You lady’s purses, you tack-toed
wallops of white silk, you grim grins,
I have you on my string as good
as legal tender for my room & board
at any inn, my dog & I
welcome there only so long
as you are not, my beauties—
& so we’re tied together in a way.
This broad-brimmed hat wards off
two kinds of yellow, sun & scorn.
How dare we subsist on the hard-
won crumbs of brutes!
But the trap is a good teacher.
Somewhere you must have
your own canny king, making free
with all the best morsels of dark
Goatweed goatweed how you brighten
my waste places with your yellow stars
blossoming in the deep space between
my shoulder blades, where the sun’s
too weak to rise. Like any lover
you make me dizzy and anxious, I can’t
get it up any more and you play
badly with other medicines, such as
dust and pillbugs. Call me a shaman
fundamentalist, but my dry bones
have never felt more possessed of life.
In the otherworld I’m growing a green husk.
My first crush was a statue:
strong and silent, noble
to a fault. Realer
than the dead general
he memorialized, for his triumph
was far less fleeting.
He kept his chin up
no matter what, weathering
every pigeon. His head
was like a moon, blotchy
with seas. As for me,
I didn’t want to be seen
with my head of a beast
like an ass-backwards sphynx.
Small dogs assaulted
the space I’d left
In her image the sun made me
round and ornately petaled,
burning and erupting
in feathery plumes. Don’t stare!
I was the Sun King.
Shadows radiated away from me
like the teeth of my enemies
strung on a reckless necklace.
That’s not a mugger’s knife
but a prisoner of earth’s desperate attempt
to pick my lock. I was, after all,
the state. Why must I now perform
for the forgotten and forgettable?
Why have I not limped like a blimp
into the humped clouds? I can’t seem
to shake this legacy of lead,
today is the first holy day
we observe by living
almost any gland is worth a dinner
so full and so giving
who should we age into
if not a shoe
I bought Henry the Fourth dinner,
but my expectation being too great,
it did not please him.
I drank a pot or two and parted.
A cat with one eye
was going my way.
“Strange fellow, tell me,
how is the king now?”
Within my mind
a mind I long to tame—
a left boy, a little Hercules,
the king of ham.
I find trouble
and learn nothing.
But I am a little
pleased at this nothing,
my no that is no.
The first thimble was the tanned hide
of an enemy’s thumb. Whisky
had yet to be invented, but
needles were employed as lances
in desperate finger-to-finger combat.
Battlefields were so numerous,
they were stacked into other battlefields
like Russian dolls. Soon, brass
was pressed into use, & one armorer
began dimpling the surface
to ward off smallpox.
Prostitutes made their Johns (then
still called Jacks) wear thimbles
on every finger, because who knew
where those hands had been?
Meanwhile they were measuring ale
The soup I had for lunch
continues to bubble.
Outside there’s fog & rain,
I’m sitting straight in my chair
reading from a screen
& when I hear a gurgle
I look out at the drainpipe,
unsure for a moment
whether the soup is in me
or I am in the soup.
I would like a recipe
for disorientation,
a map for getting lost.
It might say, Dissolve
each point of reference.
Bring to a boil.
International Rock-Flipping Day 2010
I lived like a hundred-legged king
in the faceprint of an idol
who followed my every move.
What drew me to that house made of twilight,
whose rooster swelled like an ingrown toenail
trapped between toe & shoe
& never flew?
With floor turned ceiling,
where would the weather vein?
What rod would rout the lightning root?
Unreal estate no bank would back,
underwritten only by undertakers,
each inch of space had been stolen from a grave.
From time to time, I caught
the musky scent of soured hope
Black dragons
in my cornflakes
jump out of milk
and snap at me
demonized cereal
makes breakfast
like a horror picture show
scarring me
like a kid
puking like a drunk
I want to scream but can't
as nutritious corn
from a demonic head
and reaches for me
alarm rings
waking me for the day
I kinda like your eyes.
They shimmer like the stars.
I really love your voice,
Cause I'm the only one who gets it.
Your hair looks really soft,
Maybe soon you'll let me touch it?
You haven't called me weird yet,
Which a lot of people do.
We both like random music,
So I'd love it if we jammed.
You said your siblings were annoying,
Mine are like that too.
Even with the mask on
You have a pretty face.
And when your eyes scrunched cause you smiled
I felt my heart begin to race.