POEM


Speech opens up finally, a rescue
worth risking—small blues find

their material. Nonsense is a bath
a body holds in its measure,

holding out a little for failures
I'm not seeing through.

Now begins to seem nothing less
than a call to smell forgettable

as questions rise on the move
my form makes from man to lunatic.

I WANT TO LEARN FROM THE BEST. I'M A WISE CRACKER.


I can get kind of moody, and I have a tendency to wander.
When I reported this to the manager-on-duty
She said, "I would love to have that job too
And I'm amazed at how advice columns are still so popular."

Is it wrong that I'm finding time to bake bread?
But I'm so glad I did, because I want to say
That I would not be enjoying the health I have
Had my best scuba dive ever been saved from a beat-down

On the spot by the guy who picked up a psychology minor,
Forcing myself to learn a little about mental health.
Is it normal that I'm scared to move during sex?
What if someone tries to break in?

You want to know what I'm scared of? I'm scared of everything!
I'm scared, but I move on. I move on straight into my fear.

WHITE-OUT THE SKY TO SAVE


Let's deliver ourselves with a lecture
on silence as a blunt instrument.

Somewhat fallen into are the best of us
together. Courting decay minus cliche,

speak true to form and let dead worlds
create for themselves a bonus say. So

process me. I can take a joke for life.
It's about coming clean everywhere.

SOMEONE I'VE NEVER HEARD OF DIED TODAY


There are plenty of fish in the sea....
Just kidding! They're all dead. I'm to blame.
Standard operating procedure it seems.
And they end up in the same place whether it's a heart attack,
A really really giant industrial-sized lathe
Or three guys in a forest. Even if a pastor believes someone to be in Hell,
It'd be rather rude to call him overrated.
I bet you've never heard even one of his albums.
Once he even told the parole board that if Kennedy was alive today,
He would be trying to reach a town he had never heard of,
Led by a man he had never heard
Fainting and falling off a bike.

The guys who rowed in my crews had never heard this story, I soon discovered.
Most died because they had rowed so high.
There are jokes about that, but I've never really killed anybody
That I know of. I've had a feeling of not being alone, and of sadness.
We get trespassers—I order them removed. That's why you'll never get me.
I've never done anything to anyone they didn't want done.
I've never had a client complain that he'd been expelled from school,
But what if he doesn't think I've the voice Maestro thinks I have?

This is the first time I think I've ever had tears in my eyes at finding out
Someone who identifies herself as Traci is trying to tell me
That she wants to see me perform tonight at a big auditorium I've never heard of.
However it is Easter weekend and Jesus died on the cross for us,
So if you ever, ever tank another play like you did today,
I'm just gonna ride it out til it dies, kickin' in the
Question that I've wrestled with for a long time:
Do people in remote regions who have never heard of Christianity see
A Teflon-coated frying pan actually used for frying?
I mean what could be better than someone sending you a file full of
Youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of today's "guitarists"
Bemoaning the fact that their country's birthrate is declining?
They stopped at the top of the stairs, and I never heard it again.

Either way, they're wrong, dead wrong. Don't listen to them.
If anything today is harming our credibility,
It is the lack of so-called social anarchists. Ever heard the term?
Honestly I've never heard someone from the suburbs use it.

According to the doctors I really am lucky because
I learned to play clawhammer, and I've adopted my own way of
Trying to speak reason with someone who thinks reason is anger and revenge.

But apparently I had him mixed up with someone,
And this is a 30-year-old who pitches baseballs.

CONTORTION TRIED AND ENOUGH


I shave mornings more
Indelible past a waking
Throw gratitude special air

Undergone tall orders for
A broken time spending all
Was said I couldn't help

Could think of smooth
Spare moments I lived through
Seeming to have laughed

Careering one way or another
More mornings loose change
Enough light to spend by

I WANT TO BE BOOKS ABOUT THEIR BODY


I took my loneliness out to intimidate
More than seven million candles recalled for losing me
But I identify with a six-inch sub I have.
It's like recovering the United States.

