Hook Search

Was waitin' in my bed for the bugs to stop bitin'
before my time to put in to the clock would start
but I had only been watchful for five minutes
when the alarm buzzed with alcoholism and my
knees tightened through charlie horse spasm.

why don't you blend titles more often, thought.
why don't you do remixes, remakes, peace plans.

I tasted blood on my tongue before falling back down
and closing my eyes to wake up in the dream of
the alarm clock once more, the fiction of it all more
extraordinary than de-pee-viewed once more.

Take your arms from around your back and shout
equality before making way down the wooden steps.
I was in my apartment for five minutes after a bomb
exploded outside in the blacktop, outstretched hand.

Don Delillo - White Noise (or Late to the Party)

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the aura. We're part of the aura. We're here. We're now."

He seemed immensely pleased by this.

Statuary

Thanks to your best night's attire
it's time to engage in another blood sit.

Yes, the knees are aching to explode
again and it's only the second rise.

Before long you realize sicknesses
are as boring as the worlds around them.

There is an exhaustion below these falls.
Exhaust fumes. Lingering pinwheels.

I would hurt you if I knew where
to find you, if I knew your address.

All I've got right now is what's implied.
It's a faith worth wearing. Like sand burials.

Must stomach it first. It comes out at night.
The nose holes would drip vomit for days.

In which the Atom witnesses the dying breaths of a friend in winter . . .

ocean snow, the gas stations a necessary design

luminal and homeless
outpouring exploits for unnecessary function

thoughts settle on the rose crux
the creases of unwashed sheets form written in wires, turning
dusted cocaine mirror
the color of blood runners

a small razored smile could a grail or
remainder of the ant infestation became you

could a sparkle
damn your friends and claim you a hotel room

horizontal limit, vertical position,
district of the poor cosmic particles
spectral as police warlocks who
charge & flutter like bats and heal?

the coal smudged on the train tracks is
pressed against her breasts like a dagger
unsealing various arterial rhythms

swerve of atoms through headlamps of cars
& patience while taking the mother’s fingers;
knots tied & broken like the fire that became the bodiless crucible
meanwhile untied from the handcuffs

entropic surge of a pretzel or donut,
rabbit hole of hungry mouths awaiting
maturation from a few & the action, the word, the breath--

A poem by Kenneth Patchen and with a photo by me

"O Howling Cells"

I protest against the manner of these ruins.
That their streets are soft with the dried hair
Of murdered children is not outside
The order of our speckled activity; even
The here recorded delight of the citizenry
In self-mutilation and impious sport,
Involving the real nature of human desires,
Can be condoned without loss to our earthly intent:
But that these very rocks and caked walls
Vomit a deeper evil; that this sorrowful wood
And impenetrable stone are witness
To unimaginable hells; and that not survivor
--Unless we except the insane--can share
The full horror of man's cruelty to the things
He could not kill; this cannot be forgiven.

(from Collected Poems; New Directions 1968; NDP 284)

Herpes Incorporated

an overheard conversation at Dos Segundos

We're herpes incorporated
the name wrote itself
like a sluggy tumor made of summer
all five hundred days of it
in the meatiness of the preseason

we cut each other off like door locks
"does anyone know where mercury is right now?"
vintage stores, boutiques, come back world!
                        we miss you...
you're the only magic act we're putting through

Leftover Windows and Their Chills

Originally written in March of this year. Much revised.

I wonder if the woman walking along finds love in her end.
There is a profit in it like with the pigs who police the laws of aesthetic.
Those who are nurturing discard thy artistry with bundles of wind hisses.

I wonder if the woman walking along fears her fear when it comes.
The trash of the hysterical. A race of ants to the door. The endless supply of
children left behind to rot as perished in an instant in this system of allowed lies.

Wondering. To be idiots, to be lied to, to be force into thinking.
To focus or write or think or remember—guns recoiling and shoving.
As you have fired so have they. Their bullet is a thousand being burned.

I think of the ritual sacrifices on Mayan monuments and all the fierce lovers,
and the Aztecs of yellowed teething and hunger, propped up like giant snakes.
Syringes of the scaled and horrifying embargoes mandated by grueling fatsos.

Snot is running thick down the face and is to be crusted over through the breeze.
It is a love that is concrete and can be heard with the smack of our boots on curbs.

