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