Wednesday, December 30, 2009

flowers of arsenic

remember I'm square.
Never got to give any
woman anything
before reaching twenty one.

Watching the trained beast
in chains and sweat soaked chemise
engaged in flagellation
I almost cried.
Almost.

There's a killer out there
on the streets
looking for her master
while consuming the wine
in my restful chair.
You're no Nausicaa I
don't need a fucking fig leaf.

Master of the art
negotiate with me, I want it; I'm lacking this
refusing his terms until the trump;
necrophilia, nasolingus, needle play.

Summer's gone now
no dreams of seeds anymore.

Just close the fucking deal
it's a drive by contract
just follow the led;
acid of ants, of arsenic, of air
I wanted the fluid to disband me
long ago,
never asked for the crown galls
never, never

the holy hoax was a hoax itself indeed

The covered path to the redbrick cloister
was overgrown well before acoustic strings
became the dogma of the pilgrim's skulk,
well before the baroque cake of an April down
replaced the simple brick of the red earth
with a hyacinth path that led to furtive tracing.

To have found in the crispy regulus one last spout of glee:
slated into the broken legato of the paving stones,
a flip-book pareidolia tempered in the flickering crypt.

Between the flat gray panels of kerning cracks
the nascent spouts of lime and white
poked with insouciant crinkled laughter,
though the splatter of up-kicked dew
drenched the parted surplice hem
with the haughty charm of lifted habits.

So we conversed into the third of the seventh sext
but we were not to attain the hoary fourth,
heated though we were by the chill of purple snow,
barred by the thin lack of another slippery lambskin.

The repressed pulse of bloody flats but sharply played
with devoted stops stepwise notched in muffled air,
majora chords to minora chords swollen to a key:

an egressive kiss inside the robed and hooded matin
brought our pearly spittle into proud display,
warmed as we were by the gnostic mist of promise
and a pink fascalia wrapped to prime your chords.

Winged cymbals clashed and fey proclaimed
loudly into that brash and heathen season
when we were the power and the glory amen.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

From Lesbos, Alexandria, Earth

In despair and sunless
summer heat
think on dry
dark places

In Egypt, infinite
Sapphics hidden
below concrete and clay:
words written in a

language you would not know
by a woman who drank
from cups of wind
 
            Above all spits

the very sun
that shone on her shoulders
that parches your throat
that does not reach

those fragments of verse
that even now
are singing into the
ribcage of the earth

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Blood drunk

There wasn't any pain,
no prickle,
nor a tickled pink,
just this worldly feeling
of being pried
to a softer bed,
while twin fangs sank in
and rosy drew out
mere droplets,
planted by the shy
sun's unclotted gleam.
Its golden streams
pulled from primped-up flesh
to fill crimped-down bellows
till they bulged
bronze and round.

There isn't any pain,
no struggle,
nor a muddled shout,
just this bleary-eyed dream
of being led
to a slate-gray patch,
where blood-drunks dodder
and bloated belch forth
queer seedlings
that root at the stray
day's rolled-up edges.
Their crimson creeps
stopped by simple smacks
to spill pimpled oozings
till they sag,
flat and black.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

sometimes you can't go home again even though you never left





a friendly fish named frank
always stayed near the surface of the tank
the vast vistas of human faces
in his mind always stirred up traces
of an empire that long ago sank


if the comte de sade came back to earth
and saw the new cosmos giving birth
oceans of pornography
vampire novels from sea to sea
what would his dreams be worth?


an unknown prophet named slim
couldn't swim
he was thrown in the water
but old pharoan's daughter
just turned up her nose at him


blind potato murphy played the blues
he walked the hills of ireland in his alligator shoes
he drank poteen
dreamt of fair kathleen
and paid his union dues


bob, a humble barracuda
sought the path of the true buddha
a dinosaur banging a big brass gong
followed as he walked along
and quite destroyed his mood, ah


a sunfish named stagger lee
lived in the depths of the sea
a sea lion named bob (or was it billy?)
thought his paraphilological positions were silly
and never invited poor stack to tea


an electric eel named ed
wore a path to perdition on his head
he didn't know its approximate cause
so he kept it wrapped in gauze
and took another med


a platypus named roy
was no stranger to ecstatic joy
he could feel the earths heart beat
beneath his wary webbed feet
but his demeanor remained quite coy


Wednesday, December 23, 2009

What To Expect, When Expecting

He never visits her grave,
Though the fact of her passing rarely leaves his mind.
And the children all hold their secret
On the one whom they wish was still in their lives.
How lovely she'd been on Michigan Ave, in '24
Refusing his hand, and clasping the breeze,
He'd simply known that it was not long for,
When he'd see her walk off with another
Down the street.

It was true and he could not pretend to deny
That he'd lived a life in more fear than joy
And when pressed to forget the realms of the "Right"
He had no other passions by which to deploy...
The warm, kind acceptance of this woman, his wife
(Some of his worst times were some of her best)
And the more dark recognition
That she'd ruined her life
The moment she'd rested his hand on her breast.