Another Morning Stomach

the wires were barbed
with that sick-mouth taste

fluids, said the conductor
in essence, everything

we heard our child
behind us, breathless now

it was then that the greens organized
into a big-top tarp, awaiting erection

Caution: I Live in a Crime Scene

my smoking cloud is a mushroom gun
overheated bridges becoming other bridges

grimace was our brother, a bond stronger
than the moon (before the war)

he discovers himself on the blue-line
Philadelphia. Island avenue exit.

i want to blow you up
so just pretend it's sexual

With Love Philadelphia, XoXo

We all know
you involves shadow

where you
you round
you grab
crazy, you

we have lots of
benjamin franklins
oh wait, we still say
of the declaration
there's a copy
so to speak
to ride the carousel

the rest gran
a dirty of delish

Did I mention you look fabulous?

It's me
that includes a show

the sun comes up
every season. Anyway,

At the top
the world
your breath

Summer's lovely
I enclosed a picture
stuffing in a problem

Braille is Beautiful

the elegance of an empty root
stationary, your curtains slumber
happens that the slump ended on July 29th
but the internet calls things differently

run. the ninjas have found religion
their sourdough paradigm clashes
with the plaid of a country we started
that we named after your confederated beauty marks

¶

From Custom and Ache

Some fragments from a short series I put together. Other fragments are going to be used on fortune cookie paper, and others are going to stay buried on this hard drive until the cows come home to Philadelphia. Originally written on 06-23-09. Typed up, and revised on 06-30-09.

*

Slip up. Toward the street where dawn unravels her cloak.
Chance was your upper-lip’s unseen canker.
It was hiding behind the protusile flesh flaps
hanging like airplane storage—overhaul—
covering up great flights and silencing miscreant pilots.

*

The double-up is for the bubble butt.
The chancellor has some great rain,
some wide-eye stares and a slipping down
along the avenue in his green shoes.

*

Munching on questions: crisps, popped corn.
Digestables come to be used like robins basking,
or Dutch Homes. Dutch footwear. This is how we walk.
This is how we walk on the moon.
This is how to saunter into Pennsylvania.
This is the land of the grouper fish, the sock puppets.
Socket shadows and sockeye theatres. Origami postcards.

*

Did you:
underestimate the power of the parcel?
place faith into gaunt grips?
figure on the arithmetic of ebullience?

*

To quote Well and move on. Marriage’s subtle catastrophe.
One word spliced to two voices. One conversation.
Polydipsia; heavy breaths beneath; held back in concrete.
Like barbed-wire. Like highways. Like mountains. Like towers.

Lunar Headaches Above Your Damp Umbrella

One

When I held you close
you were screaming “closer.”
The toast was burning, so
I let you go (a shove toward
the veranda’s finish).

Gloria yanked. Open. Wide. The Door.

You cried “let me see your hands.”

“They are so scalded and smeared—
how did this happen? And those nails!”

File!

Two

You see, I like my eggs over-easy.
A cup of soy sitting on the side, too,
for taste: mmm . . . yumm . . . errr . . .

Some day’s Gloria’s presence reeked.
Wrecked, I mean.

Under the setting sun—sounds.

The setting wild life
being back at our roots.

The theft of lawn ornaments,
mother proclaimed, beaming like peacock
or paprika or Cyclops just finished with the lambs,
is like forgetting to lift the seat.

Down, I said, Down into the depths
of your soul which we must obliterate anyway
because it’s only bathrooms.

And it’s only Red Sox programming
with you with you with you.

Three

Before we get started I think of Maine wild life:
flat bump flat-flat bump flat bump-bump

Four

Trees along the highway:
debts to pay, says the ranger.
We’ve all got debts.
I can’t stop getting drunk.
This highway’s got me mad.
This city is a corpse.
Wait a second, I roll:
Wait one god damned second!
All cities are corpses!
Don’t tell me about scapegoats!

Five

Ash coat on fallen cedars.
Don’t leave without buying me a drink.

I took out a bap-progue-ram,
told him to get his act together.
Somewhere else, preferably.
Bang went the drums, like
the color of a new outlet.

Six

(i)

You tasted good enough to lick.
We were walking back to the car
‘cause we both own only one.
The sky was a purple cat color.
I wore my pastel cap.
You had on the basketball wig.
At the corner an old woman
wanted to nibble a lobe.

(ii)

Her hands were like ice cream.
The noir world was melting.
We were walking to a protest.
The woman died suddenly.
TVs showed the Nicks scoring.
Gimme my margarita, she said.
First cash. Want tattoo.
Welts to be concerned about.

Seven

There is not enough ice on my salt wound.
I peek at your arm and think of Himalayan sunset:
in a past life maybe we were a bike courier.

There was an obsession for DIY lit and pizza slices.
There was a secret obsession for Thai pornography.
Building bombs inside LEGO bricks.
Fantasies about beating up other white folks.

You would think of me, your false future life,
and say: “we’ll never kill the cops, the cops, the cops."

But then you’d jump right into that pool.
Swim around a tad, a bit. Teach the butterfly.

