Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Simulator
who waves at the cars as they pass going seventy.
The wheelchair may be the result of a spinal defect,
degeneration of the structure of the back, like my father
and brother, the core too tired of holding its end of everything
up. On Monday mornings the dog wakes everyone
barking at the garbage truck, recycling, a glitter
sparkling stars as the shatter of glass emerges me from sleep.
There are other drivers on the road, the cars are
thick armor for the jellyfish brains operating from inside,
bleary eyed and translucent to the radio’s swell.
I wonder if back pain is the vengeance of evolution,
payback for up righting out of the pond, a coalescing
of paramecium like two minivans meeting head on
in the swale. My eyes are old fashioned swivel dials of the radio.
Crows mock me to motion from the dead center
of my lane and make me swerve like I know what they know.
That there is ten miles of cellular dead air here past
Swamp Creek, past where my ankle is cramping at pushing
the gas. I pass the man on the border of two states,
one is moderate health care, the other is a heavy riff of sludge
metal. His wave is encouraging, saying go on, push
through it. Resigned, the both of us, just sitting there.
::
Monday, September 01, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
High on Fire
Cells born of electricity, humming with electricity.
This monster is a trap-root buried, speared straight down.
Days of hornets stitched across his back, run him through the woods,
Set the dogs on him. High on fire, this monster staggers toward the mob,
Lurks the perimeter of the elementary school, carries his daughter,
Three years old, on his back under trees. The closed fist of his ribs continue,
This monster engulfed in fire. Train the cameras on him.
Forgets to pack sandwiches for the pool, tends daily to the equipment.
Observe monster family systems: rides quiet in the truck
Beside his quiet daddy, falls from space into a boiling Atlantic,
Slows his truck at lunch by the playground to maybe glimpse his son.
This monster shaves slowly in his tub, his own little girl pours water
Over his head, this monster weeps.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Bleachface
The welding school instructor leaned
into his connection to show us just
how to pose for action. I was fat
as any of the others in attendance.
Before this I was a clown for kid’s
parties, oil faced and woven hair.
Before that baskets of night
watching trucks sleep with stars.
There was some cold then. This
because of the sex appeal
of a television commercial, I’m
salving the hot end of my torch,
tack arc and blinder beams to not
look into. If I learned this I would
be complete and successful.
It is the clown’s dream to wear
regular clothes, but also a key
could fit into the rotten teeth
I see my grandfather smiling
at me through, a slot which loosens
up a man’s place to dwell next
to a stove with a drink in his
heart like a knife, holding two
parts together so as to seam
down a night cloth-dark, and duct
tape silenced to anything, become
hard cornered, holding
together an ended comfort.
When it was my turn the torch banged
a little heavier than I expected
and melted a corner of my glove
which I immediately brought up
to my nose to smell and the goo
tacked on there and seared out
olfactory futures for a good ever.
Then my eyeballs went
clown white and sizzled, basket
beard went up to smell like
burger king, all flesh and pot
to piss on. And just so, tight
jeans gave me over to the door
locked forever to the right edge,
no ship rivets in my future, no
offshore deep water money
making, no ever in the end of
disappointment my grandfather’s
smile sealing up, all snarl
after a sear of bourbon
hard going down, trucks through
the ice, no ship, just laughter
grinding along with me, burnt eye
never seeing you again, burnt
halter-top exposé of retina, lip
disorder not speech, hairline
out mode of the done up, my line,
your line, cracked out the get-go
It’s not time enough, clownish
forbearance doesn’t cut it, this
gauge won’t melt it out, witch’s
longing to transcend. The course
I failed but made it to the hospital
where a nurse polishes my inside
out until it made a gloss and can
breath the night, porcelain edged.
