The Haunting of M. P.

The first time Margerie was haunted it was the one year anniversary to her marriage. She was getting married to Benjamin Russle on her 23rd October 25th. It was a date I recommended to her on the eve of my honeymoon while we both cascaded significance through painkiller cocktail torpor. As I bit lazily the dead skin at the base of my cuticles, peeling off strands, pretending to get ready and spit them out of my mouth in haste, but primarily swallowing them down, I assured Margerie that as her father I was an authority on each October 25th in her short life's catalog. All save the last, her 21st, which occurred while she was, as she told me, studying diligently at school. Little did she know that I checked all the credit card bills that came into my addresses, including those which contained purchases on the card I had co-signed with her. The card was for emergencies. It was her first time away from New England, away from the town in New England she grew up in. And as a responsible and progressive parent I nodded off under the gulp of a pill for back pain the strange, minute charges for soda, trail mix, and condoms over in Flagstaff. How she made it all the way over to the other side of this country without using her plastic is a phenomenon even to me, her omniscience. It would be a lie if I told you I hadn't screamed WHORE to a beige living room wall at least once after the weekly, alcohol-soaked social. But this is not about me. This is about Margerie Pacingfield, and her haunted existence.

October 25, numbers one through twenty, were important dates for all of us. We always prepared for Halloween in our own ways, starting on the 25th of the month with a bang. Here is a brief composite of Margerie's explosive wind-up prep periods:

1) Ba-ba.
2) Da-da.
3) More cookie dough please!
4) I don't want that.
5) When are we going to the store? The doll!
6) I need more makeup!
7) I miss Kelly. (this was her school friend, a female)
8) I miss Bobby. (this was her school friend, a male)
9) The bad kids told me they'll egg me if I go out there.
10) But what if I just made a costume this year!
11) I'm gonna get more candy than anyone else out there!
12) Can I go trick or treating with Bruce this year? (her first boyfriend)
13) Mima's having a party and yes her parents will be there so can I please go? Please please pretty please?
14) I don't want to talk about it to any of you.
15) Halloween? Halloween is for losers!
16) Halloween is so fucking awesome! This year will be the best! (and I don't care WHO you are, I said, I told her, but watch your god damn mouth when you're under my roof)
17) Halloween is against my religion
18) I'm just gonna stick around here this year.
19) If God is dead, then Halloween is dead too.
20) (most recently) Josh and I will stay home and watch the candy. You guys go have some fun. (her first "steady" relationship)

Josh was the last one. With him came the haunting. He held the ladder when I fell from it and injured my spine all over. He was okay in my book otherwise. The association still paralyzes. The purple pills paralyze. Unfortunately despite Josh's good intentions he failed at severing the cord attached to the failed relationship with Margerie. Following the breakup, exactly two weeks after Margerie's 20th Halloween, Josh began his frenzy. There was reclusion. There was aggression. There was anger and pain. Like many hauntings, there was a lack of evidence, and a victim. There: Margerie smiling despite everything wrong inside the picture.

DUNE DUNE DUNE DUNE

1

oh my good GOD
---my understanding of you
(now that I know you've got
a calf clutch
on that T-Mobile
flip cam)

2

Listen up there
instead of down here
where my head sticks out
like an architect
on the verge
of collapsing
cell towers
disguised as birch
queens.

3

It was redemption at first.
At second (glance)
my QWERTY
caught fire and was more
dust for the fingertips

TESOL Free Write On Pedagogy

We start with the system
it's working parts
the consciousness that seeks to be assimilated
Frank O'Hara sounds that way because he thinks that way
I do this I do that
and schools are birthed
and entire industries from those schools
which is what Pete was talking about, passionately
which we are coming back to

the big picture and only mattering details
teaching as impressionism
only approaching, like cursors
for the occasional Icarus crater
or the tenebrism
or if you're Dan Brown the way St. Peter
sort of looks like a babe

the big picture and the system that produced it
which is the point of systems
and why we like pictures

Wishing You

Unlike the wavering reception of the traditional accordion, which derives its hulkish, centipedenal sound from some handsome 19th C Germanic roots (Dear Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann, this one's for you, who never did dance with me, when I was traveling back in time, and couldn't get a grip on your skeleton's claw! You who sulk! You who unfolded your instrument for me and begged me to worship! Nevermore! Nay, I'll keep an eye on you as I pry each of those diatonic buttons out and pound them into your corpse dust!) and has long fallen decayed to the many tests of Father Time, the twin-lipped human whistle has proven its significance through a popularity never known before. Since its inception, and through until now, the whist, as it is called back home, a name generally accepted and often found adorable, has captivated audiences of all circles for a good twenty years now.

