Her Footprints Have Been Relocated
We watched the wild leisure
of clouds suffering above red briar
in that lattice of wooden charms, rural allures.
The dulcimer quiet in the sun-path. But then
it was August, we had stopped drinking to the moonlight,
and began to analyze why luxury was infused with parakeets of late
and the other submissives with their sky grey bisque heads.
But then the trumpets of butter in the sun.
We dove through afternoon drizzle, washing away
the humid patina of the two bitter gondoliers.
Your eyes babble in a rose bush as we ride.
Yet one white glove stirs a buzz in these parts
All those winter clocks purchased
through the Party Mechanism and now
we are approaching the escapement
Pensive delectation in the background.
Night is coral frost upon the barricades.
“Nothing is allotted” bellow the 3 detainees
and all three were thieves and the biggest said
“Seek the last train.”
There is a furrow through every star.
Yet as always the lovers of nations swim
through their laughing nausea, slug-like voices
exploited by the vast Christian underworld
This handsome furrow for your favor.
Two Little Things
1
Night, a letter
only its sans serif peak encased
in pale metallic threads
wandered away
upon a boat’s reflection
full of anxious waiters
and haloed suitcases stacked
under the blue trees
which are literary
like varnished ropes
surrounding a garden.
2
Day, a bloodstain
on the schoolgirl’s pigtail
maybe it’s a violin
embedded in a bright hand
an ornamental nova
in a van full of roses
a sibilance in a black petal
a flaxen shark
swimming about the eyes
under the blue trees.
The War Lives One Street Down
I do not write to soldiers.
The war lives one street down.
I sleepswim river’s Broadway
to moisten the white gown.
The plainclothes capitalista
keeps my cells in a drawer.
Henhouse barricaded
and the gristmill and the boar.
So I do not write to soldiers.
The war lives one street down.
I cannot walk each hallway
that ends in the outside of you
and which beast ate all the weapons
and can we eat them too?
So I do not write to soldiers.
The war lives one street down.
I feel your mandible is prettier
than it was this month last year
and there is a rustling in our wrappers
created by our spears.
So I do not write to soldiers.
The war lives one street down.
a knot of roads
There are bells of flint
to cull the girls
from their footsteps
&
There are statues of ravens
alone upon the ashes
where they walk
&
A single burning shutter
too small to grenade
as they pass)
But I have seen the mottled telephones
asleep on a Japanese train
&
the spaces between
the white hearts of a hotel
&
windows too large
for a girl’s footsteps.)
The Fair Inconstant
No room service until poetry is the bell.
.
Writing is rude to interrupt what might otherwise be a life of pure insensibility.
.
Beauty is more and less a cautious species of vacancy.
.
Distance is fate’s makeup.
.
Culture is an enormous elaboration into which the Beautiful has fallen and cannot get up.
.
Absolution is murder with guilt as the innocent party.
.
Most people live somewhere in the neighborhood of themselves.
.
Rudeness is the Revolution of the momentary.
.
No matter how little we actually move, science will never catch us.
.
Spit will not kill a priest, which is why so few are spat upon. Try it anyway…
.
Once the Tiger becomes smoke, no cigarette is safe.
.
Light arrives from our eyes. The sun soaks in it.
.
Candles are light determined to be conducted.
.
Only a blind man’s body supports the head as water supports the jellyfish; the senses are heavy in
the head, but light in the body.
.
Consciousness is a rank privilege.
.
The mind contains the body. All else is the Great Outdoors.
.
The absurd is never ridiculous.
.
One might as well sweat ashes as pearls.
.
You never step in the same river twice. But it’s always wet.
.
The water’s sensuous dialectic merely imitates fish.
.
Chess is the operatic arm of Tic Tac Toe.
.
Almost everyone you meet looks like a violent peacock.
.
The moon is a peasant’s idea of philosophy, and—since the moon appears to agree with this
estimation—the idea is deemed fully sufficient.
.
Night is sweetened by kings, but it is peasants who get the toothaches.
.
No matter how many trees you fold in your handkerchief each evening, morning will find you lost
in the woods.
.
Nature is always full.
.
Every red flower owns a ghost who bleeds into it. Every white flower freezes its ghost into view.
Every blue flower arches above in observation. Every flower in your mouth is a bouquet for Stalin.
.
Our breaths are like imprecise notebooks.
.
This world is not interesting enough to be singled out as dull.
.
Dissolution is an unvocalized desire for an ideal reunion.
.
Candles are light determined to be conducted.
.
I know nothing but what is extinguished
.
You came to buy candles, but you’ll settle for a moth.
.
Resignation is the poor man’s happiness.
.
Dark hair precipitates its face. Blond hair debuts its face.
.
Things change, but the wait can kill you.
.
Waffles are pancakes with modernist structural pretensions… If you like waffles, you yearn for a
Cartesian regularity to your life to balance your internal “scrapple” turmoil. You wish most of all to
wander a nicely arranged labyrinth in search of Frank Lloyd Wright. You abhor the way spaghetti
mimics your consciousness and dream of the day Malevich’s “White Square on White” opens its
linear heart to you and makes everything efficient, clean, and easy to absorb through your simple
crystalline pores. You not only do not want to live “off the grid” you desire to move permanently
into the center of the Great Griddle, where the Art Deco Elves are vanquishing the Art Nouveau
faerie folk. Oh, and the sun is square…
