Greg Bem's Dream from Eleven Months Ago As Dictated to and Remembered by Jeff Brennan

Greg Bem dreamt about a water fall and the people floating near it. We, and by we I mean I was one of them, floated by on rafts and tubes--some looking sidelong, some not saying much of anything, some offering warning, others weeping. He recognized the faces. Our roommate at the time told Greg "Don't go down there man, there's nothing down there for you." I wasen't saying much of anything.

The treeline dawned. He saw himself on the bank, slowly becoming part of it, himself shortening. The slop began to cover his shoes and his socks began to mimic the swallowing grain. The water too was rising, at his neck now, as his anchorage held, thickening in the murk of his vision. His fixed body eddied the river, flinging away limp boomerangs of old rain.

The blue of heaven wasn't mentioned. Greg Bem choked up another dream. His chair creaked. The snow hit the window and gathered on the false sill. Hardwood stuck to both of us. It was 11 AM, as usual.

St. Marks Sing Sing

Karaoke 12/26

Billy Joel - Pressure (Phil)
Meatloaf - Anything for Love (Lindsey)
Sunfly - Common People (Norm)
Pearl Jam - Animal (Danny)
Styx - Come Sail Away (Jeff)
David Bowie - Space oddity (Eric)
Nobody Does it Better (Phil)
Salt & Peppa - Push It (Lindsey)
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Norm)
The Beatles - Dear Prudence (Eric)
Avenue Q - Everyone's a Little Bit Racist (Phil & Lindsey)

Fruit & Nut Medley

CVS Gold Emblem

Premium Quality
*
Great Value

Ingredients: Pineapple tidbits
(pineapple, sugar, citric acid
[taste adjustment], sulfur dioxide
[color retention], mango flavored
pineapple (sugar, pineapple core,
citric acid, sulfur dioxide,
FD&C Yellow #6 and artificial
mango flavor), raisins*
(raisins coated with partially
hydrogenated soybean and
cottonseed oils), almonds
(almonds, peanut and/or canola
and/or cottonseed oil, salt),
banana chips (bananas, coconut
oil, sugar and artificial flavor),
yogurt-covered raisins*
(sugar, raisins, partially
hydrogenated palm kernel oil,
non-fat dry yogurt [non-fat
dry milk, yogurt culture],
soy lecithin [an emulsifier],
salt, pure vanilla, gum arabic,
corn syrup and certified
confectioner's glaze),
cranberries (cranberries, sugar,
sunflower oil), cashews (cashews,
peanut and/or canola and/or
cottonseed oil, salt).

* Adds a trivial amount of trans fat.

Walking at Night

The gray pavement's
cracks map out many
geographies.

Every night new
waves of paper plates
coast onto the scene--

flying saucers ready
to obscure and create
as a mass or purge.

Unseen visions beneath
are like concocted
crop circles.

Tom Brangwen Senior's Trembling Stand

“He went on stubbornly for a time. Then the strain became too great for him. A hot, accumulated consciousness was always awake in his chest, his wrists felt swelled and quivering, his mind became full of lustful images, his eyes seemed blood-flushed. He fought with himself furiously, to remain normal.”

- The Rainbow, page 26

I

How could Tilly, that sorrow, calm you, rub ideas into
your skull, your brain, your mind of the new, dear farmer?

When the marsh is dry and the long-winged birds
are so far gone their flights are no longer described--

When you lust for something so blurred, unknown
to you and there is no acknowledgeable soul around to tell--

When the hardest drinks have taken on a single life of
their own merely and simply honest in its painful image,

a reflection of the dead, damp fields and the lives before
you that lived at that blank, boring farmhouse, yet well-off--

what becomes the positive boundary to calm such dead-ends?
What keeps you feeling like cattle fenced into a rotting inclosure--

To feel like a ghost walking apart from the strange others,
the present dead members of your family, who manage to

appear moving in smooth, blank wisps, hair as nothing,
while you get up and bow down again and again, according

to the shadows and the light, and the flagellating balance
of both oblong fragments that butcher everyone's perception--

II

When you saw that magnetic woman crawl up for butter,
asking that simple, foreign question, the heat thick in the house--

when you decided to track down a handful of flowers and
stamp your presence into the Baron's home, as some dark persiflage--

when you forced yourself to fall sleep next to her, her body close
to you, and all was awkward, filth, a new marsh spreading unaware--

when your life became a fence of reinforced chained links
all strung into one another, rust closing the few remaining bonds--

there was still all that plain, regulated work—the work of a farmer
is what kept the shades and the dawns rebounding out and away--

the dreams made of dirt and the hordes of the lowest class,
with guttural intolerance chomping away, so admirable--

there really was no claustrophobia about it, was there, being confined
as community rather than restriction—working with what we have--

rather than what we do not—if only your author was so easy--
if only your author could swell tides and let up the storm so often--

Dear Sentinel

After this

How it must feel

to be shot

in the back

of the head,

left to the street,

gone to the news,

dear sentinel,

you will be

recorded

by a few

then forgot

by thousands.

Reflections on the film Doubt

I

There's a reason
the light bulb went out
twice, Sister.

II

The audience
picked up on her
wrinkled
lies from the very
beginning.

It was the wrinkles
in her face; it was
the problems
in her mechanics.

III

Great howling wind,
quick coatings of snow,
and sleepless nights
while shadows hugged
the lightning's flash:

who knows where
all that metaphor
was hiding out at?

A fourth wall torn down
to a second ground, grown
damp with so much use.

IV

The benches are meant
to be warmed, yet still--
what flagellation!

What cold asses
to be with all that
bickering going on!

The nuns clutch
rosaries instead
of their cheeks.

Their black-clothed
bottoms sit idle,
covering shivers.

Doesn't anyone believe
in the orange fade of healing,
or the interior's warmth, anymore?

V

During the one on one bits
both players showed a stern glance
though really every shot was
just a grayed, mixed bag,
a queer congestion of
artful dodging and irrational
sequencing--though to see
you both go from tearing
to stern defiance in seconds
was bright, like light through
painted glass panels, or
spreads of feathers unleashed
from the since-gutted pillows.

