Sonnet

Jose and I alone have never found

the answers sought, have barely glanced beyond

these blinders, equine, broad; we often beg

and query who we even are, and why.

No existentialism: it's just that I've

just noticed this refrigerator hum.

Inaccurate ear paints a teaspoon of sugar,

its simple pallete synaesthetic as metaphor.

Picture cane-shaded fingers forming

halls when locked with mine; human home

where wasp laid to rest. Killer bees flown,

I'd imagine gentle bears could gather

sufficient sweets to honey-spackle memories

that resonate like Quervo crystals, freezing.

My Final Poem

will not be written,

read, or ever spoken.

No anthology

will ever search for

proof of authorship,

or beg my mother

to release the rights,

or find some lost draft.

My final poem,

like all of your own,

will be sickly sweet,

and wet, then dusty

as marrow hardens.

It will be boring

unless uncovered

by some future men,

put up on display:

l'homme ordinare, morts.

In either event,

My final poem

will be shattered down

to its basic parts,

its few elements

when it is eaten

with Earth, by the sun.

My first real poem

Of course it is about you,

asleep, indulged and bat-blind.

No ancient runes, no tome of some

vital commandment, no record of achievement,

my first real poem is metonymic for every subsequent poem,

and silver ore; it is lumpy rock.

My first poem's greatest value

its its liability: of course; it is about you.

I am refining it, currently, hewing chunks of truth

dredged them up from within mind. One day

I will smelt them all together, all of my real poems,

and I will wake you and show you yourself.

Matinee

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

-W.B. Yeats

Loosen the ties where synapse connects.

Like mornings that try to hide jewels among dew,

Know the truths the world secrets and the lies it reflects.

What you see are results of special effects.

Dribble of acid might eat through the glue

and loosen it. The ties where synapse connects

will be broadcast in IMAX at the old multiplex.

Attend if you wish, but beware: if you do,

you’ll learn the truths the world secrets and the lies it reflects.

Dreamers wax poetic, mathematicians perplex;

we’re given but simplest machines: poem and screw.

These loosen the ties where synapse connects.

Watch the spectre ballet; here looms death like a hex.

I twiddle down seconds to our first rendezvous

to discuss the world’s secrets and the lies it reflects.

Come see foetid corpse, catch the flies it collects.

Widening, widening, the pattern that falcon flew

has loosened the ties where synapse connects,

revealed the truths the world secrets and the lies it reflects.

Sestina for my Mother

Mama always told me that if I wanted to see change

in this world I'd have to make it, either with Howitzer

or love song, or a “To Whom IT May Concern” mailed

to whomever it might. Sunday nights she would braid

her hair in the kitchen, hot comb on stove, cookie jar

bassist walking blues while I kept time with a tapping heel.

I frolicked barefoot outside so often that my heels

grew to be at least an inch thick; season's change

forced me inside so my protection grew thin. Cookie jars

fall from time to time, but this one, it seemed, a howitzer

had shelled; the shards in my sole were so fine, braided

gauze so tightly bound, prints so red on forgotten mail.

Afternoons, home from school, I would always check the mail

hoping for packages I never ordered. After surgery, as she healed

I would part her hair, learning on the fly to plait and braid,

and apply oil to her scalp, or comb it, generally in exchange

for a long hug or two. She complimented it, noting how it sure

was a nice Mother's Day gift in tandem with the new cookie jar.

It's a ring of black faces, high atop the cabinets, 37 cookie jars.

The first was a gift, the rest marked fragile, arrived by mail.

She takes care to avoid duplicates, but accepts banal gifts anyhow. It's her

passion, or one of them; she paints rooms, shapes landscapes, heals

her babies when their ills wear them down, speeds down interchanges,

and loves, and loves. When I was eleven she taught herself to braid

because my hair required it, and when Jordan followed suit, she braided

his too. She has never had much taste for cookies, despite all the cookie jars,

but never hesitated to stock up on Oreos or whatever our wildly changing

appetites demanded. We had a dog that never learned to pee outside or heel,

but soothed his butt-itches on the carpet and sprinted to gnaw at a piece of mail

we had the misfortune of dropping; Mama looked at him with Howitzer

eyes ready to detonate every time he invaded. She explained how it's her

space he destroys when he shits in the closet or eats the armchair-fringe braid.