::
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Look Alive
Although there are roller coasters, a pair of tiger cubs
at the gate distract the girls before we even get to the toilets,
post interstate, traveler’s dementia, souring sweet air
over the spilled blue Icee, there is only an allofasudden
standing in line to ride the Hangman or the Rattler
all of the water park spred below,
each delectable flavor of death the coasters serve up
here and there the wasted trailer
leans its hulk in a direct line to some distant
industry.
strands of garbage and stalls of animals, milk squash,
yards of water logged bread,
feast of the gull and pigeon, ants forever in line
the sweltering preamble to the Swamp Thing,
a feet down hanging coaster that’s main thrill
are a pair of overfed alligators
confusing the children with even more threats. Just
this morning words comes of a teenager
decapitated at another park, other deadly portend through
the mists of
sweating to board the Anaconda or the Magnum,
force of doom, the rising up to taste. Surely
it is early man, not the zombies, rising up from the
water-park’s Lazy river, slouch shouldered,
wet and flavored with the taste of Band-Aids and urine,
the heated ooze and swirl of gestating bacteria
here is our origin and our doom, fat upon the inner tube
spinning away from the world’s regret.
.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Mace Windu,
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Ready Made
Here is the Black Dahlia’s body,
the two halves of her corpse split
into a darkness upon the field.
It is not you but the poem
whose face is invisible behind her hair,
as though it has been erased. Tutelary
image of a True Crime world.
It is not you but the poem
whose mouth goes on smiling too far.
Thus what seems like nature is cracked
skin upon a stretched armature.
But see? Her starfish is shaved. As sure
as the Mona Lisa’s moustache.
We go from a bright room to the dark
and feel the light creep close for a touch.
This is the mouth of the poem.
There is only the idea of seeing. The body,
field-dumped, framed in grass and road side.
See her turn over, minotaur to the grain?
This is the poem getting up, coming through
black and white history, her two halves
tortured by memory, the same way love
goes on, if we remember. It is not
you looking through the peephole, but
the poem, posed for the show. See?
It is the poem who is eating you.
::
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
postzombie
The zombie is the zombie that always ever was
the zombie. To have any less of the zombie is
an erasure if the zombie and the self that imagines
the zombie, thus an erasure of all of this, the bees
and the begonias too. This zombie is the different
cities of the zombie that are required of the zombie
always ever after the city of the zombie, upon
the island of the zombie. Not to worry. This
confusion is built upon the reaction of a body
slammed against a wall. Only this wall, indeed,
always ever after this wall. This zombie, which
always ever was is a force of violence that also
was always there, reviling, mutating into vast
flung functions, a killing of the without from
the within, inside time which contains the this
which is what I am inside of and vastly mutating
out of with a violence of categorical patterns
which is the survival of history. Thus is the zombie
which was ever in a city always in this city,
this Midwestern, Atlantic calm mountainous
deserted seaside of a cancer upon history. Always
ever wasting the potential for violence upon
the icicles dispersing parades of forever zombies.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Splut
Anasazi Zombie
I’d been expecting it for so long that when I finally saw
the zombie as I mowed the lawn in my old sneakers
I almost had a heart attack and died.
The old mower puttered off and some crazy silence
gripped me by the chest, the automatic shutoff of the heart
kicking up some dust and clicking into the azaleas.
Art condescends to life so easily, that zombie
shambling out of a movie into my makeshift life
only to hit the kill-switch.
I’d always wanted to be a painter,
but now it was too late, the only thing to paint
are stretching hands, and without an audience,
no real reason to paint them.
Last week I warned my daughter about snakes
in the backyard. Now we’ll all have to get on the roof
or try to drive to a prison. Razor-wire
keeps the bad thoughts inside, so my therapist says
every time I tell him about the zombies coming.
If we could make it to the desert we could live on a mesa
and drink cactus juice, hollow history out of rock walls
and paint our own hands as warning signs to the future,
stop sign held up to history. I’d like to see you paint that,
maestro. Then after a while in the caves we’d hear
a voice coming, the great spirit, drying our tears
and carrying us away through the wind in our mouths.
My heart starts to beat again. That was a close one.
Look again, there’s no zombie. Only my neighbor is mowing
his grass just like a mirror of me, and is he clutching
his chest or is he clutching at me. I smile and wave.
Maybe I’ll go inside and lie down in the grave for a while.
:::
Future Statues
After the zombie uprising
there will be statues of them in the park.
Of course we will have to make them
because they won’t have the dexterity.
