worksheets

draftcerpts

*

The throat of the wall holds

(fire of broken faucets) yea-when

tribal chants / gauge haven / oblique

stereosoph / sphere / thread / put a blindfold

on that handkerchief / stones riding a veil

across oceanfloors / while prodigies wrap

their mothers in clothelines (bird-tassels,

ambivalent oblong abdullahs)—

(title: Why I Am Such a Laughingstock)

confessions no one bothers to lipsync

anymore— / highwire execution of baggies

kill them baggies the crowd screams

watertower girders, magicmarker resin (sap)

it seeps from the stem of ash / nozzle

tracks seaweed / over-excited by fright wigs

first in our plus pale list / melting

I became / a tampon with no teeth / 

/
*
[title]

installed amid the kitchen

I cannot move from off
this coaster or stains from
babylon's measure will sink
the cup but if those distant
peaks would only remove
their turbans at once to show
how serene it is beneath
that predatory whiteness 
but is it ever as calm up there
as the mask I wear the mask

whose eyeholes or mouth
tend to scepter and sulk
like a sopped up elephant
so perhaps the moon's
sieve left those pockmarks on
the sea or else this is merely
more lackwork for amputated
jesters to scoff at don't ask
the mask split to the core
or the mask that inflicts
nothing on the face that
it has not already suffered
the daily ordeals the meals
amid the kitchenware stands
the muse that loves to leer
as I swivel my boffo butt
down in a shoeshine grotto

///