Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Rosary For 2000 and Nine

I don’t pray
I smoke cigarettes
Delicate white keys
That hang elegantly between my medicated lips
Silently unlocking intuitions
From opaque tombs
Where they were buried alive
Centuries ago or last week
Reanimated corpses of my true feelings
About this, the Queen city
And myself
The vibes I’m giving off
While loitering by the Kitchen entrance
Fuming with grey-green hallucinogenic visions
Caused by five minutes alone with my freezing sweat
And snowy ankles
Hypodermic bullet to the tension epicenter
All up in flames and nicotine
Remembering “I AM ALIVE”
Forgetting that I am mortal

I don’t pray
I write letters to my friend
And I speak at dizzying length
About mice upon mice
And the ghost of a mouse
Whom I called “Little Brown”
Who was darkly murdered
In a shocking accident
And the varying interpretations on
What is considered “humane”
I also write my friend about
How I think spanking is not only sensual
But ingenious
Guessing it might come down to personal preference
I am ecstatic that we share this proclivity
Name Brother and a cool customer
I duly note his ghostly eyes
Go on to illustrate a dream
Close with my lipstick
And hot breath from a one-hit.

I don’t pray
I read the horoscopes
The moon’s in Gemini
From the Universal jewel-box
Some necklace all of planets
Tangles to arrange us
And I become my own twin
Each sibling plots to murder the other
And I hope at least one of them succeeds
In this Spy Vs. Spy scenario
Playing out in my subconscious
There is a well-dressed cartoon madness
That is smeared like honey
On my brains
Where dreams gently bite my neck
With Manitoban tenderness
Teaching me about the seasons
Needing more than one wing to fly,
But less than two:
Everything is rigged all right
Still I persist in gambling

I don’t pray
I cut my hair
A symbol of my spiritual release
From the memories of the old style
Polluted by corrupted wire-hanger instruments
That tried to force me open
Slipping credit cards
Into latched up doorway 5 feet and 5 inches tall
Intruder my intruder
With ugly pathological lies
+ maliscious hopes for what becomes of me
I don’t quit, cause I hate to quit
Slipping your deformed right hand
Into something far too dangerous
Attempting to reach and subsequently
Restrain what is wild
Like the horses on the island
My freedom is wordless
Unexplained, without an argument
There are no handles for me
No coded entry
There is just no way to chain
My mammalian soul

I don’t pray
I wear a white sweater
Half-naked like some refugee
In quilted blanket of smoke
Draped in 3,000 thread count silk intentions
Memories all frayed around the edges
And the temple buzz from THC
The hum of pink blood
As it fills my face until
I’m pulsing smiles of mute desire
Left so desperately unfulfilled
Forgetting is not a choice
Or disappointment would somehow cage me
All in cheap metallic bird-cage bars
This attempt
With odes of love muttered out
Like vague threats
Empty of affection
Lacking any consequence
No changes in my flesh or pace
But I am nearing my perfection
Eliminating recollections this bad run
And the details are exposed
Like flesh torn off from frostbite
To reveal a dazzling red

I don’t pray
I dance
On the bar-room floor and under
Dimly sparkling paintings and Irish flags
And all the fragments I’ve forced out
Assemble from the best and cleanest
Corners of myself
And my scientific hands sweep over
The wrecks of former prototypes
Magnetizing what is worthy to remain
Discarding all the left-over unhealthiness
Post-traumatic-stress medallions burned
With maximum sterility
And I am born again
Ice and winter under my feet and there is a Reggae hymnal
Across the street the Church bells
Inside the folded napkins
I become my best-self’s hologram
In a fortified transition
Over into worthiness
No one can tame me
Or my New Year

I don’t pray
I love my family
In a hangover shared
Sister and I take the reins
A snowy walk through past rivalry
Yields only Freudian metaphor
That to us does not make sense
Though we carefully guard our personal complexes
As well as shared regrets
For what I’ve put us through
High school trials and rumors vanquished
My gallantry
Big eyed beauty
Forever to be my pride’s most renewable resource
Like the forests and creeks
Of our natural youth
In prairie wilderness
When we finally share the spot-light
My finger demonstrates just where
To go
And tie and yellow ribbon around it.

Friday, December 18, 2009

the ultimate impotence of "c"

Paint marker murder blood
and all that is beautiful I have stolen
and made myself
Of composite parts
To be gathered with persistence
even in the winter
and I lay down plates
of both vinyl and ceramic
and if you were a scale model
Which would be your material?

Mouth full of mandarin tongue
And breath laden with a citrus health
That yields not to cigarettes
Or copious amounts of pot
With the pulp in my mouth
To be spit out
At some later
More inappropriate moment
While I am wreaking of turpentine
Beside the table cloth
And intending to nuke

All silence and patchouli
I slink home again
While the crescent of the moment hangs on some incongruous
Eyelid
I note the fort-night’s passing
Without celebration
But with an excess of confetti
I see the evidence of my traversing
Room to room
Marked on the faces
Of those who play
“A game for young gentlemen”

I awake from another drunk to find I regret nothing
But the fact that I can’t find
The one hitter box
In my apartment
Made entirely of camouflage both winter
And forest- GREEN
There are handprints
I can sit on
For the next few hours that will relay to me
The sparkle and crack of memories
laid on an open fire
as I camp on diagonal slopes
Prepared to watch you take the fall of lifetimes
Thrice to roll

Twenty times to die

A sailor with your arms full of
“Time” magazine war-bride
All the clickety-clack of the 1920’s hides between
Your drugstore teeth
and in the pin curls of our hidden lusts
Straight up and down
I just want
To long-board backwards from what has cumulatively amounted
To madness
And the hands of Nigerians
Disembodied, bleeding rainbows
The birds of true love
yakking back
From the small trees in front of the rehab centre
(under construction)