We will have to sneak them in
without being eaten. Such is the risk.
The nudes will be noble and the horses
will all be on their sides instead of rearing.
We will make the rules, a zombie with its arm
raised will mean the statue was made by
a family member who hadn’t been eaten,
a zombie on all fours will mean that the family
managed to brain her before she got any of them,
and of course, a platter of severed heads
splashing in a fountain will mean that an entire
community had been killed only on suspicion
of infection. This one will be placed low
so that any new zombies traversing the square
will trip over the bronze heads.
Once we’ve gotten a lid on the whole thing
we can come back and arrange the markers back
into strip malls and car washes. Until then
Sculptor will be the most prized of all jobs.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
BloodSnot
Query
The zombie is a member of the collective
answer to the question of what it is really
that’s for dinner. Not are you reborn in Christ,
or do you like the rain, not even aren’t you
comfortable now down in the casket inside
the poured concrete tomb with all that fluid
that’s supposed to dissolve your skin so as
not to take up any of that, ahem, space?
The zombie is always foregoing Santa Claus
in favor of the labor union, showing up
at the pearly gates to tend the lawn, trim
the hedge but receive no citizenship.
The door is double latched, the faces
behind the curtains turn around quickly
so as not to be noticed. The zombie is
always after heaven’s eternal tuna sandwich.
The zombie is the elephant in the room
when the sky is brilliantly falling.
The zombie is a developmentally
inaccurate reaction to the lump in your
throat. The smiling, nodding answer.
Paul Celan comes back from the Dead to Eat the Brains of Martin Heidegger
After a night of cold schnitzel and the warm dregs
of a pitted fire, Martin walks indirectly through
the front door of his affluent Mench Huas.
You can see his posterior, overly fitted
in gray slacks. A bit of a show off. The bare
trees do not judge him and he frankly poses,
one enormous yellow stripe down the front
of his sweater, as though he is without sin.
From the nineteen sixties Paul Celan
dredges himself out of the
Some city workers are witness to his
messianic emergence. In the interest
of language they are spared.
Martin takes a spa and forgets his Nazism.
A woman of indifferently blond depths
rubs his back, his penis. Martin imagines
a shower head leaking insects then lurches
back into the sunlight as he comes.
Dogs bark at and nip little chunks from
Paul Celan’s latest manuscript as he wanders
into the black forest, the hounds of hell
he fends off with a posed arm held out
like the general of a failed army
everyone still wants do like, despite the wars.
Martin sees Paul coming down the walk.
He goes to meet him but he doesn’t want to take
Paul’s out stretched hand, Martin still
wont knowingly touch a Jew.
Paul takes Martin’s head in his two hands
and breaks a tooth as he sinks in to Martin’s skull,
the spurt of blood, so many millennial ideas
escaping into the crisp German air.
When questioned about it later, the grounds keeper
said he saw poetry murdering logic with its teeth,
while the horrified Unsayable began to
to open their dark holes and speak.
Zombie as Personal History
How openly he shows off his goods,
intestine bobbing next to his penis,
pants no more than relics to modesty.
He has one eye, the other is an open room
that fills with rain or seeds or falling
leaves this time of year.
He was obviously bitten on the cheek
first but then one of them got him
by his tummy fat and pulled hard,
the hinge of it is an open door to
scientific observation and some
insect larvae. He is an opened house
and his stairway is falling to pieces.
His kidneys, those art room sinks
of the body are clogged with bone
matter, as though the sculpture teacher
went nuts with the remains of his class
and shoved handfuls of little David
statues down the drains. This zombie
is a school house art room where
the teachers first slept with each other
then were betrayed by the failure
of children’s minds to produce art,
to lump together a horse, or smudge
a tree, sure, this zombie’s empty eye
could be an olive with a dab of white
to give it a painted gleam, this zombie
could have been several kinds of diner
parties held by aspiring artists before
they gave in to the pressure of domestic
life, the coffee table, a couch to match
the tree light, wicker chairs on the porch
and a strange man coming near.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Lion Tamer
So many mornings of television they thought I was wasting.
