Killermine

for (h)alloween

I've heard enough of your translators.
Inside the bag the meat parts were fresh.
Cold rooms and cold lights on all sides.
The top makes the bottom sets me right.
I've heard enough of your peace and meals.
A fork with prongs bent north then south.
There was once a man who tried to save me.
There was once a woman who tried to save me.
Sillouettes creeping about to smuggle you.
Our best friends are the ones we don't know.
Crying in the biggest open lot in the world.
He didn't know he was going to get it.
She didn't know he would get it over with.
Do you understand what a grated portal means?
Life comes to me in portmanteaus, bass drums.
It was all fine and okay until the walk.
How do we get through these fragrant signs?
Then there was a dance and they paired me.
It could have been metalworks and mayhem.
I stepped on her toes and she howled.
Are we all dogs when it comes down to what?
There is so much noise that needs silencing.
A security guard watched it happen.
I am the crowned prince that no one knows.
Social workers watched me get dragged away.
We all have problems no one recognizes.
Drop-kicked into the funnel of highway.
Launched through a world of pine and birch.
It wasn't a thorough search but it bled.
That great, raspy howl at such a young age.
I remember the first night and all nights.
There was never room to protest it.
Here we all look at each other in the eyes.
There was never any room to walk out.
Our corneas seethe and the pressure unfolds.
All we know is the happy, seated position.
I will rip everyone's eyes from their sockets.

Camden

After Micheal Gizzi's Chapterhouse Reading

Diabetic Capricorn, get out of your snow pants

why are you so worried, I'm like an airport genius

we sell the best weekend in town even though we aren't supposed to be here

the poets are poeming with each others names

my past is here, save me

let's start a pharmaceutical company

tell the women we forgot them but let em down easy like a first kiss

this place would be more hip if the clocks worked

this is why we invented Camden and introduced credit card minimums

you're probably bad at gum then
but we can't all be good at everything

Olney High School West - Selections

Every few days I get the urge to write a poem while in my class. Here are a few. I've left them unedited.

10-21-09

back in worlds where torn hearts hit the wayside
filleted open under a cover, one or another.
Respect comes in breathing forms.
Who can breathe the loudest breath
before the time is up and away?

*

Students who don’t stare at paper
stare at the walls
which keep everything in.

Benchmark Testing Today

The real tests begin before the class begins.
Say things five times too fast for security.
Five star hotel. Security taskforce with stun guns.
I will dance with you along disinfected halls.
The bellhop will be our third person choreographed.
His cemeteries dream the cries of the dead.
Office labyrinths keep everyone lost.
I had a dream of limbs failing.
The final frontier spared; free of fear.
You wait by the building that drips into the background.
I’ve got whips in a chest somewhere.

It was like a horde of ants covering linoleum seascape

attendance. ms. G’s
students came to class
because they could
get minimal points
for it.
but there’s no
reason to do
work. and they
won’t get kicked out
for doing
nothing: even
distraction.

From the October Cell Cutups

featuring Victoria Tran; Jeff Brennan; Stephen Silverman

This day has been a constant battle against my hangover head and failing body. I’m pissing like every hour and my pee smells like honeynut cheerios. Who knew Piels! Only eaten ten strawberries since I saw you I think. Ducking has the zero transparency in this organization Don’t stomp too salty or your blame will flare up in a thiefy way.

Thinking About Chainsaw Massacres

There is the sound of the moon
but it does not phase my morning.
The lump-sack of flesh around me
like a ring does not care back.
Three Puerto Rican girls tricked me
into thinking I thought them a fool.
I can't think of anything
I'd rather be doing right now.
A man walks down the street
with a sword made of green glass.
A hunter scatters his shadow
across the roofs of buildings.
In a many days' cycle we have learned
that we don't know our apathy.
We probably never will;
there are cinders in the sky;
this is another of your mornings,
with unchecked parts lingering.
It is everyone's goal to teach
but no one wants to admit it.
The teachers are as muzzled
as the students; the students
run around scramming for more time
and scrambling our shields.
The adults are silenced goons where we
once saw monitors who could love.
We carry love around like a child;
even if its heart stills we still carry.
Before long: burden smiles continue.
The sly fox sits in a wooden grove.
I gave you a container of honey
to ward away our spirit animals.
No 'thank you' or cast glance.
You have succeeded in dribbling.
I want to wrap you in my arms
and explain the meaning of a cut lung.
The voice on the announcer box
sounds like a baritone mosquito wheeze,
and parts of me beg for refined sugar.
Parts of parts of parts of them.
Us in the mechanic's garage, tweaking.