I don’t kill tigers with my sling shot
Only maim them
And heavy fur and muscle
On the waifish flanks of mine
Is burden sweet enough
And I DRAG them
To my secluded game of house
Where coconut is thick in the air
And I linger with the eyes
Of a mournful child star
Just within the door frame
And pray to Jah…

With my face kissing the gray storey curves
Oh the anabaptized clouds
I forget the prairies
And all else that encumbers me
And with brutal hands I try and throw
The beast away
But I
Can
not.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Haiku on the Prairie School

I.
Wind rattling trees
hasn’t ever felt so warm
than now, here inside.

II.
For six weeks each year
Midwestern trees protest man’s
want of privacy.

III.
Spirit of today,
wrapped up like small wooden gifts,
opens without sound.

IV.
Does nature appear
more beautiful sitting down
behind a window?

V.
Hill Paradox: a
stare directly at one side
reveals the other.

VI.
Does nature appear
more beautiful sitting down
behind a window?


VII.
The beaver does not
think, it builds cyclopean
mounds with its mean mouth.

VIII.
This sea is endless:
gold waves with brown swells ask the
horizon “what now?”

On Brutalism: A Bedtime Story

A body sits, exposing the corner
of a bone colored mattress.
The outline of a man discards
a damp down comforter. Noting,
as it flops loosely to the floor,
how easily weight could be
hidden beneath its subtlety.

“I wasn’t always this
stern with the others.”

A thin cast iron bed frame projects
a careful shadow on a body
concealed in rose-pink sheets.
It shrugs a leg, revealing raw
scrapes from a safety razor blade.

“They listened….”

The shape of a girl clutches
a wet pillow to its chest. It
has been consuming the dolor
and cheap make up of a child
being taught to carry itself
like an adult.

“They didn’t talk back.”

The man stands, closes
in to kiss its forehead
then stops to watch his
shadow cast over it.
He notes the white of
its eyes slowly churn
the color of concrete
as his back lurches
a shiver toward the
door. He rubs his
hands on his pants
then on themselves.
His gorged lips
derail then
wrestle
a smile

“Don’t forget to
wash up before bed.”

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Vingettes On Direction

I remember the night we met,
You just got back from Pittsburgh
You were a cosigner of the notorious agreement
That would bind us forever, in a pond full of discarded tire swings
Treading water, we broke the surface
Bashing like the best
Dirty mana all like liquid stained glass
In the sunset of that night
You told me you might see me again
In September’s numbered days
Bindi blazin’ like a mood ring
I went to catch a plane
In my butterfly net

You were worried about me
So you gave me sordid means to protect myself
A pink-transparent automatic rifle
Legal Weapon
In the age of Aquarius
I have it holstered to my every facet
In a leather antique strap
Count to eight and waiting
For the second round
Not enough arms for all the ammunition
But a heart full of storage space
Some wooden crates with your name
In my left ventricle

Portrait of Le Petit Prince
As a young adult
Regina is a tiny planet
You planted flowers on,
And I watch you draw all my secret desires
A trick you picked up from someone
When you were little
My body would encase every perfect little lamb
You made me desire you

I became your sidekick on a part-time basis
But sharp-shootin’ wrists hung limp
While I stood by mute
The silence of a ultra-violent admiration
You commanded everything
To back up
A velvet rope signifying arm’s length
For us to stand behind
Some inside jokes and Private Eyes
Playing on my little red turntable
Shot-glass with a matching fire-truck
And Minnesota vodka, healing aneurysm deaths
Pre-emptive sarsaparilla, for Butch Cassidy
And his Sundance Kid


The moon radiates united
With industrial park lights
And although we hide, our hearts are swelling
Ready to burst with night-passions
Adorned with the jewelry of the silver anodyne
Our lycanthropy is kept at socially acceptable volumes
And we still howl sometimes
But it is softly, and in each others ears
Our mutual cave of Echo
Conveniently located between our faces
I get lost in your beard,
And all it’s beautiful possibilities
While you try to imagine
Where all my silver hair will be

You are Cary Grant
In a Mexican wrestling mask,
And I am a gypsy in pleated pants
A little female vagabond succumb to the
Ebb and flow of magic and the lunar cycle
You stooped to see my possibility
And this was our Holy Almost

Memories left incomplete
A history in a shoe box, a shoe box sent to sea
Drift west young man,
And make a newspaper sailor hat
In my absence
And I will honor you with theft
My hand to caress
A voodoo doll you gave me
Of yourself
Each day I reverse it’s spell
And kiss it’s hands
And trace it’s tattoos with my finger-tips
I’ll see you again soon
The next eclipse.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Sleeping as a Series of Shapes

Woke up frequently together
with your brother you talked
about familial responsibility.
Two blue shirts from Alaska
creased underneath the weight
of a couple more hours
of sleep.

Drank blood for the first time.
It tasted like cola, it
dribbled down your cheek.
A French ship picked up a sailor
in sixteen-fifty-three.

Eight A.M
or something. Construction
work never ends apparently.
Goose flesh precedes the
the skinny dip taken. Cold
tonight, it’s late. A haze
seen from a distance an its
eventual sweep curtains
across the bay in heavy
breaths. Yard lights,
crickets, frog and
squirrel noises.

What will the future be like
fifty years from this moment?

Space tourism, satellite cafes, x-ray
glasses and crystal power harnessed.


Wonder if your sister has ever
thought about having kids?

Three altogether: two girls
and a boy for balance.


How did anyone ever settle and
inhabit what is known as the “Arctic?”

Men thought it a challenge,
no other reason was needed.


What do you know that is
not fantastical but true?

