Confused Kandinsky

The prettier humans
with the hair and the spandex,
they look jean jacket;
well-worn, dirt-repellent.
I spoke to expanse
it got up then left.
Sashay back toward
misanthropic disaster.
One second
till downpour
and then it's this
absence radiating
up against
your body.
The coke edit
of the director's film
was sonic-sound baby.
It was lights.
What I don't recognize
is the skyline: Confused
Kandinsky, or an airplane,
in half, on its side.
No windows, painted black,
emitting non-things. Articulated
angles without motion
and flat. Not more
comfortable no more.
Not no more of anything
after the best trip
of an adult life
at eighteen
then twenty-three.
Saw the seams split,
cross-dimensional,
sonic shifts of me
as a kid playing
in an abandoned
apartment building.
This was my last
year at war
with the country.

Double Date

Felt stomach aches on the road today
as a radio host spoke
of an earthquake spending
time in Oklahoma City. Damage
reported Minimal, no worse
than McVeigh and Nichols
vacation except one is dead,
the other in prison.
Personally, I coordinate holidays
alongside environmental disruptions;
airfare extremely cheap
and TSA too fun when relaxing.
The strong-arm described
through the speaker system
above the moving walkway
is long gone with friends
in other places and rooms
nodding secrets into silences.


The Richter scale doesn’t measure
earthquakes recorded over
a magnitude of eight;
I count there on fingers,
or up to the numeral
I’ve slept through seismic
waves in agreement. Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols
conjure a tectonic shift
in an Oklahoma city. Think
of a Djinn: A Genie sprung
from a lamp. Arabian Nights
and an Oxford edition (One Thousand
and One Arabian Nights) I never read.
In 2011 a similar upheaval will befall
a parallel city with thousands more people
but fewer buildings. I feel myself
asleep through after shocks, news updates.

Alchemy

He burned tungsten and raw copper
flickering green and spitting sparks.
He took just about everything
and all the clothes in the closet.
He laid it out on the floor.
“This,” he asked judgmentally,
“is what you’re wearing?”
He sprayed the clothes with glue,
then sprinkled them with glitter.
I was promised a chemical reaction
and I got one—
yes he kissed me.

Emerging limb by limb from the
melted metal, I thought
of poor Aristotle burning everything
to prima material, all the boys gone to bed.
He cried, knowing by candlelight
that matter can only change
as much as nature allows;
gold is found, not constructed
that is, unless you paint it
on everything you see.

After he kissed me, he said
“science is just talking to nature” and
“alchemy, like reincarnation, is possible
if only you can make enough fire.”

In Fashion

‘This afternoon,
there it was.’
-Frederick Seidel

No moon tonight
but I felt it.
An anticipation inflicted
by a dust gale at a bus stop
as people flood streets
to search for the things
they’re not sure about.
Telephoned all friends
while waiting to ride
the city into an evening
until nothing was said in
message machines responding.
The ‘them’ recorded with hair different
in the dress or tie
they felt confident wearing.
Where they are asleep
the rodeo clown ropes
the wrong one again
supposing it to be a bull
but so many cows and calves
and fecal matter distract so
look to the trodden soil
as hand disregards lasso.
It drops itself after a while.

The restraint of language.
Control toward an elegance
accomplished by a tie clip.
Don’t wear green on Irish holidays
and Christmas: do not clash
with the eighties basement
carpet of your grandparents.
I’ll never say this.
I’ll listen to you breathe
and when you’re asleep
in sheets by me
the kitchen sink is a cabinet
for the drinks we made
and couldn’t finish.

When all friends are gone,
who do you dream with?
Memories made-up to clock ticks
or spurned by birds chirping
as the body is unconscious?
I can struggle with this all day.
At night, asleep, I am not me.
Or is it ‘all me’
because when I wake up
I don't feel different.

Water-color sunrise.
A Floridian apartment
painted plaster
in involved sunlight
of anti-gray thrusting rays
pasteling shadow puppets
all colored,
all nameless.

I am not an artist.
I am on vacation just
to masturbate in water socks
amongst the waves
and the things left
drying out to die to be
swept beneath
a displaceable sea.

