ARIZONA HIGHWAYS
Noems from a nobody. Updated sporadically but emphatically. Will be published in chapbook format once enough noems accumulate. Don't like poetry? Don't read this post.
they rode infatuate and half fond toward the red demise of that day,
toward the evening lands and the distant pandemonium of the sun.
- Cormac McCarthy
thunderin’ volcano
a conspiracy of clouds
a blood red shelf
purple mushrooms driven upward to the edge of the Earth
& your distant face smiles at me thru cracked screens
nascent gatherings “can i come too?”
upper atmosphere “Sorry. No Homers.”
anarchy of weather
down here below
we wander away from ways we were
& toddle back towards our birth
to confuse & confine
with no practical parlance
no known vernacular
once wild wanderers wondering
now we blunder drunkenly toward church bells that clang for home
dolente, dolore…
shrieking sounds of delightful joy carried on the crisp air
the sound of wood and velocity
the spinning backward wheel of night
“In the future, experts say ferris wheels will be faster than rollercoasters.”
“With an attitude like that, you can do anything!”
should I be angry at the teachers who told me I “had something?”
or did they keep it just vague enough to plague me all these years later
were they insulting me and I didn’t know it?
as a kid I couldn’t wait to be old
i was sure it was nothing but cars and candy bars
take us tomorrow to whatever waits ablaze
that roaring sun on the horizon
but the faster we charged the farther away it got
until kids began to collapse in the heat of the endless desert
Sahara, Death Valley, Gobi
these names have no meaning here
these name have no authority
the sand is the authority
the sun is the authority
i just wish someone had warned me
about the sun
or put a gentle hand on me shoulder and said
"son, the future you think awaits?
abates
you can’t drive through Heaven’s gates
you can’t crash the eternal place
but you can invite yourself into basements
where wings for human ascension
& the hidden geometry of invention
shake hands
and make plans
it’s called intention
it undergirds the empire
a.k.a.’s & new names
secret contexts
& claims kept quiet
mental hugs can’t help you
when wizardry of your doctor wanes
none of us strangers to intractable pain
still up above the silent ascent of that long gold tumbling…
the constant upheaval & shovelling up of gathered dreams
unfurled like years across inner American oceans
a desert of meaning
a city of words
the wasted whens & whys
embittered
uninsured &
ensured
names for tools forgotten
& of fools begotten
like soldiers sprung from the mouth of Majors
on the Marne
on Main St
on Merry Christmas where daddies lie dying in cold battlefields far from home
& any know comfort
& I’m upset about a break up?
I got off easy in the grand scheme
the name of an old bully
springs to mind
a particularly devoted tormentor
terse & w/ talons
beckoning violence
w/ blood grinning teeth
charging at me through the fields & the leaves
a long march of losers parade thru my sleep
in the high bleached sepia-tones of memory
barging into my head as I scream
and bolt upright in bed
miles from Europe
I’m right here instead
so quit yer bitchin
& find a way out
many have done it before you
and many lie in ground
Pops, Raffi,
Scott Nelson
the former a real friend
the first two just guys with which to plan thefts
flakes of nostalgia
shards of youth
streets that narrow
an impacted tooth
ways that might maze
back to days you once knew
the forking maybes
of our long-gone hours
regrets aggregate
wasted & wet
& no ways to get
cuz no creatures are stirring
not even a mouse
tonight even the dealers saw logs in their house
try to keep three at all fucking times
cuz one won’t be free
and one’s charged with crimes
and the third dealer knows this
and doubles his price
and you want to come back
pierce his gut with a knife
but you know you won’t do it
you pay double price
for Saturday slumber
no mourning is free
no matter is mine
just the mine of us
& the you of me
just the two cats that I came to see
while you cross your arms and palpably seethe
2. Well, Hell
we seek oblivion
& nights of white powder
we shirk our duties
for the kinder beauty of the buzz
ha ha high
we surf the sun-soaked city on shrieking streetcars
too bad it’s raining
wet leaves gather in gutters
all around that old emergency aura of a sudden storm
grand & windswept
epic & petty
people scurry down sidewalks holding newspapers over their heads
the lost temp umbrellas of the Print Era
from somewhere a screeching (no words, all obscene vowels) cuts the day
someone sloshing determinedly thru the street, stomping clear sheets of rain water out of pothole puddles
he screams in my dreams, your partner confides.