Time whistles
like a vacuum

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Supe O' the Deigh

I cut my fingers on the cheese grater of logic
And strawberry jam creeps down the drain
As holes like little correlating scales prompt me
To call in the final favor owed to me by Aqua Man
My open palms reaching out through slimy sewers,
And into adolescent streams
Finally cupping the breasts of Mother Ocean
I beseech her on her daughter’s wedding day
For a flashflood to come across the prairies
Saline revenge against the poisoned ivy and the stinging nettles
Benten gave me a one-eyed gambler’s luck
And I know my song-request will be granted
Before I’ve even fastened my patent leather shoes

I truck over yonder
Spinning out of control, rolling forward
At an unreasonable wine-drunk pace
So
With one fluid motion, I tear the training wheels off
And simultaneously open twin wounds
In my slender sides
That gush the gradated color of rust
Spilling tones of orange and brown across the asphalt
With metallic flecks of pink spraying outwards
Like sparks from a welders torch
I am a blinding spectacle

Now and forever
An open book of disquiet*
A non-sequential autobiography
Written in a cryptic language
One that we all speak, but seldom stoop to understand
I hang my head in exhaustion
Noticing the slit of beauty in my navel
I decide to travel there
A temporary trail a la Hansel and Gretel
Will take me to a candied destiny
And a bodily inferno
Who knows when I'll come back?
There will be no answers
In the back of the oven.

My co-worker says:
“You look like a cross between a French tart, the Wicked Witch of the West, and a gypsy.”
I welcome his enthusiasm
And he gives me cues to smile for the rest of the day
I glance nervously over my shoulder at him
And breathily mouthing “line”
He rolls his eyes
As if we were playing dice
I catch them as they crackle back from against the glass doors
And see that it is time for me to curtsy backwards
Away from dirty tables, and sexual innuendo
Pleated black pants
Flapping in the breeze, I skulk away
Knowing that for now I am saved

Monday, September 7, 2009

Friendliness Depends

The Owl of Athena is so kind to me
And ours is a friendship born of a single cell
Inside the fortress skull of Zeus
Where we ran our nails down chalkboards
And had loud, drunken conversations
Relenting only when we became deities
And merciless warriors

We allowed for there to be a reprieve
In the cosmic headache
Using the front door
To make our exit
You were giving salutes like a soldier,
I was shaking my sugartits berserker

I am ruled by Mars (submissive)
With a moon in Scorpio (dominant)
And with war-paint on I saunter through the streets
Loyal to a an ever-shifting code
Dictated by last night’s half-forgotten dreams
The Grimm moral half-obscured
By the sort-of memory of gnashing fox teeth
And the feeling of having eaten bricks

A cheerful rose colored flame in a moth’s metropolis
I press my diamond soles down against the pavement
Which yields to me like a magic carpet
And I rise and fall like a rootless ghost
Sweeping the side-walks clean
Cigarette butts and delicate grasses
Dancing around my pure white ankles
I hope to jump the curb
“Don’t find no opportunity”
I make my way inside a city park
To recline beside the totem pole
And get lost playing “He loves me, He loves me not…”
With the feathers of a Ojibwa headdress

And a little red dust goes a long way
When
Making brotherly overtures
With my fine feathered friend
I donate half my sandwich and a mickey of gin
To the cause of keeping living
Like the unicorns linger too long
In the designated smoking area
To miss the Arc,
Yet remain ahead of the curve
In the Animal Kingdom
We swap each other’s secret shames
And for just one day, I lose my keys
In the rain and the silhouettes of pigeons
I know that I can count at least one person of the opposite sex
As trustworthy

A sojourn in Saskatchewan
A fleshy sea of helpful pilgrims
Who offer up gifts of ice and leather
And we participate in the jungle rites together
Our animal intuitions throbbing as one
As the cocaine jaguars of the workplace
Watch us dance with clenching poisonous intentions
And we are courteous to them
Bowing our matching smile-shaped head wounds
Although the fear is in my stomach
And your back is up against the blood red walls
You could cut the air with a switchblade comb
And we try
Like hell, we try

I am Sylvio “Plymouth Sundance” Jones
You are Esteban Garcia De La Boltaz
And we slip through greasy daytimes
With righteous curves, and sleepy eyes
With chalk to exploit on pavement
All others are forsaken before us
The masses are obedient to our commands
Which we are fond of writing on public surfaces
Running our hands over everything
This Kingdom is anything we want
We are crowned with dandelions

We own all that we touch
A kleptomaniac’s advice on living thrifty
I have debts no honest woman could repay*
A peasant’s stolen treasures
Compulsive souvenirs of everyone I’ve known
A book on surrealism, and one about artists, a nesting doll
Some Vietnamese cobra-wine
A page from a school-book you wrote my name all over
I put these thefts out of my head
While we share four X’s for eyes
Drinking from a bottle with five

Rip Torn
We consult the map spread across my apartment floor
I keep telling you we should wing it
But you remind me
What it means to always be prepared
With a firm hand on my shoulder
And a loose grip on your lighter
You tell me to “take it away”

Friday, August 14, 2009

A hundred and five degrees in the shade

It's a hundred and five degrees in the shade
and I am at work questioning the rarity
of the metric size 9.

Frozen dinner promised a brownie
but delivered only brown goo with
four misplaced green bean pieces at the bottom.

I ate one.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Heat

"Fever broke,"
pronounced the forest
from beyond concrete
and brick work
glass juxtaposed
to plastic.

The beads
trembling
over
the sparse hair
betwixt
the space
beneath
an eyebrow.

Paw at
it, Cacophony
of Silence. You are
unlike sensible
decisions: a process
that will not reap
proper
results.


O’ again,
what has been done
without consequence?

(The hue of the dress
worn at the first dance
of your young
adulthood.
It was nice,
wasn’t it?)


The Revenant, now
out the garden,
sways a rhythm
of a beat
unnoticed.