VI

The rooftop is a great way
to spread the Power of the Word,
but how do you choose the rooftop
without appearing proud or
insecure?

VII

As the third I guess I'd say
you made me feel the best,
which is what your character,
as a representation of innocence
torn asunder to urban grit,
was supposed to do.

Don't get me wrong--that
warm and fuzzy feeling
remains a great memory,
and I even felt charmed
by your swift control
in the classroom, but
I'll be honest--I liked you more
when you had no control,
when your energy was all
smiles and warm cheering,
when you had everyone
else take care of the
depressing things in life.

And after that wash of
scandalous, believable events,
it was nice seeing you back
from your sick brother,
giving your queen a beautiful
dollar-store pieta.

Clothes Shopping with CAConrad

The guard at
the water noticed
us bobbing toward
more free places

two wet refugees
who sought to cover
themselves
with the fuchsias of
tomorrow and
nickelodeon orange

the glasses heightened our
scarfs of graffito
floating below the heads
and hair mixing
in what some would call oxygen

the nails stained like car-parts
and the digits crept up as if on pulleys
we settled on whatever matched
the amount of rain
generated by our exertion

Bless you! My Roberto Bolaño

This poem was generated by: http://www.aipoem.com

I know not how to thank you enough, my Roberto Bolaño
When I am walking over to you
I just want to hold the low day
But you give me further suns

I know not how to thank you enough, my Roberto Bolaño
When I am walking over to you
I just want to pick the children
But you gave me your heirs, instead

I know not how to thank you enough, my Roberto Bolaño
When I am walking over to you
I just want to find a simple blankness
But you gave me no form, no hands with which to take you

The Anti-Message

The clock strikes:
these are the steps of our departure.
- Charles Reznikoff

Christmas

is here,
present as a

wooden coffin.

OKAY.

This is the
time of year--

no--

portraits of
fallen relatives;

cookies molded
to flattened plates;

light eggnog;

L. L. Bean
gift certificates;

white and unholy--

no--

melted snow
still soft and white,
fluffy as it turns mush;

green needles
of pines;

white and gray
birch skins;

brown decay,
leaves hanging
crispy and sudden;

same shadows
I care not for
though always
should have,
lingering down
those treeways,
resonant,
glibbering
geography--

his poems,
1918 - 1975,
sit between my
grandmother
and I, his
face glancing
at the blue
couch cushions.

The Family Warzone

Children fighting,
too many of them.

Cries. You, nephew,
whose name I don't
even know, just fell from

the stairs. His name,I have recentlylearned, is Caleb.

Somebody
said it really was
just a slide.

But now, crying,
tears spitting out
and mouth puckered
in lemonic response,
you sound
like an 80 year old
being carried
out to the sea.

And that sea
sure is angry.

Some of us grin
at your tragedy,
young though
probably
so profound
to you--

I like the
response of Kendra,
my perfect niece,
who just drools
and contemplates
her next move.

Harold Pinter

1930-2008

Metro-North

You in the black suit
looking like a million birds
in the blue of heaven
the tie tucked in
the winter sucking away
everything your body wants
a body like a diamond
in the ocean
on a necklace
sinking, getting warmer

1 1 1

Metro-North and
the air still hurts
the lung-repellant and
wood tiling
and it's dead sully
and burnt lighting
while the haily window
and tickets' ticking
tick clock-like
with a dog, his shirt says
dog on it

1 1 1

Watching grand,
central perfects
their skin shine makes
a sun blush
the birds circling like
tuxedo fibers
like snow in a drain
or socks drying in the shower

1 1 1

this wagon is padded
cholora, love in it's time
love like paint on bricks
your glasses, depthless mouth

1 1 1

Roberto Bolaño, dead, Chilean
worked in Germany
where the trains make sense
and people dress for one another
and there are no dogs allowed

Short Poems from Christmas Eve

Birdy Our Jack Russell Stumbles Into Trouble

The dog barked
at nothing; it was
her friends, but
the car's lights
were bright and
alien--they were
beams, explosions--
and though they
sat still they did
break the darkness
into many halves
of many things,
and the shapes
frightened, as
strange things do.




Waiting Just Inside The Chinese Buffet

At the Rose, as I have learned
to call it tonight, though its
real name was and is "China
Rose," there were only
several others with the same
idea as my mother and I.
We stood sheepishly near
the fishtank and Buddha
statues. Mom talked about
getting Izzy, the family fish
that's somehow survived in
the kitchen bowl back home,
to move to this black hole
vortex restaurant, where the
tank is much bigger and the
fish bigger too--bright with
large fins of oceanic colors.
I listened to her silly words,
words that are really calming
deep down, and I thought about
how much stranger every post-college
visit back home to Maine
becomes, and I thought about
how I visit for each holiday,
holidays I've learned to forsake
with a toothy, gapless smile,
my grin's yellowed teeth shining
the reflection of the Asian
lamps. I struggled not to pay
attention, dreaming about returning
outside to the wide spread of snow.




Murder and Mystery

Kate watches the television
while clutching the tired dog
to her lap. I sit with the
laptop on my lap, and I think
about how it might be another
type of dog, another being
that should be praised more
than it is scolded. Scorn and
an elderly disappointment is
what you get for dependence;
get ready for what you take
for granted and it will eat
you alive, until you are dry
skin, beady eyes, arcane doom.

Mother went up stairs to bed,
to prepare for presents and
ritual--she will still wake up
early as she always does, and
my admiration will stay muffled.
Robert is in the darkness of
his room, paralyzed still, more
than ever probably, now that
he can walk a little, move around,
and see that life is now so much
different than it ever had been.
The lights are duller, even though
everything is newer; a gritty
reality sets in and I dream of
novels with this laptop--large
novels that stretch ages and can
track entire personalities.
All is black outside. No more cities.
Death to all the cities; no,
death to the rural, the jackpots
and taverns and disconnected poor.
Body rubs and busy streets--laughter
and scorn and eyes watching each
move--where have all these powers
moved to in this life, strange
chorus of snails, strange beings
of withering faces--forgive me.