Now I'm supposed to say
My utter lack of succession so would be okay.
Being able to pronounce the problem is indeed a downpour.
Everyone's always telling me to be liked

Must be avoided. I guess they know the joke.
Marked as sensual, they're talking about celebrities
But see the wet, salty cat found in the best quality.
I try to be more an acceptable use of itself.

Attractive people do theory, the meaning of the phrase
Bleeding out to narrate my national poetry.

POEM


A mind attack moves into my mess
as only pedestrian madness can.

It's why I wear my hat on my head
instead of taking a bath

neutral observers can piss on,
holding fast to a last laugh.

A motivation stalks me blind,
waiting into me night-like.

WERE THE SCISSORS IMPULSIVE OR INEVITABLE?


Sewing up the kinks in this film, I'm
Obscenely jewel-toned, obscenely neck-like,
Something offensive: a revolver
In the glaring white gap
Implicit with stars in active orbit.

The trick is to make it personal:
The pilot alone knows
I have played tennis with so many animals.
I stay at his palace and share my room with two other talents.
What he needed from me I have no idea.

How fibrous and incidental it seems
That I, just ten, became the mystery of
Sad beds wide enough for planting
The chill of closed eyelids.

Then the terrible thing happened:
I had children of my own
Count out sherry and ripe plates and little corners of a kind of ham.

For six months I arranged museum dioramas
In a carousel-sweet dress.



******

This is my National Poetry Month Cento Contest National Poetry Month Cento. It also exists here.

HELLO, I HAVE A POLITICAL OPINION


Hello, I have a political opinion
Allow me to express it
By wearing this
Smug-ass t-shirt

Nothing beats a good slogan
To make me feel good
About what I believe
And more importantly

To make you feel bad
Because that's what politics is about
It is about making sure
That the only people who are your friends

Are people who agree with your politics
And the most efficient way to do this
Is to wear a t-shirt
That people will either laugh at approvingly

Or deride or simply ignore
You can then judge easily
Which people are worthy
To be your friend

And which people are simply
Not worth speaking to ever
Or even worth attempting
To understand in an empathetic humanistic way

Life on Earth is not as bad as you think it is

A REPEATED, SELF-AWARE, HUMOROUS MANNER


I dreamt all of me, woke feeling like F sharp
or a geisha, but forgot my address.

I briefly felt nothing with unfocused eyes severely
while staring at who has drawn me

behind the idea of a computer screen.
I briefly experienced a specific sensation like recovering

in darkness earnestly committing to eating my hands.
I'm going to consolidate something

fixated on my leg, upper arm, lower back.
I was painlessly dying from NYC.

Someone has been saving the refrigerator
while semi-unconsciously yearning for a degree.

I CALL BULLSHIT ON THERE BEING AN ACCURATE COSMOLOGICAL MODEL


It's hard to tie a worm's heart
On a booger doctor. Being a lobotomized toddler
Just play Sexual Muppets: the cat pictures.
I just like the biblical soggy pile

Of totally edible food. Why does science even know?
Laser eye surgery doesn't immediately run over my hometown
Where Hamburger Helper cut my stress balls.
After 60 we razzle-dazzle them, but we're close

So it's like I just spared you all your face,
Every flappy part when you can drink the same person.

INGRES MANAGEMENT


Gorilla estrangement was all the rage
in my room this morning. Bigger
and badder spectacles to fry
were not forthcoming. I tried dying
in a non-lethal manner, but that
only upset the wayward ray of
Precambrian sunstroke attempting to gain access
to my most select and least opinionated doldrums.
Time left over from last night's
brunch absorbed and confounded me.
Another hour went by and Sharon the chiropodist
dropped in for champagne and charades
but I wasn't in the mood for such shenanigans,
though indeed they were in short supply.