A Who
that goes
there in
absence
of friendship,

bumping
along
to the unsaid,
things
Not-Done.

Consider this
a resignation,
A promise broke
in lieu of something
that was once
never again.

An
obsession
acknowledges happiness
until the sweat drips
in the folded crease
of a map unfolded.

The math-inky (?) motion
of the “could” tran
scribed to the “did.”

Cartography,
reminiscent of the borders
depicted, makes for
lousy acquaintance
when met
months after
the expedition....


I guess what
is trying to
be said
is

"Lover, I’m sorry,
I remain unchanged,
floundering
forever.



Rebuttal:

Well it gets
less poetic
as the night drips
on its axis,
distinct in
that one has
gone back on
a promise.

Think architecture,
a hoop of laughter
beneath a belly
churning doubt.
The taller the
building, the
demand for
masonry
melts.

"Atop, a leap
sirens confusedly,"
beckons the Presence
or results,
after all,

you are
a catch,
don’t sell
yourself
yet.

(Sweat
befalls the Specter whose
jaunts
up north seem circumspect.
Toppled
surroundings deemed
comfortable
relinquish time traveled.)


Re
re
dundant.
We're aware
of the roads
traveled.
May we develop
our own course,

sweet pea?

And if I lied,
would savoring
the aftermath,
the nothing,
drip as sweet
beneath con
crete

cisterns
reduce to
non-things?

Friday, July 24, 2009

'The Process' excerpt

"...We are, all of us, here today and everyday, in an extreme situation- between birth and death don't you agree? Is there some still more extreme situation in which we can imagine ourselves? Yes; the extreme situation of leaving here willingly; do you follow me? Can you follow me if we go?... I don't mean just silly old death either; I mean sneaking past him. Oh, I dont mean necessarily bodily but maybe so; maybe even physically; maybe as if we were just thinking crystals in some other state, imagine. Well its alot less thinkable since space, isnt it?
'There is no Place in Space!' No hope of heaven or home out there, either, but, maybe, a hope of my I being You everywhere, do you see? Otherwise a rather grim prospect for us space creatures, isnt it; caught like astronauts dependant on their bodies"
-Brion Gysin in The Process (286, Tusk Ivory)

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Are you On the Farm?- Des Lyxia's first cut

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?z2enhjjdmjx

oh yeah, we're on myspace too

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Perks of Companionship

My girlfriends tell me monogamy
          is the true life to lead

but I’ve seen the never made
          and sweat stained bed

sheets of my single friends who
          live their lives like a

fire bombing: frantic, consuming,
          irresponsible and

injurious to societal well-being.
          While the wind blows

their destruction to other cities, I
          look at them admiringly

and romanticize the want of a stranger
          bed. One that does

not bend beneath a nine to five
          husband (like mine)

whose love has grown soft in the
          wake of two children: a

daughter and son. At night when
          the trees brush about

and stab at the window sills,
          I often wish I were

born an Aries to declare war on
          mankind. Imagine,

vaginal corridors that sweep men,
          like dust, under

the frills of thick shag rugs.
          Instead of a welcome

mat, kempt and nubile, mine will
          be thick and rapt in tangles

that warn of terror. Uncertain threads
          would mimic the bob and

weave of a single soldier haplessly
          navigating the expanse

of an estranged mine field but then,
          then the men would

never let me sleep and I wouldn’t be
          getting emotionally

paid for those kind of lays. I suppose
          they’re right, my

girlfriends. I’m happy to be married
          to an over-worked

man whose deep, snore-heavy sleep
          means never having

to fake an orgasm

Things We Know both Fantastical and True

While delivering sweat
we’ve considered leaning
more on the left,
less on the right
then the horse
gets only so wet

We’ve thought about the horse.
We’ve thought about it
like this.

A larger friend.
An equality beast.
Home equity loans,
do they apply to beasts?

We know certain things are true
Fact: Cancer devours animals
Fact: Animals have tails
Fact: Tails are not made of bone
Fact: Bones go in both directions

This is what we know,
this is what we’ve thought.
This is how to have it
if having is a construct.

Fantasy, like a new pair of jeans
Or walking in the rain: feels so
good at times, hard to imagine
it isn’t at all a dream.

While delivering fact
we’ve considered leaning
more on the left
less on the right
then the speaker
gets straight to the point.

We’ve thought about the truth.
We’ve thought about it
like this.

A humble friend,
an apt reality.
Forging horse shoes,
does that constitute as truth?

We know certain things bear burdens
Horse: Words tend to matter
Horse: Matter constitutes weight
Horse: Weight produces pressure
Horse: Pressure is just a word

This is what we know,
this is what we’ve thought.
This is how to read it
if reading is a product.

Fantasy, like a new pair of reins
taut in gallop around a lake: feels so
natural sometimes, hard to imagine
they don’t buckle under our weight.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

cracked pipes

imprints of Mexican children circumnavigate your curves;
the lady like bootlegger mudflaps covered the cracks
and saw all the pipes heating up till they busted
haiku's not written yet were already learned from an early age
You stepped from this world into a garden and the garden is You.
planted in sawdust and watered by cowboy spit-
at least you got off and out of the pot
Yage screenprints the mind in tide-dyes of ultraviolet
or was it infrared? I can never remember which is denser
or which caused the riot.
a priestess still taking confessions of remorse
Why, B. Did he do it?
broken toilet bowls spell out Y E S like alphabet soup once purged into its crevasses
porcelain dolls with cracked heads never made it that long anyways.
I stepped into the Garden and it was You.