He choked on his butterfinger while
performing the dead man’s float
remembering the credit card companies.

And so many dead languages, too. Yes,
he thought about those.

He passed on to me while keeping track of time.
It all took seconds, took in the seconds, I mean.

And dreaming of drowning one day
after dreaming of murdering black presidents:
thoughts going over and over and over and over—

The third time he attempted, he would kill himself.
That was decided, a sniper to the neck. But he did want:

adoptions, crew cuts, crew lead.

Big, big, biggest LCD with channels all over the place.
Blue jeans that fit. The perfect check cashing station.

So back to my arm. Transformation. Salt ice.
Brim locks; one time in my childhood I got dragged.

Outside there were moths in the dewy grass awaiting
the wind. I walked through to a tree
and set it on fire.

Today the gas would cost me $2.60.

Eight

Well, it’s that time of the year again.
An iron prod. Calcified tooth. Zero erections.
Traffic. Traffik. Phlasshhhh.
The purple nurple bum bus.
Day layers with curb pillows.
In hand. Heat Sink.
Putting gum in your hair.
Chewed gum. Heat sunk.

Sucked you up like a ceramic
bowl filled to brim with JELLO.

Trip Expenses

Transcribed from the great road trip that happened in late May of this year, 2009. A little late, yes.




05-24-09

New York the State of the Empire

Warsaw sprung wind mills
in the safe red dusk.

Buffalo. To search for wings.
We never went to the East Side.

All the marshmallow farms:
memories.

Hay fields.

White guy like Dan Deacon lookalike.

Three Dead Deer

Critters overturned (bellies expunge)

We can use the highways wisely.
The sunken airports just never took off.

Smoking room at Comfort Inn.
Northern PA all rolling hills:
all greenwash.

Waiting for the taxi.

Anne Marie Russian Vodka Drink Er
Cops babe on upscale monitor:
smoking room but not for inside.

Do not smoke anywhere but in the smoking room.

Cops in Fort Worth.
Orange tooth paste.
Waiting waiting.

A dead wolf on the highway.
Crows swooping on the highway.

No narcotics deals on
Cops in Fort Worth.

What carrion on the HW!
18W--17--81N

GPS machine. No memory.
Just sky god.

Broken. Finally. Finale.

Plenty of hot water.

Biggest carrion:
picnic table. Judging swerve.



This American Life.
Through Painted Post.
30m-p-h in Village.

BBQ Sunflower Seeds.

Dirty PA bathroom.
Small coffee. Thick syrup moon.

Salmon clouds filled the sky.
Another evil mass:
we are the penumbra.

Every NY highway lets you go 85 mph
without a single copy; even the rest
areas are paradisiacal. Militia-men
hide in the shadowlands. This is the
age of Obama foreclosures. We must
escape. Taste a different centrum.

Explorations.

A journal called PRINTS.



05-25-09

Toronto.

Stationed between downtown below that blooming tower.
Blown foam with Amazon Obsession.
Twin showgirls along Bada Bing fence.
Walking through Buffalo's streets left us
with a sense of callous abandonment.
It was where Jeff's parents grew up.
We could never live in it.
Stay away from the East Side, they said.
Saw on Allen Ave (and Chippewa)
cool babes crouching low.
A gay neighborhood with drag queens.
Bigger than Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Nietzsche's Bar an utter disappointment.
Imagining the streets with 15 feet
pure white snow.
A man needed a quarter and may have spat on my pants after I rejected.
In Niagara Falls other disappoints.
No cab driver. No cobs.

----

In Kensington Market.
Ronnie's local 069.
Enzinger beer in tall glasses.
Or was it Kenzinger. Does it matter.

Rimmed with lemon. Tongue.
The counter culture shop
and ideas of the drum circle.
Empire. Hope. Obama shirts here.
Coffee from the nut house.



Vintage clothing and vintage Asians.
All along the Memorial Day cusp.

Tuesday a pattern.

Italian Job--star cast starless plot.
Hot Box weed cafe but no weed only blues.

Must find the gayborhood.
But this cafe. Empire Empire.

Chinatown. Not enough grid iron.
Not enough Negro.
Streets are trash boxes:
a punch to the day face.
Must find the theatre.

Before the GPS god derailed us:
Black shades on women hankering
like French maidens. Bicycling
on through this transition residence.
5.99 for 24 batteries.
Drug arts. Internet game cafes.
Public art for public artists.

This is all better than dropped
collar Italians with their babes.
Babes as appendages. Babes as clothing.
Lack thereof. Nouns. Noons.
Babes as language. Lack thereof.

Black glass turnover.
Token homeless man.
Token with chill less summer.
Aired and conditioned.