Atmospheric Pressure

The cinema and the lights,
the arm around the waist
caught from a barroom midnight.
Shrugged off, “As if that’s what you say?”
quite ashamed like you’re seeing me naked
and I am and I say you name.
There are worse things than hormones raging.
I got in a car accident twice,
one of which was fatal nearly.

Waking up and you’re up
and my shoes are not my socks.
I forgot I’m wearing long underwear
and my other underwear is somewhere
and you’re making me coffee
set to drip as drops begin dissipating.
An impacted result tuned
to intimacy issues peeling.
A church bell announces bad news always.

Work your shoulder blades
(a galaxy of white giants exploding)
into constellations too close
to resemble the shapes
for which they are named.
And in the stratosphere of your car
(still driving us somewhere)
I’m not sure if this is that neighborhood,
I can’t remember names anymore,
I felt this but you looked different.
It was you in the dream
except it wasn’t.

These democratic notions,
my fingers on your spine,
imagine grains of grain
conjoining rock-particle wet
droplets heralded
by an early-spring rain.

The 'Me' You Want is Out

Beauty inspires beauty.
An architect begins with Palladio
returns to form to produce
a villa stucco akin to Swiss alp Tudor style.
Carved you out of stone I think
on exhibit in the green room
of collective unconsciousness.
You are the people you see
you feel you know
immediately.

We’ll get you published in a minute,
keep quiet though,
we don’t want the Hoovers downtown
to hear about this.
Make another reference to an architect
those journals really enjoy that shit.

Beauty inspiring beauty.
I wasn’t a poet until Baudelaire time-traveled
to two-thousand-and-nine
to tell me everything would be fine.
Form follows function always,
that everything would be like an a b a b rhyme scheme.
Comfortable in a syllabic bathrobe
with hair wet and socks off
online to suggest alternate personalities.
Form follows function always.
Writing inspires reading.
This book suggests you deconstruct that poem.
I read a book about rats once:
They’re really not all that bad.

One Gestures

for Austin Pruett

Cold snapped temperature
begging for more
bodies by the dozen
wrapped in front of your nearest church door.
I work the soup kitchen circuit
I can’t feel sorry for myself anymore.
If mangroves grew in my city
I’d tie a knot of plastic can holders
to each branch to be anchored with stone.
Artificial growth on organic compounds:
Collagen injected into the silicone tit of a mother.

A smokers car floor of memories
smashed to an ashen pulp
mitigating between coffee spills
and sockless toes when pedals are pushed.
The myriad you.
The gesture used to finalize what thought
is left of the lover left behind.

Cold-reading again
as an actor for escapism.
Easier to bleed in literature
than meet a future liaison
who turns out to be a bedsore.
Ha I’m talking about me again.
Ha I have been good this winter.
Ha I haven’t touched a woman for months
I feigned celibacy
last New Years
until Valentines Day.

Destructive loving digs
a miscalculated emotional atmosphere
giving too much to take a little
or another problem is
too much too tiresome!
O, a gesture of love!
I imagine romance perfected:
‘You’re much too much too soon’
on repeat on the stereo
in the bathroom.

At my very worst I am

Everyone I meet today will be a genius
and a complete dick. They will
probably feel the same way.
At my very worst I am
a pervert with a heart of bronze,
an oral fixation, and swollen
fingers in the morning.

This city was appealing because
everyone is as self-absorbed as me.
This makes for bad parties and great art.
The self-perpetuating “weirdness”
gives our families an excuse
to never visit us.

The more you focus on the worst parts
of me, the more pathetic those parts
become: the last vestiges
of body fat all hanging limp
over my belt buckle. My stepmother
assured me, "it will never go away."

I think up demons, I don’t believe
in magic, I’m so unsatisfied,
I’m not an artist, I’m an asshole...

The older I get, the less I idolize
cult leaders and the more I relate
to misanthropes and exemplars
of promise squandered.
I understand the difference
a little more every day.

Reality is Subjective

Holding doors for women at corner stores.
Watching children watch an ostrich at a zoo,
I could have been different somehow
if I would have stuck with sports in high school.
I admit I like Jagemeister.
If provided, I would take all the Jagbombs in the world.

The black light makes your drink look alright:
Vibrant-white and breathing like dry-ice
on the set of a science fiction movie.
Intrigued, I say your name
(a gesture) as you remember me
long enough for a hug
while I forget what to say.