Rose Street, Regina SK?

sought my twin in you
with incestuous purpose
now I lay me down

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Juggler

And there she sits,
Cinnamon-Cigarette twist lips
Elbow propped on a switch hip
Made of aluminum siding,
Where the aces are slipped
And a Vodka/Lemonade made lisp,
That drips

Off a tongue so young and so fine
Some angel divine, drinking whole boxes of wine
At a time

All her energy poured out
Like spilt milk
Not enough white tears to cry
Not enough ruined silk
It’s not enough to ask WHY
It’s not enough to show ILL
Shooting always to kill
Put your hands in the sky…

I do it for love,
And lay-down days of Vics Vapo Rub
To push with my eyes
When you’re too far off to shove
Beating back tears with a pool cue
Trying now to bewitch you
With my lies, with my thighs
And the way I preach Voodoo
But en lieu
She smokes crack out-back
And then tries to step to you

Here’s what cracks
Conscience when down in the sheets
On my back
All those bar-stools built flimsy
The wrought-iron they lack
This last minute attack
Of memories ground fine
As a white-dust gold mine
Of sodomy, a temporary full-frontal lobotomy
What was Theirs, what is mine
Hair-dryer left behind
Parking fines

Left unpaid
‘Til the last minute
When credit is due
The purple hue of an aura, out-shone by a few
Outdoing many,
And many more to out-do
Look at you
All gone-gone-gone so fine-fine-fine
I still have my name
And we’ll meet in due time.

Cartography: A Proof

I’ve seen the tongues of
rooftops splayed out like
maps charting the great
North American fresh-
water seas. From the
glimmering wings of
recycled trash, the once
mobile concrete appeared
to be eroding, as if it
longed for a ride on
the tarnished barges
shipping timber out east.

But from the top levels
of the City’s old schools
with the deep limestone
roots, the floors smell of
unsettled dirt and the
windows can’t be seen
through: the sooty
smudges of hand prints
disguise the city a
forest with rolling hills.

Hidden between intersecting
valleys, the sidewalks breathe
the damp air of fallen down,
hallowed out logs as they are
trampled upon by animals.
Blocks with broken windows
frame the avenues of birch
bark one-ways as the white
turns a dull, muddy brown
escaping beauty with age.

Now the smudges have come
alive, every color, every shape
reflect the cityscape a wilderness
of hate and difference and race.
It was in the schools these
traits were institutionalized and
went unchecked under monikers
of “higher education.” The English
language as precedent over the
dialect of foreign-born speakers.
Children separated if unable to
pronounce vowels, told they
were hopeless and left to
learn by themselves.

But up here, the past blurs
and neighborhoods abrogate
to nature, hills, and space.
The present shies away beyond
the dense ore canopy. The future
laughs what cerulean must sound
like to the lofty breeze

“Ahee Ahee ahee”
Over the lakes
“Ahee ahee ahee”
Over everything

This eventual echo of humanity
hooting: a nerve gas of laughter.
On top of the roofs I can see
the smiles on generations of
offspring slowly melt on the
hot tar of realization. The
colors of their peers have
always been poignantly
mirrored back at them

Did they know how
education would
prep them?

These children taught
cartography by teachers
drawing gridlines onto
human compositions?

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Letter To Penthouse

The half-finnished beer
Blossoms with green glass
Like the breath of someone
Leaning in to tell an obnoxious story
Just close enough to your neck
So that the more ardent syllables
Find purchase on a lonely skin
That only prison tatoos
Can know the meaning of

"I like warrior women,"
You point out, while we watch
Nouveau Riche Sci-Fi
On the piracy purple screen
Made up all of silhouettes and static

You said that aloud, asthough
I'll take my que from such a statement

As if the man's supposed to give a fuck

I can not consumate
Your subsonscious desire to be dominated
When you've made it clear to me you have a
"Type"
I'm bored of this and of the rest

No matter where I hide
The Parkland or the Northern Lights
There is still coke in the bathrooms
Like neat piles of dry-wall slowly crumbling
And blocking up the shortwave
Nose to brain
Turning voices loud and obtrusive
Soundbites flooding in, over-capacity
The echoing drip from inner stalactites
The infection that lingers on my more private arm
The weather, coming in spells

I have had enough, and dramatically
Have torn the looseleaf free and begin:

"Dear Penthouse;
Two girls take me out to a secluded acreage..."
Leaving out the alpine smell
And the intoxicating sweat that a female delivers
Jumping on a trampoline, the way that nylon
Pulled taught
Is just like any other muscle of the body
The restless horses next door
And pitcher of spiked lemonade
The laundry left
Undone.

3 A.M and Space

Obscenity is a pair of knees
Hitting the grass so hard that Chlorophyll
Spills like dental blood
And OH!
Oh, I’ve felt this way before
The nocturnal beasts bathe
In what we must have been
: alone and like a fever
Blanket. Not much about
Warmth no more
Rather about the weight
The feeling of half a human
No, a fraction of a being
On your chest
Heavy
Distracting

People strength
Soothes like nothing
You’ve felt before.

Who-Ha
Who-Ray

Come to have thought
It-- Daryl Hall
Has a fantastic voice


On that note, One (you) should consider the work Hall did in the seventies as something magnificent. His voice alone, as aforementioned, is unbelievable. War Babies (a classic), the Silver Album (b-side is amazing), Sacred Songs (see. Babs and Babs), and even Private Eyes. Pharmaceutically digress and crave just one more cigarette


We’re having fun now
Trust me,
Just come on in
For the sake of a poem
Or words on a page
Just hold my hand
Forget about hands
Having more fun
Than sex
Just think
If this wasn’t happening
Would you feel you exist?

We’ll try to be subtle
Then
And use larger words
With less abstractions...

Whistling Dixie

(Long ago, when humans were new
To Earth’s expanse, one Leopard,
Bestowed with power, served
Accordingly as prophet and imposter
)

Let the Leopard of Honor speak
Loosely. But not too free for
Long spells of quiet know how to
Last and lean on their effects.

