denial island

a leaf carried by the water’s current runs aground
curiously placed rocks in the street gutter
and thinks to itself
now i am an island

like the falsehoods of human intellect
carried by experience to a place of desperate isolation
buying party hats for doomsday

now i am blue
my head resting on the desk
keeping still for death

Bard Rebos

morning sun wash the dash, unfortunate
spider crawl the seatbelt to neck, sits
thirsty commute to work relived today
possibly tomorrow

envision self digging a ditch, boss call
request go elsewhere dig another ditch
commute home relive day tomorrow and
possibly the next

file the files file the files file the files
legs beneath cabinets, torsos above
faces with good hearts, minds with
good intentions, comrades commute
everyday

thirsty’s as thirsty does in dust, help
self to eternity in small gulps, call
bottle home afternoon sun, pride
possibly shame forever

see eyes because of you
struggling young woman just because
heart with good mind, no intention
bitter, sunburned words remembered

V-ae-iled

the midwife veils your arrival
into the muffled room, wipes
you down with a rag until you’re
as presentable as a fish at market

you veil the sun. you veil the wind.
you veil your face like a bride.

control is the leisure of kings
who bid the sun behind a scrim and
sit like stately birds in the late afternoon
amidst the kingdom’s vale of suffering

whose vale of sadness. whose vale of waste.
where like a newborn widow you veil your face.

About Face

standing at the edge of the scaffold
setting the framework on either side
securing it with all your might the sky
and monoxide shine of your hat ablaze

familiar feelings skirt about your cratered
face, you raise a hand to the sun and listen
to the ambient noise of the freeway and
percussive chant of your pneumatic tools

you host a tattoo tribute to peace opposite
the tan formed at an old sleeve’s end, and
the irony is not lost on you in the thick urban
melee, the unsustainable drive toward racket

noise is the cancer that pays your bills. it
forces your hands into tubs of plaster, into
leather gloves, noise makes you crazy for
death at sunrise in a moving truckbed

turn around, friend, the wind comes out of the south
you have nothing to fear but your will to forget how;
even so, the cancer disregards your limp, and sings
whilst you toil to construct new Burger Kings.

Action Schemata

part the shimmery flush between you and the present
by allowing the tongue to run over it like a blind man
over the face of an acquaintance, until we’re all caught up
in the following diversions:

the story
a net, the time and place
on our homework

heads down, admiring the shoes.

hold hands across the oily divide opaque like a petroleum fall
rushing from the cracks in our precipitous yesterdays, drink from
it like we drink from the lyrics of old songs.

in and out of the bathroom
before a mirror, under the blankets
red bows tied around everything.

f-f-f-fa

buoyed up by the childlike
persistence of the waves, kept
close and flung down the
icy blue pale of the trough
seeming to outrun pursuit.
in this ocean, the young cry
for their moths and faths.
foams in response the breathy inter-
loculator in this salty swath, “calm
down and go to sleep.”

better luck getting the dead to live and forget.

2 kip u doun

n thiss
out wit
drownd
crones
frum
isser
or
ore wood
it madder?
no
i guess not.

Dib Dab Regress Further Dib Dab

i opened up a page to the consorts
via webtube my book the commaless
vendetta against books which was
a mistake because i was hired by

the commas

to do this tricky gutter job Uptown
where
Jesus
lives/
with
elves
you
know in
happy
harm on
y

with other Jesuses
with coats that sing
and rhyme like rain
with sane.

i a m f

It’s amazing mother fucker
how i i ron your shirt it feels
like lack-of-summer cold, or
wet spring sans negro or
whas dat again my friend?

Incantatory Pop (Bam)

Storm high and right
which is far up and
West when I look
a certain way out
a certain window.

Look, officer, I am very late. Can we speed this up?

Bam, my left leg in
capatipated dead.

Listen, Officer, sir, I am a busy person with places.

Bam,my heart in two
very distinct parts o

Please, Lord Officer, with the deadly force.

Bam, I wonder what it
feels like when the man
I make risher makes me
risher.

Dear Lord Officer Gunman, with the deadly force, I am very late.

Bam, I remember now. It
feels like the dreamy stillness
of tall grass
wont
to move
for a
ny reason. fu
cking christ.
it wants.

Listen, officer, hundred dollars.

Bam.

Spain Got Gold Gotgold

you hear it in the player’s eyes
as he whisps like wind in a hover
round toward center field with
a gleam of a gleaming spaceship
filling his nostrils sanctum diaspo
ra
fa
ilure imminent, like a dollop of me
lted ice cream on the lips of ur
fave five -help b4 it’s 2 L8- b4
the ship crashes, elastic landing
legs gleaming
in the hips in the swagger n-the
breathy
isolation
of home
ware u
hear the see and see the hear
stuttering fr-fr-fr-freestyle self-
expression until it feels so good

u got and spain got got gold. gotgold.

by and by.

Esc-

in the tall, slippery grass
with its small nuisances
nipping at you because

of you, you know, you

going there,
and all, a
whisper
esc-

the songs you sing. the songs you hear. note to self.

my feet itch a
hundred years
ago in an unkempt yard where the Russians lie in wait;
ago under the TX sun complete with Russian comforts and delicacies;
ago when blue defeats red with weapons supplied by the grown-ups.

not the Chinese.
not the evil axis.

if you’re looking for
refrain then remem
ber little Timmy
leaping over
the unkempt
to prevent
his pre
mat
ture
death.

Starting. Over.

At the end of the universe
where stars live and die like
seedlings under the giant
thumbs of cosmic forces,
a white curtain conceals
their fate, the beginning
of time adjacent to the
end of time, a calculable
moment of space beyond
the farmer’s gate, past 3
shadows, and a lake; beyond

a mound of dirt eroded by
spindly child fingers, beyond
the cool grasp of our quiet eye,
clinical and earless retriever
embarking on the start of things.

Over.