One can never read the same thing twice.
One week in New Orleans
cannot be replayed
as it were a tourist
experiencing grand new things.

Album, film, and short-story collections
span entire continents.
The you I was then is the me you are now.
I’ve thought about beats happening,
I slipped on my way here.
A national disaster of memories
colliding
where we were the first time hands were held.
The kiss before the Tower fell.

Yeah, I've been catching up on the last ten years of hip-hop.
The pop-variety, not the hard stuff.
Something to say for number of albums sold.
Accessibility transcends art form.
Intelligence boiled down
to an experience shared.

I’m the pervert I’ve read about
in the southern gothic pulp.
The rag with the cross burning,
fate just as questionable,
notoriously ill-suited
to be read but ogled
beside a New Yorker water color.
Lifeless in the sense of imitating narrative struggle.
Ebonics as metaphor
for the gin
and the juice
as the body of Christ now.
A veritable masque of bad decisions
made light by all the young people
worshipping them.

Life should be so reckless!
Smoke a cigarette at a gas station,
roller blade a bridge on ice skates,
the direction of a bullet moving
toward a Midwest deer opener.

I’m the Stephan King of literacy
walking on water-tight profits.
Knowledge: my income.
Engorging the heads of young men
becoming twenty-something adult types
gentrifying off the train stops
near the Urban Outfitters of their mind.

I should have left the memory of Pacific Northwest rose bushes,
contemporary museums,
that river walk with an old acquaintance,
and bicycle rides through unfamiliar streets
next to the Pynchon on the shelf
and the religious texts I’ll never read.

Process

FYI: This is what an average text document of mine looks like before I break it down/edit it into a poem. Hence why it is ridiculous and annoying.


Horizontal City

“A City Cannot be a Work of Art”
-Jane Jacobs

Buildings.

Decorated thin trim;
A miasma of wood smoothed to what should be bone
But looks camp-fire stiff:
Faces moonlit until tossed by flashlight.

I’m dreaming parks in pools,
Islands in a city radiating.
Dubai is Fifty years old
And should have a happy birthday;
Sand never looks so well
Amongst tax hikes and voter peril.
I’d love a new spirit
I’m mitigating through.

Front-page news and I’m channel whatever ‘E!” means lately
Sun setting Alaska
I went for lunch
Until dessert was served
Then it was dinner.

Conversations
Gotta stop writing when I’m gone again
Cause this happens
And I’d like to talk to you
And the smell of man soap reminds me of somewhere
Long showers with a seat and hair jell I never used
Nor paid for
So it was yesterday earlier
Again
And I was about something
About something well and if
Tell the truth about Sacramento
It’s south east
Warm, probably
The people there are varied latino/Hispanic (depending on the man who drove you home)
Meant to connect you to somewhere they haven’t seen
A bridge connects something to something.
China Meiville.
Gosh this pastry taste like bacon.

Walked on gravestones buried there-haps
Betwixt literature sown into steel spires
Undeveloped blue prints begotten through fund-negligence.
I looked before bespeaking
A hailed cab to infinity.
Nah, I’m not drunk.
Me?
Nah I’m leder sunk (look up term for weight on line)
Billowing text messages
I’ll catch an old one
To fall asleep
Pleasant dreams akin a person you grew old with rather quickly
It was the hair it was the face it was the bush it was the scene
Forgotten rather poorly
I’ve met a couple beggers
Asking for change

Oh yes, Architecture in motion….

A mess of unconnected organs
severed with gunk built up
at arteries allotting congestion.
Febuary-bored women
cross-guard spring fashion.
A severed tumor doesn’t fall
it is unhinged by surgeons
coddling nostalgia:
A newborn slapped
then set down.

A wound pocket watch responds
to a determined faucet
questioning whether the pipes have frozen.
A leak swims on

moon mist fogs from below the bridge.
Central park and the river;
A fox runs along the bank
to understand if the river has courage
or is just runs on instinct -

Vapor tunicate
Sounds like a Mars Volta lyric
Eyes wound wide around a thesaurus
Speaks a river banked on instinct
The courage to provide
A self-help-book of movement

Yeah, redundant
I could have this conversation with myself and it could be something else
But lets push it.