LoH: Who-Ha
           Who-Ray
           Kitchen’s in the bath-
           Room toilet in the sink

They say mallards pick partners
The same way people choose
To mate: lying down, for all
Time and monogamous.

LoH: Water’s on the stovetop
           Evaporating without heat

Basically, you have to bend
Backwards if you want to
Be seen. Tell that to your Honor.
Black spotted, four footed and neat.

LoH: Prince thought he’d
           Never be a humanist

After the drakes swam collectively
Away, the hens discussed politics.
Along the shore their children
Aspired to fly without wings.

LoH: He wasn’t until
           After Egypt

Lying abound the Leopard answered
The aristocratic birds with a riddle:
Being honorable, she ate the babies first,
Admitted boredom then fed on the men.

LoH: Who-Ha
           Who-Hay
           What will come
           to the artist
           locked
           in the
           page?

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Jughead + Delphi = Forever

My radiant face is the sunny facade
Of the Adult Video and Book Shoppe,
Your capable hand clasped around my one long freckled arm
You've been here before
You are familiar with the heaviness of the door
That leads inside
I note that you're
Using just enough force to ease me open
Without unwarranted attention
From the sullen clerk
Careful not to
Pique the horsey shyness of the clientel.



A girl who drew down on herself the displeasure of the heavens

Have mercy!
I'm just a dumb beast in the spring time
With the dull animal rememberance of sex

Exhaling floral hormonal sighssighssighs

And blushing petals stick in your hair
Drifting yonder
To infect all around me
Awakening similar lusts
Exhuding an aura
Of pink harmlessness
Restrained only barely
By a famous blue raincoat
A Rose called Carnation
In my teeth

A May-time fire in my veins called MN
Raising welts in the fabric of my innermost
Guts
Flying always South
In dusty rural daydreams, lately
My fingers are velveteen field mice
I'm up to the elbow in the splendid icing
Of a wedding cake's memories
Sharpened marzipan teeth
Jaded claws on the greedy fingers
Of this will' O the whisp
That sweeps softly through all the local Friday nights.

It was all a dream:

Awakened by the wolf-cry of twin choppers across
The prairie streets
My vision splits
I know with the certainty now
That I am cursed
Sideways
Brought back from this reverie
To find the constellation Orion
His belt writ in glittering lacerations
Across my milk-white _ k_ n.

I am sure of what comes next,
An audience with the Oracle . . .
I am headlong in preparation,
Making myself so drunk that I cannot talk
And going to loiter on her porch
Not far from the Aerostar
While a sickness all in golden bruises
Affllicts me, I lean there /
On her pillars /
And track-marks and pinstripes
Emboss my body
Scaling down the masterpiece of femeninity
With Thursday Night's style
I'm overready for my audience

*Bellerphon Calling!

Obscenity is is a pair of knees
Hitting the grass so hard that Chlorophyll
Spills like dental blood
And OH!
Sweet green grasses,
Under starry neon signs
The only limit we knew in this world
Dictated by a chain-link fence lined
With faded pastel refuse
Always we were destined
To scale a God's mountain
My body in your kitchen,
Now that's obscenity.


I exhale just once more
You crave the hot/cold chocolate
Of my words
I dream of foreign pavement
And new crystaline pint glasses
That I will cradle child-like against my breast
As I dwell behind the stained-glass divder
Sentenced and destined by Delphi
To run on bridges forever,
Passing greater and more beautiful things as I go
Never to linger
As my feet will singe

And the bridges burn.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

am I what we say I am?

We are what we say we are
By saying what we Are, we Are
Are we not, if NOT saying What we are?
We are what we say we are

By saying 'What? we Are we. Are
we not? can't we be?
We are what we say we are
Am I what we say I am?

Are we not? can't we be
what I say I am?
Am I what we say I am?
I can't be what we say I am

Is what I say I am,
what we say I am?
Am I what we say I am?
Are we what we say we are?

Monday, May 4, 2009

Pantoum

Hey treefolk, anyone want to do some writing challanges? I just learned about Pantoum's (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5786) and wrote one out. It was a flipping trip once I got into the groove of it. I say we each do one and post it? Extra points if it makes sense (lord knows my doesn't)


I get it now

A conversation with yourself that is
not supposed to be read but sometimes
comes out, rendering the mundane
tolerable in an otherwise dreary day-to-day.

Not supposed to be read but thought,
as if that is more of a challenge!
Tolerating the dismal routine of
mind inside self and self projecting meaning,

as if that was man’s one and only obstacle:
thinking about thinking self into obscurity.
Mind over self and self-withstanding pain.
Best thing about writing: paper has nothing to gain.

Like thinking of things that obscure singularity
discriminates nothing when penned on the page.
Best think about writing on paper: words are free
which, is also true for ideas wildly out of place.

Discriminating empty space, ink dries on the page-
I get it now, a conversation with yourself!
A proper position for thoughts tranquil yet untamed
for when they come, they flush out the ordinary.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

melange-a-trois

on a CBC surfin safari she was sippin syrup with Gertrude Stein
I had a twitch, I was a nervous birth-down at the corner of heart attack and vine
Alice B. was sitting there, just a sittin', wastin' thyme and she said to me,
children of the moon recieve us! little darling don't bleed us
children of the moon recieve us! little darling don't bleed us
Ddrrrryyyyyyyyy
and Hhigggghhhhh
and waitin' for the spice to return, Ill make you some water if you'll get me the worm.
I'm churning out ashes that you put in an urn
cuz I'm curlin' out slowly like the fronds of a fern
caps-lockin' and poppin with adherance to code of the heard,
'picture me rollin and scratchin' inscribed under my neckbeard
not even withstanding stickers that read, 'keep portland weird'
(even if it does make for a good asparagus or overhead light)
moon kids skid stopping on short patience with tall bikes
they had torches sans pitchfork, atleast till the album strikes
children of the sun believe us, little darling dont feed us
little darling dont fetus
little darling please heed us;
a rose is a rose is a rose
but everybody knows that just isnt true
nobody grows right out of the blue
and I am not really you, but
youve got my thorns and Ive got your vine
sippin on syrup with Gertrude Stein

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Gorgon’s Will Be Done

I.

