The Poet’s Head

At the speed of paint peeling from walls,
the poet’s head is two times as much. Even
on a so-so day, his ardor survives like dark-brown
Bakelite. “The poet sees more than we do!
This is never wrong!”

So Strong Is My Love

I am more than willing to swim anywhere
if only to be near her vital signs.
She is my bridge to dark sparkling cairns I observe
through field glasses her honeyed breath blurs,
diva-like. But why, you ask.
An answer eludes us. One could as easily ask,
do vivisectionists savage teddy bears,
do goyim mop their brows with limp Jews?
The world is the world here to there,
or anywhere improbable, e.g., Santa’s workshop,
yet above the ankles I am content,
so strong is my love.

Baked Goods Named after Famous Poets

On Ezra Pound’s cake no birds perch,
or you either, lady. Or me, to be honest. Chapter one:
I threw a toad at a chargé d’affaires.
That’s not true. It was a turd. That’s also not true.
Chapter two: That flower last night in the moonlight?
It didn’t make it,
and I have walking pneumonia, which
accounts for these squeaks when I breathe
with nostrils in the morning, also at night in the moonlight.
John Augustus Roebling almost finished the Brooklyn Bridge,
mostly in daylight. A conch held to the ear recreates
Governor Cleveland’s dreadnaughts booming Hello there!
in the moonlight,
with flowers, with time,
that wilt.

Shattered on Purpose

Someone, please, lower their eyelids! Someone, please,
close their mouths! Spilt battery juice! The all-clear sounds.
We hope the New Tyranny satisfies.

Poet Asks Reader a Difficult Question

Aha, dead air! I suspect it comes
from a moribund cloud. But only because
I’m thinking about it or something else
I cannot remember, such is life or
an assumption. Now that I have your attention,
perhaps you can tell me why Hitler kept
a photo of Ottorino Respighi in his billfold.
Because Hitler thought Respighi might
have been Italian? How could I
possibly expect you
to know?

To

…to turning a blind eye into a hat pin, to
eating crackers at funerals, to
gliding like a knife through room-temperature
butter…

Context Is All

I am much taken by a girl behind the wheel of a Terraplane with
snakelike possibilities. Do I confuse? I mean the girl.
Reptilian women go straight to my heart.
Cuvier’s dwarf caiman I provide for my comfort.
Context is all. (These are never easy occasions.) Farther into father
we find sketchy organs. He walks away to become someone
else. Underlings bow to mark his passage. I am the least
of an aristocratic line. Does my face look as if
it hears its neck singing?
Don’t be deceived.

Blood-Clot Tennis

Something you’ve never heard of and, really,
who would want to? Blood-clot tennis’s
salient feature is immobility.
The player who first moves loses the set.
In the event of a tie,
the player with the most blood clots wins. If, again,
a tie, the player whose blood clots more closely resemble
Bing cherries wins. In the event
of a third tie, for however long a delay,
nobody wins.

Flowers with Feathers

This is an arbor, that’s how it goes in Adjacent Paradise.
A week of sweet sleep replaces rubble with honeyed dewdrops
or something else almost as nice, or a flux of phlox,
or succulents striding about in tight trousers, their downy
features facing everywhere. He who brandishes knives in dreams
in wakefulness shrinks from slicing tongue.

La Porte Étroite

The agouti’s lament calls to mind whatever one hears
in haunted dollhouses, beginning at ten on
Walpurgis Night. I see that you squint.
At my medallions?
I tell the curious they’re French awards
for language heretofore unuttered,
for the nurturing of vegetables heretofore uneaten,
for shouting, Hey, wait!
for grieving over Persephone’s fate.
In this and all else I’m always late. A poet’s fate
also. Strait is the gate.
Pace Gide.

Bonneville

Sunlit salt flats,
assorted reflections,
salt and spare parts and
Goshutes tiptoeing all over the place,
eating up everything, ugh,
that dark smile.

I stand here, a poet, a latter-day Tell
determined to set a land-speed record, that is to say,
with a hurtling bolt (a crossbow’s arrow).
Salt flats are arid, no apples anywhere, nor a son’s life
in the balance.

You say it’s astonishing, how the salt is immobile,
how coyotes stand still, as fixed as that
which makes us ill (too much salt),
there is no pill, we meet our fate. It’s
always too late. The collection plate passes, el
condor pasa también.

