

be sea-grass        a similar tone      We're left

within infinite space as if Houdini had

come in & decorated          Your eyes add

"height" to my yearning        to be a tiny specimen

in your sight (modesty)        My youthful beard

is crooked            Eight years ago

I was an unknown Octavian-like

individual in a small town        merely to suggest

certain delicacies & character        tempered by

claustrophobic surrounding

Now        even slightly mellower        no excavation of

seasonal grasping          bearded I rise        awaiting

too late  perhaps  for love still tugging at my

torso of the dangling beribboned dart in my

Corinthian-like facaded ribcage                  I feel

engulfed in gulfs of blue       the way northern-folk

seek sun in the south           warming up the mental canvas

ablaze          strawberry patches flourishing

like the unhaunted garden of an asylum      

perhaps that of which Van Gogh gasped at in wonderment

on the Christmas Eve of l888      following the irrevocable

rupture with Gauguin          "Stir crazy"

One can nearly hear the soft shoes approaching

walls that weave in & out           Somewhere

"lost" amidst this is a network of a fifth sense

like nostalgic repetition        Humor hem'd in frolic

& variations of variations        like grandma fighting

off a crazed orangutan at the edge of a cliff

with a suitcase of money she had found in

the backseat of a Chevrolet convertible      "Information

at the root of humor?"         Humor is only relative

to our consistently-evolving expectations      

The energy of youth allows one to seek for anything

the abilities to fill gaps in patterns

like the government eventually rooting

& resorting to a Mexican dugeullo:

"murder & take no prisoners!"         "Never laugh

when the hearse goes by / For you may be

the next to die.."                 My point has

been insured           this poem stretched around

the earth       balanced on who's forehead?

"Stressed" each word         Will you come

over to pirouette with the silhouettes of my

rightstandingness?      Perhaps soon        Perhaps

my voice will crack & I will turn away from

the idea & run down the street

(If so      meet me for a get-together       Do you

like cheese? coffee? crackers?)              Comic

imagination               The winter birds are everywhere

their "tweets" the only sound around          

the surround-sound of the tree-openings

I will wait here in this dead-grassy stretch

of quiet        I have a spot outlined for you     

               Fog's patching certainty leaves me

               busy-bodied in expectation

At night the cloud-changing sky matters not

Here       the marshmallow softness of ground

with Anticipation     like a hundred buffalo

running through my torso