Today we felt the sea change.
Felt the current sweep the
heaver particles of sediment
from the depths up to
the shallow pools of the
Mediterranean Sea where
we garden, populating the rough
coast with immovable vigils
of stone.

“Born of the sea” our mother told
us, “with the spirit of Poseidon.”
“Scared under his star,” she said
we wouldn’t live beyond a century.
But here we are, legion and aging
pristinely. We lay in hideous wait
for an opportunity to leave. Then
it happened: we felt our future
change.


II.

Poseidon’s spirit
sure left its
stain: he took us
at the altar of
Athena. We were
fair-cheeked
and chaste.

O cursed be that
name, that
scourge of legend
who forces
himself on the
prettier young
women.

There was Tyro
and Allope.
Demeter then
Europa. As well
As Amymone,
Caeneus, Clieto
And melia .

He’s had them all
And desecrated,
More reputations
Than Nero has
Christians. That
abomination
of lust

sent us to
this island of
ruin where
no gentleman
dare navigate
its cliffs or stroll
its wastes.


III.

An admirer will come dote on us
today. Not my lovely sisters
but us, the wretched lonely. We
know from the sea and on
the shore where the gulls screeched
“he is coming and bears four
gifts on his horse: a cap, a sword
sandals, and a shiny targe.” We
expect he’ll leave

with three more judging from the
surge in appetite since that
night Poseidon laid with us. We
have dreamt of the children
that will spring from our abdomen
We’ve waited for this collector
To come free us from our
Pebbly prison—wait, what’s
That in our garden?

Is that our sisters we see
or our own reflections…

Friday, April 17, 2009

Let freedom ring

"The most unhappy man in the world is he that is not patient in adversities, for men are not killed with the adversities they have, but with impatience which they suffer." - Charles Bailly, 10 September 1571.

America, take up your sleeves; the day has only begun
and there is so much important work to be done.
We will finish by dusk if we stand as one
and sweat and squint in the midday sun.

America, how may I see you right?
How Whitman heard you sing that night?
How Roosevelt dug his boots in thick,
the mud caked on his walking stick

and pollen gathering in his beard
America,
I've missed you dear.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

The Undergraduate on St. Patrick's Day

It’s warm tonight.
An early spring to mark
the conclusion of March
while the wind blows itself
in circles against alleyways.

Out there,
on the sidewalks the men
and women are lazily clothed
in last summer’s fashion:
dull green from head to toe.

They spill onto the pavement.
Cars swerve and honk
at the oncoming barrage
of frustrated souls embodied
in youthful wet dreams.

These people squawk back,
shouting at the motorists
to learn to drive their ca….
Onto the other sidewalk,
the mass marches onward

to the safety of a toilet seat
in such times of uncertainty.
Grasping hold of its bright
whiteness their bodies scream
out the wasteful evening

Their future lies in an
attempt to reach prosperity:
competition, marriage
children and church meetings.
What sense of justice depraves

this community?

Where I’ll be waiting. Their
fathers built these streets
and bulged their pockets to
be reckless. I’ll teach their
children about value and esteem

Then they will surely hate me.

"Art is a destination" I hear the muses sing

for Tiffany
thanks for letting me pretend
to be a woman

I

i wish i didn't put myself out there so much
and was proud enough to capitalize
all the proper nouns that do describe
every ounce of my inner being.
But i’m afraid of getting hurt
I choose instead mortar, flame,
to burn the lives of others
who want my intimacy
but they must know
mine is not unique.

i fear i may have
jumped the gun again.
Perceiving things wrong.

“These short lines
Can’t be misread”
i type
i never really liked
to read.

II

Someone asked me once
to name my top five books
and i couldn’t, i’m proud
enough to respond with
an educated explanation…

I never liked the unlearned.

Though people make me
hypocritical i know
i’m not that smart
i blame the glasses
they leave the lasting
impression I’m proud
enough to know
people read me
wrong.


III

This environment is not art:
a small desk with light enough
to illuminate the idle cobwebs
in the corner where I write
the American Spirits smoke themselves.

They wear and scratch at the sleeves
of my American Apparel v-neck tee
They’re hunched over my laptop
typing listlessly through
puffed smoke screens
of insight
that get lost
amongst the ash tray.

“Art,” I sigh as if it’s ME
typing with unmanicured
fingernails stained
like tooth decay on
and off the home row.
Their cherries speak
the click and klack
of type

On keys
where I am not the artist.
I am the clichéd American
listening to Icelandic poets
sing lullabies in a tongue
I’ll never taste nor touch
to the tip of one
genuine spirit.

IV

This is me smoking
The image of a reality
I could capture if
I had more talent
but the boyfriends
never let me sleep.

Instead, I perform ecstasy
On a four cornered stage
Laden with sweat stains
And always dirty sheets.

If only I could get paid
I think with lays
like these.

What matters is
I’m not talking
about politics
or the economy
or the person i
believed once
to be.


V

Click
The economy
Klack
Siblings I never see
Click
Gifts for my father
Hiss
He’ll never receive

Squawk
The lunch I attended
Klack
With my ex-fiance
Click
I forgot to mention
Smack
How great life was without him

IV

The theoretical act
of a pack of cigarettes
smoking me into oblivion
is a device purely likened
to the performance of an
ego overcoming self-
masturbation

Hands touching
fire to fingers
holding paper
while touching
a machine that
offers singularity

And now the rush
ripples through me
the gradual release
of me getting off
finally

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

How much it means to you

I've seen the easy way of passing by the truth.
I've lied and known the weight in how the lie was used,
but just to make it simple and easier to take
we'll keep this all between us and never have to face
what Jesus did to you.