Impermanent Feet

My telephone began ringing at daybreak to discourage me from watching
Mother Nature’s performance over by the horizon. I believe, yes,
I do believe that my telephone needs to go to the telephone hospital.
Hello, breakfast! Merci beaucoup!

But strangers barge in to claim my two feet. They’re theirs, they say. My two feet
belong to strangers. Surely this uncovers a ruse. An affectation.
Are these strangers deft enough to unglue an atom? To let an atom’s little parts
gyre and gambol all over the place?

Here on my tender stumps I’s still able to read a heart’s long waves,
the least of which weighs several lbs., dry. Soaking wet, more. When a bough
drops off a tree, a stump remains. Thus a sense of comradeship. “Well,
what should we do now?” Take a hike on your two new feet!

Decapitation: Yes or No

When telephones go out of order, lives tend to blossom in un
usual ways, as often as not, without paddles. One also no
tices flowers with names better suited to sewage clas
sification. I pay Lucy too much attention, the sl
eep-in argonaut, sister to lazy Susan. I’ll
get a knife. No need to cower. It’s n
ot your head I’m after.

It

Presenting, once again, the ever persistent It,
aspects of which drape themselves on the nearest to hand,
as a medical condition mimicking several phenomena
in surgical scrubs, with flared nostrils also, with, avant la lettre,
lilies in zinc buckets and an unaccountable odor
calling filling stations to mind.

Eleven Lines Concerning Language

I often revert to the telephone when distances discourage shouting
out of windows. And I often try to speak Chinese—Mandarin, Cantonese,
makes no difference. It’s the effort that counts.
Whoever’s on the line’s other end often answers with a click,
followed by a dial tone. If via window, pedestrians will cross the street.
For a successful hot and sour soup, ingredients are essential.
I also notice that a certain breed of mastiff’s name is frequently
mispronounced. The cane of Cane Corso, Italian for dog,
is KAH-nay, not cane, as in walking stick. I spend loud hours
trying to get people to say it correctly. I might as well
whisper for all the good it does.

Readymades

I am forwarding my marriage certificate and six children. I had seven
but one was baptized in a half sheet of paper. I am writing
to the Welfare Department to say that my baby was born one year
old. When do I get my money?

Mrs. Jones has not had any clothes for a year and has been visited regularly
by the clergy. I cannot get sick pay. I have six children. Can you tell me
why? I am to report that my husband who was reported missing is dead. This
my eighth child. What are you going to do about it?

Please find out for certain if my husband is dead. The man I am now living with
can’t eat or do anything till he knows. I am very much annoyed that
you have branded my son as illiterate, as this is a dirty lie. I was married
to his father a week before he was born. In answer to your letter, I have given birth

to a boy weighing 10 lbs. I hope this is satisfactory. I am forwarding my marriage
certificate and three children, one of which was a mistake, as you will see. My
husband got his project cut off 2 weeks ago and I haven’t had any relief since. Unless
I get my husband’s money pretty soon I will be forced to lead an immortal life.

I have no children yet as my husband is a bus driver and works day and night. In
accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope.
I want money as quick as I can get it. I have been in bed with the doctor for 2 weeks
and it doesn’t do me any good. If things don’t change I have to send for another doctor.

Wednesday Morning Quatrain

A vision’s duration, neither shorter nor longer
than its memory, speaking in tongues
(sleeveless tacos!), the little ones
on chicken skates.

Reading List

“The Sea Looks Really Tasty Today”
“Brother Slawpoke Ravages Cabbages”
“Tree Rings, Lunatic Doesn’t”
“A Chiropractor’s Dalliance (Tundra Style)”
“Sharia Lore”
“Who Put a Kaiserin in My Luggage?”
“Slash and Gash! Pendulums Running Amok!”
“Raggedy Andy Sucks Crayolas”

Three Monday Morning Tercets

Who blots them up, these furtive teardrops, oops,
I mean dewdrops… Who said my poems are like forks
in a road, oops, I mean toads, not quite done…

Having matured, I punch you autonomously and
apologize promptly. Earlier, I’d have not… To add to
the confusion, the g in gnostic is silent…

Be of easy mind. I just promoted your coy little koi to
a fully fledged karp, which is to say, a karp
with feathers . . .

Meteorological Couplet

You bloom in me, I bloom in you,
we open umbrellas inside each other.

Just How Civilized Are You?

