Apolgies All Around

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

and a red
shovel

and where we
hide the bodies.

(sorry william carlos)

Sometimes, It Seems the Story is in the Sand

or

foot/prints

written on your feet i find
i have not lived by force of will
calloused be my sense of time
and graceful steps evade me still
in my mind at times i look
and see some imprint in the sand
think the mark once made so shook
the ground, resonated through the land
oft i believe the mark was made
from some free soul’s high will to dance
without design the dancer played
and from the dirt made high romance
once i decried all forms of toil
now i see fault lines in the soil

Last Thoughts on Last Thoughts

or

talking/blues

it's a strange thing to steal
when someday it snows and you feel
forlorn all the way down to the tips of your toes


when the ceiling lights flicker
and it seems like everyone knows:

that your wiring's shorted out,
and the coffee is all gone,
and you don't get a buzz when you sing all your songs,

and the bus isn't coming
you know that it isn't
and the wind's always blowing asking you to kiss it.


the chimneys puff smoke like cigarette packs,
and it paves up your lungs all sooty and black,
and you just can't seem to find the prize in your box of cracker jack.

when the digs are all deeper and
the dog starts to snore
when you think you're a coward and the sun is a whore
who you just keep begging for.

when the brakemen all nod and
they tip all their caps
in their stares you can't help but see:
jazzmen singing scat.
when the train tracks all curl like
news in the fire
and all you got left to be is a murderer or a liar
when your friends all take trains and march in parades
when everyone else ignores the charade
and you're stuck right up there on the balustrade, my friend.

and it seems like it's all coming to an end like
a movie you've seen before
but slept through three times.


or more.

the window pane's staring
making faces at the furniture
and the general orders the artillery with a side of fries
the soldiers sip milkshakes while the janitor sighs
he cleans up the mess like always.

and shakespeare's drunk on turpentine
he won't stop writing sonnets on napkins and bathroom walls
the powerplants burn coal now and
the smokestacks puff and croak to simulate the clouds
lenin’s telling jokes but
he can't remember the punchlines
as batman parks your car and
you're arrested for doing time
when you feel the ground spinning
shaking like a leaf
the trees all look like arteries and
there's nothing underneath
and all the consonants are cold
your demons wear diapers and do as they're told

if three blind mice become three dead rats
and all the black panthers are now domestic housecats
if your architecture's leaning
and you're afraid you're a terrorist cause
you can't tell the difference between your hand and your fist

the spiders start crawling like you knew that they would
and king midas won't touch you (though you think that he should)
several princesses pour you their hearts
but they all taste like kool-aid and stale pop tarts
and you just can't tell what's accident or art

well I don't have any medicine without harmful side effects
liquid fuel and arson
fistfights, drink, and sex
so if you really want to walk away without being broken or bemused
try a different practitioner
find something else to choose
but if you want the better story and your head knows when to quit
if your tongue and eyes salivate but you just can't seem to spit
if the fire in your toes makes your still legs dance
start walking and burning bridges

because your father never needed them

The Dialogues of Our Age

We're reading Augustine's "On Free Choice of the Will" in philosophy, and I made a found poem out of his dialogue with Evodius + Lil Jon songs. Thought you might like it!

--------------------------

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Evodius: Please tell me: isn’t God the source of evil?

Lil Jon: Now back,back,back it up
a back,back,back it up

Evodius: From whom do I learn to sin?

Lil Jon: Stupid bitch standing there while I'm drinking my hen.
Steady looking at me, still asking questions.

Augustine: Do you think that learning is a good thing?

Lil Jon: Hoe, don't disrespect it.

Evodius: I think that we come to know only good things through learning. But if we do not come to know evil things, how is it that human beings perform evil acts?

Augustine: You have hit upon the very question that worried me greatly when I was still young, a question that wore me out, drove me into the company of heretics, and knocked me flat on my face.

Lil Jon: Drop dat ass to the floor you scared you, scared you.

Evodius: Adultery, murder, and sacrilege... who could fail to recognize these as evil deeds?

Lil Jon: Twerk something baby work something baby. Pop yo pussy on the pole do yo thang baby!

Augustine: Then perhaps what makes adultery evil is inordinate desire...

Lil Jon: Bend over to the front touch your toes, back dat ass up and down. Get low.

Augustine: All wicked people, just like good people, desire to live without fear. The difference is that the good, in desiring this, turn their love away from things that cannot be possessed without the fear of losing them.

Lil Jon: ...Brand new shoes, brand new tool...

Augustine: I praise and approve your distinction, for although it is tentative and incomplete, it boldly aims at lofty heights.

Lil Jon: I do it so good, I don't need nobody else

Believing In Ice

There's a glory in drinking your coffee black
and a heroism in puffing away like a smokestack through two packs a day
paving your lungs to make way for cars, buses, trains
artery highways

I did not sit down to write a poem
because this poem has been written before
over and over again

It has not been written by solitary mountains crumbling into the sea
but instead people etched it into back alleys, trash can jazz
when all night long the city sings in gradients
it has sprung into summer and fallen into winter

I'm not writing a poem.
I'm standing in a telephone booth at the end of the world.

There's a release in restraint,
but also a truth in lockpicks and scalpels
pornography and curtains
we're all looking for the final camera that's watching everything.

Here's my question:
if you had never seen it,
would you believe in ice?
After our hundred years of solitude, can you hear the hurricane's swing-sixteenth notes all about your pig tailed children and their love of nothing worth having?
Are you proud of our heresies?
And how do you take your coffee?

victory

My dad just told me the best story, about when he was in college and he convinced his friend Dave Green to enter a pizza eating competition. Apparently, Dave said something along the lines of:
"Why would I want to eat enough pizza to make me sick?"
and Dad replied:
"You don't. You just want to sit down, eat some free pizza, and leave when you're done."

This is brilliant. This is fantastic. I want a list of all the eating competitions over the next year. I like how losing at eating competitions is winning at life.

i will be your saccharine

this morning
before I whittled my face and rewrote my autobiography
sirens were singing

and their wordless cries kept lids
on my desert eyes and plugs
in my feminine ears
sibillant hymns were cracking window panes
singing-- choruses from chrysalis,
seraphim, and syphilis

here's the truth
i will be your saccharine
this cottonwood summer is ours
let me tell you a story about a doomed ship named regret
quietly
because everbody knows everybody in the dark
we're bumping elbows
trying to watch some fireworks