Caution: I Live in a Crime Scene Photo

A reconstitution

my smoking cloud is a mushroom gun
our bridge doesn't get along with other bridges

grimace was our brother, a bond stronger
than the bridge and wild highland magic

the island avenue exit discovers herself
on the blue line, Philadelphia

* * *

we all know you involves shadow

where you (you round (you grab)) crazy you

the rest: a dirty of delish

It's me that includes a show

the sun comes up
every season anyway

at the top of the world, your breath

we have lots of Benjamin Franklins

summer's lovely, I enclosed a picture
stuffing in a problem

* * *

Our braille is beautiful, elegant
one of your station sleeps in our curtains
his slump ended on the sabbath
even if the internet is calling things differently

I heard the ninjas found religion
but their sourdough paradigm clashes
with the plaid of a country we just started
that we named for her beauty marks

* * *

the wires were barbed with another morning stomach
"fluids" mouthed the conductors, in essence: everything
we heard our child, behind us, breathless now
a stare like yours, more parts per million
it was then the greens organized in order of their halos

* * *

weeping, yeah, in my
silent open-mouth jaw-lock wet-
eye way, the lights of
Penn tunnels en route to others
less friendly and successful

we were brotherly
with one another
until the flood
(ice had covered Ninevah)
the tide-drowned harpers

there had been love there
making out with the thing
it had been consuming
the blank space, tasteless backhairs
our fevered livers ballooning

living above condition
the smiling Ivy, her perk
Dan's har, the impossibility
of his experimental season
barring androgyny

a man laughing himself awake
we should quit our jobs
and be the shadows who sleep in the train station
and change will fall like girl hair
as love wells in the trespassing public

------------
Video of the poem in an early version from back when I was fat:

The Dog-Destroyers

Today is the day of the squirrel
the day of the mouth-waffle
an awesome day

A Chinese farmer has constructed a
one-man submarine, revolutionizing war

The police didn't join in the dance
they arrested him for disorderly conduct

We love Hollywood, we just
have a funny way of showing it

they give me free soda, I'm here so much
it's Jack-o-lantern anarchy

Pall Mall particles in their perfect randomness
the distance of the jump corresponding with the color

these are the impossible endings
you're not considering

We disassemble poems until the tiles run out
see our credit policy for more information

Remember, VIAGRA does not protect against sexually
transmitted diseases, including HIV,
so live your life in the average window of shark-attacks;
in what industry insiders have termed the "shark-attack window."

Never-me Slandeh

To be a reclusive white communist
close with a female communist white friend.

I watched them about a year ago from today
and hope I don't run into them tonight.

In fifty minutes. Also the other he fell in love with
this guy's work. He found it randomly while scrolling across
the landscape and it was a digital rendezvous.

"The problem with you is that you never finish
a single project." That's right, I didn't pay
attention and now I can't make goals. Workshops
are the types you dismiss at the backslap of a hand.

I need money and will be homeless to get it.

Pray that you're given the brass band five-star
stud-knuck this time. Or pray that you aren't.
The alleyway is where supermoves are invented.
But nobody thinks about these things at the time.

I've got a Cuban Vision now. I met a Dominican today.
I think about necrophiles all the time. And child rapists.
I bite my tongue when I think of attrocities. I eat so much candy.
This coffee tastes like it has sugar in it:
it's sweet and from Switzerland and the packaging
is yellow but not from age. It's probably a fungus.

Or a dye. The kind you use to roll fabric in.

Hunchback Poem

I'm waiting for him to step out
the door so I can follow him for
a block or two wielding a claw
for him and struggling to keep up
but not struggling too hard since
I will definitely reach him and tear
open a quality of his that he cherishes,
though I can't say which part now, but
as I'm standing under the moon's
reflections from the glass-sheathed
buildings erupting from the pavements,
like my own magnificence, my hands
quiver and I feel I will know feelings
of murder, revenge, satisfaction soon,
as remainders, and like bunches of taxis
who will stop their cars one block
down from you and I, shake their heads,
move along, ready to spot live ones,
for I am dead too, and will be long gone
too, bending around other sunken corners,
new fragments and saps itching my skull.

