American Portraits and Translations

After watching Lost in Translation and thinking of memories in Japan.

What will get you
writing again?

What will get you
thinking of things,
expressable things,
things that should
move you in strangest
directions?

It is amazing the
contrast of light
and dark, spread over
like a tightly-knit
blanket, or a routine.

Sometimes routines
are nothing.

Sometimes routines
depress with their
impressive orders.

In Tokyo, the light
is an impression
in world of other light.

In writing, the words
depress like maniacs
holding flaming swords,
their hearts in sheaths,
sleeves made out of grass,
blood pouring down lines
like telephones, abruptive
immensities, cheatings.

The cops stole your smirks
like they were towels
to be wrung out; breaths
like baths of grease,
midnight motorcycles
to the instant grills.

If I were your lipstick
would I shade your face
in cherry blossom?

If I were the hanging
plants, if I were moons,
if I were strange dogs,
if I stockings licked,
or ripped, lipped to
let go . . . if you
held that umbrella?

Every girl walks
down the street the same,
each mall's layout slime.

The really big deals
mold fashion to greyback.

The mysterious face
of the close your face.

Double oh seven propped
in the shower, the rope
snapped hours after
judgment's rolls.

To stop and to drop,
to roll around in
and be awash with sound.

Chaos the blond, lashes,
longingly looked
at your likeness like
Italian gardens, moto,
spread cheese across.

It was hard to reach
the soul when the soul
was a woman walking
blocks away, her form
blurred motion, her
orientation, midnight
velocity, midnight this,
midnight that, midnight
of the same, thick cuts.

A sweater wrapped in,
"um" style, "okay,"
flowers for purpose,
sticks of fire and color.

We waited to hold your
hands together in
practice, the exhaustion
supervising from above.


Taken on March 1, 2009

Listenings to screams
of cats, noodles eaten,
staring foreheads,
the masculine bowing
before katana death!

Suzuki! Please, whiskey!
For relaxing time,
make it Santori time.

Make it time of the will.
Make it a cabride zone.
Make it forgetting.
Make it millions.
Make it plays upon.
Make it gravity.

While husband worked,
wife dined out explaining
her husband to the other,
who is husband,
the form cannot explain,
Aristotelian commotion,
the battle of molasses,
long gunshot of lazer.

Nowhere. The anarchy of
nowhere, no time, video
heads bouncing around
like slaves to heads.

This is how it is
to respond to
the best beast,
the vocal projection.

Anorexia it is not.
Toxins it is not.

Some people think in
tongues, think in jokes.

If I fall, someone will
notice. The people are
the secret, the dancing
is the muse. Heliotropic.
Mastodons of menace!
How their footsteps fall!
Dancing the meringue!
Dreaming the rasta!
Tongues of Babylon
opening up and eating
all of it, crowns, sides
of the diamond, eating
the routine in the whole.

What is the definition
of burgundy?

The wrong situation for
orange camo?

What is too small?

What is pizza of death?


Taken on March 29, 2008

Seven gulls for seven
women born to triptych.
One gull explodes wing.
One gull picks up woman.
Third gull dances blues.
One gull picks up guitar.
One gull silenced.
Sixth gull dances seventh.
Seven gulls but sixth
and seventh are dancing.

Special? You called me
special and then Morrisey
and then the same lights
saying the same words
the same symbols bogging
along the same lanes,
driving down into etched
marks of brig's stand.

(Thinking,
like Lisa Jarnot
thinks)

How many times have we
shut the door and walked
away knowing we did shut
the door and walked away,
drunk, or stunned, our
hair wind blown along,
we tired to think but
still thinking and what
was it they whispered
those chancellors, those
kids on the sidewalk,
those chancellors of
the wind, their hair
shut doors, their time
drunk or stunned, Mount
Fuji standing straight up
and us begging forgiveness
for having walked away.

Strange canisters, broken
xrayed feet and toes,
in forms that we haven't
seen. How's that song go?

The magpie's come home.
The chicken's come home.
The roost has come home.
An old friend, David,
used to sing in a band.
He sung of remote control.
Being a remote control.

I think about these things
years later. Does this h-
happen, later on? To run
through traffic and think,
to watch the smashed glass
on the windshield chipped
and crumbling beneath
each wiper that unlimits
our visions and glances
to the east and west,
like children across a
street, or fingers torn
from an envelope, or
the fingers later spooning
jellies and cubed ice
dowsed with whiskey
into the gaping mouth
of the one your love, so
does this happen, does it
happen forever and ever?


Taken on March 2, 2007

Mt. Fuji in quiet movie.
Blues are the colors
my mother used to make
me admire, the tones
of the sky and the water
and the color of some ink,
of a car and my favorite
crayon, of binders and
folders and shirts and
toys, of flowers and
butterflies and berries,
of weddings no one watched
and funerals with eyes
closed for ages, shadows
behind the lids all blue.

Then the abstractions,
the subtle intangibles,
the blues neither felt
nor felt, the deep
widening blues matched
with music and sound
but felt raw and uncut,
blobs and blurbs of blue,
claps and waves of blue
through lines and circles,
bubbles and bottoms of
holes, of everything.
Transfers always help
but never in the blue,
enraptured and bathing,
blue descriptive in its
vague sense of being,
a cloak flowing in the
forest, the breeze bowing,
teasing, tracing skin
and massaging and the
metamorphosis; no wait,
hesitation is in blue,
too; the lines and lines
all circumferences
ensnared. The great slick; up and you chose blue.

You can start a jazz band
as every object in your
field of vision becomes
tilted and titled with
blue. Tiled along in
parade like tears to
spout. This is the spooked
way of living. This is
the hardship of starships
and our chizeled features
becoming the great love
story of our time. It is
easy to think of the hero
as a farcical character.
It is easy to think of
such masses on the walks!
Subtle reflections await
and it's the hardest
things we do, every day
going on like this, the
romance killing us,
becoming us, and onwards
to the sky, I dream of
Ashbery's system, being
lost in translation,
the deep undercurrents
of the underbelly, and
ten at night zooming
past in chorus, songs
sung to make us drip.

This is the grief of
honey being licked
by paws, the bottom
of the container visible.