I was in the mood for art history,
a hobby of mine since my days in the post-apocalyptic
restaurant business. Tricks of the trade
included most of us in their undoing,
sly perambulators that we were not.
Care for some radishes? I thought so.
Unfortunately I have confiscated none
lately. Otherwise it'd be a regular
"radish fest" up in here. Or was it the phrase
"tree line perimeter" I had asked you to memorize?
Who's even here? Am I at one again
with the unstoppable, unbreakable pour
of glass into the morning,
fidgeting as new bogeys show
up for a symposium on my socks?
Nothing could be further from Duluth.

SOME NOTES ON... MY GOD, REALLY?


That's slightly but atmospherically it:
Play the settings on a bucket once
And pass out. I call bullshit on camp.
My face has a good rapport with no? Nice.

Aspirational smells really follow it.
Uncomfortable chair birthday!
Are you actually doing yoga on my blog?
F that. I was rushed/forced/ineffective.

Meanwhile, it's the light fixture.
When it might know they don't know.
Heh, I know, right? Just your basic review.
Not bad! I don't know. I just realized

My rap name is this computer.
I remember when I was weird.

Movies I have watched repeatedly as if I were on a desert island and they were the only movies I had brought with me to that island

Inspired by Elisa's post on desert island movies, I decided to make my own. (List, not movie.) But I didn't think I would be able to accurately guess what my state of mind would be if I were actually faced with the decision of what movies to bring if I were to be literally stranded on a desert island. Then I realized that I didn't have to guess about what movies I would watch over and over—all I had to do was make a list of movies I have watched over and over. This is that list. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but these are what came to mind. They comprise a good chunk of my DVD collection, except for the franchises, i.e. movies with Roman numerals after them. Yes, even Star Trek. I seem to remember there was some controversy about the DVDs Paramount put out, like, that they sucked for some reason. So at this point I'll probably just wait until either they make better DVDs (haven't checked in a while, maybe they have) or DVDs are obsolete and the movies are released on the next whatever thing. By the way, yes I am aware that the odd-numbered Star Trek movies are supposedly not as good, but you can't break up the series if you're going to a desert island. What if you run into some people there who haven't seen them before and you invite them over to your house to watch your movies? How are they going to keep up with the story if you're skipping straight from Wrath of Khan to Voyage Home? Duh. Besides, Star Trek is beyond aesthetics. For me anyway. Which is all that matters, because it's my island.


Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Big Lebowski
Wonder Boys
Donnie Darko
High Fidelity
Dr. Strangelove
A Hard Day's Night
Take the Money and Run
Sleeper
Bananas
Love and Death
Annie Hall
Manhattan
Stardust Memories
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Hannah and Her Sisters
Radio Days
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Husbands and Wives
Shadows and Fog
Everyone Says I Love You
Deconstructing Harry
Back to the Future
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part III
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

AWESOME BOOK ART FROM THE CAT DRAGGING THE EXHIBIT


The high-pitched grating sound of watching SVU
Yeah I think I'm ready
Who didn't have a dog surfing on contemporary experimental poetry?
How awesome is a dog surfing on some random dead guy?

I know not about space and sell it
To see if I miss Buffalo; I!
I have been longer than reading. I was pretty good!
Yes re power structures, happy for acne meds

To see if I know of the on-again-off-again thing I was,
I want to. Kafka is in public school kids
Which is probably too many babies
People refuse to automatically revere.

Dear, I may have been euphemistic/polite.
Consider backing the Swedish Institute.

Hey New York Times, it's "NBA" not "N.B.A." Duh.

IT IS REALLY MESSY AND THANKS FOR THE EIGHTIES


There's a favorite cupcake? Also,
This emphasis on my future?
I wouldn't have watched the handlebar mustache made for me,
Radical sunlight through my desk.

Here's a good way up a thing.
Not sure if you mean there is a year to go.
I especially don't see poetry
At my belly sensation. Ah, no.

