Saturday, October 29, 2005

Outline for a news & entertainment magazine:

There are a lot of important people
doing dangerous and important things.
A lot of important things are happening.
Last week so many books were published,
all the trees grew wings & started flapping to get away.
Flowers were thrown on the streets, to no avail.
You showed your nakedness to the world,
and nothing happened.
Paint your body, starting with the eyes and nipples.
Put a bright Star of Bethlehem on your forehead just for fun.
Being sad is an un-American activity.
Ships like massive icebergs are arriving.
Their jagged bellies nudging at our shorelines.
Put your eyes in my mouth.
Put your mouth in my hands.
Put your feet in my eyes.
The kind of smacking-each-other-in-the-face-with-joy,
asshole-licking, rolling-around-the-carpet sex
we've always wanted to have.
Build yourself a new ribcage with tin cans.
Go up to the roof of a long long factory building
and see how many suns are left.
When the ocean comes closer you can catch a starfish.
It's always the Fourth of July. Fireworks eternal.
Say the word "Love" and a thousand wings start flapping.
Say the word "Death" and watch a stone
turn to water in your hands.
Watch the streets and the buildings turn to water.
Watch your face turn to water in the mirror.
"This is a head. These are hands touching
both sides of the head's face.
This head is precious. The hands that touch this face
are precious.
I have smashed my brother's face with a rock.
I have raped my sister. Yet, against my will,
I have been forgiven."
Imagine waking up after a long war
in a huge pile of black olives.
Imagine lying in a bathtub filled with vegetable oil.
There are a thousand dead souls
whimpering in your eyes.
Your fingernails were made from a multitude
of crushed bones and burnt hairs.
The noise of beards growing sounds
like snakes slithering over the edge
of an old flat world, dripping into space,
and space is a sink at 4:15 a.m.
In my dreams I can transport everyone I've ever known
into the living room of the house where I lived as a child.
Somehow they all fit on the sofa, sitting next to one another.
Stretch out all your limbs inside my body.
Nothing has been reported.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

My little brother, 3 years old

for Joey

My little brother's left eye was stronger
than his right--it tried to pull away.
It left the right eye hurting to catch up.
Now he wears glasses to balance
the aching twins at war
in his head. The lenses glint,
almost alive with the things
that make him wonder. And everything
makes him wonder.

I am too serious today, and I search
his face for emerging signs of concern.
It shows none except a questioning eye
when confronted with dogs on leashes
and people who yell at each other--
things appearing chained or unhappy
confuse him. My eye-sockets darken with adult powers
watching his face dimple in puzzlement at any pain.
Already something in his body
is hungry to liberate our pitiful lives.
Little does he know how we'd string him up
if he tried. Little does he know, beyond the wet grass
demanding nothing, a planet's population terrified of joy.

Let the little blonde head bob between gardens,
look on teenagers playing frisbee
and wonder at their long crazy legs.
The world smells so good to him from here.
I've carried his cotton-soft life
in my arms through parks before,
counting on his cuteness to bring the girls;
It always works, and when they come I say:
"Let me touch your body with mine and maybe
I'll put one of these in your belly, but I can't
promise to take care of it when it comes.
I'm still too much like him to be a father."

Most of them laugh--but one looked terrified.
My little brother gently smiled and patted
that one on the head, almost tumbling out of my arms
with sudden reach before she could turn away.
She looked ready cry under his touch. An old boy, and the young one
in his arms, watched together through six eyes
bristling to properly align their powers,
her thin shoulders tremble as she walked apart.

A child's touch makes matter itself
stir immeasurably. And he is already accustomed
to people weeping. Like the nuzzling
of a concerned dog: a gesture
meant to comfort or express affection
reminds us of the innocence lost to us
from which it comes, of how badly we need comfort
and how little we can expect.

Friday, October 07, 2005

The Atomic Bomb

In a suicidal letter to a cute girl, though she's only sixteen (but so


intelligent, I swear), I cried out with the vehemence of Jeremiah

that I could think of no positive act or invention
to match the dismal immensity of the atom bomb.

She argued sensibly for me to think of more intimate
and simple acts, her antithesis of mushroom clouds blossoming,

suggested that eating pussy might make me feel
more useful. "It feels like an inner atom bomb to us ladies"

she exclaimed, her prose bright as a bluejay eating seed. I replied
with great maturity (and felonious intent) that though an increase in

cunninglingus might not uninvent the atom bomb, I would certainly go
down on her in a daze of gratefulness if ever she came up

from her grey New York
to my green New Hampshire.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

When my father died, the world broke into blossom.
When my girlfriend died, beauty ran rampant.
When my guitar died, all the rivers sang.
When my cat died, leaves turned into lizards every midnight.
When my best friend died, I loved the faces
of strangers on the street.
When my god died, I made friends among the mortal.
When my lawyer died, I loved my neighbor.
When my country burned, I found silence and childhood.
When my forest fell, the dome lay down on the sphere.
A massive blanket enwrapped me.
When eternity disintegrated, the clock stopped.
When lovemaking was no longer possible, memory began.
When my mother died, I had eyes again.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

the hot-dog seller clad
in white that is no longer white
sadly watches passengers
on sidewalks broken decades old

behind the sex lies of magazines
real lips wait to peel you open
in a bus station (today long-distance lover came
to visit from a smashed New York)
enclosed in glowing glass

girlfriends almost lost to memory
and a timid dog wearing black leaves for fur
join hands that are not hands
in an unseen ceremony
nothing dances unless earthquaked, nobody rises
to pick up the phone unless it chimneysmokes

a woman so old and so short, weak steps
silent except when they drag
shrivelling, limp buttocks rising to meet the back of the head
sheep's wool grey-white

dying suns surround our extinguished child

sad passengers still walk when they're too old to move
the city is a dirty bandage
shabbily clothing loneliness
every person walking will be ageless as god

some(dying)day