& you think about this while taking a piss
to die @ King Station
alone not a patient
who’s lone simply want
was to rent a sensation
down King & Queen
we ride for free
to see both sides of both streets
methadone clinics @ Dundas West
then heading sharply southbound
where fruit markets struggle in quiet dignity
I see on Queen a McDonald’s where I smoked crack in the bathroom
Look left before Bathurst for a big rooming house
on the north side, a place for the soused
where divorced & injured
construction workers go to die
on mattresses (mattressi?)
on floors
such a sordid place, suspended in time
a place for…
what? it’s gone? they torn the place down?
all us on the bus
trussed up & dismayed
for all different reasons but on the same day
& we glance askance @ the ruins of that place
a crash pad for junkies
for others workplace
consult our peripheral
where dogs growl with malice
and our streetcar rumbles past ruins of that palace
old buildings = invincible
I thought that was why
this city’s is indivisible
I’m left but not Right
History guys should talk on TV
about the importance of heritage not PG13
like a book or a painting
a city never feels done.
upgraded, upbraided
while citizens, stunned,
watch & wait for stern foremen
& the men who begun
this odious task of erasing our place
our memories remain but faithful you think?
like Marianne bent w/ a syringe @ the sink
but these hard young men have no words they can say
they know that a city this size operates
invisibly but busily
not noticeable much
only when novices lean on the clutch
and the bus yanks forward like a dog on a leash
the secret to cities
is they’re incomplete
the movement is the city
the change at its core
construction is permanent
& change is your life
destruction impermanent
they’ll rebuild it twice
jarring improvements &
no dusty denouements
no end to the movements of scurrying men
beneath towers & cranes
while skies threaten rain
it hurts to see the city do so well while you’re gone
like a neglected garden suddenly blooming
you can’t help but wonder
if it ever needed you
in small suburb towns
enforced stillness reigns
sunsets can still shock
in powerful ways
orange cats climb through grass blades
some sleepy, some strays
gazebos darken w/ dew
while the grass gathers weight
That’s why I left, you say out aloud.
Shifting allegiances
Conspiracy clouds
I’m nostalgic for places that shut down @ night
I’m nostalgic for stations that shut down @ night
all the quiet hours
test patterns still stark
I feel like Mike Collins
alone in the dark
hurting alone above the Tranquility
radio silence for the ‘ternity
48 minutes alone, off to sleep
while waiting for Houston to claim victory
but these are the stars of the moonshot nauts
I’m still mourning the death of fav shops
Hebrews 13:14: “for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city to come.”
what feels like it’s done
is provisional
moving not photo still
living
endurable
& likely insurable
like lives long with labor
the fruit for the flavor
not other concerns
what burns can’t return…
…is a lie in the Bible that implores you to accept your lower station
w/ everlasting patience
even as your grindingly slow nation
throws money at tenured jerks who commission studies on the effects of _____ on the poor.
Just ask us! We’ll tell you what it’s like.
To have to choose, to have to lose, to have the blues.
Anyway, nevermind. It can’t be brought back.
With the Palace Arms gutted will ghosts come back to pack their belongings?
in the same place that stifled their longings?
will they take their mauled cases
as men shave bald faces
and exalt in the thisness of their days
not knowing they’ve usurped a place
w/ a history that can’t be taught
just applied.
Applied History, now there’s an idea
let’s travel back into time to change the blinds
I don’t need to be Kyle Reese or see Pangaea
cook my meals on hot continental plates
Looks almost regal in that photograph eh? Almost nice.
Fuck.
well if it ain’t yours it’s no ones
you can’t name it or claim it
it slips thru yr fingers like a football in rain
as we struggle thru pain
to remain
on the field
in the game
me & you might get a house one muddy May
& have kids and be fit
& measure their growth w/ lines on the wall
& buy them popsicles
& tell them they’re tall
& receive special permission
exemptions for the sensitive
to take the walls with us when we leave
it might be someone else’s house
but it was always our home
& these walls will attest
they’ll tell you the rest
they are proof of our tenancy
shot thru w/ our vibrancy
a lone Roman candle burning up sky
there are two kindza nostalgia, your friend says to you
there’s the living kind
where one, some or all involved
are still alive
from the time period remembered.