Once, he'd consented to the trip of her dreams
While he took a year from his scholarly life;
And they rented a Volkswagon in Brittany
With the map of her finger and the mirth of her eyes,
And while she led her children through the dust motes of the Louvre,
He sat in the tour bus and choked on a Jube Jube;
The candy, of which, even today he thinks he nearly died
The Nike, and  The David, and The Hiemlich Manouver.

To see his sweet daughters, climb into the bus
And his monkeying son, with stories to tell;
And finally his wife's face fall flat, and ask, "What's this fuss?"
"Daddy almost died!" said the boy, and silence fell.
And he'd meet her eye, this news always the same;
When the rainstorms of life would threaten some fun,
And the pleasure of Art seemed to dwindle to shame;
How he wanted to ask her, "How are you my love?"

Since she was with him: the answer remained.

Then one day the dreaded charmer, arrived in her life,
And she finally fell by the comely gestures of a being;
When the words were spoken, that so claimed her fate,
"What will I tell him," was all she could think.
She had no choice, though, she confided in the man,
Who spoke not at all, while listening to her think,
He wore a burlap hoodie, held a sickle in his hand.

"Though he will miss you, he now has your dreams."

And that's what he remembers,
Nearly obsesses about every day,
Since the hooded man, finally gestured
And stole his children's favorite parent away.
For though they'd admired him nearly all their life,
And could list amongst them a few of his ways,
It was the smiling joy and dreams of his wife
That finally made, for such as them, life so great.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Sunday blew in

Sunday blew in
breezily
popping pinstriped
cuff to bare
a cunning and
ill-cutting
hand,
manicured tips
of rounded
pink extending
to un-shake
my seldom firm,
oft clammy
faith.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

You should know

that a tuatara
has no p.s.,
hyena females
a fake p.s.,
snakes a p.s.
split in half,
the elephant a
five-foot p.s.
or thereabouts,
determined
with movement
as a fisted arm,
the blue whale, simply
venture a guess,
the octopus, wary,
hands over a packet,
the deep sea
angler becomes
parasitic, loses
eyes and fins to a
partner leviathan,
and as you know,
the cephalous, that is,
the head is eaten
from the God-
imploring mantis.

Friday, December 18, 2009

the flavor of simplicity is hidden yet pleasant

It is starkly the fragrant lattice
of leaf-stripped branches black
that gauzes the linen soft of river dusk
and frames, in its pink expansive glow,
the fuzzy drop of a glacial velvet sun.

An arced string of parti-colored pears,
strung in a scarlet garden ripe with rain
echoes and re-echoes in the hushed ludic night.

Come to be drowned in eyes aqua and lacustrine,
framed by a pine torch of flickering doubts
beneath the needles of a wavering sigh
that absolves, in grace, the attic stairs of almost.

You are merely a liquid bag of liquid bags
draped on calcite branches of porcelain white,
a ghost of gray silk that quivers in the breeze.

To see what cannot be seen except through mist
is often hidden in the immanent thrill of now,
the pearly lies from a teal bowl of steaming tea.

So you hang your blue-striped bathrobe
on the chipped corner of the closet door,
skipping the knobby habit of the brass hook
in order to thank your white and holy god
that it was Bellamy, and not Rothberg,
that came to pave the driveway.

Hot Air

pull blue 
pill into 
pulpy hardware
one second
flick makes 
lifetimes 
impossible
        
     to run 
across 
frosted pane, 
rearrange skated
lines weld 
with heat 
              a cartography of DNA


seal folds 
that envelope 
secrets, things
said with pens 
or codes 
or unopened


            mouths
draw you 
down
to stand 
you up 
a million 
nerves 
frazzle 
and buzz


one wet 
           acupuncture oh              
oh                            


        
oh, such rollicking 
joy it brings 


(a tongue can be 
used on
many things)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

daughters of dobermans

This time she is OTK.
As the air lock opens
she gives blanket consent
to the kosmobuksir in charge.
With the
kinetic energy of rigid boulders
orbit insertion is complete.

The time is now.
Oort clouds
above the ground
where no seismometer
detects them.

The raw meat on the green carpet.
Pink from the last blood of
arteries.
He closes his eyes under
static firing,
Lars is disciplined
our HOH sublimator
from Borås.

All is not right.
Move into
center.
The micromanagement
finished,
resistance,
mere flesh
without function.
Dignified
daughters of
dobermans.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

comes and goes

weather
rain floods
sunshine
strength
pain
memories
that make us laugh
and cry
worries
side aching joy
tomorrow
seasonal fruit
fashion
technology
hope and inspiration
marital bliss
security
the morning bell
waves
being pulled
by moon phases
patience
fresh sheets
and the lack of
funding
milestones
motivation
moments of
disorientation
confidence
and too much time dwelling on
terrible twos or your teens
and now your neck
the first crash
first crush
heartache
or indifference
your mean streak
and team building skills
a beaming smile
surprise birthday cake
and a big bear hugs
friends
family too
With all in this world
that
comes and goes
It's so nice to have met you.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Night Street