The Frowning Woman

There within the F terminal,
where at the 33rd Gate,
at which the plane sat outside,
destined for Portland,
Maine, a woman crouched low,
frowning more than I, and
I sat on the radiator,
peering into that frown
with a frosted grimace--
my nostrils filled with
crusted snot, my cheeks
flaking in the dry airport
interior. Those lights were
made for subtle exploitation.

You cannot take away the
cruelty that I express,
have been begging to learn
to let out. I do not care
how you have reacted, but--
it is not your place to
move my goals to yours!

The frowning woman, of course.
Of course she was lost
in her own world, insane
enough to be thinking
blood-red thoughts too,
or maybe she was not
contemplating anything at all--
well, perhaps her anger stemmed
from some hectic Christmas travel,
or the deadening stress of going
again to her family, or maybe
a severed boyfriend who
used to be so prominent
but was now dull and petty.

Upon clicking my email
I discovered a new gift
certificate, and thought
that perhaps this erroneous
subterfuge was merely a secretious
nondescription meant for
the usual gift exchange tomorrow,
during the morning, time lapse
shit and pearly consummation--
last threads to childhood,
last time of company in the
land of jovial inheritance.

But I have come to realize
secrets evaporate through
sugar, fat, and oils--wine
cascading from tongue like
a thief stealing hot items;
there is a level of mischief,
whether you consider it
cool or atrocious, that sits
in my stomach and aches to
be let out like bulls or darts.
My fingers will not be calmed.
My bowels will not be silenced.
I have sought misery and now
misery seeks me from above,
behind, spiked metal of sky,
memories and disembowelments
around each bend, every step--

In tears I think, I spout,
all aloud likening to branches.
Fetch the dogs and join me,
oh frowning woman, wherever
you may be (home or hell,
or both), because my hope right
now is in your concordance--
do not fail me in paralleling
my own strict being, awkward
and clumsy, non-responsive
and forgetful, while the ground
freezes and the chimney lets
along woodstove puff tracks
into the town's ancient air.
Let the broken lights trace
the sky, these hands clutch skull.

The Heat

All about the floor
and lumped walls
waits a sickness
without a body

You have made no
improvements
I've been saying this
for years

Your laboratory
is so lazy
the samples are
sleeping

like the heat--her
dignity broken
making me sleep
in my clothing

Reading Cavafy: I

"Let us speak, let us speak--silence does not suit us."

I hope to let out a silent thunder,
eyes bearing down upon the stiff text
like great googly interruptions.

But how to strafe past the great
illusions to Greek culture, places
and people I find greatly boring--

how do I flush them out like their
sea flushes their gods to and from
the great pearls of the unconscious?

Outside it is raining. Right here,
in this bedroom, haunted by me and others,
there hellishly slumps a radiator heatwave.

Russian Family: A Love Poem

Four blond heads bobbed
and bumped in a rhythmic
congregation on tonight's
sad, ageless train-ride home.

But only one of those heads
struck my fancy, called out
to me as muse or death, it
being of course in her height.

My exhaustion was taking
me over in its root-like
sense, so thank god for
those four archaic crags.

They kept up their own peaks,
all dashed upon with slick, snowy
coverings, while the valley
between us, that long aisle,

teetered, a dreadful slide
for the conductor and his
uglies. My own head sat up,
my eyes glowing red like rubies,

or red like fresh deer peaking up
from a dense smother of
mud, the banks a quirky success
where Spring has defeated frost.

The two stones for eyes
implanted into my skull gazed
forever at the Russian daughter,
she late 20s, beauty too preserved

through her yellow, posing
reflection, the train's windows
glaring as does the sun, or
blue icicles, all dim tales of

distortion and vice, but
so well formed one may never
forget, a visual match to each
gray consonant of her speech.

Poem for No One

"No one ever comes
around here to talk
to us," said the man,
the black man, through
his window, and there
they were, a group of
dedicated newspaper
deliverers. I was not
there, with them. I was
at work, where I could
not even comprehend
the situation, and I
still cannot, but no,

I was selling books,
each with words on them,
and it was obvious--a
cast iron mask to sear
the greatest flesh, melt
all the gray brain matter,
yellow lights above making
everything seem desert
island, or outer space,
or Clint Eastwood's
mortuary examination.

It has been a month
and a half since Obama
was elected. The signs
in front of the houses
are no longer as bright.
Some of them even lack
the bottom blue half.

These are signs, marks,
we may now refer to
as geldings. I'm sorry
Biden, but you are
the castration of this
advertising. The dust
and dirt has covered
you, or maybe you've
simply decayed and been
swept away like excess.
What will happen when the
four quarters left are
ground into dirt, nothing
to sprout up but more
crime, chains, and shallow
pockets stuffed full
of damp, molding matches?

Creatures Through This Darkness

Christmas has come to Philadelphia
once and for all, gracing each good night

over and over and over again through the
noise of atonals, horns, and a mistake series.

I

Walking down a labyrinthine stepset
just to the West of City Hall I noticed

some scurrying beast beneath a bleacher,
but I could not see its dark form despite

lights hanging like illumined fauna or robust
and steady icicles, so I continued away,

the broken image untouched and the feeling of
open wounds burning deep into my brow.

But then I passed the fever of some damning
omen--a deadened bird, blinding, sitting still,

its neck entirely ruffled and encased
in several inches of a feathery brown torso.

I could not help the arousal toward that
tangible image, my feet aching to spring.

II

I strangely saw no homeless men in the
vicinity of this orange and black Hades.

The last memory was of a sprawling form so
still, like the wormed Death, back on Chestnut St.

His rags were multicolored, his body I hope
invisible beneath their thrifty warmth, were

reinforcing the difficulty of my new urban
grit, paradoxes sitting amidst my shy perch.

On the subway I saw students from Temple donning
dreadlocks and woven tops, chatting with

smiles as large as the sun even though my eyes
were twenty feet away and my back was turned.

How I wish I could be them, or with them, unfathoming
with such grace, and that dead bird's image erased.

Sibyl Humming

It was traditional
Serving each other
at a generous rate
of exchange

This jacket was wove
from wrinkles

The dogs passed
with indifference

The clouds couldn't read
one another while
walking over the park
those blind giants

In a Recent Dream I Read Simic to You at Your Death Bed

Back at the old, sturdy house
the purples would be quick to
gather in small bundles over
each and every cloudy puff.

