As evolution dematerializes us
verbal confusion considers revising
the passions are extinguished
and our bodies turn wispy
the souls have so outgrown them
then we will see the pure beauty
of a physical world touch
its delicate management smell
the skin of its construction
which partially wants to be
dragged under while being caught
looking back and on the other
hand seeing I is always two
at war or in love that much.
Watching for poetry’s sake
three fat-assed old men
trading horror
baseball stories
Braille watches
take him out
drug-free
here’s the masterpiece
pitch Mr. November
men are more emotional
than in the winter
turn the sound off
got my money’s worth
got chased out on purpose
grown men jumping
up and down
start fresh
every game
never complain
or go back
keep going.
Descending the
empty staircase
of branches one
at a time slowly
sparrows
and finches
one flicker
four doves
to drink while
the sun
comes in
through the back
of my head
bitch-slapping
me falling
into the shallow
end of their bowl
of fresh water.
Love’s not the weather
or why is the world
so dire for us
if we’re the ones
who can’t resist it
it doesn’t winter over
but what is that
world for which
it doesn’t matter
the line woods unravel
their sense of impending
direction and front
bird thoughts with blood
on their throats
and faces.
At the center
of the heart
the ashes even
a little flame
produces
as it breathes
a gas oven after
all wherein
are bodies
taken back
stacked away
too soon
falling asleep
in the stillness
falling not falling
snow of bones
red birds come
and fly through
like blood.
The truth may be
no one is healthy
enough for sexual
activity he was
speaking spiritually
living south of Surprise
they all say yes
for the rest of their
lives he admired
their harsh fate
the forty year
blizzard arriving
televised it may
be weird here
but it’s 68 degrees
and it never snows.
Just as I was
going down
I heard speech
again and laughter
of course I
was drowning
but I was thrilled
to hear them
even if not included
in their kiss
in the street
their happiness
so similar
to my own.
Finally I’ve never
gotten over there are
other people in the world
their beautiful strangeness
with hands and eye color
I stare at and want
to ask each one where
are you from
no I mean
where are you from
if we have not
our own coruscations
to go through
for what else
has he risen
water-breaking
fish?
When thinking sees itself
and feeling is added that
attraction or repulsion
the metabolism wakes up
ideas have ideas
for good or not
just to go from seeing
what happens here
one thing or another
to seeing from inside
the thing itself
to be your pain
what you are
suffering of
and for.
If I keep trying
to turn this solitude
to fit me it’s not
I’m not nice enough
about it it’s somewhere
in the middle of the
suffering-happiness
cul-de-sac of the movement
where thinking about it
gets so impressed
with itself it forgets
humility must serve
the lord of love
you must be my best
enemy at times as I’m
called to be yours.
He swore
on the birthday
of his death
on that day
while listening
to his favorite music
cranes flew over
south mountain
following the lines
his heart had made
when he died
because they still
loved one another.
Stood upright
out the window
at midnight
a tree looking
back at me
a pomegranate
yellowed with
at year’s end
leaves rotten
fruit maybe one
salvageable but
then who eats them
every ruby earned
sweet crunch
I like the idea
of disorder the body
as the mouth’s
true food.
Christmas gets old
especially for children
waiting to be gifted
at year’s end the
eighth grade play
begins that way
one poor boy too many
on the earth
so thousands die
like today while
he hides in the hills
above
the widow’s son
young and alive
often in the market
in the company
of questionable women
questionable men.
Poem locked
against me
unworthy lovers
for that hour
when the sun
lies down on the table
feeling its way back into
the wood’s stern empathy
I sit beside its
gravestone whether
or not the inside is more
important than the outside
more trust than power.
Well done the sun
whose criticism
starts with himself
I wish I was him
from behind they all
look like thoughts
wearing large bonnets
if thoughts had petals
I wish I was them
or even this statue
quiet as a conscience
on its pedestal
for which the world
is afterbirth and shell
and thought is you.
The poet John Ashbery appears
in every single one of his poems
but the person John Ashbery
appears in none of them
not in any convincing way
in fact isn’t that the point
he means to be the world
so there’s a certain coldness
but with Schuyler and O’Hara
it’s all personal emergencies
as a passionate meditant
would put it and one feels
their immediate aloneness
and laughter like waking
with someone you love.
End shark finning forever
our gift to you
Canadian drugs from
your organization
diabetes-busting evergreen
scent that lasts
outlasts the revelation
disengaging from likes
and dislikes like tonight
how you’ve gone too far
it’s our sixteenth sitewide
wilderness financials
kitchen evolution
anniversary
how is ya?
A poem is the science
of recurring possibilities
a thesis to abstract
how much of the usual
can be overthrown when
replicated by some small
significant aspect
you overlooked and
had to go back for
to some damn thing
we are giving birth
always or being born
we had to pull over
we were laughing
so hard at the world
if you can imagine it
from inside your liver
the full unworthiness.
I asked the lord of forms
for a new form
how crazy was that
pretend thoughts
came to us once
now just ghosts
I love most
the ones
I disappoint most
I always drive past
where I’m going
at least one time
between void
and supercluster
I lose track.
Onto a narrow yard
between two houses
a band-aid of light
gets applied
then gets ripped off
what do you think
of the goal of
infectious whimsicality
in the way the greens
are placed on red pavers
how is the eye not led on from
blindness to transcendence
in the rise of two small trees
one red one orange
shading one another
and the usual gnomes?