Live from the Crash Site

After Chicago's Field Museum

Say that someone needs a certain kind of mask
the elder women grind iridescent shells
and crowd a house to capacity like cigarettes
dressed as great cannibal spirits
we call this "the forced distribution of gifts"

a document which depicts both education and marriage
most likely written by the governor of bridges

I'm going to eat you...what are you going to do about it?

Live from the crash site...
You know, in a way it's like bowling
the hideous smells and after-clatter
are almost too obvious

The Loop, spokes of it
a Mexican popcorn child's pigeon circus
he abdicates as you see the disease you're sitting in

(infrastructure as cancer-factory)

I'm partial to the Drake passage, nothing personal

A nature walk ending on the south side
begs the question: "What is an animal?"

the first flowering plants appear
in the dinosaur times

little girl says to little girl
"did you know we are making history right now?"

the clouds are close down and no storms are coming in
perfect weather in which to leave the atoll

even the dead prefer it sub-tropic
even the dead have morning breath

there have been six mass-extinctions in the earth's history
rock beach versus blown-foam flip-flop
a brief history of the Precambrian
a brief history of the minefield

Forget feet, miles, or kilometers
the tower is 283 Barack Obama's tall

smoking again (for the benefits)

we peek through portholes like lovers, like thieves

at least one death can be attributed to the Gatorade shower
nah man, I've been out of bread bowls since 1
upon landing, we splinter our canoes for the same reason as our bodies
the spirit, which brought such good fortune on the voyage over, can atrophy, or worse, become malignant and a pox upon the tribe

Trapped with Sandor

Olney High School is a Stern Soldier

"Bus Wait"

After the Transylvanian, Sandor Kanyadi

the tomb swept on was ridden once
by two riders sucking brand new thumbs
colored in grief and denunciation
while waiting my turn gathered steamy pause

those pockmarks are your bane your banner
and bent while watched by the not so gentle
whose sparks flicker the stolen corners
away from their shadows, yes, to thievery

*

"Your Last Best Friend Recently Diseased"

it could be that all
this is imprisonment
while it aligns to form
its message
that it's coming home
from the battlefields
(the plains being sexed up
by torn shrubs
and powdered footprints)
to greet you
with a bear-hug

Two Poems by Sandor Kanyadi

From Dancing Embers (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002)

"Unvaried Variation"
-Originally from Black-and-Red Verses" (1965-1972)

although the thunders have rolled on
and the lightning bolts have fizzled out
the evening still can make a child of
this old man with autumn hair and gout

standing int he same old hollow tree
where I was at the age of five
when I spent a long night crying
and shouting songs to stay alive

*

"Should Be Abolished"
-Originally from Poems about Poetry (1974-1977)

not only punctuation marks
but capital letters basking
in class distinction
should be abolished
words should be stripped
naked just like
those deported

When They Say That They Want You (Don't They, Version)

What was the father really but big goof balls
popping and drain covers and long rails of fat
'cause cause to order fresh appropriation seemed
good back then when we thought about patterns.

It takes a long strand of thought to explode
circuits I said watching circuits darken, power
outage from east bank to west, drawing as in lips
to cold pool of coldest month in transition you

sitting there sipping discussing structures' lacked
evidence. But it was fine, it was like having falling
back to worms since that's everything all the time
anyway and this new shirt isn't helping your look.

Naked Pictures

Let's liken it to something
since memory, evidence
of it happening holds more value
than an actual experience
that we don't even need you for
that we have removed you from

Envelope

October 11, 2009

Maura:

The work I sent you most recently was indeed rough drafts and other bits and pieces I had floating around. I sent various friends small collections of my drafts because the drafts weren’t doing anything here with me and I figured it would be more beneficial to confuse/mystify/startle various recipients by doing something different. I guess it worked with the inquisitive you. The problem with sending out material like this, unmarked and appearing haphazard, is that it looks half-ass, and while the amount of effort that goes into stuffing an envelope filled with messy, crazy pieces of paper is not necessarily that great, I hoped you find it pleasurable anyway. I assure you the next creative work I mail to you will be up to par in its neat composure.