The whist is one part synthetic-human lip-skin, and two parts conducted-air current. For every batch of tones created, only a select amount of joules are needed, and these are negligible when the measurement of beauty commences. Have you noticed the latest tools in aesthetic quantification? Look into the matter further, if you dare. Buschmanns need not apply.

It is no surprise that the whist is finding its way in every home. Professor Dunbar just purchased one two years ago and utilizes its preset tunes every night. He marvels at the Bach; he snaps to Eldridge; he bangs his head to Megadeath. He is quizzical and prays to God every night on the euphoric, almost sinful qualities of this curious musical instrument.

Little Annie down the street knows similar aural satisfaction and bewilderment as she listens to the mouthed -O- coo her to sleep. Ba Ba Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool? And when she wakes up in the morning to Miley Cyrus, the mimetic inclination rings her own lips as though one day, yes--oh, she is just a dreamer.

And yes, Marcus, oh Marcus--how his life was changed by the whist. Found on the streets by the WhistWonder 2XXL, a gigantotron of a whist, proudly displayed in the front window, bullet proof, down on the block, Marcus did not even know what was in store. But he stopped dealing, left the crowds he always considered friends, and family. Now he is off unemployment; off food stamps; and away from the government-issued housing projects. In the day M does cultural development and marketing processing downtown at WhistWonder's HQ; when he gets off, he sets up his two whists--one a prototype that only a select group of WW employees are allowed to know of, the other the original 2XXL--definitely inferior, though humorously, and touchingly nostalgic--on each side of the room, and creates mash-ups of popular folk songs. Big Rock Candy Ring of Fire actually found airplay at the local WURY station, famous for its innovative playlisting and advocation for experimental "sound artists."

Before I took the five minute drive to go and buy the whist, my life was hell. I had been a scholar in classical composition; my forte was piano sonatas. I could never "get it up," as they say in the office, to the string quartets or the symphonies or the nu-operatic. Even the dueling xylophones over on Ridge Street, during the student block parties, made me quiver more often than not. But none of that matters now. The plaguing life of family--wife, daughter, daughter, son--and the university position at the local League school--who really cares at all about 'consonant vocabulary' of late 20th-century composers?--and the weekend job doing research for a local comic book hero-artist, which sometimes provided me with the opportunity to write up some of the subplots--all went out the window, the attic window and the basement window, with the arrival of the fantastic machine.

As humans we spend years moving outward onto instruments. We strive for abandonment of our bodies. Security is fashionable. Always. From the dawn of time the goal has been to feel extremely comfortable with our own bodies by distancing ourselves from them. The painter picks up the brush and oils and canvas. The writer picks up the pen and notebook. The engineer builds models out of small wooden pieces. The doctor will only feel okay in life if he wields his scalpel. And the warmonger his tank. And the goddess her lightning bolts. And me, well, my whist.

With the whist comes a rationale that is grounding. It sobers. The whist will make us cry, will make us laugh, and make us love. The whist brings peace. At its current rate, it should end poverty and world hunger in no less than two years. In four I suspect the imperialist system throughout this globe will deteriorate and fall off like some old garment no longer desired, no longer sexually appealing. In eight years, the whist will come to be a language commonly accepted in all households. In ten, the whist will be a model of worship. Inevitably the whist will end and will be replaced by something else. The emulation of the human voice will be surpassed by the real human voice; but that state of enlightenment will not be immediate. There will be a crysis, then a dark age, and then, perhaps, the renaissance. Our mouths will quake and our moans will be deep and sound. I will be long dead, probably gathering dust right next to Buschmann. But that is okay. The whist, sitting next to me in my coffin, will provide my requiem, and my safe passage to the land of the silent.