Now is the time when we all need to have paid attention
to the human fly. Practice at scurrying up walls
could help humanity evolve away from the zombie hoard
which of course used to just be gawkers hoping
that dumb sonofabitch would fall.
If we had a set of suction cups ready we could hang
out on the ceiling, watch the late show upside down
just out of reach of the swiping hands.
Or if I had that lion no one would let me have
I could use it to protect me from the zombies. Unless
of course the lion would turn in to a zombie
then it wouldn’t be such a great idea. Or if the lion
decided to eat me because all the other meat was spoiled.
All that television has prepared me for these times, put
my head in the lion’s mouth just as it yawned
on the rooftop and the understanding is her canine
nicked my jugular and blood filled her mouth like from a cup
which is the right and wrong of boredom, for a lion.
I see myself on television waiting for the cure, Dr. Serum
making a cameo from the crowd, his spear point a syringe.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
How to Tell a Body Apart
Osprey and raccoon leave fish carcasses
up in the skinny Australian pines. A tourist
drags her skirt in the gentle surf of the bay.
One large condo in the distance
is completely on fire.
In order to feel safe, we sleep in the trees,
swatting at mosquitoes. An Abuela
comes down the bridge half way, calling
for her sons. The hem of her nativity
dress has dragged through blood.
Summer clouds are like cakes.
They do not promise to stop torture
or to bring humanity back. If you see
an osprey with a fish it is a sign of prosperity.
In last year’s spring parade, between the pirate
ship tossing green and silver beads and the police
motorcade, one man walked alone
as a skeleton to protest the war.
He walked like his legs didn’t work,
pretending to lose his balance.
Children threw rocks at him until their parents
smacked them. At the end, the pastor’s son, playing
Resurrected Jesus walked through the trash
and dirtied his gown.
The Abuela raised up to beg heaven
and a wind dropped a dead fish into her hands.
She screamed and the tourist, missing one eye
and half a cheek turned her head
towards the sound of birds.
::
Without
When you were talking about how the zombie
curse happened, I heard your voice but I wasn’t really listening.
You said they were the lucky ones, now
who could enjoy the world gone to shit and we
were still holding on to some hope of going back
to cable TV and spousal abuse and playing the lottery.
Now they got to walk where ever they wanted
and we had to scurry like bugs. I heard you say
you might just cash it in and shoot yourself in the heart
instead of the head so you could go back Macy’s
and stand at the discount rack and think
of all the other lives you could be living right at that moment.
Go ahead, I said. This time, when you die
we don’t need to cry about it any more. You pointed
your gun up to the clouds, took aim and the smoke
from the fire got in your eyes and you closed them
because except for the meaning it makes, the noise
of your mouth still carries on just the same filling
up a space no one’s really sure needs filling like a
canary telling it like it is to the grackles on the line.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Mad Wind
And Spring, revealing himself to be yet another season of madness,
Can blow a raw wind through the open window, stirring up dust
In this old house of me. It because of this that I submit the following:
A room full of chairs reserves the right to have,
At any given moment, one or more of those chairs thrown.
Because if a chair can be sat in, stacked or stored away
There is no reason it shouldn't also be hurled across a room
To crash into other chairs- collapsing whole societies of chairs.
There is no good reason why it should not.
CINEMATOXIC
Lightening behind the old drive in screen
creases the clouds into some cheap countertop.
We take popcorn and old beer and sit
on top of a school bus. It will rain soon
but the air is cooled by that. Looking
at the screen you explain how the muscles
should tighten when they dry out, eventually
they wont be able to move them. Perhaps
that explains the blood lust. The wind across
the parking lot lifts out hair like heat
from a fire. If you put your hand out
it you can split the air up around you.
When I was eight, they moved the bodies
from the graveyard, then let the grass grow
so you couldn’t even see the stones. One day
we found a clearing in the lea of a stone
where a deer had made its bed. We threw
firecrackers at the stone splattering
white rock with burn marks. Then the grass
caught fire and the whole field was like
hell and then everything was just scorched.
That summer the drive in went all Adult
then didn’t reopen with the thaw.