I once took her to get a pedicure, hoping Ms Kim would trim stress as she scraped heel:

stress accumulated from years of being the only woman in a house of male

patten blindness so advanced that all we can think to get her is a cookie jar

at holidays; these are usually duplicates. One of these days I'll make a change,

be old enough to heel myself with love and wisdom like a howitzer,

change from idiocy to appreciation, generosity, subtlety somehow braided

together, fragile as a cookie jar, but impenetrable, clad in chain mail.

Idea of Disorder at any Lightning Strike

In the green water, clear and warm,

Susanna lay.

She searched

the touch of springs,

and found

concealed imaginings.

She sighed,

for so much melody.

The lightning struck a dozen feet above

my craning neck, my thumping bass, and wide,

now blinded eyes, and rattled brain and frame alike.

Imbalance rectified so violently

by you or I would earn us time in Bellevue;

the universe, though, works in terms (insane)

much grander than our frightened mortal vocab.

It's this, I'll bet, that so entrances me.

I try to trace the golden arc of light

before the black field swallows it like swords,

and fantasize that when I find the source,

electric, of this art that strikes me so,

it will explain this tingle, touch: the urge

to rub this tongue against it, though I know I fail.

Delusion Altitude, 35,000ft

I.

I'd promised to wave at St. Louis as I passed overhead,

so I crane as we zoom through the timeless twilight of morning

and waggle a few digits at the bright slick

poised at the confluence of Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

Metallic, it undulates, an amoeba

with twinkling cilia tickling the dark waters.

Odd chunks of jewel intersect it at even intervals,

as if some sloppy god bred pond scum and gems,

and splattered them in a dank nook

to ferment, lovely, floating on nothing,

fed by the breeze blown by my dark hand above.

II.

How meta, I thought, to write the word turbulence

while the sky tossed this machine about its metal self.

Left hand to right, cirrus to nimbus to moonbeam

it juggles our lives and our luggage, with talent, admittedly.

Concurrent with prayer, I imagined I'd blaspheme

when foreseen malfunction came to pass,

when fuselage shattered, scattering roller-boards,

screaming, these fools and I, silent, into altitude.

I imagined regaining consciousness among debris, plummeting

below fiery Plieades, between jagged shrapnel and flaming hands waving.

How deftly I would glide, limbs spread, flannel aflutter,

towards some body of water, discerned from the land that cupped it.

How wisely I would blade my body, knife into the skin of the water–

solid at such speed– and sup of the sanguine splash my form lifts up.

III.

In this moment I notice my asshole,

clenched to preempt catastrophe,

my lungs squeezing stolen oxygen

across cheesecloth and into some mechanism

that transports it to aorta, which disperses

the stuff corporeally, as per usual.

Baba Yaga

Little green thing lay

squat in brakes,

plotted rotting,

scanned chokes

and oozes brewed

in gutters,

and chuckled;

they gurgled

and splashed in chunks.

Cauldron with fat

boil to match crusts,

seethes, sweats bile

in globs tapping toccata,

ekes out millennia

hexing spiders to drip venom.

Chipped pestle digs

grooves into finger skin

of toddlers who wander

too near scrawny stalks;

mortar creaks; bone-dust

lubricates murderous beak.

somebody suggest a title

Her fountain hair jets and wafts,

and loose, showers, as snug as gloves;

shutter lids block drafts;

within stained glass, wishes flutter, like doves.

Her jawline, a mug, warms my own hand and lips,

while the other sits on saucer sternum, sneaks

to thrum on tummy as if tickling an eclipse.

The whole frame can be held, is as slight as squeaks.

Our fingers, having woven like wicker vines,

or bamboo ankles, tangled over cotton-soil socks.

Knee-backs' puny deserts bear sculpted art of dune lines.

Metronome pores dole out rivulets in unison, like clocks.

Arms wrap like rope stretched from fore to aft

but dont fray, and keep us buoyant on mattresses, watercraft.

Skeleton

Fingers maneuver gently,

tickling lobes, adjusting pony-tail,

or picking nose as appropriate. Each touch

precedes the surface

it encounters: I create

with caresses, construct particles

contrary to physics in milliseconds

of contact with you.

Alas, I touch but so much.