& then there is dead nostalgia
which is just time.
remembered
& furnished palatable
for publics of the morrow
the means & the marrow
the last man to die in a war made glorious by its very distance
burnished by time
as if once we just missed it
or one of many men to fall in dubious battle
one of Custer’s slaughtered soldiers
who fell where they fought
to receive
posthumously
one final assignment
a special consignment
to stand always @ attention
in the dusty trophy rooms of military history
while the attention of America slides somewhere else
i don’t have time
for a callback to the colonial
an America that claimed to tame its savages
but never looked inward
we make monuments to those moments
nodding, you agree
dead nostalgia seems more poignant
more potent
and & more dead, you add
& I said, more sad
as we slid down King Street haltingly
like Hemingway’s prose
the ring & the rose
wait. go. stop. wait.
& eventually we reach the end of the line
& only rarely it feels worth it.
well…hell, that’s transit
that’s travel
that’s life.
or at least your life
at last your life
to piss away as you please
while your subjects bend knees
the pissed-on city abides outside
& your new “friend” left a beer on the bus
which pulls away
@ a glacial pace but does not stop
tho the driver sees him clearly
& now your “friend” hops up & down in anger
a furious frog
a cartoon of rage
an Animaniac
zany to the max
so just sit back & relax
you’ll laugh til you collapse.
and the car slides down the tracks
I killed a man who looks like you, he tells you
on another streetcar
in another time
similar but different in ways you can’t define
just like days can’t be explained
the streets
the suede parade
rock gently out your window
we pass the bottle back and forth
& feel the sizzle
holding court
riding King like a pair of kings
in exile, finery & raiment
preparing a long joint statement
on the status of the night
describing all our lives
overdressed for the occasion
we mavericks of the station
potentates dispensing wisdom
too bad no one asks
how can they not see brilliance when they look at us?
are we like the sun?
have we ruined what was young?
we are the ruins of those ruins
you offer politely
it’s from some old poem
I stole it delightedly
cuz it tells the terse truth
of ephemeral youth
& the ruins of its ruins
years of dust & rust accumulate while we wait for subjects
to bend the knee
you killed a man who looks like me?
Well…hell,
I got hours to kill
& minutes to fill
& nothing to smoke/read/do
& no one to hate but you.
We are friends cuz we seek
of the night we don’t speak
bcuz there is something wrong with us
& we don’t know what it is
but
w/ questing belligerence
& unresting vigilance
we continue to seek the unanimous high
the kindred experience of same things denied
We seek oblivion
& nights of white powder
We seek the one who won’t fade
that won’t fade
we seek songs of the grave
from the grave
3. pancake people
On slabs of sidewalk
trudge feet toward drudgery
We are walking to work
not talking, just walking
Trying to prepare ourselves for the great flattening
God’s rolling pin
The enormous steamroller that rumbles over all
& makes us work
& work
& work
for some asshole we’ll never know or meet
or if we do meet him we fucking hate him for stealing our lives from us
for taking our time & bodies
stealing the prime of our days
the bloom of our youth
wringing us out like sponges
& throwing us away.
I am certain that I hate him
and I encourage you to hate him
bcuz he is so fucking hateable
he deserves our hatred
he has earned our hatred
he deserves your hatred
he has earned your hatred
pssst…pass it on
our lives are gone
more gone than the front lawn in February
by all means and manners hate the honcho
but don’t hate yourself for being a pancake person
cuz we’ve all been flattened out here
we never had a chance
Our solid selves got vaporized the instant we stepped into this empire
& now we are prairie people
Pancake people
People only in the past
no longer people of the present
I can’t even remember what a moment feels like
what’s its duration
how soon is now?
how long is when?
rooted in/remembered for only what we do or did or are doing
never by what we wanted to do but couldn’t
bcuz we were doing something else
for that asshole we’ll never meet
4. the forks of February
I’m no stranger to spaces
I’m a runner of races
lungs
a pair of pollutants
a lair for the mutants
hairy heritage due
too bearish too few
a mayor for merchants
a basket to glue
a somebody somewhere
a never we knew
once we wondered where we’d go
among munchkins & huns
of recess & lungs
there are lines for the longers
& there’s twine for the goners
There are Bryans and Ryans in line
There’s a Sarah and Sandra
but I’m tired of whining “I’m behind on my courses of course.”