See what we bring to it.
I’ve moved again.
I’m about to smoke a cigarette
Move a wet leaf and move and move and move and move.
Sounds like confusing thunder
Lightning in a snow storm
Sidewalks dipped into snow pavement
A considerable amount of thought
Some god somewhere put into a cataclysmic event.

"A city cannot be a work of art"
-Jane Jacobs

Decorated thin.
Trimmed miasma of wood
smoothed to what bone could say
to a camp-fire stiff face
tossed by flashlight.
I'm dreaming the city beautiful:
parks in pools in a post-Dubai world.
Sand never looks so well
amongst tax hikes and voter peril.
I'd love a new spirit
to mitigate
whatever the television
channel "E!" means lately.

Blow text messages to mend
bridges built on bridges that happen where you'll be
cause I have built them
and contractions are an idea
best suited for the late twentieth-century.

Gravestones buried therehaps
undeveloped blue prints begotten through negligent
drunk infinities.

Cities and the cities they’ll blend behind
a city being a city
scared of heights.

Vertical city

“A city cannot be a work of art. When we deal with cities
we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Because this is so, there is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with the city.”
-Jane Jacobs

A mess of unconnected organs
severed with gunk built up
at arteries allotting congestion.
Febuary-bored women
cross-guard spring fashion
until a severed tumor doesn’t fall
but is unhinged by surgeons
coddling nostalgia:
A newborn slapped
then set down.

A wound pocket watch responds
to a determined faucet
questioning whether the pipes have frozen.
A leak swims on toward

moon mist fogs from below a bridge.
Central park and the river;
A fox runs along the bank
to understand if the river has courage
or is just runs on instinct --

It’s ten-o-clock
and you’re not stumbling over your words again.
I could kiss you but I won’t
you haven’t read enough of me lately.
Keep time sing song I tell you
replying “tick-tock, tick-tock.”
“No,” I say.
“A watch only goes with one sound.”

Can’t confirm this. I’m a glorified liar now.
I’m an agoraphobic in a radiant city pavilion
hemorrhaging parks that land in pools
of garden posies pontificating boldly
of L’Esprit Nouveau
I’m dreaming

I see Art Deco.

There Is A Current Under River Ice

A mind beneath a child's stroller worth of ice.

elongate it

Spoon fed atmosphere drooling
a restaurant to-go cup where father hasn't paid
and the check is arriving late.
Mother bends, releasing a v-neck shirt.
A baby moans then dribbles a passive drink.

fast forward
I'm masturbating
I'm up in funding
I'm neck in neck in polls
I'm 'Critics Choice'
I'm employed
in moss ridden dew
on the birthday I decide
to not contact you.

We write still
enough to hand on thigh
toward the spring lace
tucked beneath your skirt.
I breathe the distance
in a language I can't speak
between an oak bench
and your leg
and i laugh.

This Was An Afterthought Yesterday

The abcess of a television
marks an entry dark;
A window that can’t be seen.

I said I wouldn’t sleep with you
and I won’t until you beg for it
and until I lose it
I’ll forget its an evening happening.

Breathe -
pump -
posistion
release -
smile.

How was your afternoon?

Now it was yesterday earlier
when we did our thing
laughing at your jokes
(I cringed)
like a prayer unfolding
I knelt to receive
the Denver omelets we made
in Paris
in Auburn
in Dreams.
You were blue that day
Coma therapy radiating the age
sag from your face

On the eve of a century.

Before I could Spell “Coriander”

“We’re on a river,” the little boy said. “This is a river and we’re on it.”
-Shirley Jackson

If I had a moment
All along the highway I’ve thought about you
Miles would be laid out
And I’d be the exit
You wouldn’t take.
But stars domed inside the sedan
Diving north and
That’s a lake next to a bigger one
(none of which are “man-made”).

I have been downtown in winter:
Felt it cringe all fall before
The snow really freezes.
The clouds falter into prayer music
Acolyting candles wicks
Blown into architecture.

It was yesterday earlier
Stop---
Bubble fizz fire worked
Into free transit
Spent one cent riding a city
Into an evening
Blue was up and red sort of
Glossed the future gold
Hydrangeas my ma
Used to plant