This was my house, not yours,
but often I would believe
both were one in the same,
each shutter and tile a match.

But things were not always
as easy as one, two, three;
sometimes it would take months
for me to even notice angles--

angles! the simplest conjectures!
I discovered them the first time
after eating twenty seeds from
"Hawaii" that had been microwaved.

You wouldn't know that softening
them is apparently the best
thing you can do for your stomach.
But still not good enough to

prevent that yellowing nausea,
or those wild visions you
avoided while my dog licked
my face and the chair was great.

The old house, where trees were
the best way to track time,
where the poets we read were barely
cared for, barely dreamed about.

The Tribe Spoke, Said No

After Survivor: Gabon (CBS)

Dear Michelle,
I thought of you for three days
Dear Gillian,
Don't ever lose "that"
Dear Paloma,
Good luck with the tips, and the weeds
Dear Jacky,
You were always smiling, helpfully
Dear Golden Child,
Your life of leaderless suffering is over
Dear Kelly,
You were always worth the dirt
Dear Ace,
Limber Ace, keep flying, stretching
Dear Dan,
You can't find yourself in a poor Eden
Dear Marcus,
I am afraid of you. Let's get gay-married
Dear Charlie,
You were Randy's first gay friend
Dear Randy,
You will be happy in dog heaven
Dear Corrine,
Smoke without filters and the mirrors will be choking
Dear Crystal,
You got way far
Dear Ken,
You snake. I wish you the best, you snake.

The Whole Lacanian Universe

After Josh Strawn

http://www.jewcy.com/post/defense_zizek

Reading about Zizek's latest
critics, all dim antagonisms
of a more practical psychoanalysis:
this is what it means to be without;
this is how the bird becomes
lighter than its own blue feathers,
even when the air is thick with
snow, hail, and shadows dancing
due to dull ropes and sharp blades.

Rousseau's dreams once led on as
textual sprawl, bugging out
from the inside, forming trails
of slick muck, but now they are
only references—love poems
dipping black feelings down
around what happens in the skull.

Fascism, and too the new left,
wait patiently on a high setting, and
suddenly all these political games
seem like a hauntingly choppy brew
worth stirring up, even though its
all worthless—to see the dust clouds
form into passing shapes, heaps
of layers piling up, my mind thick
and stale, my gut burrowing into
its own thick plateau deepens my
frown, shuts everything down like
a scarecrow or a lost lover realized.

There will be battles upon battles,
we seem to say to ourselves, again.
And a sense of blood, and footprints
sloppily scattered across the sidewalk--
these things just shadowed qualms
leading on towards an iron door, while
all of our dirt-covered change lies loose
in each pocket, summoning strength
and a long string of disabled moments
through each single, heavy piece of metal.

The Hegelian-Lacanian world
of ideas for me is just a series of
red and purple thought-spindles,
existing like jump ropes only one
or two early-evening curfews away.

Time is a ball bouncing and made
entirely out of thick plastic; yet still
we snap at its bulk with our scissors--
we attempt to cut those cheerful ropes
that we once played with but have
set aside, even though they are still
lifelines, and we utter useless babble
to sickening, deadly audiences while
squeezing our three digits together.

The New Waste

This is my life rolled into yours,
a place where safety pins pierce
skin and flip our eyes upside down.

Shots of coffee, bullet wounds,
and bats--all attacks on downtown
streets, and jaded memorizations.

The earth felt damp, like a trip-
wire playing fingers, dancing trap-
work, the need to be home when gone.

And through the soft wired mesh,
a thick glaze of snow sat still,
soaking into topmost layers of life.

When the fumes are released from
the edge of the automobile, triumph
lingering in the mouth, backseat,

the most dreadful characters rise,
are given life and death to. They
move about like absences, portals.

Curious, You Met Him at the Pond

It would have taken cannonfire
to keep from amalgamating
our differences: you, young
and blood-red sparrow pecking
the ground for bedding; I:
the ant crawling up to find you,
stinger ready, army of brothers
left way behind, in some dirt
fortress. I climbed your beak
and demanded pity, you took me
for a blur of wind torn into
the wrong direction, a mad
time to spread your wings and
talk philosophy with your father,
down at the pond, its murk cool.

Poem for Assessors

Adapted from July, 2007 notes.

Lions are not storming
into my room right now--
neither are beautiful spotlights.
They have been taken, are being
dragged away as sources along this
gravel that is gray now and gone.

You must stop worrying to
start worrying once more.

My friends are always acting,
like slithering pleasures, and
it's a spiraling pole-like thing
and the lost light is purple.

Therapies can sometimes
become anti-therapies.

The radio since exploded!
And the buildings will explode!
And the lost light is purple.

But storms are not brewing,
and that's all there is to it.

Urbeosis

I

Night unwraps the entire sky
just over there, at the center
of this declining pit, its mystique

entrancing and disappointing
together, twin beings of thought
and feeling like dancing passersby.

The harder you squint into its
arrowed distance, the softer the
image becomes; the rough steel

girders elongate, forms of towering
phalli, looking like the flaked ooze of
dry candles once topped with flame,

now donned with sparkled but blurred
reflections, and though out of nothing,
deep and colorful scars shine back

a minuscule image of us, and our
visions become tired and strained
beneath the proportions of this grid..

II

Over there it was the same thing, earlier.
It haunted about before me as a black
and red place from long ago, from

when my feet treaded within it for the
first time, shoes wearied from other towns
traveled first, the other soaked roads.

This malformed day was a day of the
unsung climate, a day of a trip to the new
and to the old, neighborhoods both

crumbling and building through all
the dust. Perhaps I should have shut
my eyes and gone home instead, to let the

ideas rot from within not from without.
But the true Other haunting me is not
only mechanical; though this ghost has

two arms, two legs, a heaving breath
and hair that hangs straight down like
daggers, then there is that old dance

she shares with her Other—that symbiosis
truly of death through water, the drowning
of those who have come and those gone,

and how the anger, this bright excision,
collaborates with the streets, expands
as in an artful bubble, or lack of taste.

Quiet Times

The sound again of walls--
their slowness sagging like the wet roof.