Drats. Yes, please find taste is my office windows.
I think the same. OK, time to foam to wheat.
I found the messiest thing.
O, I in my desk; I am? Like I don't see this car city.

So, maybe you pick a lot, but not dangerous.
And that lands later this afternoon.

I'M ALWAYS IN DISGUISE THESE DAYS


Download the United States
It would help if I don't think
I just kind of order premieres
So much real life is useful
Gmail's free and it is the main one
Now it's only a slippery slope of how to be

Look rich on the verb "heart"
Not to have figured out the gentle art
Oh, yeah—I was sitting at your problem
Early in your crown of the ground tonight

My constant fear is playing in the meal
I was sitting across from the coffee/milk balance
That tastes exactly like it's nonfiction calling it
Material for treating itching

April poem I want to murder: this baby! Yep
Attractive people are greedy for HTML
Sweet sounds like luxury to introduce myself
That makes choking a slippery slope
Of morons getting 5% of poetry

THE YEAR I LIVED IN AN IGLOO


I could tell you about the year
I lived in an igloo
But what good would that do
Probably just make you mad

I've decided to spare us all
The burden of my infinite wisdom
I've decided to be nice to people
And move into an igloo

Oh wait I already did that
For a year I did that
And what do I have
To show for it

I need to try something drastically different
I need to expand my horizons
I need to go to central Asia
And live in a yurt for a year

Then I could tell you about the year
I lived in a yurt
The book I could write about that experience
Would drastically outsell any book this poem appears in

But what good would that do
Probably just uplift you
Or possibly even empower you
To be a smarter, happier, healthier you

A LESSON IN THE GENTLE ART OF LIVING

Obviously I'm alive! Should there be a state law banning relaxed pants? Stop worrying and start living! A good friend of mine recently reminded me of some advice I'd given her back in college:

"If a man were obliged to chronicle with brevity, the leading events of our terra incognita, I would advise him to reduce them to 'arrivals and departures.' As the door is never locked, the stream of visitors is incessant. Every man coming from 'the corners of the earth' drops in with a 'God save all here!' This is the Shibboleth of Ballycroy; the accredited letter of introduction, and, better for the traveller still, a full acquittance for meat, drink, and lodging."

We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following. Political rhetoric is hard enough to understand. Many folks are pure partisans, deeply associated with one party or another or one ideology. In one study 75% of women reported more satisfaction in their sex life after only three months of regular yoga practice.

If you haven't popped yet, don't worry! An assistant principal at King High School in Tampa was investigated for his practice of pulling on students' toes when their grades slipped. We sat down to dinner tête-à-tête, and although both myself and my kinsman made an exertion to banish unpleasant reminiscences, the evening was the most sombre that I had yet passed. The happy party who once tenanted our “merie home,” are never to meet again. The otter-killer “sleeps the sleep that knows no breaking”—the Colonel has retired to his winter quarters—the Priest’s confessions call him from us for a season—and some secret intelligence which reached the lodge over night, has caused Hennessey to disappear.

Even worse, he left behind a letter claiming he was a ghost so he wouldn't have to talk to me again:

"Dearest Mumkins, Mumphery, Ma, —

I got your post card the day after you went away, and I was awfully glad to get it. We went 'Upstairs' in school to-day, to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, and Mrs.—somebody—read aloud that little book about Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. She read it awfully well."

Nothing short of the landing of a French army, or a smuggler, could occasion such confusion. The chamber of state is invaded, rifles are uncased, shot exchanged for bullets, a basket with refreshments packed; all is hurry and preparation, and in an incalculably short time, we are ready for the fray, and in full march for the mountains. Shakespeare, or he is belied, was in his youth a deer fancier, and he would probably describe this busy scene by “loud alarum, exeunt omnes.”

The movie was a huge hit and if the spirits align, the show could become a smash in its own right. You smashed us, we smash you back!