I keep my cat cute & cuddly
& cater to whims
I set out his supper
& watch his mouth grin
The forks of February
The daze of our lives
The force is one scary
& wonderful guise
The tyrants of spring
& a gaggle of guys
the minds you could bring
& a pear for the eyes
The tolling of autumn
The butts of a bummer
The sound of the bottom
& scorching hot summers
When worn winter wanes
I will give you a hug
and drink summer rains
& lie like a rug
Deliver us schemes
& seasons for bread
I reckon our dreams dream themselves til we’re dead
& then when we’re more gone than the front lawn in Feb’ry
who lived here?
in the Walled City?
& why did we tear it down?
bcuz we know
both nations, cultures, people, forces
their dreams were not Walled In
were not cuffed to steel bed frames
we had no right to take it
& i’m sorry that we did
5. city of words
sunlight mutters through finger-thin branches
singing summer winds blow clear down from Saskatchewan
I am lost in a city of words
a Cyprean curse and a coast for the birds
embiggened & smallened
avoided and placed
shitty and fallen
& cold like the lake
an inner Siberia Moosonee makes
& Irish don’t notice the tailor’s mistakes
Mexican mallards & mines of the men
Arm me in armies & kill me for Lent
Palm trees like towers & ballads of song
Long island hours & pallid pale throngs
pall bearers bearing my box to its place
a virus attaching itself to our race
[READ THE FOLLOWING R WORDS IN SERJ TANKIAN’S, THE LEAD SINGER FROM SYSTEM OF A DOWN’S, VOICE]
illuminations emanations
invocations postwar nations
[c’mon…at least admit it sounds like a S.O.A.D. song. All we get at this outpost is Toxicity, over & over again, & just as one must size a soldier up for what they can and can’t do in battle, so too have I been sizing Serj Tankin up for what he would & would not do on an album. He would rhyme those words. They’d make him feel important. Like “Prison Song” prolly did. I just wonder his fierce Liberal reaction when he learned it was a torture song @ Guantanamo]
bricks pitted & scarred
here holes in the wall
side with the shards
eat your meals at the mall
frigid fine fugitives
midgets of mind
fields curl and golden
no storm is confined
Bed bound here baby your spirit I hold
I’m from where we want all the tears of the bold
Florida Man [something] scream headlines at night
while mangled Marinos are wheeled out sight
6. Cities of the Red Night OR an ode to my ex-wife ;)
this is a tiny tune
that will live in your head
like the deeds of the dead
a tune to troop with you through
the old cities of this world
as long afternoons unfurl
before us
the gold tumbling swirl of galaxies
& Alex sees the unmarked parts of me
ignore us…the yearners
we can’t beat the earners
but we can see
the long gone dawns of our yesterdays
the lifelong song of our messy haze
I don't wanna wake up
break up
break down
etc etc etc..
this room’s a cocoon
so we can sleep thoughmorning emergencies on the avenue
I guess the room’s more like a a balloon
so I can see a fewmore summers & seas & the colour of YOU
7. O Cookie My Cookie (I almost named you Snarf, but I let you choose (via a process I’ll explain one day when I’m high or drunk, so maybe never…but the cat choose Cookie.)
I feel surprisingly sturdy these days with my Cookie
he aims to displease
& breaks all he sees
but I got a new me
or a least a new part
to replace the stripped screws on the valves of my heart.my cut cat kitty cat
my runnin round the city cat
born in an alley
where he lived before I whisked him away
& all the way home on the TTC I stared into his eyes while his stared into mine
that green ochre hue seems otherworldly to me.
What places has Cookie been?
& what worlds have those two eyes seen?8. Bricks for Breakfast in a Heroin Hovel
8a. Uhhh, mazing?
Bricks for breakfast
The accumulations of an addict
The accommodations made
Penetrating the armor
The constancy of crap
Envious environments
Faraway highways
“Look at that sky” days
High all day days
Remember the old days?Golden fairways or
Moldy old strays
8b. Uhhhh, ‘Merica?
The constipations of an adult
The accommodations of an addict
Two lane highways that should be four
Two hour movies that feel like four
Two hour dinners that cost you more
Than getting married
8c. Uhhh Psst?