A carpet reaches out, crushed,
like a cab-hailing man on a dark bridge.

The green house
thrown atop the brick-layer's graves.

The new night sails
into a new, deaf low.

The air is full of falcons;
Good thing the clouds are full of bullets.

December Sun

The sun has by now become
a pastel mistake on gray wallpaper.
Our heads loosen, like separate things
attached and melting their sinews
that were falsely, shamelessly spliced.

From the ground looking at trees,
the sky grows veins
and I remain solid for a while
looking through hibernating womb
walls and wind vessels.

Two Answers

Two Questions

The world taking you in for what it’s
worth can be a terrible place—just ask
all my friends and enemies who have
sown the idea seeds and branched
away into harm; actually, haven’t
we too been engaged in risky
behavior frequently as of late?
Haven’t we felt our palms gripping,
our jaws clenching, and our smiles
aging just a little more than normal
over the past several dead months?
Blame the weather, or blame time,
but blame something, yes, you must—

Thick Glass

To want to know
everything
but knowing
that what is known
is just a sliver
above nothing
makes for an imposed
circuit of shame.

In the shower
this morning my
eyes were open,
my mind was alert,
and a general
appreciation
for humanity
resulted from my
decent sleep amount.
Prime qualities
for a rosy day.

But also greeting
me in that stall
was the haze of
the skylight,
thick glass bounding
me inside, dreamy
air and haunting
angles of that
upward and sick
other world stretching--
then awash meant
more of a dense
splash than a
purple paddle.

The Taken Job

A dormant man
candled by wind
and age sits atop
a dirty, red and
sullen table, his
grimace glancing
forward and back,
more than once
reaching for me.

He smiles with
the gaping mouth
of a cartoon
character, bright,
and I notice
amongst his sweat-
pants's stains those shoes—
a new Nike pair
snuggly attached
to his ankles.

And the new black
poncho adorning
his hands is like
a growing series
of puddles on
an empty street
in North Philly
(or the golden
ornament of
a limousine
passenger,
(or the tallest
Christmas tree’s
decorously
alive branches)
is made of cheap
plastic, a trash bag
unpunctured,
unfilled with filth
or wear from the
automobile
exhaust forms.

Outside silvering
slices of rain
impale the streets
with deadening
cries, loud rushes,
booming barks,
yawning noise.

Tonight my eyes
find the police
more present
than ever before,
and I imagine
that dormant man
lost or trapped
somewhere nearby;
with a great
difficulty
he breathes in
along each sleeping
block of soaked
and gray concrete,
the material on
his shoes wearing
thin with each step.
He is uncertain—
more than I, he was
kind, more than I.

Me, the Winter

Me, the winter
The winter calling
the rite of arms
or a farewell to
arms-bearing
or as a beacon
of rain, made of
black rayon
to keep out
the world's sog

Furthermore

After Slumdog Millionaire

I would like to know
what role Bollywood
plays into that orange
sunset of an ending.

Spiraling limbs jam,
dusted off epilogues
sit cantankerous,
all brandished long ago,

and though spirits rise,
Judas never comes back
from his bathtub
of rupees and blood.

I Am Guilty

I: of Time

And how the Kool-Aid mixes with the leaves--
And how the rain sets the smell of gasses straight--
And how the shoes are overrun with water, cold--
And how the cars continue to speed with such splashes--
And how the best minds have been unleashed today--
And how the worst minds have been sent to watch--
And how the coffee bitters both your tongue and mine--
And how the beer forces us to sleep later and later--
And how the correspondence continues to pile up--
And how the drafts remain tied down in their inboxes--

II: of Romance

Beautiful star hides
for now; morning is washing
that breathing silver.

Stately Plump, Buckshot

I

Well, first of all
Newark slumps
its tar-black belly
down just as I’m
finally, correctly
placing myself, though

it will be some
moments before
I can even see
the twisting horns
of that damned
cistual slip,
that inverted
red-paint abrasion,
passing along the
skyway on the right.

II

There is nothing
here, in the town
of Elizabeth,
New Jersey,
but rot and
digestion. It
is a welcoming
prelude, a shut door.

There is nothing here
but torn road, metal,
and check cashings.
The bus stops
look abandoned,
unwelcoming—
forlorn as a dagger
tip or gassed juggler.

This place is
beyond urban
fascination.

As I sit with windows
rolled up, doors unlocked
but waiting for change,
waiting for mercy,
I get the feeling
all the ghosts,
every last one,
wander these streets
in thin coats made
of ice, dangling limbs
appearing lifeless,
flesh-chunks dripping
and chilled bluish.

III

In this pool of
oil, grit, and fumes,
the automobiles are
as poisonously
visual as a long
lonesome downtown Detroit—
post-apocalyptic,
portentous and trite.

There is an image
of a shotgun firing
at a flock of birds
trapped inside a
leaning tower, a
parking garage
both behemoth
and angled toward
the great last sigh.

Along this map
of whimpers and
darting pensions
coexist deserted theatres,
housings stretching along
like chain-links, graveyards,
employment histories,
or this worn blanket
of machinery death.

Intimation

An old madman
held a lighted matchstick
in his hand and said,
"Listen, look, touch this.
This is important, it is all.
Dance it. For you'll never be the same."

Most laughed and turned--
others knew
that there was more here
than wood and fire.

Listening to Max Tundra, Burning Mixtapes

It's 5:43AM on Sunday morning.
I've never felt so bleak on
such a warm passing of a 12-07.

Synthesization of bytes.
Conscripts of pirated music.
Preparing tracks for journeys.

The insides of my eyes feel
pinched inwards, as though
they are facing greater things.

Prolonging classic pop beats.
Circuit-bending strangeness.
The vocoder is missing.

Goodbye to all close calls,
water glasses filled to the rounded top--
no room for any of that poison.

God of Gaps

Written after doing RCP work at Eerie and Broad.

Honks, cars, snowed flakes
and beyond, your voice to carry
narratives from one world
to the next, gray abysses

timed to the beat of horse,
tricked over slipping stones.
Met at one street corner,
moved to dirty next, heard

solemnity in voices but could
not be stopped from greater
visions, could not compose,
but wanted, it was hard, to befriend--

chicken, portions, beards,
rough edges thickening with salt,
we lying prostrate and casual,
separate vision of the oppressed,

and me too solo, large grin a knife,
or knifed, to be hit by a slow-moving
car, to be smashed into abstraction,
to be caused but causal, lit flame.

