Tuesday, January 7, 2014

draft/worksheet [unfinished

*
What buoyed my steps in wine that evening
With curtains raining across the eyes
Their salmon insistence pallored all my closeups
Straightjacketed hallways backing out of the lens
What held me aloft and shining
Quivering like globs of earlobe jelly
Alarms for the lamps I was extinguishing
In a painful domestication of the dark
With the ink they made from Proust's urine
Which deigned to shed share with me though I shunned
That natural yoke till my fat shoulders broke
And my divingbell bedeviled by muses
That evening and every other whose-so-evening
What was it led me beyond those binoculars
Fathom heart in the smoke canals though nowhere
Nowhere do I get the planet bigbang as it were


///

Friday, January 3, 2014

drafts and roughs, worksheets [all unfinished

*
A thing-minted day
Fresh as it lay full leafed on the flesh
Threads of spittle drying on the deadbolt
Where is the confidant harlot enough to hear me
Whipsaw savored preserved
Barns full of sabbath
Straddlefuck swizzlefuck
Fishnet dalliances may at last pass repose but
Mermaids lowered down chimneys
Coughing
Morphcam transfer monoprint cluster
Are you assisting at
The postponement of my poem
Where I came to samesex myself
To cohabit with death

[
/
SON OF UNCLE SAM

From the trestle overpass I tossed
one of the chopped-off arms onto
a train heading for Miami and then
another limb upon a Chicago-bound

freight and so on until eventually all
of the sad parts were disposed of
in this manner, saving the head for last—
it went to L.A., they need heads

there, perhaps.  Dispersed around
the country each piece of the corpse
could never be accounted, my crime

would go unsung until such time as the U
S of A reunites to solve me, save me,
resurrect this never perfect body.

///



*
now where's the oar to steer
my window away from night
stonethrows patrol the site
its targets narrate what's near

which of us can pleasure spite
unique enough to seem regular
or angle all to get it right
airing each gasp on a coathanger

skilled anchor-priests will tow
ulterior rain in their uterine wall
but you-and-I's prodigies know
our genitals are relatively oral

cue-quiz the vatican's factwhore
scrape that mock off your back
phantom-orbed for destiny's cloak
someday you may haunt me more

/



/
THE NOTH

like a moth but not 
the noth flies
south to its ways
gift-wearing loneliness
moulting purities

handmedown my hand 
outerbound grown
from high yonderbye
noth wings are nothing
and nothing's why

each noth-nest is full 
of hungry cries
they speak for their beaks
and as they fly
they wave to their why

nights the noth migrates 
but days it returns
is it an insect or a bird
real or absurd
wish it was that straight

sometimes it swoops 
around my head
off-course who knows
where earthen it's been
so barren its share is

so child its sheer is 
here to ground
and air to polar
then back up to fare
a sortes of series

I wait for more 
expecting neglect
has found this foul
day to fall baffle
nightmare for soar

noth flight is right 
route or wrong
shot to the ground
unstrung by a song
it must shrug to sing




//
POEM

a necktie
negates me

and of course
the shirt's worse

the pants
I can't I just can't

why do my clothes
oppose me

every costume
is contumely

hats hate me
and socks mock

indubitably my shoes
abuse

each coat
has got me by the throat

belt belts me about
pockets lock me out

shorts or briefs
both thwarts and griefs

the buttons too they
unite in mutiny

it's Kill Bill 3
daily they attack me

my gloves shove me
my sweater swears vendetta

every thread
wants me dead

my slacks exact revenge
whenever I change

into them each item
claims me its victim

just getting dressed
is dangerous

must I go nude afraid
of couturicide

what roused my attire
to this ire

what made this rent
between me and raiment

what caused this split
with each outfit

this breach
with the britches and such

why does my ensemble
want to bomb me

the closet's declared war
on me the defector

where's our armistice
pale in its healing surplice

the tender toga
that would tug us together

cause once I used to care
donning debonair

the latest fashion
in a flash I'd lash on

my ass in an ascot
my heart in a headshot

undoubtedly some labor
went into nabbing my clobber

acquiring my sport-dress
was not effortless

it took a lot of brute
pursuit to root out the right suit

for an occasion where
duds were de rigueur

the cost was not
inconspicuous oh what

caused this rift
with my shift

what made our aim
less uniform

was I ever arm in arm bent
with any garment

was I ever in synch-op
with my tanktop 

complain complain nag nag
least you got a rag

on your back my skeleton
pipes up lookame none

he's right what right
have I got to feel spite but

I never meant no
harm to them why

have they gone so
Tarantino 

on me 
when it could be

otherwise we could be lovers
but no all my clothing

is filled with loathing
for what it covers



/
/when we could be

so good together


/

POEM

The pianist’s wrists
are encircled by flames;
she forgot to take off
these blazing bracelets
before playing or was
her handvalet detained
by the concert crowds
who here push forward
in their ripest seats to see
this arsonist jewelry;
upon each virtuoso paw
a flakwork gold watch
shows the time is now,
the music's burning.