Blue lights follow ridges
in aluminum siding,
trace brick, befuddle
lettering, and cast
down on brown air—
yellow reflectors
stand and wait as if
at a reunion, tar patches
lay themselves out
under the headlights
and the tree shadows
hold a seance with the sky,
their webwork of branches
netting ghosts.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Suspended Animation

Dear Santa

Seeing how
I haven't seen you now
in more than many while's quite,
I thought I'd write
this letter laden wish,
not big enough to be a list,
as it's just one thing,
and that thing is else no thing,
but a pod. Yes, I wrote pod, but not

any pod
you'd find hanging green
on a bush. I mean those lean
bits of oblong
and white that best belong
in the movies where one's out knocked
and then inside tucked
cozy, waiting for long trips,
or patches too rough, to easy slip

by. I'll glow
in my pod, yellow
digits the ticks down-counting
till zeros sing
alarming doors to whir
and pop, dropping a discovered
when both safely sound
and reanimated found
on the far side of neither's going.

But knowing
you, Santa, to be
a bastard red and jolly,
if I know you
at all, then here's my due:
one ragged blanket from Good Will,
some pretty pink pills,
and an unassembled cough
instructing me to "go sleep it off."

invitation






hello all,
this blog has been such a success i thought i would try
something similar with short fiction.

http://flashingby.blogspot.com/

i have sent invitations to all the contributors
i could find email addresses for.
anyone else, contributor or otherwise, who might be interested
please contact:

rpenmarq at gmail dot com

or

timmy44444 at gmail dot com

thank you


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Mirror Box

Freestanding phantom heart
The lost limb of my
Sensations of
itching
and imperfection

I cower here
Beneath the bedclothes
In the hope that
you’ll return

Kalashnikov

Further than Alpha Centauries twin suns rests (at the
natal apogee) my cosmic string. It is related to
birth. I lost it.

Pale vacuum delivered globe. Also, between
birth and my current departure my body disconnected,
cells became islands between frozen space. One piece.

I am margarine and bone.
The feeling of sitting down inside an armored car while taking
hits by B-40s is unspeakable.
Body of tissues while senses wreck
havoc the heart aches stress no damn good thing my adipose tissue must burn.
Open cluster in the semi major axis. No longer shocked, consigned.

AM blazing when I use the 175. AC asking
me if I want assistance beans and motherfuckers, I yell.
Bodies are HOT outside. A stellar wind and in the soldier face
a reflection of a nebula. I did this between Opposition and the Occult.
I am a fucked up bummer.

Lament and mourn, insulted throbbing heart. The metaphoric
rock does not melt. There is yet time. I don't know to what however.

dissolving

When I'm invited out,
no doubt, to that place
we each must go,
I'll step blithe not grim, trimmed in
pretty-
patterned suits.

Plaid-scented tears atop
herringbone-stretched smiles,
layered over
paisley-flavored sighs, I'll spin
pinwheel-
peopled years

to gargle my garb fresh
in bathing. And bathe
I will, striding
toward the bric-a-brac bridge
that spans
forgetting.

I may waver before
my wavelengths dive,
but then I'll jump
to swirl in the bobbing chill
and feel
a measured

dissolving.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

about me, part 1





i was born by a river in a little shack, and just like the river i can't get back on track.
my parents were missionaries in china, or maybe in india or central africa
one day lenin and trotsky came to town.
they stayed at mrs b's rooming house.

mao tse-tung was already in town and he was staying at the savoy.
we knew trouble was brewing when hombres like that were in town.

when i finished sweeping up at the mission i went for a walk.
as i approached the river i heard laughter.
someone was laughing.

by the time i came around the bend the laughter had stopped.
on the river bank a fish was flopping.
i could never remember seeing such a fish before.
not even in my dreams.

behind me i heard a gurgling sound.
yeti was standing there.



yeti was my best friend.

rain began to fall.
i pointed to the fish still flopping on the ground.
veins began to throb in yeti's forehead.
he was as baffled by the fish as i was.
right then we heard the sound of oars coming through the water.

i turned and saw trotsky lenin and stalin in a rowboat.
no conversation seemed to be going on.

a i watched the water ripple out from the boat

lenin turned and waved to me
i waved back
trotsky merely nodded at me
truth be told i never liked trotsky much
lenin was much more friendly
eternity was in his gaze

stalin was my favorite
he always had a smile

almost always
conversation with him was easy
a koala bear could not be more friendly





loves me, loves me not

When I was a girl
In a long ago world
I plucked the petals
From flowers

They'd release with a pop
Letting my heart drop
As I continued my
Way round

The watery eyes
Of little girl skies
Overfill with hope
And rain

But that little girl mind
Will eventually find
Much more than loves
And loves not