I was Thinking of the Diner Painting While Reading Your Work

After Jeff Brennan

Your voice was death,
a black sea to mount
attacks to, bright
misnomers, trench-locked

and feeling like petty cash.
There is no God in this room.
There is nothing here but
flaking skin remnants,
old used cookies with single
bites out of them, and a
trash can born out of porn,
beer, and broken CD burners.

I would clean this room,
force writing into gallop-
step, but I've got a bucket
to go fill with fly blood.

Admonition Delivered Behind the Back of Gregory Bem

I don't want an outside
too much beauty at the street level

you'll get no help from me
in your invisible war
on visual vices

or your other demons
like Puerto Rico or
your managerial demeanor
styled after a man coughing in Austria

"the sleeper team of the NFC East"

God has entered your work
like a poem enters the library:
scrawled in black Cross pen
with my adderall hand
on the back of an Ayn Rand author flap

Zounds. The trumpets insect each other
as the wounds of God are cauterized.

Brooklyn Canvass: a Call-Back

Dear Asian Lady,
When you bought that Chai latte...
I mean, I am sorry
for looking at you like a criminal
would look from the bushes
--the police passing--

I have become something
in the Park Slope shallows;
buzzing in on lit floors--
their hanging art, prayer flags,
Obama regalia

Let's transition to the target,
tactlessly. "It's like your father."
(I said that)
Then a membership appeal.
"It's hard to believe."

case these buildings built of something horrible
while the shadow kills their cover
the dogs bark for their own phones
plastic flapping off like broken feathers
in the black, dawnish air

do you have a moment
for my hands?
or my still young face?
or the banner wrapped around me like some equal fire.

Made to Glass

a revision

When we arrived back to our homes,
we spent hours imagining how we should
speak to one another after so long apart.

What we can make of the collections of
dust never seemed so simple before.

Subtle houses of the body—glass—
all different, certain architectures,
standing still amidst metal bullets.

A ghostly crew, sitting around on
white branches, the spread of skeletal trees—
things grown without us around.

Homes are fragmented things,
shining vessels strengthened by sunlight.

A Probe of Weight, Circles of Life

Belly roll-
up flailing

the flail
flesh, fiend

and/or friend
keeping warmth,

kept warm--
dumb and dumb,

lackluster.
I don't

know it /
you never

taught me--
dead still,

chilled grounds,
hallowed,

purpled,
patterned--

quilt in window
movies of Amsterdam,

red lights bubbling
up, illicit cherries,

growth of length,
bottles of ounces

flailing arm or
fat conductor up

toward single heaven,
Baby, where wildist

things are, but not
thin cubes--they

grappling fingers /
pocketing pennies--

stuffied accents
(mad scientist

machine garbel,
elongated,

brittle like nails,
dead too, like the

squirrel's death--
brains smashed

on the pavement; or
the death of a jay,

its brains smashed
where you won't find

'em, dripping deep

down into
wet dark suction,

tree hollows,
nestbottoms, eggs

onto a frying pan,
into a steam, dead

all the way back
down, dust and mold.

Salem Caprice No. 1

At night in early December
I sat in the passenger seat
waiting at an intersection in Salem
when I saw the fat father
leaving the Chinese food shack
bag in hand, leading his son.
And trailing behind him
was a shriveled girl
with thin hair
bent hands
misshapen eyes-

-Leaving the car
leading by the hand
smile that only those
with misshapen eyes can break
These are the children we see in school;
These are the children who make us whole.-

Sorry that I thought
In another world,
could I prune that branch?

Green arrow.

Clearance

You are still bringing in that
terrible wind with you

the clatter of public engineering
and people moving

I told you the tunnel glowed
A ripped sun rising from west 4th

Like it's some Ireland

Move those padded feet
your bone-tight back like a hospice
withers in the terrible wind
your market, your
little Neva

but remember
like Nietzsche
there is no clearance
in the niche

Black Angels

After Max Payne

You aren't going to kick me--
red slip dress--
out of your walk-up railroad.
After what happened at the Roscoe stop--
the watch falling in the restroom--
the silence of his partner.

Don't let it be the black angels.

You aren't going to believe this.
When they told you I was dead
you said you had gotten off six shots
and were the prime suspect
though the alleys are full of allies
with tails, claws, no alibis.

Don't let it be the black angels.

I hope you know you can always
call me. The bright lights needed fixing
and they did (him, his partner).
She liked art, right? Alexander Calder
invented the mobile. The babies
cried anyway.

Don't let it be the black angels.

I told you too it was me they wanted

I

Sirens drone overhead
like the flies, incessant,
craving meals of the dead.

This formidable
buzzing of blade—
whippings circular, irrational.

This helicopter—
all the begging, a whirl
of warp matter.

Into, as well as, birth of:
solid sighwave,
off-screen kick-shove.

II

Stale soybean breaks beneath my
fingertips, clean mush like tears of mud,
the Eucharist dancing on the tongue, wine
breath for badlands, burning bras, venereal—

This poor exchange of evening,
desperation retrieved,
exchange made for madness,
auditory, and oracular—the dying mouse
and his plastic crinkle noises.

We see we hear we touch—
so we know the spinning such.

Keep nodding my head from left to right.
No music no music just dancing tonight—

I download graphics drivers.
I remember the ghost-flashes
at work wanting me on alert.

And there was where I referenced “before-
time” again, the milk jugs facing me
in all opposites.

All the Greeks knew—kneel, kneel, kneel—
let us paint and live our gods too.

Order Lepidoptera

Migration’s momentum—automatic, involuntary. Leaves in the wind.

Monarch butterflies convene in the Sierra Madre Mountains to wait out winter. They huddle, covering trees, replacing green. Bringing orange, bringing autumn, bringing senescence.

Whether the rains come off the coast of the Atlantic or Lake Michigan they do not come effervescent, refurbishing. Not spring rain but metallic, devastating, pulling now rice paper thin leaves off trees.