We ate chocolate and cookies
and Wendy’s and wondered about
that apple at the border
and the bogus Tim Horton’s addiction.

Soft Rock

after Darling's Music, Northern Liberties

Vanessa Williams
           dreamt
                          The Right Stuff
          and told us all about it

You were in my dream last night
           trying not to laugh

Paul Carrack-slash-Don Henley
               don't want to hear anymore
               about when Celine Dion
               Falls in Love
                          with Clive Griffin's
                                  backing vocals

              this song appeared in
              Beethoven's 2nd
              but that's all I'll say
              about the matter

carbon=links=carbon=links=carbon
breaths slowly rumble slow legato'd
pitch blood from the black platter

copper wirers reconstruct your surgery
while waterboarding polyphones

Didn't we almost have it all,
              Whitney?
Didn't we almost have it all?

Sulimay's Barbershop, Fishtown

"WOW, he barely cut

              anything off at all"

We're celebrities, get us
         out of here

notes for the floor

           fall like hair

   swept like hair

as an economist, I know
about being smart with
my money, which is why
we are being handcuffed
together

                    in our wounds
which are more like grooves

stands a blue fluid
meant for combs

The Cement Hammer

Back from in April, when I was obsessed with Bill Burroughs for the second time in my life.

Cement hammer busted on through the door. Wrestlers in their paddy wagons.

The land of heroes.
The land of masked idiots.

Will to power:
on with the signals.

Alerting(s)—off with them.
Channels are sewn together
the way buttons are pushed
to a new uniform. Starch heavy.

Drums are tapped beneath the hydro-
chloroformations.

We were walking amongst strings.

Perpendicular ropes courses.

Hearing Rodriquez after a 1970s shower.

It “was” like being dipped.

New vaticide culture.

The way vultures kiss.
more of a necking procedure,
leisurely wrapping beads, each groove
coughing into an interlock.

I saw the flashing gold dress
women in their first April weather
propped up and hanging loose.

What goes on off the slick fabrics?
Are their spider veins lurking
where once lips suctioned?

Is a gold reflection meaning
a shade has been displayed?

Flower dresses are even worse when
napalming. What I mean is:
Vietnamese watching
clouds of flame
seeing nothing but—pet.

For a Wall

To Jessica

PRAISE THE GOOD WALL. PRAISE THE BEAUTY QUEEN.

WHAT'S THIS A PAGEANT? YOU'RE A TRAGEDIENNE. YOU'VE GOT MORE MOUE THAN POUT. YOU'VE GOT MORE SLISH THAN SLASH.

THERE'S MORE THAN ONE ANCHOR TO THIS CAPSIZED THO--OPEN UP YOUR ANTEDELUUUUUVIAN VESSELS, TIMEWARPIST. GET OUT THOSE JAWS OF LIFE AND ALL ABOARD, LAND HO, SHIP AHOY, YOU GOT THE IMAGE. PICTURE SILENCE ON AN OPEN SEABED; PICTURE ALL THOSE ANEMONES DANCING BENEATH OUR SPIRAL BLADE. BENEATH OUR PROPELLER WIND. BENEATH OUR RIPPLE KISSER.

Row Your Boat Ashore, Idiots

Poem from the roadtrip. Couldn't finish it before the sleeping pills kicked in. Might do it if I find a way to care.

we waded through the horse heads
you know, ones that never took off
                as capitals

             the low-staters, voice
suffered from h1n1 and cat-scratch fever
                 simultaneously

                 the highwirers
were the obvious enemy of the clueless
and the hurdlers high on BBQ sunflower seeds

- fuck buffalo -

                 the blown foam
holds show-girls and pikeless zons (blue
boyfriends) missing valkyre (badda-bing...)

"stay off the east side" except the police
        the shadowholding gays
like city soul cocaine or Advil PM

snakes sleep in the bar sand in our sandles
positioned and strapless we remember snow
        semiotic alloy, hand, hand

- border, lost coastlines -

                     wake up drunk
"get ready to punch this day in the mouth"

diasspointment ran in the pattern of a waterfall
the smoothness was resereved for the canadians
and misty maidens

                                                through ash-scapes
the pavement treated itself to American fare but
metric covenants required calculated conversion

you know: as far as the earth goes, you're
falling off slowly unless connected with
                                            morter-boards

where can we find
a civilization to rail against in this cosmo
dryer rack of tye-dye Kenzingers, Jim Jarmuch?

sometimes, it's best to think of ourselves as
                     a series of tubes

not unlike the short light that bubbles make
that don't sleepwalk or chomp bits (that are
                       gone for months)

                       sonoluminencent
shrimp bang with the precision of votarists
after two pizzas and an intervention (the snoring)

- boxing day -