Here, these black speaker boxes mark
the broken field like crosses, the blank screen
our lake of fire, the flickering
plays moving bodies in the dark tree line.
The rain will come down and soften hard
things, ease the crust of pavement,
un-ratchet the ligament to bones.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Drive Up
Breakfast is cold and there are zombies in the window,
The whole earth has them arriving to ask
To use the phone and then eat you. That is how they work
Without even opening their mouths.
There must be something wrong with the poor man, you say,
And then Chomp you're on your way, gooed up.
People will no longer admire the sunrises
Because the light will only reveal how everything is gone
To shit. Which always was the probing truth.
There was one time when someone would cut
A hole in the ground and dig around for precious stones,
Just the same some fool would root in his head for a clean
Idea to marvel everyone with and give some little
Glitter to it all. You could see it on the TV first thing
In the morning when the light was soft and you
In your Pajamas could get optimistic before they
Came to the windows with their breakfast orders,
And all the editors wrote down zombie names
And addresses where they could be found rubbing
The rough stucco on your house soft trying to get
Their orders right. And the chef who made it in
To the gas station at the last minute can cut
Up some old Twinkies and braze them with electrodes
Yanked from old electric telephones still stuck
To the wall and juiced.
And that marquee out front is just as old and cheesy
And holy-roller as you can please and the lord
Don't want no early bird special. But that zombie does,
The trucker feller with half a head and teeth, he got a
Manifest on your load. And there is a bird, and a boy
In a red cap, and some hunters in Camo overalls
And just think, it'll all be over when you say go, give up
The rifle and stand up and declare the diner to be up and
Open the window and take a fast, fast food order.
Another Reason
It's almost zombie season. The factory
Girls are staggering to the beach
In decayed memory of carnival fun,
Condoms and jellyfish in the breakers.
From the jetty, one of them tick-ticks
Its hips along the boardwalk towards us,
Some near intelligence of hipbones
Showing through the tattered lace
Of jogging shorts
When a girl appears out of the water
Thumb and pointing finger missing
From her hello-come-here. She is old enough
And naked except for the nylons
She got caught trying to run away in
Out to sea, the sand and hair across her
Face and open mouth plastered, sand
Coming from openings, some tiny crabs.
When she's near enough you shoot her
In the leg and she falls on her side, gobbling
At the air of her missed opportunity.
I'm smoking.
When it got dark we climbed the light tower
And watched the dunes in moonlight. What if
She hadn't drowned but walked into the sea
Because she had forgotten what it was.
Her hair was dark brown. We ate beans
From a can. You threw the can down to the rocks
And began to laugh with
Fear and courage. This is the end of everything
And so beautiful .
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sleep II
I ride the relapse out, literally, on the motorcycle.
The night streaked downtown, the flint edge of cold to penetrate,
Five bad days break on the sixth like a wave.
I download an old album, choke the bike high for the cold,
Pound it up
Keyed up, banking straight into the sun.
It is music with its own fabric, it can wash over you if you let it.
It is what my son Henry calls monster music.
The light shatters, fragments through woods yet to come back.
Guitars rending, feedback from the bike, its music, it’s humming
In my chest. When the woods taper and end at Huguenot,
It is my emergence. It is joy.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
On the Phone
Me: What?
Prof. Snodgrass: Mashed Potatoes.
Me: In a box?
Prof. Snodgrass: In a tub. I want to hear no derision on the subject.
Me: So are you getting the tacos? That's like six different stops. You gotta get the meat, the shells...
Prof. Snodgrass: Yeah, you gotta get the little packets..
Me: You don't do the meat with salsa and taco sauce?
Prof. Snodgrass: No
Me: You're kidding me. The little packets?
Prof. Snodgrass: Listen, Truckstop, I know it ain't Pimento cheese sandwiches or anything.
Me: "Truckstop." That's nice.
So later I sent him a text message: "Tubbed-Tater Eating Pennsyl-tucky Chicken-fucker". To which he responded: "I weep like Dave Mustane."
~
Be Good
And in this way, if I thought right, I could begin to feel better.
They told me that I had to change my mind in order to survive.