Some national procrastination
Some federal phantomhood of duty
Some anonymous sheen of movement
The vapidity of rapidity
Tedious escalations
Small shopping Sundays
Pronouncements made archly
And sharply
Arctic announcements
Addict announcements
Dead end denouements9.Cities & Centuries
who told you that there is magic in the world?
is it out there or in here?
and which world? and why would it wait for YOU?for you, specifically?
did you think to ask?
or did you settle back into some grand sense of entitlement?
yeah i’m bitter
i miss my wife
i miss my lifei miss doing drugs
i miss routine hugs
and i am furious that i’m even here
a deal has been done without my knowing
without my consent
i was born
& i am going to die
uh uh
nuh uh
no
never
alone
am i alone on some throne ruling nothing?
am i some king with my things drooling? scruffy?
naw
i’m powerless
flowerless
no tchotchkes
no cop keys
no way out of this cell you call hell
without knowing what’s next
just have patience on the pounce
it will hit you & it will hurt you
Danny, there is nothing more I can do for you
what’s coming will not lift you above your circumstances
it will not strip you of your certain stances
it will not change what’s in you that needs changinga soul like a soiled diaper
Walpurgis Night lifers
they never liked you
they only needed you as something to chewlike scenery
or the preening greenery of English documentaries
I don’t give a fuck about your W.H. Boredoms
& your poets who wrote panegyrics for Kings & Queens who were cunts
if I may use your English word
your cockney term
but still you tell me, in prose & in poetry
that the “it” of being will not leave me alone
but I will still feel alone
& perhaps even more so
because The Big Event has come, gone, and left me
to congeal in my memory
as faint a sound
& as near as now
as done as one whatever
etcetera
i am non-compliant
i am incomplete
i am non-receptive to new ways of building
living
thinking
dreaming
being
loving
hovering maddeningly over a loved one's shoulder as they scribble what they really think of you. Oooohf. Could you read it? Would you ask?This is why men missed the Transit of Venus. Cloud cover.
But a sheer lack of proud lovers.
I read about the Drake Passage this morning.
they say it could go either waythe Drake Lake or the Drake Shake
drifting in water so calm you could cut your boats open one inch above the waterline & no freezing salt water comes in.
or smashing you sideways in a great big laundry machine
made worse by the lack of portholes
they say stare at the horizon to make sickness cede its weakness
recede into the deepness of the water
until you reach the Great Private Continent
where ships lie scuttled on shredded shorelines
& rattling rust belts sway
no scavengers here today
well more power to ya if you’re made for it
especially true if you paid for itno not the lavender plug-in your cat loves so much
the travel! the thunder! the thuggish fried touch
of the powerful hand that guides you into the rocks
ancient arctic koans
written on the departed’s bones
reveal “we DO do loans.”
& groan & moan & wait to be showndo you read random riddles forged in far-off lands?
palimpsests papyrus crumpled from foreign hands
the small-dicked, purse lipped PhDs
can tell you more than most
while you wait to pee
but stages built for mass media
won’t let barbs fall like boasts
they question you on it!
like that principal with principles
when you were in Grade 7
with such strong opinions
on God on on heaven
& on poetry
but even then you knew what poetry should be
poetry should be a failure of communication
not of imagination
poetry should be
the struggle to get the words free
to let out what you mean
or what you meant when you said it
so no you can’t go back to being a kid
no psychics no bike kicks no pleasant men dead
no Cantonese slang no man with sharp fangs
no Eng Lit
no ringlets
you've still been Shanghai'd if you work for banks
just tell me who’s coming
& get me a shiv
no more creeps in dreams
just our hugs getting harder
just the now & false new
dragging your me
& dragging my you
into fashionable shoes
while broke mirror shards of a future we never knew
gather behind the walls of this worldbehind beautiful forevers & sordid endeavours of the sore who did & will dig forever just to fuck you & fuck me
& tell us that they’ve seen….
“Seen what? Seen what?”
“There’s something out there.”“What? Specifically?”
“Just something. Don’t fish for it through me. I saw it, you didn’t.