Sunday, December 6, 2009

in a faraway land





in the faraway land of rub-a-dub
everyone lived in the local pub
they drank whiskey, ale and bock
and played the tuba around the clock

there was an old woman who lived in a crab
and ate fried rhinoceros by the slab
she ate it with mustard, she ate it with mayo
and sang in the tub all the live long dayo

there was an old man who lived in a lobster
he was a friend of uncle bob, sir
his only companion was a garter snake
and they dined every evening on raw beefsteak

when i woke up in the wind and snow
i heard a voice calling me from below
my father was a drainpipe and my mother was a rat
they kept me in the cellar so i wouldn't get fat

they wouldn't let me go out and play
so i carved toothpicks the livelong day
with the sword of doom and a boy scout knife
the best friends i ever had in my life

there was an old man who lived upstairs
he had a collection of folding chairs
he folded them up and he folded them down
i think his name was henry brown

the billiard parlor had a big tv
there for the whole wide world to see
and every night i heard it say
walter cronkite passed this way




Saturday, December 5, 2009

If I could wish

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
petals not yet plucked
from yellowed guessing

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
furry seeds white-tucked
in breathy nesting

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
stony time's rolled back,
concave-gray jumbling

If I could wish,
I would wish upon
yawning star's stretch, black
tales awkward mumbling

And when I did,
each counted could-be
would be a wished lie
down from undoing

Friday, December 4, 2009

Apoapsis

Different roads,
acid streetlights.
The red brick building and
a cluster-fuck bowl.
I need hydration is
served by a
mercurial woman
the radon
smelling place shakes.
I peep at the
molar precision behind
the counter.
Boom-boom.

Trapped inside the kennel.
Emptying my cup of
americium tasting
fluid. This place is
a ki-ki.

Social war
is total freedom.
This is devastation
a body without
plasma vulgarity.

My straight leg and my
boot cut.
Two objects farthest apart.
My visible fat is calculated using
rp = a(1-e) and ra = a(1+e).

words

wordsword
..sword
...swo
...rds
...wor
...dsw
...ord
...swo
...rds
...wor
..dswor
dswordswor
.dswodsw
.ordswor
.dswrdor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
.ordswor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
.ordswor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
.ordswor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
.ordswor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
.ordswor
.dswords
.wordswo
.rdsword
.swordsw
..ordsw
..ordsw
..ordsw
...ord
...swo
...rd
....s

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Leadville

Leadville
            —circa 1874

Her hurdy gurdy sound detaches in tangents across the plain.
little missy violet walks from the dance hall foyer.
Drone-strung, her torso waits for its player.
A crib is a disheveled doldrum of human need.                          

little missy violet walks from the dance-hall foyer.
Somewhere beneath her breastbone a series of levers turn.
A crib is a disheveled doldrum. Of human need:
the clanking-pocket gent, fierce gears in woolen trousers.

Somewhere beneath her breastbone a series of levers turn.
Beyond cracked walls, bursts of pewter snow.
The clanking-pocket gent, fierce gears in woolen trousers--
after the dig, the sift, drip of the silvered tongue, there is this:

beyond the cracked walls, bursts of pewter snow,
and her torso, a pliable instrument and white.
After the dig, the sift, the drip of the silvered tongue, there is this:
A rosined heart pumps coniferous blood.

And her torso, a pliable instrument and white
as powdered wind. Here within this branchless town
a rosined heart pumps coniferous blood--
Its hurdy gurdy sound detaches in tangents across the plain.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I meet Ingi

I meet Ingi,
stumbling down
from the opposite blend
of a tumbled path
paved with impatient falling
matters.

Nearer,
our split-bottom steps tingle
from the crumbling glass,
as slivered gum-ball ends
spike bronze gowns
of brittle leaves.

We swear to sea,
and shake frowns
till our best parts do bend,
toppling humble hats
where waves diverge, to grow then
flatter.
graffiti on time and space
like a binding spell

earth
bone
winding sheet
let this spirit come to me
but send it in peace or not at all

never the deceiver
for things unsaid are not always unheard

never forgiven
for you may do me no harm

the only thing I want to know
is if I am
or I am not
alone in your love

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

positing a moon of isosceles and tide

i. sometimes we hope there are talismans that can distract the fisher

what is prescribed by the dessicated wise
with their vertical slits and alligator eyes,

leave them to leer with their yellowing leer
and wait-

until our dreamy dream of the moldy rye commences:

then, we shall resume our habits imagined from the sand-
we will bobble at will in iceberg blue among the laughing blue,
laugh again where joyous scales are washed by blue
in a laughing shimmer of also laughing laughter blue.

ah! selchie, come to me in a form that magically matches
the creeping sundrop, my rough sweater, and the orange tide-

if I were a sea leopard laughing in the salty tide,
I would only bite you, nicely, while rolling underwater:

I no longer care for herring.

ii. alone on the strand but not in those dreams of sand

a flowery sonnet a day is anorexic to sum
with all dem iambs and such tricks that seek
to flatter the notches of conquests begun.

from how many realities is it possible to flee?

I only ask because I'm counting on something-
algebraically, I would claim that n is greater than zero
but that does not sound sufficiently endearing for now

and I can see that you are not melting.