This morning we have had an alliterative arrival—a piper, a pedlar, and a priest. Although I place them according to their order of approach, I need scarcely say, that the last, our respected friend, has given unexpected pleasure. For me, the visit is delightful, for I hope to obtain another lesson in the “gentle art.”

IN QUEST OF THE FIELD OF DIAMONDS


Despite my best efforts, I keep drifting toward meaning.
It takes effort not to take part in conspicuous leaning

In one rhetorical direction or another,
Taking care as well not to insult your cousin or your mother.

I want a yellow ball to fall from the April sky
And land near my feet, but not on them—I'd cry

If that happened—and break open, revealing a secret
That allows me to shake hands with an egret

Or egret monkey, which yeah, is a real thing I assure you.
I have no reason to tell lies that aren't true.

This reminds me of the time I went roaming
Through the ugly parts of Queens without a map or homing

Pigeon to guide me, just a regular one
Who was just as lost as I was. That was fun.

Later, I lost that day, if you can believe it.
No biggie. I have little motivation to retrieve it.

That's just the way it goes sometimes—
You lose a day now and then—but other times

You pick up a day you never knew you had.
Sometimes this is pleasant news, sometimes it's bad.

"Oh well, what are you gonna do?" you may say.
"What can I do in this life, besides call 'Mayday! Mayday!'"

I used to think about that myself, back when

To think was to act, and Mark laid down his life-torch to take off the big fur coat. The next instant he had toppled over, almost in a faint, and, had he not fallen so that his head was near the small perforated box on the end of the steel rod, whence came the life-giving gas, the lad might have died.
          He had forgotten, for the instant, the necessity of always keeping the torch close to his face to prevent the poisonous gases of the moon from overpowering him. Mark soon revived while lying on the ground, and, rising, with his torch in his hand, he looked about him.
          "I've got to have my two hands to work with," he mused, "and yet I've got to hold this torch close to my face. Say, a fellow ought to have three hands if he's going to visit the moon. What can I do?"

POEM

This is your home

Abuse it wisely

Forget everything you know about air-conditioning

Nature seeks an audience with

A variety of slogans

I can eat pussy with the best of them

A trap is set for you to dissolve

These days, these days are my true

Monitored slowly bruise

Motion denied

Flutters to the ground

Stripped of artifice, the lesser for it

Illusion is better than possible

Light slides in

Like water under the door

Symmetry through the ordeal

Lets off steam

You're everywhere

TO MY FOLLOWERS

I think you people are ridiculous.

I think you people are gorgeous.

I think you people are beyond hideous.

I think you people are flatly igneous.

I think you people belong in a zoo.

I think you people are people too!

I think you people drive a Trans Am—

Behind the wheel you people eat honey baked ham.

I think you people aren't "famous" as such.

I think you people aren't even Dutch.

I think you people pluck chipmunks from trees.

I think you people fuck hip monks with knees.

I think you people are getting out of hand.

I invite you to taste my ampersand:

&

Now that you people are duly tamed

I am free to minister to your newly maimed.

THE SOMETHING SOMETHING PRINCE


An atavistic sandwich sidled up to me
On the eve of my ascent to the English throne.
The timing struck me as suspicious.
I felt somewhat lackadaisical
For the rest of the day.

I decided to leave town.

To parachute from a plane
Into a desert named after a famous Baltimore Oriole
Seemed like an honest goal.

Lucky for me,
Eddie Murray himself talked me out of it.

These days I can be found with my pants down,
My philtrum waxed, my orbit declined, my strap-on
Buttered, my concerns addressed, my address
Concerned, my small arms trained
On my one true love—

May her file be forever up-to-date.

KEEP YOUR LADY CLOSE, KEEP YOUR SEA ANEMONE CLOSER


I want to meet other webmasters. I'm a webmaster.
I want to cry foul at ballgames
With my lady and my sea anemone by my side.
I have an itch three inches
Below my left buttock. Now I don't.