Let them go. Let them go.

Boston sidewalks are peppered with maple leaves. Anthocyanin. Eggplant and apples.

Chicago sidewalks are covered with gingko leaves. Carotenoid. Summer squash and pears.

Even dogs resist the outside when the sky is thick like cream and rain importunate.

They stay

curled

cocooned

on the leather couch
and fake oriental rug.
Sleep comes easy when colors whisper,
humble now, if they speak at all.


Sidewalks are softer. Their edges usually parallel and hard, blurred. The difference between pavement and ribbon of grass that separates sidewalk and street, smudged.


Human migration is not regulated by seasons. A different kind of stirring, we do not follow time tested flight patterns, the path of our ancestors year after year. We only know we must leave the familiar and find our own home.

III.
Chrysalis: From Greek from chrysos gold of Sem origin; a kin to Heb harus gold.
1. A pupa of a butterfly; broadly an insect pupa.
2. A protective covering: A sheltered state or stage of being or growth.

IV.
The fledglings peer over
The edge of the nest, then retreat.
Advance and retreat, retreat and repeat.
The mother circles above chirping.
It’s almost as if the fledglings know
What failure would mean.
When a butterfly takes first flight
It has already lived a life,
It has already known the ground.
Born again from chrysalis
(Leaving a casing not a shell)
The butterfly hangs to harden
Not to hesitate,
Its wings pumped with heniolymph
It flies without thought of falling. •

Order Lepidoptera:

With membranous wings, largely or entirely covered with scales •

Leaves have begun rotting.

With each breath the sweet smell of carbon released permeates the air:
fermentation.

Carbon released not from tail pipes or factories but microbes, bacteria, nematodes.
To them, these soggy leaves are vital, not detritus of autumn.

VII.
Caterpillars possess a pair of mandibles;
That is to say a mouth
Capable of opening and closing,

Of eating leaves
As they crawl along branches
And dirt, easy members of the Class of Insecta.

Butterflies belong more to the Class of Aves
Than insects, the realm of birds—flying silent
Rather than buzzing incessantly.

To migrate from the domain
Of the crawling to the soaring
Comes with a cost:

The mandibles lock,
Morph from mouth to proboscis,
Fuse together to form a straw.

A coma patient incapable
Of feeding herself, of breathing
But through tubes down her throat.

Lips mute and pursed:
The price to pay for wings
And beauty.

VIII.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Superfamily: Papilionoidea
Family: Nymphalidae
Subfamily: Danainae
Tribe: Danaini
Genus: Danaus
Species: Danaus plexippus

Even with eyes to the ground, few notice the dying butterflies or that trees start forming buds now, just after they have lost their last leaves.

The squirrel’s tail twitches double time. Cheeks overstuffed gathering the last nuts, hiding them in trees and dirt. Digging false stashes to prevent discovery.

Butterflies open and close their wings slowly. Breathing slows when falling asleep. Kneel next to these dying insects; remain still as they crawl onto your palm.

The sun is too distant to warm their wings. They are no different than leaves, fluttering to the ground. Prepared to spend winter in rot and decay.


Cocoon: From French cocon, from Prov coucoun from Latin Coccum kermes (thought to be a gall or berry) from Greek kokkosberry kermes.
1. An envelope, often largely of silk, which an insect larva forms about itself and in which it passes the pupa stage.
2. Any of various other protective coverings produced by animals.

XI.
Language is anything but arbitrary.
The sound of words,
The way they slosh around mouths,

Roll over tongues
And drip, or jump, past lips
Mimics the symbolized.

Köhler, Ramachandran and Hubbard know
Show people a jagged line
Ask them to name it

And, whether English or Tamil speakers,
They will choose Kiki over Bouba every time.
Ask anyone to hold the words

Butterfly and moth in their mouths
And the butterfly will emerge
Through delicately parted lips

As from a chrysalis,
While the moth turns to dust
Trapped between tongue and teeth.

•

The insects are dying.
•
In the North East, people are guarded, distant. They hold collars over ears. They cover faces with scarves. They do not stop to say, “Hello,” to say, “How are you?”
In the approaching chill butterflies let down their guard. They lie idly on Chicago city sidewalks, no longer interested in phlox and flight.

In the approaching chill ladybugs line ceilings. Clustered on windows sills and in corners.

Squirrels in the attic.

Crickets by the hearth.

With eyes closed there is no difference between Chicago and Boston in fall.
In either place heaviness of footsteps is replaced by ephemeral floating of shoes among leaves.

schwsh schwsh schwsh

With eyes open brown stones become grey stones. Alleys grow like roots behind houses.

Lake Michigan goes on for miles, but the air lacks sodium chloride, docks and cobblestone.

The streets are wide in Chicago. The streets are narrow in Boston. Carved by cow paths not city planners, they curve organic, confusing.

They mimic the Charles,
mimic the Merrimack.

XIII.
Fish scales are beads
Loosely strung together,
Draped across bones and meat.
Butterfly scales are velvet
Taughtly stretched
Over delicate veins.

Moths too belong
To the order Lepidoptera
But their monochromatic
State of being
Does not yield velvet.

•

Moth larvae’s skin does not grow.
As the caterpillar grows with each leaf it devours its skin, now too tight, must be purged. When full grown, larvae weave cocoons from silk as a spider weaves a web, around itself. More than merely an issue of semantics these gossamer threads do not create the precious object.
Unsightly.
Cut them out of trees.
The moth emerges at night
and flies unblinking into the flame.

XV.
Etymology of Entomology
Butterfly
Pappillon
Farfella
Schmetterling
Papalote
Mariposa
Kipepeo
Pepeo
Nizugunzigu
Wrrp
Vinder
Borboleta

XVI.
Migration or maybe emigration.
Most species of butterflies that travel do not return, prevented not by strength of desire, but strength of muscles: wings so thin cannot fly for long.
We bring our language with us.
Packed in suitcases between pants and layers and layers of socks.
Evidence of origins.

XVII.
Butterfly Middle English buterflie, Old English buttorfleoge

Language is anything but arbitrary.
History reveals more than simple etymology.
Back in the Beowulf days
It was believed that butterflies were witches
Come to steal the cream and butter.
Batting their wings as a girl bats her eyelashes,
Foolish, spastic
They hovered around the churns.
Witches don’t have time to make butter.