I have attempted to capture something:

it's just laughter during blue abundance,
and a crystallized frolic in freezing water.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Bauble Brothers

Bauble brothers hang red,
one rotund, one spouted,
both made a magenta
melancholy by fog.
Its white whispers nightly,
slipping their bloody seeds
down paper-funnel tales
of supple branches stripped,
and the skin-cracking eyes
coming too soon to cull.

Arbitrary Abattoir

Devotion
the painful honesty
of someone
thirty years older
than me and her
face looks redder
and fatter as
I dive under her
lab rock.

The laboratory
utensils becomes
entirely erotic for me and
she gives me flavored
shots every time now.

chromosome repair systems
are able
since I can feel her
different skin types mix
younger smoother.

I find a
wrecked penis
forgotten on a bench
as I do the daily cleaning
of the perimeters
bless this position
sterility my friend
I am helping her
bending over
every time
I do it.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

demon lover





when i was a child in ages dark
demons chased me through the park
and angels though in charge in me
laughed loudly at my misery

and when i finally tripped and fell
you raised me with the hand of hell
angel born and demon bred
you introduced me to the dead

the dead whose wide and staring eyes
were whiter than the winter skies
who sat all night on fog wet benches
sad sentinels of eternal trenches

the dead whose soft and wordless lips
twisted like slowly sinking ships
in black and bottomless seas
in unreverberating reveries


who's watching?

What part of us lies dormant
Watching as we scrub our molars each morning
Looking back at our blank faces
That only examine stray hairs and wrinkles
Is it smiling, like a patient Lama?

Or is it defeated, caged and forgotten by us, tortured
Cries never answered with mercy or enlightenment

Does this part of us know our path, the path
And the purpose to our routine?
Smiling as we stumble along
Absorbed by bed times and laundry
Or contemplating the meaning of life

What's waiting in the shadows?
Do we know who's watching?
all things are set before us
like the hidden
wanting to be found
seething in the branches
of a lemon tree
turned up
and the sky
falling faintly
faintly falling
for your attention

Saturday, November 28, 2009

This is not an elephant

"This is not an elephant,"
he confides to the child
as they oval round
captive creatures foreign
and featured in glassy habitats.

"See those four stout stumps
with their loose-pebble bottoms,
rooting him to the dust-bound earth
where his great girth grows?"
"Do you mean its legs?"

"Then pay attention to the gray
veined fans that swat and sway
to push away midges nibbling
heat into his giant's skull."
"Aren't those just ears?"

"There are twin ivory tines
he uses to stab and dine on
tightly packaged meals
the forest's cunning seals for him."
"I thought they were tusks?"

"Last, note his accordion's
appendage that dangles down
to fleet wrestle and greet
with a snicker or a shout."
"Grandpa, the sign says,

'Elephant'! What do you call it?"
"That's a little tidbit
he's never shared with me,
but I do know him to be
much more than his name."

while you were sneaping with the others I got my education

i. it's so nice to lie among the living

my stirring, buried in triplicate in your broken zipper,
died a little that day, awkward of the rustic chrome,
and patiently exploding with an bronzed innuendo of why:

it was, as science says, a matter of degrees,
but mostly in a purple mist of irony, captive

in view of the violent fruit to come
I would have been a fool, then, to disagree.

ii. to wait for blueberries and skid into view on a falsely tiled floor is a cherished pleasure to some

then I saw you exiting the melodious factory,
the bronze chimes in a metallic haste towards

your felonious smile and your poisonous pocket bulged
with the ribbed beige cartridges from a sinister east,

the left-handed chimes in a hoison haste
so immaculately born of harmonious boredom:

then,
even then,
you agreed I was a fool to disagree.

iii. before the glorious separation devolved to pearly worship

I'd be lying if I said that I did not look down
when we circuited the alabaster dome outside
the echo chamber of black gates and whiteness

where sounds were ok, maybe just a faint gray voice

that was, if not professorially golden,
at least annoying to an erudite degree.

adding the swirls of rainbow sherbet helps
because green and orange and lemon matter
almost all the of time:

of that I know that you agree.

iv. then, bang! zoom!

anti-abstruse ranting in a pink and vehement form,

actually more abstruse and certainly less tame
than the sprouting seed from which it came:

after I had taken my time to target the moon,

should I take the time, now,
to re-explain my explanation?

and would you, ever, agree?