/// 

Monday, December 30, 2013

one up

one of the things about the sonnet that has interested me over the years I've been writing is that

it allows a kind of freedom which other forms perhaps don't—

in writing the octave, one is in a position of the normal poet writing the normative poem, i.e. a kneeling obsequious beggar, pleading with the reader, trying to please the reader, groveling our hearts out to smooth ease their way into and through the first eight lines—

but then with the sestet, the poet can abandon that humble act, and can in effect say to the reader, fuck you, did you think that I was going to cater to you all the way through, to kowtow to you for the entire 14 lines?  Ha!—here in the sestet I can do as I will, and you're powerless to prevent me—

I know you mopes won't stop reading no matter what outrage I play here in MY six lines—

Whereas the non-sonneteer writing the average poem must try to please the reader for its entire length, especially with verses longer than 20 lines or so, fearful that s/he the reader can stop reading at any point especially if they glance ahead and see that your piece is going to go on for another page or two—

But with the sonnet, really, I think, most readers who make it through the octave will at least start on the sestet and once moiled in its sticky six-essence will probably say to themselves well what the hell it's only 3 or 4 more lines I might as well finish the fucking thing—

they'll read your bloody sonnet all the way through in spite of,  despite whatever tricks and joicks in haps of tic-wreck shroudburst you've thrown in to satisfy your own arbitrary selfish whims,

the sestet crowns you Coriolanus Caligua again.

There is where you get to twist the nose of that snotty sonnet-reader.

///

Saturday, December 28, 2013

drafts, roughs, worksheets [unfinished

/
only his heel is human
the rest of him is a god
every stalwart sinew steelshod
nothing's mortal but this heelblood
[
when we run our tongue
in through the boot-thong
longing to fellate
that fatal flesh, to
taste the meal of that heel,
the mortal meat beneath
his shinbone, the only
tender tendon in
his body's bold/bloody squadron,
the only nonweapon
part of him—the heel
his mom held him by
when she annealed
the rest of him in steel—
if only the heel is human
foot fetishists feast
on these Achilles kisses
[not usually known as
the unhardest part of the body,
but in his case [alone], it is
[uniquely] vulnerable—
welded together by anklebones
the penile stele of heel is here
the most fragile member of
[
 [that arch/fist/fiche/stele of flesh]
[heel/stele [
[that steeliest stele of flesh]
 [
if only the heart were too/also/similarly
vulnernable to love's [adverb] speartips
[
your hero needs no armor if
his Manolo Blahnik's stiffed/quiffed/bulwarked
enough to rebuff our lips
[
/his manolo-toed sandal's tough
enough to rebuff our lips
[
tongue rhymes with boot-thong
/greave-guard /  shinguard's /anklet
ankleboot/ tongued/ shin-tongued/
bootlet / bodkine / botkin 
impervious to spears and swordtips
/not immune to spears and swordtips
prey to love's spears and swordtips


*
/
a leaf fell and cupped your ear
attentive to your silence it whispered
the usual urgings/reasons to commit suicide

profusely clinging to the drowned self
can you admit/adjudicate how fugitively
the jigsaw solved by a missing piece

the poem completed by its lost line
how this indecisiveness is too binary
too eager to choose the one or the anon

a key-ring that sets fire to the sun
a wayfarer housed in wide open rags
an icicle locking into its cloak of claw

halo-effects perhaps but say [surround newcomers
an entering gueststar knocks first
and the cannibal's head up your ass

and the caveman's noggin gnawing
its way down your esophagus
may meet someday in the middle

of this hunger that devours us
endlessly via all orifices and organs
that strike time's tympani with

the thin notes of requiem [a voice in chains
Basho kicking a pine-tree for advice
cruelly they woke their sex up on me

chessboard on which shirtstripes flicker
feasting with pajama-trouser-flies
how many shark miles in your pheromones

abducted by life prisoner of a leaf
the pleats of my pantsuit climb squeaking skylines
[what prank to give my chair a hotfoot

the lovers show no mercy to the backed-up rat
[

/
*
a fairy tale painted yes by tininess
I furbish a lonely room of welcome
where no partake rises to bosom me
and homonyms trample my tongue
because I came to samesex myself
or I went to cohabit with death
to dine on means animal in nature
to greet filmstars in my gaunt lieu
[
assisting at the postponement of my poem

/
The days have dyed me naked enough
to hide behind: no scar alleviates
this boring surface.

I must stuff the ears of vanishing-acts
to stop the blind applause
from desiring more.  My glass

slippers left gashes in the floor,
grievous pits your ponytail longed
to bathe in.  We mourn your mere

whose petty life is timeless,
wrought from the moment.  Tired of its
exigent ways to wander onward,

down the avenues in a traipse of glory.
I build labyrinths for lip-readers
to run through, sprinting

[to pester day's girders, glide
to the cactus rodeo where nobody
can ride our spike-hiked hide.
]

/
*
the name stenciled on
your frankenstein kit is mine
but its letters distribute so
are they caught in the spread
of points on a betting card
yet causality you declare fervid
is the sole vocation the lone rune
by which gods can dispute their senses
so that no later than someday we
will believe in our superstitious
existence as names on dotted lines
clot up and thicken into a polyglot
ingot and yet all the gold in Fort
Knott cannot further bear or
absolve me from this longshot
/

the usual nostrums
the day to day recipes
trace sardonicisms on glass
pour seashell stones on the clown

///