For hours I've mapped the topography,

surveyed terrain, tracked the curve of every space

with kisses, yet

some part remains unfathomed

beneath body I hold, this whole I

grasp so tightly. I want for the structure of

the thing, to know its

core, iron support,limestone

foundation; bone, skull, scaffolding.

I search and shuffle through blueprints and atlas

to find the missing set.

Wunderkammer von Murasaki Shikibu

I. Manners in which we

preserve memory remind

me of our likeness

to crickets, locusts: nascent,

singing sillily;

hoarding not oats and seeds but

fulfilling needs, no?

The tethers that anchor us

to sanity are

but memorabilia:

concrete, stackable,

submerged, preserved in ether.

Keep me enamored

with life, safe below the air’s

mass, comfortable,

nestled firmly within earth.

Merit is ensured

by characters, words uttered,

scrolls, novellas, thoughts

recorded to reassure

us that the human

animal has worth, that he

will retain validity

when his cities burn.

II. All things in this world

link it to me: perception

is existence, yes?

Any argument spoken

is evidence heard,

inference intuited.

Sycamore, magnolia,

lip’s kiss, vibrator,

noon sun revitalizing,

darkness’s terror.

III. Überdi Überyoru.

With every breath, collecting.

Detritus

Another layer incites no great stir,

nor would the amalgamation of this mound or that;

stars are birthed from scraps congealed in space,

so I suppose this biscuit's ignition gives cause to celebrate:

soft crumbs, then paste, and now the oddly glowing mark

of God's hand on my desk rend an anthem from lungs.

We sing for greening sticks, Bards wax

epiphanic because freshening spring never fails to vitalize,

yet stomachs flip at the sights and smell of this small life,

and we sic machines to thwart its wet development.

Crimes of passion

When specter froze itself in draping silks,

and hid itself in eggshell shades, it cracked

like Russian spies among opposing ilks,

and shook like leaves. When pleased, it took the slack,

now jagged curtain rod and shattered out

a window to the silent midnight pall.

He'd never laid so closely, wound about

a form so tightly or left scrambled scrawl

so lightly etched in fresh cadaver's wet

and stinking gut. His step's quick click and knife's

efficient melody made tears collect

postmortem. Humming octaves atop his wife's

new lover's blinded body, butchered, red,

record-light blinked 'til batteries ran dead.

My mans and them, chillin

“Im starting to feel weeeird...”

-Frank, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I, having gazed into abyss, and dabbling deep

there, among saplings, I realize that I too (Yo, see, he's

SO OUT OF IT)

have been gazed into,

but with hero's eyes, sperlative,

that secreted in stealth,

peering into the kiddie pool depths

of me and striking oil

under black soil–

(TEEHEE) (YOOOO)

You're gonna hafta back up outta my bubble, bro,

listen, lookatcha breath I can see it hovering

like bacon, a-sizzle and waaaaavy bro.

Waaaaaavy.

Terracotta waltzes,

shimmers like gulf surf.

Flame fingers grip at logs;

sparks and I hand-dance.

Burning eddies whip stars,

snag their entrails, drape

remains from the zenith.

“You are a child now, scared of the creatures that lurk

in the dark and open spaces inhabiting you.

Rightly so: when you scream, they feed, writhing

like maggots on your dismembered psyche, rotting.

Refuse to be freaked, and build a cage for the freak show:

twine pipe-cleaner for bars, lay Pooh's honey as cement.

When they grasp at you through gaps, feed them peeps

to gum their teeth. Watch them scrap, here, from safety.”

The fodder for monsters

flurries down on us

from darkness. Disorder

severs thresholds, bor-

ders, births vitality

of reality

and conscious mind's root: fear.

“We remembered things we didn't remember,

that we couldn't have, fictions from within oblivion

forged of molten air and a tab, just a dab of lysergic acid.

As it faded we tried to document the adventure”

aaaaaaaaaaaactually

im lazy;

heres more jamz

an expansion

i have decided (while drunk) to use this free time to update mysober-self and the world about my non-poetic thoughts. while not devoid of the marks of poesy, i, exuberant in "real" life, expect them to be as sexy (potentially) as intriguing (definitely) as intoxicating(ed) (slekrjgnlesrjngly) as my poetry.

"shoutouts to all the niggas that fuck with me, fuck you to all the bitches that dont fuck with me" -- weezy f baby.

hello, world