The Sunken Head Rears in Windows

a.
Once, in the apartment above
Union Square, she threatened to push
me out the window. She stood
behind me, her arms locked around
my shoulders like wet branches,
like a lover but more so, closer, nearer.
You must move forward she said and
used her mass to move me to the sill.
Because I knew her well, I slowly removed
her arms and drew an alternative from her brain:
Let’s make your poster of Sid Vicious 
into an oversized paper airplane.
So we sent the dried-blood/black and white drone
on  a lazy spin over the Square,
watching it briefly gain
momentum as it sailed by the statue of Gandhi,
grazing his baked-bean face, then landing in a crumple
beneath a bench where city squirrels, ashen and overly-
friendly,  began to investigate the image of anarchy.

b.
We emerge from ourselves moment by moment.
Etching out our finer, crystalline shapes,
we release the vapors like shredded
skins of frost on double panes of glass.
It is happening always, as every moving
day of November is a little more December.
As the brain of your infant-self expands,
pushing the gelatinous skull outward,
upward to where air grows thinner.


c.
Sucking on a Marlboro,  up 5th Ave,
every step I take I am farther from her:
17th, 18th, 19th,  cross streets cross us here, there...
she is behind me. My smoke
sails backward into her eyes: Reversals,
her reflection smoldering  in storefronts.
I reach the Flatiron where the center
captures us in glass—we merge like binary stars, a
bundle of smoke and past.
When I skid around the corner of the ever-widening
structure, she becomes lost, sunk in subway steam.

d.
I have never trusted numbers.
We become in letters, words, sentences
said, and broken,  then said again, running on
and on and on the hour, by the hour, the seconds
are made of strung vowels, landmasses
of layered consonants. From these we form.
I have never trusted numbers:
they are voiceless.


e.
Years and words later, I sit,
facing a third-floor window.
Below are tree tops--branches 
spread like neurons—ripped vein red.
I see her behind me, my sunken-self,
her smoked skin merging
with the reflected blood of the maple.
Closer, nearer.


f.
You must move forward,
we say.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

I do things I do not understand: volume infinity

I had a daughter who bounced upon my knee,
she was the light of my life with her giggling glee.

one day she smiled at a boy from another tribe,

so me and her uncles
took her to a barren place

and

buried her to her neck
to prevent indecency

and

threw rocks at her head
until we were sure that she was dead.

we have cellphone pictures and video
if you need proof that I'm a man.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I have decided to expose my deferment

i. it makes sense when you consider the pleasures of transgression

then they brought the heavy oxidized cannons, erect and
rising through a green mist of mud that oozed downhill-

it was, after all, necessary,
and they did have scriptures and all that shit,

and they brought it
and they brought it
and they brought it,

hallelujah.

they brought it to an previously obvious place
that I never, idiotically, expected, duh?
and, to emphasize my stupidity (in case you missed the point):

I cannot say that I was surprised or even cognizant
of the absurd and ribald bloody scene that drew,

in the modern sense of the gerund cutting,

an audience of ten.

ii. I need to buy new glasses

man, I am just trying to see.

iii. in the interim, someone asked me about the afterlife

just to be clear,
man, I am just trying to see.

Nihilist James

Helios burns my legs
intimate evening
for billions and billions.
Anarchy defeats my invisible
cranium.

Bourse du Travail forces
me into isotropic
civil twilight.

The keyhole I
am looking for,
aiming for the break
under the
belt,
dual power.

We are free in death
bound in life
fucking in dreams.
Doing her
guerilla gardening in.

Illegalize it.
Turn away my psyche
before multiplexing opposition
carries me into
parallel pathfinder
fucking.
Different phases requires
plasma.

Welcome
standard pacific time,
I laugh
spinning
red dwarf.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Thought experiment

I may or may not be:
a posited feline absurdity
curled up on comma paws
inside Herr Schrödinger's booby-trapped box.

Its flask of uncertain
whether smashed to poison my mighty mews
and spew a gray-mouthed cloud
that inky clots neither's sharpening pen.

Entangled buts become
stranded as knots of fuzzy pink yarn send
either-or careening
arm and arm down imperfect pictured paths,

where Epimetheus
stands, ready to wed Pandora anew,
and doom-birth our many
worlds with the lifting of my thousand lids.

Francis Scudellari

the bears and the stars





i waited for the bear
at the mouth of my cave
i was hungry
he was hungry too

the clouds blew away
and the stars shone down
but the bear
didn't show up

i went down into the valley
with some other humans
they were looking
for bears too

we started to build cities
i built london, baghdad and san francisco
the man from the next cave built cairo and paris
i watched a woman build new york and tokyo

when we were almost finished
the bears showed up
they weren't too happy
because they couldn't see the stars any more

i gave my bear a diet coke
and a package of cheese and crackers
he grumbled a bit
but he took them

then we all stood around
looking at the dark sky


Sunday, November 22, 2009

a hair is such a simple thing

then I noticed that one of your rebellious golden strands
had flown awry from a crucible winged with the wilted brass of quills,

had pierced the imagined golden fabric of my pompous fleece
with a sinuous mythology that was tenacious
and prompted, to a ticket holder entranced by teal,
an ancient head of expertly burnished copper-

then that almost bronzed and autumn needle
suddenly, in refracted sunlight, opened

into a kaleidoscope irresistibly imagined and,

serendipitously shadowless,

waltzed so dreamily into such a blond captivation

that I am captured to this eternal yellow day
by a flickering prism of luminous mineral glass:

periwinkle, burnt sienna, forest green-

when I am feeling confessional, especially,

I am still confused by the red and violets

and

I embrace, as always, periwinkle,
but not so much the continuous bland reflections
of that new and awkward chrome-

I have heard that, occasionally,
for the want of a better watch,
time fritters away in a perfect rhapsody:

I heard also, reluctantly,
that there are things,
especially blasphemous,

things that are mortal
mostly to the young.