When you met me then, I asked your plans that night,
you said "I've learned not to plan, it never turns out right."
It all seemed so confusing until you took the lead,
and now we've got that figured out, the worry should recede
of all that you could be.

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Belles of the Ball

Human life is a case of nuclear waste,
festering and buried deep beneath
Minnesota’s Iron Range, where it
waits to sprout mineral wings.

The sound of their tinny nourishment
beat destruction down on everything
that was and now isn’t. Nothing left
living at least nothing actually breathing.

Earth’s orbiting satellites jest “Sic”
semper tyrannis,” having witnessed
the end of a natural habitat. They’re
left to bask in independence,

taste their metallically bonded
tongues and laugh and laugh and
yet, Man’s memory lives on still
in the corporeal nostrils

of the lake’s dry shores whose
inhalation of the fallout radiates
consistent in the forever long
and sordid winter.

The satellites observe these
no-longer-spoken borders where,
above them, dimly lit monitors
click and klack meditatively…

The crags of once great lakes
cast shadows on their depth.
The hypocenters echo the
spirit of a dying planet

awestruck by its sole
inorganic inhabitants.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Alexandra

My dog is sick and will die soon. Bone cancer is eating her leg.
My father took her on a long car ride to taylor's falls (way out in the styx) where the MN metropolitan highschoolers go to jump the cliffs into the river. My brother said Alex stuck her head out the window the whole ride there and back. My dad remembered when Henry and I were little and played minigolf nearby at gooseberry falls. Henry was losing and quit playing, saying the game wasn't fair. Alex is older now than he was then. She still has a couple more days until she can quit.
I remember rolling up my jeans and wading into the shallows of the falls, slippery and sharp rocks uncomfortable to my always shoed toes. The water rolled over my ankles and ushered me to take the plunge over nearby precipices. I could never bring myself to make the jump.
I always passed out during the scenic ride home, long before my head could hang out any window. Car rides always put me to sleep; the rhythmic movements, the pulse of the road lulling my muscles to relaxation helping me to leave behind my active heartbeat and full breaths that characterize the necessary silent portion of existence.

Friday, April 3, 2009

OnLYme

I have made one single decision,
which is the decision to make decisions.
Societal-neural incisions and implants cannot do more than supplant ideas into the recipient.
Cognito. Ergo sum? Ergo a societal mirror reflects each and every one of us. Or is this just what we assume when we declare God is making fun of us?
If we are all the bathroom rugs in the cosmic pisser,
where does the slime we slither between us come from?
Furthermore, do you love this rug just for where I have been, or for my slimy intellectual influences contained within?
Why is that that in the bed of a structuralist I dreamed of you telling me 'there IS original thought' all the while seeing it through the pen I just bought?
You wrote of how you knew what it was like to be dead,
among inklings of angels on the back of a gum wrapper in a Harriet prison-of-the-head
Which is to speak of knowing the difference between life and not-
The world creating for the world forgot.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Knowledge

Like a ton of pavement
Washed up and liquid
Spiraling
Toward its inevitable conclusion
Unearthed grass and cigarette butts
Ripple beneath the street.

The train tracks
Used to go North and South
To other destinations
That meant something else
But their buried too
And spread out

Closer and closer
Now
They barrel to the center
Of the city
Away from Lake Michigan
To the middle of the prairie

The knowledge underneath
Years of erosion
And modernity
(the decomposing animals,
bones blood stained,
thornberry paved streets and...)

Yeah,
We got it now.
A global community
That reaches away
From the Great Lakes
To Everything

Where it comes back
Again though the oceans
Can’t be colonized
And the larger bodies
Of water can’t be
Renamed

This society flies
Over on zero
And one
Wing…


We’re all Living
Together on this
Old prairie

And we,
We can see
Everything

Sunday, March 22, 2009

There's a pigeon in the prayer house

There's a pigeon in the prayer house
and we're not wearing shoes.
I'm biting my tongue
on a floor of blue carpet,
under a dome painted blue.
The doors to the decks are open
and the sky is turning grey.
It's no wonder then:
a pigeon in the prayer house.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Sacrosanct

Blind priests see Christ more in floorboards and baseboard-heaters
than anyone who can enjoy particles in front of them
I confess, flesh tones and bank loans will suffice
though 78's and 45's wait as if at gunpoint attention for the order
alphapersonalogic is the one I feel right now
it dwells in the subsonic-chronicaudiophiliaphonic ranges;
an ethnic relic
because 'Hebrew' means 'to wander'

Friday, January 30, 2009

Evening Night and Morning

When I think about a world
full of cities like New York and Chicago,
like London and Paris,
Beijing and Tokyo,
I get scared to death.
If, rather than a few hundred miles apart,
these dense human heaps
piled up just over every horizon.
I hear the stomping and shouting,
the college dormitory halls and balconies.
I wonder and listen. Who needs music
when you've got a front row seat
to the Stumblebutt Orchestra,
really the best and brightest.
I heard the chirping start this morning
right outside my window
with the squeal and croak of
a solitary early bird.
I tried to call when I heard
the birds start to chirp this morning.

Monday, January 26, 2009

my daughter will be named Sylvio : and ribbons will rain down upon Her

Always to loiter menacingly
On the precipice of some
Small gesture that will
“set it to happening”
I am rabid with what remains

Indistinct in sunlight
The night is my highlight
Elixir of yeast
I bud cigarette garnishes
Going well with everything

Swedish Crime writer
This is my position
And I am functional relationships
VS. romantic idealisms
The wannabe skeleton key