The cubit, an ancient unit of measurement,
is comprised of a forearm’s length to
the end of the middle finger (the digit we use
to flip the bird), arriving at a smidgen less
than eighteen present-day inches.
The ancient Egyptians solemnized it
as the Royal Cubit, its distance determined
by the pharaoh in place.

Cave dwellers used stalactites, which, as
you can imagine, produced cubits
in undisciplined profusion,
likewise Inuit icicles.

Thus one facet of how we determine
who is and isn’t civilized.

How a Poet Finds His Lines

A herald arrives from Earth and provides me with a few fresh lines.
Spectators arrive with a few more fresh lines and often offputting foreign
accents. Moravian? Probably. Also Bohemian. The conversation
turns to the good life, followed by a distribution of prizes. A sampling:
“I aspire to exceed certain Europeans in their luxurious villas, not
only in Africa but in their large mouths too, where problems go
south through imagined mounds of wilted produce to an area smaller
than Vatican City.”

Protean Garbage Trucks

The upper case’s liquidity drips on the page
like an aquatic garbage truck taking inappropriate measures.
I persist in asking, where was Brother Akron named?
Is Akron biblical? I hesitate to speculate.
And Sister Petaluma? More of a botanical ring methinks.
But do feel free to change my mind. I also specialize in tangibles,
though, as you seem to suggest, pleasure corrodes.
Having corroded this and that, pleasure seeks relief in
questions such as, what does one call a carrier pigeon’s carrier?
On reflection, one also asks,
does a carrier pigeon require a carrier?
Is the pigeon damaged? Depressed? Expired?
I could go on. As a mercy to you, not.

For your amusement:

Ipswich Dixie! Akron ditzy!
Rickity rack, watch your back!

Tumbling down a flight of stairs,
one persists in splitting hairs!

(Intermission. Distribution of Codicils.)

A satanic garbage truck collects curses well beyond
their use-by date. A theosophical garbage truck collects deflated
extasies. A philosophical garbage truck collects plagiarized
theses. A zoological garbage truck collects specimens’
feces. A ’pataphysical garbage truck collects
whatever it pleases.

Is this, at last, a fantasy?
Do these, my belovèds, chirp and coo?

The Long-Lost Kepi, etc.

Under no circumstance should a get-well card explode.
“Begging your pardon, you are standing on my goal.”
A running mare alone is good, a running stallion alone is bad.
To resolve this conundrum, look under your eyelids.
Therein, find your happiness. Therein, find some ambiance.
Therein, find a long-lost kepi,
which probably belongs to Harry.

(Only in poetry is it possible to look under one’s eyelids,
where, in the quotidian, we find moisture and
little else, be the subject in good health.)

Antimacassar

Direct your gaze here. Thank you.
I see that you marvel. Puzzlement perhaps?
How can I help? Ask me anything.
“What is an antimacassar?”
A doily-like object. Macassar is a hair oil.
In the Victorian era a vaguely political movement
opposed to oily hair called itself Antimacassar.
At issue, upholstered furniture besmirched
with greasy stains. “This will not do!”
And then it didn’t.

(The Know-Nothings knew nothing of this.)

Catalog of Wursts

Tightly packed wursts (Bratwurst, Weisswurst, Blutwurst,
Frankfurter Würststchen, Lebenwurst, Thüringer Rostbratwurst,
Schopenhauerwurst, Nietzschewurst, Goethewurst, Schillerwurst,
Kleistwurst, Currywurst…)
aren’t often mistaken for pavement,
especially on a warm summer day. Moreover,
whoever introduced termites to my poetry needs to stand,
parade-rest, to the End of Thyme.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Oregano.
Oregano who?
Oregano first, you can go next.

Tightly packed wursts smack of oration. Poetry is better looking.
Poetry even smells better. Oration’s termites look rather drab. Poetry’s
termites feature golden wings and little emerald eyes.

Petrarch is a classic. Nobody reads him. A Petrarchwurst has never
existed, a culinary anomaly. But should that matter?
I mean, really, who reads me?

It Says Here

Stacking crêpes thin as air, stashing white truffles,
enough at least to last a lifetime, or never
mind, I smell a sound.

It says here that fangs conceal squirts. It also
says that the sound I smell
is personal.

The Poets of Loch Louche

Gloom o’ertaken throughout a softer dusk,
shy lights pacing to the margins within
Loch Louche’s terra-clots.
Whence these privies, O deftly braided sutures?
Who holds fast, O wireless thrombosis?
Dreary fens remain and I am traded low, gouache marks marching,
here and there dripping, now lightly touching, briefly lingering,
lambent, curling, vanishing, vanished!
How ample! How simple! And what if behind me,
a two-tier sky? A league is but a league here and elsewhere.
The poets of Loch Louche are not, forever!