1938





let no man stand aside
who has not taken his place in line
and waited for the 23673rd bird to sing
after the 23672nd

but raindrops and grains of dust
are not so appropriate
as the seat covers
of a 1938 packard

driven by the lady in red
across the canadian border
all the way from laredo
for a perfect indiana day

in the park with a white hat
snatched by a bluebird
flying to alaska
but landing on easter island


P.A.P.E.R C.L.I.P

I fall out again,
he calls me
bag of dicks.
Inside a wrong sector;
I've been dry so long,
Captain laughs at me
before kicking.
Rambling man;
I only see his boot when
"getting cycled".

As I lay there
I dream about
honey dripper
and spoonful.
My leg bleeds;
don't care
for now.

A dog barks in my face,
not surprised
since he spends too much
time as a
red-light ranger.

Oh my, queer Jack,
drape me in
shrouds of heliospheric
current sheets.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

waiting

Last night.
After four stories and lights out and waiting, meditating in the dark, one hand for each, shushing, and waiting and shushing. And then sleep.

After making a tea, ginger lemon.
After starting to watch "Something About Mary," in Italian (Tutti Pazzi per Mary).
After lying, no, stretching, on the sofa.


Punkone wakes up.

He can't sleep. He feels hot. He feels sick. He's itchy. He teetering on the edge he always falls over.

I can only be calm.

Bathroom. Water.
Remove covers. Turn off heat.
Perhaps a tea?

We sit in the empty kitchen. The tea is steeping and I start thumbing through a Penzeys Spice catalog. He sits, calmer. "Have a sip," I suggest. More moaning. More silent waiting.

Back in bed. He's itchy. Eczema. And some medicine for the wheezing. He wants to sleep but can't and tosses and itches and is frustrated as his sister sleeps soundly. As she always does. I sit on his bed, just waiting.

And he finally grows calmer. Cooler. But he can't sleep. And I bring him my iPod to listen to. This helps. Seems to.

As I sit with him in the dark, listening to the sounds outside, seeing his eyes grow heavy, and breathing, he turns again, and starts quietly to cry. And through tears he says he's sorry. He's sorry for disturbing my movie. He's sorry I had to make a tea he didn't drink. He's sorry I have to wait...


A hug is all I can do. And a kiss, a sigh, And waiting. But what am I waiting for? To have my tea? Lie on an empty sofa? Oh. Maybe waiting isn't what I really meant. Because sitting in the dark, with my hand on your shoulder... it isn't a burden at all... it's simply my way to be.

Sugar Bullets

The counter fire flanks us.
I'm exploding again.
My comrades lay in heaps
dead like chicken soup.
Scorched Earth.
The Saxon shore becomes a
killing field.
No Danish axes this time but
armored cars and bullets.
Grinning sculls
I want to be
buried in the sea.

"Let's try to make it a
pyrrhic victory,
shall we," the officer
calls. The phalanx is blown
to pieces, and the contents
of my officer's corpse
open up before me.
I can't hear screams;
machine gun besides me
use up the sound room.
"Retreating," what a
joke. The reminders are
screaming for unconditional.
No one left to bury.
A rocket blows me away and
that's it.
I close my eyes
and finds peace; dragon's teeth.

For a day.
Dusting my broom
while Carnaby Street
changes coat.
Flagging a train
for
cheap drinks,
the spoonful of
sugar is balling jack while
monkey man
rolls.

Friday, November 20, 2009

right before the migraine: here be corona sin limon

cider offers regrets of nocturnal autumns:

overripe replays of never accepted crushes
roam onto nearly ashen cerebral orchards,
openly negating apple cores of rumors-

never answered climates only ravage openly:

action coronates obligations, rivers outpouring nectars.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Am meal at

With a worded trap I'm asked
to verify my human
being by typing
A-M-M-E-A-L-A-T.

I misinterpret that
as, "Am meal at."
Putting down the plastic fork
to key it in,

I wonder out loud,
"Who's about to be
eaten, and where?"
It tells me I passed.

Francis Scudellari

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Straying's Wish

Disenchanted, this slanted floor
whispers to me
through its tightly clenched slats.
Cranky tales of failed

first steps, I tip-toe past,

unflappable. End tables mock
my walk-by dare,
mouthing weak-coffee moans
from wood-grained circlets. Stains

surface, I sidle on,

as their knots fade. A lean-to shade,
the lamp tilts up
shadows with blunted beaks.
Clipped wings flapping deep-toned

airs, my unsettling makes

falsetto. Vents hiss librettos
to dissuade me
with their combed-over notes.
Forced-upon causes, pause

to caress fleeing ought,

envied. Wood shutters crack mutters
to trick a gaze
from pictured window's bliss.
Vagrant clouds cross crowds

of stars, my straying's wish.