Littering

He was prostrate on the blue rail bench trying to work the last of the coffee out of his body and commit the defining event of the day to memory. He imagined he was safe here, with his water, a lemon in it, at the Philadelphia International Airport, at the Terminal D R1 stop, the only sheltered railroad stop in like the entire airport rail-loop with benches large enough to lay prostrate on. It was so ordinary--a notable ordinariness considering what had happened. “How could everything feel so ordinary?” he thought, laying prostrate in the enclosure, waiting for the train to bounce back from its final stop: the E Terminal.

This is what he always did after work although using a word like always seemed more than a little ridiculous in light of the circumstances. Henceforth, he thought, there would always be the way things had been before the event and the way things were after. His life-line now sundered by some pre/post duality. It had been one of those days where history becomes binary.

He noted how ordinary everyone else was being.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to no one in that nothing-voice we use when addressing ourselves.

“But-,“ he almost replied before being rebutted by some other cerebral pundit. In times like these self-talking is often shaken down to breath-heavy prepositions or whichever expletives we’re most invested in at the moment. Plausible narratives, causality, other words that basically mean “meaning” weave slip-shod quilts in the frontal lobe and, due largely to latency issues, these paltry push-pins of language are all that escape. It’s as if what we conceive as our “lips” were trying to remember the dreams of what we conceive as our “self” had had last night.

He sat up. He was sitting up now, no longer prostrate, although we know that the rail bench was long enough to accommodate his 5’10” 160 frame. He thought about what he must’ve looked like there on the blue rail bench, under the sign that said “Terminal D: all Gates, Ticketing, Baggage Claim,” at once the Airport’s anatomy and its religion, mouth-speaking things to the ether. He thought about memory and experience and perception and eventually cinematic perspective. According to the sorts of authors he always cursed because they were always right: “I’m in your movie; you’re in mine.” Ergo, he wondered: where would they place the camera in this scene of the bio-pic? What would the other scenes be? Surely today’s event would be incorporated. How could it be skirted? Anything with this many breath-heavy mouthed words behind it must hold some belly of biographical significance. Surely, some theater-goer or reader (because, at some point, he probably would write some memoirs or letters or something if that’s still the trend for “the greats” when he’s had enough life experiences to be called a “life” and the desire to feel young again—a desire to return to days like today: the day of the event…the day that changed everything forever ago.) Surely someone could cull some meaning from things like this, things this traumatic, things this memorable, things that inspire this much fucking introspection and meta-fiction and poetry that will surely be anthologized as his post-“whatever-the-media-and-internet-are-calling-the-event” period, which represents a major departure from his juvenilia.

The train slid in exactly when the paint-chipped sign said it would and he left the enclosure, leaving behind the empty cup, a depleted lemon inside.

“What an asshole” everything who boarded previously at the E Terminal and sitting in the seats with windows that could see into the enclosure thought as this indignant, self-absorbed litterer walked through the requisite series of automatic doors and joined them as passengers.

Sixty years later he still feels guilty about littering because it’s the only thing anyone else remembered.

"Minor Things" or "Nantucket"

Let's start with a nod to the irrational numbers
followed briefly by what we consider imaginary
and who could forget the fractals
by which Star Wars is possible
that teenage ship-launcher
like mine, Times Square, eighteen
at B. B. King's
the guy who bought me the first bar shot
meeting Magner in the crowd like a smoke monster
that one guy with the backpack with the acid
the myth he was until you found him
and train-ride home through the laughing gas of youth
how youth ends at drug use
how drugs make Plato credible
and Boltzmann, Morrison (who I hate), Coyne, and the current anorexic music slump
and Timothy Leary
who JFK Jr. summered with
great plane crasher, great Payne Stewart figure
great vicarious sadnesses
a depressed father driving through Massachusetts
the lesson on the "Texas Wedge"
how small and awful this island really is
how these are the poems your father would like if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself
but if you shared yourself

The Middle of the Atlantic

For Future Breakups

It became clear earlier
that this was no time to be happy

I know you think the stage extends everywhere
but this is Fishtown
and we're in a parking lot
and the sky just went on strike
it's been without a contract since March

you recognize the horizon from the broken churches
where only the locks work
and we keep swearing at each other in our graffiti
about it being over, about it being too un-tragic