•

The rain stops.
Wind and walking brush leaves off sidewalks, piles form along edges.
No longer blankets, pillows now.
The sidewalks are stained.
Leaves imprint drying pavement.
Modern fossilization.
Each breath in stings lungs, each breath out, smoke: the first frost is coming soon.

The days are void of bird-song, quiet. Those finches and sparrows that have not flown south are taciturn, too cold to so much as hum. The butterflies are dead.

Stay inside.

The ground, merely damp for the moment will soon be slick—not pavement, glass. Only a few leaves still produce enough auxin to retain their grip on the tree. The other leaves are languid; their edges curl as they dry on the ground, sleeping and sacrificial. The sun too has grown lazy. No longer able to reach the top of the sky, high noon betrayed. Shadows are long for the entire day. Sweaters yield to jackets and gloves.

XIX.

Affix
Split
Wriggle
Wriggle
Writhe
Discard
Dry
Harden
Wait

XX.
Tree’s roots grip tightly onto earth, embed
Into soil, like a child’s coiling
Fingers in her mother’s hair.
Dirt provides stability, minerals dissolved
By water, water which crawls
Up xylem, clinging to walls
Polarity of molecules, capillary action.
Trees understood first
Spreading fingers, palms up
Towards the sun makes all the difference.
Wings too know how to absorb heat
Use it for muscle movements for flight
How to uncurl lips like roots
And drink the dirt.

•

Butterfly larvae shed skin 4-5 times before proceeding to the second instar: pupa. A chrysalis forms under the last layer of skin. Upon the final molting the chrysalis is exposed, skin discarded. No longer larvae now pupa. Attached with viscous muscle the pupa waits until inner organs are strong enough to break through harden cuticle, waits until the jade case has lost its jewel tone, turned black with the bug inside. The insect then hangs: large body with small shriveled wings more beetle than butterfly, imago.

XXII.
Language is how history haunts.
You can declare independence
But the language will persist.
It is only slang that differentiates the
invader from the invaded.
Language that lives outside
Of the dictionary, amongst taste buds,
grooves of fingerprints and hair follicles.
It is only when you say Flutterby
Instead of Butterfly
That we are truly free.

•

No more butterflies now only bits of newspaper floating through the air, a rustle reminiscent of previous seasons. Sound is different: quiet just before dawn all day. Sound waves travel slower than light and even slower now. They do not bounce easily off snow. Absorption.

Grey is the densest color. In the cold, butterfly eggs incubate. Under snow, under rotting leaves, they wait, no different than seeds. Peach pits from the neighbor’s tree lie on frozen soil, those that didn’t get carried away by squirrels or chewed by dogs. They need this frost. Without it they will not sprout.

This is the season of wait.

Thanksgiving

Finally, my own menagerie.

I hadn't seen a crow or duck
since that happiness,
the most fleeting beam of
that great bloomer of a sun
blew cooly into hibernation

The world wars itself
the hostility, like all things
is predictable.

The crate-paper Indian.
His rotting.
The birds expressing
interest.

Please
Lead me like a new dancer
to an Eden where we can destroy one another.

"No Monday in Your Sunday"

So Wall-E was recently released on DVD and Liz bought me a copy as a Thanksgiving gift. Last night's viewing further solidified my belief that it's one of the best movies to be released in recent memory. It should embarrass most production agencies that a "children's movie studio" (PIXAR) continues to release movies that probe consciousness in a way "indie" labels don't seem to grasp. While nearly all "ambitious" and "enthralling" titles, such as "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Synecdoche: New York," tirelessly play on the all-too familiar (and yet bewilderingly hip) themes of human relationships and coincidence, Wall-E explores the quintessentially modern conflict of existence vs. survival through a universal (yet non-patronizing) narrative. I feel that all too often movies that receive counter-cultural acclaim are those that follow the Kant's classical analysis of humor: "sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing;" as if their absence of meaning or moral somehow validates them as "pure cinema." Take a tip from Wall-E: meaning parsed in a manner that everyone can understand; aesthetic morality expressed without post-modern pretension.

Noctilucence

After A. R. Ammons

It was so easy to live—blue strands
interweaving between bushes,
curls to capture bold from bland.

Now there are only rocks among us—
chipped foot placements, the soft
crust of the earth spreading apart,

dust pushed up from front to back,
a trail of sandstone and granite, all
blown into a new breathing powder.

The sun slows bends down to rest,
filling the evening with an assortment
of white rays to ease the humdrum.

As Autumn cascades along, our feet
scuffle too, tired and off-balance,
scraping up the last miles in light.

We stop to admire the moon’s new
courage, a mirroring statement, and
watch each other’s eye clamp shut.

Heat swarms the room, and there is,
without denial, a strong memory
of breaths, of steam in the cold.

Like Bright Raspberries

I

Today another one
sat down outside.

Another charm plopped like
skin on skin only

twenty feet away, muse
of the electric death.

I watched and read
Best American Poetry,

2008. The Guest
Editor is Charles Wright.

I was long past
his glorious intro.

I was also long past
staying focused on

the butterfly of
crisp hardback pages,

an inner filling that
will yellow, yes it will.

II

After half an hour
of trading glances,

caffeine sweat-cake
drumming up to head

like a jogging heart,
like sentience in transit,

the mocking bird got up,
cell phone still in hand,

and bounced--for her
terminal, her gold,

next-step oblivion
that would snow boredom,

powerful precipitation
of absence and card-houses.

And so, back down to
that poetry, fight or flight.

III

Did I mention the curly
hair aiming up like a torpedo?

The scandalous ragtag garb
hanging loosely from figure

but not like dead skin
or a dripline of cake batter?

Did I mention her bag
stitched together rottenly?

Poor case of fashion
attraction, our poor

glances stupid and fruitful,
my vision to that wasted

soul just gun barrels
of smoke on the horizon,

damp feet inside raw shoes,
pumped clouds of adrenaline.

Like bright raspberries,
now is for sitting and

now is a time, green-shaded,
for all those red insides.