Thus I am currently of the mind that the citizens of this world
Are not out to consume me.
Yesterday there was a service for one of our sisters that fell along the way.
Her father told us that an experience in childhood had fractured her personality,
So that later, as an adult, her mind would attack her almost daily.
I wasn't going, I needed money. It so happened it was held in a church
The next block over from where I'm working, I came back from lunch
And recognized everyone on the street, they were in suits and nice dresses.
I walked up to the church in my two days worth of sawdust.
I hadn't planned on going. In my mind, if she'd had a big event
I would go and wish her well, but in this case it wasn't necessary.
She wouldn't be there. She'd already moved on.
~
Friday, March 14, 2008
Alchemist
Of being human anymore. Don't you forget them.
This is undercurrent, consider it a theme. Like a tree
You have sap inside yourself, this is the season is rises.
Stand against that which gives way. Remember, you are not at war
The red-tail hawk high up in the dead part of the tree across the way
Might have it's own message, it doesn't necessarily have to be one of violence.
`
Sleep
--Sleep, Holy Mountain
I don't know what the hell this is either, I was just hunting for some metal. I do know for this music to be truly effective you have to play it really fucking loud.
The Trouble with Zombies
When you realize that you are being
Eaten by a zombie instead
Of reading a poem,
You will feel cheated at first
Then a little icky because your shirt
Is now wet and that makes you think
Of the time you spilled soda down your
Front at the movies and, because of shame,
Were forced to sit in the sticky
Until the darkness lifted. Go on, make
Sense of the sensation of being eaten
By applying some critical theory,
I suggest Deconstruction, the stack
Of fresh paper you were going to print
Your fancy poems on slips
Onto the floor as you flail after it.
The leaves are soaking up your blood now,
The zombie is chewing on a hunk
Of your neck, and you are shocked
To realize that it is your neighbor who
You were thinking of including
In a poem about dry cleaning and shirts
And stains and the way shame
Can unravel the mind. And as you begin
To black out you remember seeing
The neighbor beat his kid in the backyard
But you didn’t do anything
Because you were reading a poem
And it made you nervous to think you might
Have to go over and say something
And instead you sat there, reading
Your poem, trying to connect the bright, hopeful light
To the scene in the yard next door.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Diagonal
It’s a sunny day like this
From the rooftops I think the chain fence
Is come to.
I think of the kids dancing to some rowdy
Music passing in a car.
There is disaster strapped to a cloud
Shaped this time like Thomas Edison
The inventor of the wax sound tube,
Of the wind gauge and needles
Against skin to test the heart
For strength.
But from here I can’t really help
The hole in the world. That Chevy truck
Still lean to in the ditch for some week now,
I can’t resurrect the winter to freeze,
Nor poke out a loop of birds to pass on.
No, the grass is all grown
So far as I think of growing
I might consider when I’ll fall asleep
And slip off this roof, or when the arms
Come through the crack in the door
And nudge the lock off her perch, so
Long as I can still point easy at my own head
Like I was scratching or pulling the trigger,
Why not go hopelessly on a relaxed memory
And the clouds come apart into paper wads,
Toss themselves in the wastepaper basket.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
I Got Stuck This Morning
Needless to say I spent most of the morning thinking about Missy Elliot.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
A Gorillaz For Dr. Snodgrass
Henry's Favorite-Clint Eastwood
Henry's Other Favorite oh yeah And Mommie's too--19/2000
May-may's favorite--DARE
Daddy's favorite--Dirty Harry
Hardware Word-of-the-Day
Your first burst: Utility Nozzle
Her proud brow of encumbrance.
Next, mincing fish sticks into forbidden
Not to mention odiferous resonance: Beano
The hard line in the grocery section, post-elderly
The stare of greening faces like a sudden shore
From a fog: deadpan. A marbling of veins
Sticking screws and weeds. Bright flash
Lead beads and tweed geezers, shows
Us how to do. Wing-nut gallery
Despicable plastic glass fronts and frame
Fountains with teeth, shop suck,
Crimp this.
::



















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