So either wait your fucking turn
or gather all your guts & slit your fucking throat so you can see it for yourself
never fight a man who has nothing to lose.
you just might lose an incisor. Or two.
no more Wild West for you.
just hope that that congregation of jackals (one of ‘em looks like Kim Coates or maybe you’ve been on too many boats) are here to protect you not select you for a special kind of death, the kind in the desert where knives slide from leather
but it would be unwise
to go ask The Man if you’re filming
Alec Baldwin shot a woman
when tape wasn’t rolling
so go film your Westerns
fit Stalins on stallions
culling the best herds
for cities & centuries10.i sing the junkie acoustic
how do you do? sez one man who doesn’t
write right ride on
like a danger song
poems by a junkie who fucks like a flunkyi need what reads like eternal life
what’s not TOO reliant on internal rhyme
"modern bondage" said Shelley
as he wrote/rode up Greece
a hale hero deleted
as he asked for a pieceof pizza from Pisa
azure roads completed
a zero deleted
a name writ & bleated
a name undefeated11. To Paint the Free Cretaceous
A setting of the spacious
To paint the free Cretaceous
To give your mind
to deeper time
Geology mendacious
streets of best & western gleam
the rusted belt below the green
carved into, like all of Texas
barged into, like the rest of us
a rose to sail you home, to England all alone
the long grey shires
strung out with wires
give us modern faces to old disgraces
& keep us with companions
wherefore the why
whatever skies
in darker Dante density
the keeper breaks
the oath he takes
we tackle future destiny
Helen Keller: An American seller
A dream gone gleaming after
Jealous controversy
From those who saw no mercy
In the softer touch
Though none gained as much
As Helen and her Anne
confirm please
have you read it? have you said it?
have you set off to seek your fortune?
Like Puss in Boots or big Bugs Bunny
No St. This
What could be kissed
What tends to declare itself ours?
Our smacking lips
& sinking ships
The end of American Power
On hard highways you’ll dream of me
& I’ll dream of something like you
I’ll call you back
My heart attacks
& you’ll come stumbling past herIn deeper pasts
Where steeper gasps
Call surrender to weird hereafters
What wends its way to daughters?
The river of your fathers?
Or dogs you loved
& boys you shoved
Until nothing flows the water
Sumer is icumen in summer is a-coming in
Lhude sing cuccu loudly sing, cuckoo!
Groweþ sed growth seed
and bloweþ med and bloweth meadand springþ þe wde nu and spring be wide and new
Cuccu cuccu Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Wel singes þu cuccu Well sing you, cuckoo
far ne swik þu nauer nu for your song we never knew12. Alucard’s Abecedarius
An alabaster salamander told me of a poem
Bitter bards do sing of parting hearts and broken Rome
Canyons cross the killer’s thoughts a cad so curious
Don’t dormitories drip with drab dumb hands so spurious?
Eleven left, the heaven’s wept “we watch the eager mountain!”
Go gadget greet the meager meet: the fool’s that found the fountain
High low you know the better road
If wending comes to winding
Jamaica break a Jagger take and
Keep it on you kindly
Lemon’s love to leak their lungs
My mother mom’s a minstrel
No nothing new a month or two an
Operator menstrual
Pick the pocket part the socket
Quiet cons the creeper
Right to left with heavy heft
Shoot bullets from the reaper
Thunder reigns in Thunder Bay while
Under rains the river
Veldts unvarnished victors vanishWanderers will wonder
X the spot where breaks the rock that takes a tock of
Yonder. Keep the clock and hock the broth when
Zithers zip like zephyrs
13 @ Caliper Lake
What world could you collapse in
If poets can’t here laugh?
Do you run right from the factions
That sleep you in the past?
And ream you like a rapture
And keep you like a cast?
“If some drugs (and you’ve done some)
came to haunt your headache…
If late love (and you’ve loved some)
kill a cameo face
A slick note none can complain
Of crack or caliper brakes
Out on Caliper Lakes
For some bled dumb dead dog’s sake
One handfed touched your God ache
And Mightysauga’s Misses while Mistersauga pisses
What then?” I said
And woke the dead
Your pen instead
wrote me wrong raw rollercoasters
of some sad somethings and no wild nothings
Alabaster anythings and salamander somethings
So fuck you and your buildings
You’re here to break the real things
The secrets of my soul
The cereal in the bowl
I clutch just like an inmate
A person without innate
value or shall you
come back with the gal you
showed me one Saturday shaking like leaves
and watching the Leafs
game
on our TVs
and crying for captain
and dying for action
when suddenly
exploding tree
lo! Leafs lay everywhere
Carlo broke his Colaiacovo
Monster can’t breathe air
Gilmour’s on pills more
Lupul’s caught Lupus
A disgrace for office
A commonplace
young new face
A crack a caliper brake
a shack on Caliper Lake
and Kevin for your Kerslake
A Sauga for your Mrs.