Lullaby

O rocking horse, I almost weep! How also I notice
a smudge on your eye. (The right eye, specifically. The left one
isn’t, but rather a shaft and sound effects.)
(The permanent sky is blue today.)
High in the stirrups, stirring tea, how gay this instant
should not be! From over Earth’s din I am
the wind wooing untidy things!
See me acquire a fresh pair of wings!

The Poet Travels Yet Never Moves

I see Allah sniffing galaxies, I see sacks of wine
slung over the backs of camel mountains,
I see little miracles running around
in even smaller spirals, their golden slippers kicking up
diamonds, rubies, gravel and opals,
so put me in gear, I need to go somewhere
I can be even more glad.

Three Vaguely Related Tercets

The Skyy Wagoon gurgles on and on through le Grand Sabot (a swamp
of ill repute and of limited resources), and I toss you overboard,
not really, just kidding. Stop swimming. Come back.

Misadventures, such as the above, contaminate the passing years and you,
my hapless belovèd, persist in looking for rosehips
in unlikely places.

I received a get-well card that made me ill. It also made me ill to see
Odin’s doppelgänger swaggering down from Valhalla as if
he owned the place.

Seven Questions in Three Tercets

Where are you off to? Does that step have a name?
Do you tenderize shrubbery by jumping up and down?
Is a boar’s hide as thick as an elephant’s? Why

won’t elephants do what boars do? Are
the puddles too shallow except in a tundra
elephants eschew?

I came, I went, I started a war,
but don’t slam the door,
it hurts my teeth?

Quatrain / Tercet / Quatrain / Envoy

Bong! Monday already! See Death’s immaculate black limo cruising along
toward whatever dismal terminus! See its retractable sun roof through
which protrudes about half of the shaft and all of the blade
of Death’s signature (and very sharp) scythe!

We transition to the aquarium with its astonishing array of aquatic
life, some of which we merely admire, some of which we eat,
and some of which we first admire and then eat.

Bong! Monday (same day)! See Death’s spotless ankle-length hoodie,
all in black, as he walks about, scythe in hand. And you leave.
I go to pieces. The pieces turn green. Everyone
avoids my green pieces.

Am looking forward to Tuesday.

Untitled Poem for Kurt Luchs

Now that we’re done, permit me to provide you with a title,
dear poem, not that you require one. You seem quite perfect as-is,
whereas misdirection staggers into the Elsewhere
accompanied at some distance by wistful-sounding sirens,
or could that be the wind passing through ocarinas
strewn about the battlefield?

Am I Dreaming?

Friends! Neighbors! Benevolent despots! Am I dreaming?
This crumpled postmistress, is she breathing?
Something about a midnight departure, stuck in a bottle,
best rescheduled . . . . These breadcrumbs,
where do they lead?

Sticky Black Paste

Little resembles the sticky black paste that oozes from despair.
But O the blood! How it makes one to dance,
how through holes it pinks the air where
dancers collide with artillery!
Chancellor, doge, baron, tribune,
the little fellow who drops his name
looks for it first where the light is best.

Poem Touching on the Subject of Reality Being Something Other Than

I am crazy. Eek! See what I mean? But
surely not you, perspicacious reader. You’re
the very framed picture of sanity (I hope), with eyes that
seem to follow me wherever I go in what looks like a room.
One can never be sure, given metaphysicists’ thoughts
on the subject, physicists also,
sometimes.

Not Another Poem about Kites

Speaking in the pluperfect subjunctive, I’m not dead,
nor are you, apparently. It’s Lady Fate makes
raisins of grapes and dirt of us, bones taking longer, often
never. On good days milk becomes yogurt,
sometimes spelled yoghurt. What little I know of
the Wright brothers I observe through shit-tinted lenses,
perhaps by reason of squandered hope. How shall I put this?
Let’s just say I’m fighting off the urge to write another
poem about kites.

Nutcracker Soldiers

An admission fee for one night of love? I’d sooner gurgle.
Verdant people (of course I mean green), especially
of the ghoulish persuasion (of course I mean
necrophagous), are often deciduous and
rather stiff. Think of German nut
cracker soldiers on weekend
passes, brains, for in
stance, in acorn
patterns.