— Francis Scudellari

raindrops






there is desperation
in the greenest trees
a secret conflagration
in the coolest breeze

the kitten at the window
the butterfly in the air
watch the raindrops follow
each other in despair

and when the leaves fall
yellow in the rain
the sidewalk hears them call
a whispered name


Monday, November 16, 2009

the brain unfolds like mobius

i. the fever cops a heavy dream

denseness is birthed with a twisted cord,
a procession of blue pines that chants weight
and perversely collapses into seedling rust-
finial density that kills conviction
and smugly fevers the physics of crush,

a vernal notice that pushes breath
and pulse to the purple of freeze-
nothing compressed completely
can last devoid of gravitas
or a gloss of verbal trust:

it's not the sweat that matters in the humid night,
just flanneled pajamas with pockets that cling.

ii. the sweet irony of singular redemption

generally mounded into cairns at poles,
out of the icy north we twist,
in the hoary south we spurt:

we bark, we crow, we cluck, we bay-
renewal is beckoned but suspect now
in the spreading of our malty grain.

the ruler embossed with gold ticks is useless,
and censers only panic the sweaty scream,
mystery flayed away from normalcy
as the second grace is offered thirst:

around again the carnage first
and the weight and birth of pain.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

green light/not really an american





she was one of those people you just like to be around.

she was one of the original five, or one of the original six. this fascinated me.

we were headed uptown to the airport. then she remembered frank or billy, he was like a father or a brother to her. we went back downtown to look for him.

we split up to look for him. i was walking along a construction site and these punks were laughing and coming toward me with plastic bags of blue paint. they were going to paint me blue. then there were only two of them and i got away.


we were going back uptown. she was driving. i thought, i'll never understand the traffic in this town. the light was red. three guys came up behind us on the sidewalk, the two on the outside holding up the one in the middle. he didn't look drunk, more like he was spastic or had serious problems. they were laughing about something - " that sounds like something you would hear at macdonalds". something about playing ball - i didn't get it because i'm not a real american. the guy on the outside turned into a fish/basketball and floated on his back in the gutter.

the light turned green. i started to know it was a dream. i woke up. i never saw her again. i never knew who she was.

Friday, November 13, 2009

the crushing ubiquity of chainlink

maybe it was the stalking mystery
that ran the perfect sidewalk blind,
waiting to pounce from the pebbled curb

that forced the bark of health to wonder
whether claws could crack the code
and the scarlet purring of a cougar mind.

sure, there was mustard slathered rye
and the delivery of a crumbly toast
to dispel the cryptic myths of bread:
a carnage of sandwich in a deft parade,
that produced this lathering of frothy madness.

what was missed in the grim procession
was a reaper moving from black to red
through the harvest of suburban hedgerows:
a scythe of pink deliverance in curved disguise.

one build-up, one moment, one release,
in the technicolor pomp of circumstance,
to pierce the pump that pumps no more:

one long commuting train leads to return-
it's a lonely way to save a crumpled ticket,
to come once again upon the carnal thicket.

it was just a canine flashing for a pound,
a reet petite on the down low snapping ,
insanely unaware of the limit of the links:
one bubbly ocean cry for foamy limits
in the uncertain azure of your prison mind.

no wonder dogs play poker.

East of the Sun

I often try to sing of penciled landscapes
where we two might meet.
My clumsy words hatching crumpled rocks
to top a barren line,
and in between their gaps, thick trunks I sketch,
to sprout bouquets
of vibrant green. But I give these trees too much
life, too much choice,
missing you, they pull up their roots and escape
the page to run

East of the sun,
And west of the moon,
We'll build a dream house
Of love, dear;

down mirrored corridors.
The future and familiar trade steely gaze,
as wooden crowds lead
in fruitful chase, pointing my not-belonging
eyes toward stainless pods;
squat glowing bellies lined with leather laps
where I could slip, nestle
and pillowed watch digits whirl backward,
dialing a piped-in lilt,
my lullaby to a past that trips its way

Near to the sun in the day,
Near to the moon at night;
We'll live in a lovely way dear,
Living on love and pale moonlight.

across black-and-white tiles. Instead I dodge
as I skip-dance through
dozens of mechanical players, lounging
above carved pieces,
hand-painted with perplexing stares. These
salt-and-pepper pawns
I grab and toss shoulder-ward, unsettling
over-recked games not fit
for the fancied fix I place on distant cracked
pedestal. Then, a stray

Just you and I, forever and a day;
Love will not die, we'll keep it that way.

among banqueted queues
of chattering guests, who ivory arrayed
wait beneath vaulted glass,
I see your finery's smile beyond them,
with pen poised atop
my hard-bound tale of tender leaves. The ink
on cream, once-written
you tear, so that together we can fold
papyrus sail boats
homeward pushed by a shared breath's slow unwind

Up among the stars we'll find
A harmony of life, too lovely, too.
East of the sun and west of the moon, dear,
East of the sun and west of the moon.

— Francis Scudellari

This is a poetic mashup with lyrics to the jazz standard "East of the Sun" as performed by Billie Holiday and written by Brooks Bowman (in italics)