The sun does not come round like this, or driveways. This is my mother's house. Tomorrow's her birthday. It's also the day, one year ago, Morgan died. It's hard to consider this and hard not to. I'm lucky to have known him and to have been trusted with his work. I'm lucky to have the mother that I do. May we continue to bask in this light a good while longer.  

 

 



school through the elementary

this is
from a manuscript
that michael rerick
and i
worked on for a couple
of years

another spark goes

another spark thrown up
into the sky from the scrape
and fire of Pittsburgh.
His steeled eye. The rain as grey
as the sky is. From here to where
all of our loves grow mosslike
and crush us from inside
we will hear your tin rasp
and know even when alone
there is beauty inherited
by things tied tightly
to intent and living
wide open.

RIP Jack Gilbert.

stranding in the wheezer

or standing in the freezer, which is better?
lots of things have happened in the past.
the people on the teevee are hallucinating
their lives are as thin as the screen. If we put
all the pictures together we still won't
know the thing we're supposed to be looking
for/at/into/over/onto/with

in other news i'm very happy that the commercials are for things again and not for people. i'm also hopeful that the fact that we've effectively re-elected the same government means that they'll be forced to do their jobs - otherwise, i think we should maybe consider not doing ours. oh, wait...if we do that...

this thin wand

gather your frets and build up your reaction to politics and football.

I'd forgotten I had this space and now I've remembered. Not sure that it means anything about being here more, but I'm wanting to resurface things and gather more materials together. So maybe I'll start posing questions. There will be about 9 people who move and come into this at all. There are 3 minutes left in the Pitt/Notre Dame game and because I'm watching Pitt will probably wind up blowing it. I'm going to tack in some pictures here. My wife gave me a neat little fisheye camera when we got married and I've been putting it to use some.

long sum derangement

or maybe not. it's been a while here and i've been wordless, or working. one and both together maybe. but some commentary now on the roll through of the hurricane. it bore the same name as my grandmother and hit her home town on the day of her birth in the year when she passed. so maybe when we die we become storms and make all the streams reacquaint with their banks and the people that surround them.

i've got no new leads into anything significant. my hands are still at the ends of my arms and i'm enjoying life as a married man, though both my wife and i could spend the fall in a hut of paper piled building-sized. she more than me though, what with the doctoring.

we talked about sounds that we'd like to carry with us last night. and the ticking of rain on a window as a storm starts, the noise of the espresso maker on the stove when it's not like the dentist's suction instrument that makes it hard to talk - let alone the fact that someone you don't know well has their whole hand in your mouth...

10:16

five dollars in the crisper
the gang signs off on the receiver
and all that can be played now
is card games, or lite jams.

adults contemporaneously get up
at night to go to the bathroom
and are depressed by light
and how long it takes to get
the bed back to their perfect form

one body in soot makes a clothespin look kind
another way of outsmarting the fox
is by simply turning
on the weather

all the waterfalls are moaning now
and bad-eyed gladys just stares out the window
she's that chicken from the commercial
going celebrity before pieces of meat.

2:45

they like to spit into the holes here
they lick their boots and begin kicking
the dirt around, pressing water down
with drillbits into the rocktalk backwards
through their handheld radios, backwards
through their dollarsigns and logging roads
the step’s a steep one if you can make it, they say
and unfold their dollar bills like clothes to wear

the day
is thin and so are we

11:46

3 shorter pieces that kind of interrelate...let's say we're all shored up now?



thank the grocery
aisles for
whipped cream
canisters

what dizzy was
is something new
now, vermont
1992--oohwahwahooh




the rush comes after
the break
in both waves
and theft

i learned this by watching
keanu and swayze
dance fight on the water

their black rubber suits
another clinging to affair
to contend with later on

the trust they almost shared, the sand
and ocean comb-like--rushed
through their hair




life gets easy
when you sleep
and when you can’t
there’s drinking

10:58

A bicycle seat for your perverted chair. The cost of shooting a hole right through the head of a stuffed animal, preferably something remotely endangered. A lopsided win on the playing field. The sort of day where you question what work is and how buildings can stand being so still. A forum for snake spit and skins that peel back like glue. The raised hairs on a body and stray tingle that follows a finger as it traces letters onto parts there. A jump-photo at an unrecognizeable landscape. The morning vestibule folded with water.

how much of a starter kit are you?
how much of a finishing motel?