Before me is a wide amber plain
Upon which sits a truck.
Feathers cover it like gods
In a ham-tossing contest.

Attitudes surround me in the form of wives.
Galaxies sputter and spin,
Drinking relief in the form of milk.
Questions arise in one
Nebula after another. A dove cries.

People organize yard sales.

SHADOWS PUNCTUATE A SHAKING


Shadows punctuate a shaking
Glassy torment arrives through
The winter breathes notes
On swimming a jacked sky

Down a portable life now
Affirming condition as a key
In a game to see what stories survive
Of holding luck onto a ledge

Greening daily along a bridge
A last stop to look from under
Not moving or published sucking
Plus weather statistic reruns

Lying for the sake of setting free
An off day's shy electricity

Where were you when you learned that NaPoWriMo 2011 was five days old already? Were you reading that sentence I just typed right before this one? Maybe you were someplace else. In any event, now you know. Scroll down to read the poems I've written so far. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Thank you. Now, just for fun, here is a partial list of poetry books I'm currently enjoying and which you should seek out. Treat yourself, why don't you. You deserve it.

Hecate Lochia, Hoa Nguyen
long love poem with descriptive title, Matthew Savoca
Applies to Oranges, Maureen Thorson
Lights Out, Geoffrey Young
Virgil and the Mountain Cat, David Lau
It Is Daylight, Arda Collins
The Spoonlight Institute, Alan Bernheimer

4/3/11


Zigzagging the east thirties
to work up a burrito-
worthy appetite
Lexington and 37th
the first Manhattan
street I set foot
on as a tourist
eight or nine
years ago and it feels
the same
I tell myself and
almost believe it
oh well
so you lose something
being someplace a while
not a big deal
if what you get
in return is better
weather warm enough to read by
and the Empire State's
colors for tonight are
blue, blue, and blue

POEM FOR SOMEBODY, PROBABLY ME


So tell me, who handles your self-appraisals?
Did marking time become glamorous again
and forget to tell me? Might as well hum
"Moon River" to yourself as the sun sickens
all you see, your glass eye tricked
into bemoaning another decade mistaken
for a charming delicatessen. Just imagine the
waste products that go into those years.
I'm having trouble calculating
their effect on my snooze bar,
their bubbling entropy. A grass stain remedy
might go well here. Let's see if it's not
an all-out cure. Mowing the frown right off your face
is my chief objective. Misanthropy is
my middle name, my undefended goal.

POEM

These are our stars. I can't see any.

A glass of water. 3:34 AM.

Saying a lot, this letting go

helps to see you. I only

seek your approval at every turn.

I climb into your leaving,

and where am I now?

The water is cool, lacking nothing

I can name.

NOTHING BUT BLAND BEHIND THE CURTAIN


A bunker of saviors is kinsman to funny—
that's where equilibrium comes from.
Prick militias stencil drowned craves
through the night and catcall. But enough truths.
Rentals befit modern wrinkles as no fasts recorded
vent into occupied lethargy. A swindle will do
for good shooting. A no-haters guarantee
disease is only a walk blind people
shed fingerprints with. Glee like that can't be forged,
and so much for interruption luminously
doggy style, natch. Nachos? (Strictly fake.)

SLIGHTLY GROWN-UP AND ITCHY


Slightly grown-up and itchy these testimonies
are gathered, stopped drools smothered—

lax audience deemed unnecessary at this
olfactory miscarriage. Upended sketches evade

late gropes fashioned from postal slogans
the skyline took caress of, a bent dazzle had.

In the moron the platitude gave up.
Respecting that isn't hard. I'd cream

permissible retail, ministry airship belch
unavailable, so a smut try to fix on.

Well, Blogger is being a broke-ass piece of shit today, so I guess my poem for the day will have to wait until I get back to my own computer. Fuck you very much, Google.

Fuck you, Blogger. Let's try that again....