But how is Rhode Island? Is it still a sink hole? A stink pit? A nether realm? A beautiful coastal habitat? I rarely think about it these days, though I take note of it whenever it comes up in conversation with randoms. I think about you sometimes and wish I could see you as it’s been so long. Do you miss your friends from school in strange ways? To me Roger Williams is like a ghost town, like a refinery of spirits, fading but still out there, somewhere. A mist, if you like King references. Is it tragic? I do not know. Some days I contemplate the integrity of growing old and I get really sad. Following college life and that post-college-confused-glow, people really turn into those caricatures that show up on the big screen. Only now am I freaking out about it, breaking down about it. Strangely enough it wasn’t the first high school friend I noticed got married, or the first friend I noticed had a child, a baby, an offspring, an heir; rather, it’s the work and the relationships that are chaotic all around me that freak me out. People dating people they hardly know and have to start to get to know. It is a commodity of survival; and it seems false. And oddly enough, I think about the primal qualities in relationships from high school and early college, where people weren’t pretentious and prestigious and were just wild, sexual beings coming together for some raw energy appeal.

The obvious answer is in recreation. People can recreate their youthful heydays if they want to. But this recreation is the struggle everyone faces, and it’s a struggle. And it’s faced. This is error to me; this is denial and unwillingness. We do not know how to push forward but we do not care. Because time is always running out for the adult. I am waiting until that time where I become one of the millions who claim adult years go by so fast. I am scared sometimes. Some people take chemicals to recreate their childhood emotions and intelligences. The LSD-baby-vision-reformation-practice is what I mean. You have heard of this, I am sure? To be able to think on the same imaginative level as the young child who is still learning via full, wholesome emersion. I still engage in tripping on hallucinogens like acid but mostly I get really happy—really, really happy (because non-refined, utterly true blue happiness is early childhood for me), but then I get really sad, really critical, and subject to the great failures of my life thus far. For me failure is the most apposite affectation. It is a hump that can’t be retrieved; attempting to leap over such a hill becomes a new hill in its attempt. Do you ever think about storms? There’s an author who wrote about a storm. It was large and always on the horizon. It was terrifying. When it reaches you it sucks out your life, sucks it up, and gives you a new life. It’s a life that can’t be built or destroyed. We can only bear witness.

Storms are cruel mothers. Lightning; thunder; beauty; intensity. But it is just like that uncropped childhood block building. Storms are completely immense experiences. Unexplainable, no matter how hard we try. I think the greatest weapon in the world would be a storm that could be controlled; or a storm that didn’t end. Is this why weathers of disaster always come up in literature, film, and other modes of “entertainment”? We love death. Thanatos. We love fear. Phobias. Our anxiety keeps us on the edge of our seats. Then we dream of loves. People to be there with us; people who we want to understand us better than we can understand ourselves. This is a painful request for the self as it requires the suffering of admission. Admittance is never free: boundaries will pop up like bacteria. Small things that eat away at the whole. Do you ever dream of the blindness of a newborn? Sometimes I wish I was forever in that womb-ejected state. Fresh, warm, wet, screaming, the light everywhere. That first light. That infinite light. The light that comes before we learn to use our memory, before we learn to use our memory so we can start forgetting how to memorize, in order to protect ourselves, because all we really want is that first light.

Greg

***

11-09-07

I sat and watched you,
your ears were behind earphones,
spectacles spat to face,
the droning of so many songs.

Evil brightening before days,
yellow lights electric skyline
porous skyline put your boots on
take them off scrape off the mud

it must come off come off, it must.

little bird flying with little wings
sighing with little children as champs
behind billions of boxes, behind all of
those eyes ripple trickling water
trickling water,
torrential torpor
try this
try that
do something
do black under spotlight
do shirt of gold
under sparkling white teeth

tweet tweet tweet tweet

billboard burnt fuchsia
billboard burnt

the callers at the call centers, I can't
imagine them being very happy, I cannot
imagine them trying very hard--this is what
I do, do not try hard, the clown mask
is hilarious, as it is: many, many people
cornered by jaguar grins
and currency became teeth under old
spotlit
glamor glance billboard drums too
old!