11:42

still no ketchup, but some more words. have to make the napowrimo work for and against me...then it'll be back to occasional and photo-based meanderings...

keep a shitty tree
to hang your children
from
like leaves
but not let them
leave the grounds

keep a city clean
beneath four thousand
mounds of dirt
the burning asters
a form of situating distance
and what rail call
will come through that mountain
chugging and smoke
the last of the stalked grain

most hope for feeling
and get practically nothing
in return--the bump on the lip,
a fast switching spotlight that curtains
bodyparts, loose change in a jar--cattle
prodded further into the field
what setting beyond place
mats and mats to wipe your feet

10:44

I'm behind because of the weekend and traveling, but here's one thing and I'll have to get two others together and up in the next couple of days...


two syllogists
passage contraband
but their adding machines
make the reasons

one proposes a ring
without a finger, the other
hatches a planet from a pea

all about the round
the long winter danced

tables and chairs like tables and chairs

and the tents were inverse equations
trees of the possible watched their leaves
runt, turn over like a game of crowns

8:49

mist becomes the ghost
you thought your father was

when praying all those
ticked out minutes

before the sheetslap
a body bagged with night

complicated, cold wrapped
round your feet and feelings

and disappeared from there
once the eyeshut shut

trapping your mind inside
but so far in it seemed

no measure could capture
that distance

what it means to be
dead is no language

and single syllables beat
their one-stroke hearts

into how we know this

11:20

don’t stall your thermometer
for my afflictions

the bed itself is a sea of sorting
dampened corners, dreary window

my french fines
for your capped porridge

the glyphs: petro- and heiro-
concert their meanings
umber, charcoal, leafing through pale stones
each other kiss
a word, a folded book of talking
gestures drawstrung

11:04

trying on the hands
again
and what it feels
like to laugh until everything
comes up loose:
teeth, gas, and water
from the eyes
side-spittingly lid-heavy
a cone of volume
waving out from somewhere
beneath the belt you try
to hold steady
but tame is not the weigh-station
not the freight-laden
rig of fits born to highway
through you.

5:54

my other voice is a bottletop
blown over

the white scribble of jets
in a pail of water

my vow to you is always
to catch your sighs

my other voice
is a handsaw, drunk

on the breaking
of days

deserving of praise and anaesthesia
the sun blinked off

x-d out eyes and the sketch
of a skirt on the wind

drawn into a plain pine board
with a felt tipped pen

here’s where to begin
blind as the dirt

where the din of your mind
can steer toward the quiet

of the cooling board
i woke up this morning

how do you reckon
hurry, hurry

the salve will settle
the skin, the sun

knows better than to blink
back on again

10:00

the fairnesses we inherit
and sort of similarities to others

take the nose
from a statue
and hold it still

form your own bangs
let the water come away
from the faucet a little
introduce your neighbors
to your other personas
live like you think
famous people are
the worst and berate
them as you water the tv
and berate yourself after.

grades of B or lower will
no longer harm your chances
at becoming a leader
everyone's open for potential
discovery at the hands of women
or men with more money
and experience

in order to sell out
stadiums, you've got
to have a good hotdog

i can't get more helpful
than this in less than five minutes

10:56

you have people
you fall asleep: Donald Trump

says he knows what country
his hair came from

and we would need to
interrogate this

fascinating dynamic.

8:59

allowances for glassing and your fake gold teeth

add the bears to the palm and wait for showers of foldable burial

these words are shouting and like wine will age to bitterness

my project is to complete

the sadfoot works until it's lost all gourds

what can be poured is poured, such hustle pre-prepared

a maid for the stage and inclusions

and the directions where you look when you're lying

down and solid--the ankles are available for support

6:02

fergie carries her notes
around in flaccid plastic bags
and our eyes
at the bottom of the ocean
get eaten
by limp worms
turn on their phantom
lights and list after the faltering
leads farther willing electric bodies
everybody leaves
of good chance
it’s what gets taken then


here’s an ode to the black eyed peas:
get off stage
banter
when you’re backed
into the future
and thousands of microphone-looking
people question why
your songs burn into our fizz-addled
minds on the dance
floor. breaking palace gates
and plates, a three-cheer
chandelier gets placed atop the stadium
and the lights wink
like beats upon the shoreline
thumping the whales
and lesser crustaceans into the original
refrain of “let’s get it started”
because class
and ass rhyme, bitches.
pop the mazel tov
and take off your t-top
to let the boom boom buzz in