Like all delighted people
A target for your hisses
And a crowd to right the steepleA shrill high bill for cable
When your furniture becomes youA meal to eat a table
If a burning slur can beat youA farthing for a fable
A breaking of the cable
If hell is what we live in
And fucks are what we give
Americ- the “uh” inn?
America’s new Indian
Who came to crush opinions
And cut your kind like a bleeding onion
We squeeze our days like a sopping sponge
We kick this place and play some grunge
You break the days that grey your face
Like dome liar left you wired in place
A chump who says he knows the place
A flyer who’s tired and shrinks in space
And has five friends in southern states
Who keep him dreaming of disgrace
When woe begone beneath you
A woebegone complete too
When Lindsays leave you laughing
Dead from cocaine rogaine hat things
Ill advisory lashings and big beef teethy gnashings
A wire to wear at crashings and parties where we’re dashing
A you to me to tell them
That you took me to sell them
Like diamonds in the rough
Or golf balls made of stuff
Another champagne campaign
A sad man with a lampshade
Another carnival barker
Celebrity parker
A big black marker to blot your days
I heard it’s bad luck
if you well…fuck
X a day before it’s done
Not look around at anyone
But glance up at looming shadow
A big X blots out the sun
Of lovers yeah we had those
Of summer yeah we’re not done
So squeeze me like your sponge now
And keep me from colliding
You break me like a snowplace
You beat me like I’m guiding
A day to face that greater bay
A writer turns to paper planes
And offers them up to the word
Quivering and hopeful
Another way to spin unheard
And I could play so doleful
While clutching my last bowlful
A creep could sing more soulful
But I can’t fix your futile
And I won’t nix what’s nubile
Just keep us in the new pile
And we’ll sing from here to blue aisles
14. The Western Lands
As tides polish stonesWe live in rented rooms alone
In fits of greatest blight
red cities of the night
I see you fallen and pristine
In pages turned to silly scenes
Trees stacked like giants
In lands of sunlit green
For fortune’s enemy
Some things end in me
And mine
Out on the north line
Running telephone wire
As plans transpire
Out to the western lands
To be held by ancient hands
Where they eat from broken plates
Seek the greater faith
And soar beneath commands
15. Some Summer Somewhere
I
All summers occupy the same address in time, across time.
Other summers and this summer melt into one long endless idyllic sunblast
You could be holding a popsicle in 1925 or a Blackberry in 2005…summer holds primacy.
It invades, burns and tans.
It pervades, warms our hands.
It’s heat gets inside you.
Summer abides & continues.
On any given day it’s summer somewhere.
Summer in your heart. Summer in your head.
Some summer somewhere.
Summers summed up and demonstrated.
Summers contained.
It bursts forth and blooms outward in the high turbulence of growth.
They say the universe is getting colder with every passing minute. Each eon. Heat death. When all the warmth in the universe is extinguished.
IIskates slice ice in old daydreams
games played in lost Sunday scenes
still played inside memories left upon the shelf
rooms where everybody paused when you left them
to continue one day when you walk back in
a brain in a vat
following itself around
a Chinese room
talking to itself
keeping yourself company
through the drowsing thousands
filling the millions and billions
when Central Park lies empty of people
and wolves dance its fringes
and coyotes call each other’s names
those rooms still wait for you
to walk back in
and begin again
the life you left there
a friend you stopped seeing at the age of twelve
waits for you somewhere
an ex you haven’t thought of
waits for you
some kid you knew some summer, some wild whenever
somehow waits for you somewhere
the untaken trails don’t vanish
they wait
and they change while waiting
like you change as you live
so that maybe they won’t recognize you
when you finally step back in
to resume the lead
in a play they are playing
and as they say what they’re saying
you’ll be somewhere else, sleeping
the dreams of a man from somewhere else
a boy without qualities
spun from the somewhere of this stunted waiting
this wan whenever
the ghosts of your life
wait for you to return and begin again
you can’t set them on fire
you can’t leave them
they live on only in the life you did not