The smallest positive integer not definable in under eleven words.

Duck!

(bullets)

Actual Borders Bookseller/Bookbuyer Conversation

[Bookseller is breaking Borders SOP by reading White Noise while listening to Bromst when he should be shelving shiny mystery books]

[Enter Bookbuyer.]

Bookseller: How ya doin'?

Bookbuyer: Perfect

Bookseller: Perfect?

Bookbuyer: Nobody's perfect.

Bookseller: What?

Bookbuyer: Nobody's perfect.

Bookseller: Oh. I like the absurdity you bring to this interaction.

Bookbuyer: Ha! Now, that's an absurd thing to say.

Bookseller: More meta, really.

Bookbuyer: Right.

[Bookbuyer places the Money Issue of the New Yorker on the brackish marble counter]

Bookseller: That'll be $4.23. Where are you going?

Bookbuyer: Where are any of us going?

Bookseller: Down to death. The Greeks knew it. The Jews knew it. And since then all human endeavor has been an effort to make us forget about it.

Bookbuyer: [Pays] I think about it everyday.

Bookseller: That's why we're the way we are.

[Register cacophony. Receipt tears.]

Bookseller: I'll probably blog about this later.

Bookbuyer: Weird. Cya!

Bookseller: Cya!

[Exeunt]

Why I Hate You

You never looked at me
on the subway. I waited
for twelve stops.

*

There was a long line
and we were both in it,
but to you I was a link.

*

Scalpels can reconstruct
the faces of the ugly:
the impositions of surgeons.

*

It’s only a pensive existence
where you come in. Don’t wash
my back and remove me scars.

*

Rolls of coins drop from your pockets
and nobody understands; there I am
cleaning them up, fitting them back in.

*

A car can hit
but a car can
also speed away.

*

Lights through the kitchen window
were just like the flashlights
when they came to get us under covers.

*

Once that concrete
was carved into shapes
we could recognize.

*

Beheld beneath those
brawny branches
a the girl in pink pajamas
and her mother screaming;
the blood pouring out,
but from which mouth?

This is your Brain on Don DeLillo

8:43pmJeff:
i hate people who greet everything new with wide-eye'd terror
like Tracy on the biggest loser

8:44pmMaria:
better to squint?

8:44pmJeff:
no, better to concentrate on blowing yourself up
and hoping to feel wonder, surprise
even though mass-culture has made that impossible
we can find every stimuli possible on television, or On Demand
or the internet
we only seek these new stimuli because we saw them on television, on Demand, or online
and others have described them as ideal
it's all an effort to be part of a crowd
and the crowd is massive
it's every person in the world except for luddites in south america and the dying in africa
it's not even a shared experience
since there is no sharing
but it's the furthest thing from unique
since we now have an "ideal" set of life experiences
and our lives are spent grinding towards the resources necessary to accomplishing them
and if we don't, we are failures

Brandywine, Sponge

I will not revise no never-(_0_-

Vomit in the foyer
and a reminder: burger patties.
Drone of a television:
behind courtyard walls the
suicide girl clutches her remote;
these memories are wireless,
and streaming, a real
tourniquet sans buttons.
Back to creeping fingers
to ward off parched throat.
Plunge into columned skin.
We spoke of flayed facial flesh,
the blood drops pittering
down the cheek. My
mouth is dry in daily thought,
and while the bands sucked
tonight one of them didn’t.
I think I’ll send you
a message later; carpet bombs.
Bombs for the babes,
for the lightning beings
and crass espionage failings.
Wandering around: wondering
aloud—blackout, bonanza’d
sam-itches in a foreign city.
We are plastered forever
waiting for bombs forever and
still, some news clips preloaded.
We can ride the train to work
reading them and thinking
of not calling anyone else
including your sisters.

Moon, Death [Vallies of]

For Rio De Janerio
we can only blame ourselves
yelled the fat-cats (black now)
over old fat lawnspeople
also yelling

we hold back our waters
with siege weapons
trebuchets mainly

"this is like
the fourth grandma joke
we've made today"
says the ghost we hired
for just that purpose

she's like bleached pink
and may be recycled
delicately

the center city skyline
unites against lesser cancers
is aware (anyway)
of your U-bar on the down-tube
leaving divot constellations