You text:
"Even if it is Jeff Koons
a wax penis in a beer cozy
won't win me back"
Which I immediately forward
to all my fake lesbians

rather than photography
let's bank this instance
for the next time we're in a long line
or staving off ejaculation
or on the El dodging H__ N__'s
or trying to forget about you
forgetting about me

Bumping Some Coke With You

Another Frank O'Hara Fantasy

is even more wonderful since once you told me it makes you horny and I'm in the market for a life experience
partially for the fact that we both love Morissey
partially because this is a send-off on a roof-top
partially for New York picketing cross-river like a gold-leaf chorus line
a city with more Exit signs than memories
instilling it's children with a wholesome insignificance, hiply disaffected
all so temporary, like tattoos and erections
every public works project the internet talks about happening but are less real than ocean maps

but they will approach it as long as its perfectly still

and this is what makes you a legend and also what makes you a movie

and it’s tremendously inspiring this isolation we’ve imposed

is it’s own form of madness

And how do they stay in business, these cartographers
is it a family thing?

I look at you, sadly, because you will never engender those Vincent feelings that make literature possible to care about
you will never be the white space or the belly button in a "You Are Gorgeous And I'm Coming" or an iamb in a Lunch Poem although you do have feet and are unshaven
and your mother most likely accepts you since you didn't turn out an artist or something
or a dancer
so I'm done wasting energy on you and about that time on the roof near the satellites after we licked the bag like two new celebrities
and return to the ordinary muggings endemic with the gentry

Your Holiness, I Beg You

The hole was gently smuggled in across the Bulgarian border. There was no directive. The hole moved silently about the landscape like iron on curtain. Your mother was there and she told us all about it when she got back to Dayton, Ohio, where the cat jumped a few times. It had been twenty years since she left for Europe. The year she left a hot-air-balloon took off and had a tragic crash only several hours later, when the man, young Thompson who I went to college with, shot himself in the head. The day had been bright blue, some puffy white clouds jumping out of the background like forested explosions. When Thompson pulled the trigger, he immediately flipped out of the basket, like in rag doll physics.

The bullet had been aimed upwards and shot upwards. Thompson had been looking down at the gun's barrel. It was his father's gun. I had seen the balloon floating along in the sky thirty minutes before the bullet tore through the balloon's fabric material and caused the previously-rising sky device, having lost weight when Thompson flipped, precisely 190 pounds of good, standard weight, to be exact, to fall slowly. The balloon tore with all its weight. I was studying for the SATs and didn't notice its fiery descent into the baseball field in the center of town. There was a large bang and there were some children remembering moments earlier when they had been screaming and running and looking for a place to hide. When I heard from Coach Jordan, my physics teacher, about all the clandestine chaos and resulting whimpers, I remembered being in the woods with my stepfather some years ago, maybe two, and felling trees left and right. There was definitely a fear of being squashed. I could be a LEGO man too.

As mother flew across the Atlantic Ocean headed for god knows what, because I was only 15 at the time and didn't give a shit about Europe or balloons or sissy music either, she had some fears of her own. Like a shortage of Perrier on board the flight; like obnoxious older women hitting on her; or worse, older anybodies farting next to her in the type of flatulence you associate with death and the most uncanny of resurrections.

But think of the odds: I am a god now, a living and breathing one, and I tell this story because it humors me. To think about what all the mortals like, in their pasty lifestyle of prowls and ill-humor. I can't imagine what they would do if the cows came home. What would you do if the milk boy delivered peat moss? A beer a night keeps the moss deliverer away. Get your best lagers out, is my free advice.

When she lands and when we're done playing the last card game of the night, where I'm stuck on the sidelines, having lost over and over, and have my imagination turning as I watch the mobiles hanging from the ceiling and the wine stench rotting holes in my mouth, I think about the hole. The hole marches back across to Bulgaria and is legally represented by an assortment of other holes. After the trial it gets penetrated by a stampede of beast feet. Where is the herdsmen? Where is the woman with the golden pipes? Where is father, his axe swinging, blowing the masses into pulp and plunder?

My mother takes a picture like a tourist. If I had found out she had done that I would have hated her for several years; I am currently hating her for several right now because she didn't tell me, and I found out about it, because I'm a god now, and when it comes to fourth through sixth dimensions in Bulgaria, I'm there. Hi mom.

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