While we were waiting
for you to go to jail
we watched surfing on TV
and talked about hell
in those days I avoided
everything good
but knew enough
to be around it and
to hide like a yellow
star in the south of
reappearance and
capture I painted
myself so you could
see my handsomeness
as it was for you
in the old days
as it is in the camps now
what will become of
the last encouragement
I have left.
The lake-effect
love can have
on warm fronts
nature is dying
because she has
better things to do
always that piece
of trying to impress
someone lingers
lost migration
routes open up
icy mornings
nomads appear
still breathing
the afterlife.
Dear brother the cover
Fra Angelico did this year
for your Christmas card
is lovely in a way we’ve
never been to one another
he’s getting better
gold and blue with
red in the center forming
a cup as if her bodice
and her waist which is odd
there’s another cup
in her right hand and
in her left her almost
standing baby in a pink
dress when things meant
different things than now
yours is always the first card
to come and I am such a shit
but if you follow their eyes
his as he offers a lily
to the past hers staring
down the future
isn't that you there
where they intersect?
One red and yellow
McIntosh apple mobbed
by volunteer tangerines
death insists on the juice
of living to earn some
credit for the earth
the redemption of orange
in childhood calls
for its own disease
the last one I picked
the actual atmosphere
was wrapped in
delicious past delicious
your poem nothing
left in my glass.
Handsewn slippers
untested household
toxic chemicals
late night construction site
reality homes
but no (true) buyers
a bowl of cold
tangerines Cezanne
channels
no true understanding
of the unrained-on side
of your nature
that I hold you while you
wipe the dust from the table
with your sleeve
this tenderness is how you said
life enters our physical world
starts pacing back and forth
November was coming
out of a long tunnel
into an open height
December’s an ocean
wherever you stand
waiting for whosoever.
The furnace farts
I fart back
we’ve eaten
too many bodies
not to approve or
disapprove of ourselves
as if your laughter proved
heaven exists at least
somewhere bodiless
beings as self-evident
systematic geology
you have to start with
the future and work
back from there
to where the past
warmth keeps happening
that sense of danger
starting to fall
almost everywhere
gray as language.
I suddenly remembered
it’s because we have a body
that acts like a dam
holding back the hidden
a resistor for the invisible
what do you call it
momentarily so everything
has to pass through it
as stones accumulate
due to upthrust or downslide
the stream is interrupted
strained to individual voices
that the body thus made
can miss and momentarily
recall the body you made
never inanimate to me.
I don’t trust women
who listen to me
who treat men
like gods or children
who prefer the lions
to the chickens
who hide behind
their children
who capitulate
to their own gender
who believe in gender
who’d rather be
a percept than
a concept did you
know the chimney of
the
Station is the world’s
31st tallest structure
an amazing confluence
of words and windiness
I don’t trust women
who listen to me.
When the great doors
of sleep closed behind me
I was in a picture
of the grand gallery
the exits were sealed
and there was no sound
I came to a well
how did this get here
the water smelled bitter
but I drank it anyway
why go back now
to rebuild ruins
centuries ignored
bones of a lost responsibility
the history of perception
so that by the time I was
ready to spend the night
in the highest chamber
in dreamless sleep
I knew how hard the lovers
who made me had worked
to salvage something
they were losing fast.
The way the sun
prefers certain
things tosses
others away
the insect once
a flower until
it won its freedom
in ancient times
everyone was rich
now we’re all
slaves if I loved
you any more
I’d have to be
Jesus Christ.
It’s the way the new ballerina
dances the old ballet
that matters most to them
not the ballet danced
so many times before
but for us it’s the new
movement itself
we go looking for
the elixir after all the past
we must get over
face it at least
some parts we’ve kept
the preservation
of a certain slovenliness
and refusal to rest.
Please save me a seat
on the wonderland express
even if I haven’t personally
seen death a thousand times
been the immediate cause
we’re all still in the motivating
one another business
escalations in uncomfortable
rooms coming up against
limits then interpreting
the implications
aren’t we aren’t we
we walked all over the city
every day and night
we were like the conquerors
of whole civilizations.
When we finally track down
all our other obsessive selves
gathered for one last dinner
or coliseum together
where to start
with depression
after job loss he
donated one gently-worn
heart quilt square
which all our lives
lie hidden buried
open named under
Franz we can’t even imagine
a God the closest we
can get to is angel
or Elohim and that
rarely and pathetically
but maybe if we
stopped leaning
so heavily on them
they might be able
to hit on us
for a change.
The overcoming of all
that overcomes us
which must be
submitted to
again and again
control is the last
to go come morning
winter’s plastic
surgeries this time
she wants a larger ass
made of snowflakes
for which she kills
herself as usual
each one bearing the
same meme people
people
please wake up.
In their crosshairs
as a born-again nation
vast and illiterate
they talk all day
rubbing their huge
cold mandibles
under their desks
or cloaks collaborating
is this the best we can do
you call this an arms race
he went to
twelve iron chairs he re-painted
in the colors of several mornings
and sold for a small fortune here
the form as delayed movement
as decay the power behind
free movement slowly you actually
think it through
thinking as loving
refusing to be glamored
or unduly unenamoured.
Of course
love stalks
us all
but if
you live
long enough
you can
see it
approach
through the
tall grass
you
its prey
so you run.
