Guy walks into an advertising agency

When you wake up in the
middle of the night and
wonder what you forgot?

• There's no such thing as ghosts.
• Babies get fairies to do things.
• There are snakes that go months without eating.
• One day she just started judging people.
• I know everything about you,
  
• you're very impressive.
  
• Yes. Go bang your head against a wall.
  
• You sound like Burl Ives.
• He had his fourth coronary behind the wheel.
• Shhh.
  
• Japan.
  

Folgier's in My Cup

I came with your face on my laptop
after plugging the operating system,
flagging data fields under partly-cloudy skies
of high atmospheric particle levels.

A pop-up ad interrupted everything.
I lit a cigarette and linked into a saturated fat.
Clicking on the Lotus position, I fixed my tie
and downloaded a new app-organizing app.

I once heard a sound at the shore of a lake.
A massive object cast a malignant shadow.
It was the Storm -- the new BlackBerry Storm
available only on the world's largest 3-G network

I signed the family contract. On bad nights,
red with unlimited text, I fled
from the high-resolution display, screaming,
in a loop: the best part of waking up is

a warm toilet seat, a distant memory
of you, doused in flour,
ironing my shirt with a rolling pin
or scanning the Times with an insidious grin.

If they refuse, it may delay the air in the criminal trial of the case.

You will get nothing
beyond this and that.
And no one will fly
you to the moon. How
will you respond to this?
You will maintain that
the moon will fly to you.
And then when the moon
comes crashing into the
earth, drunk and angry,
you will believe that you
willed it by being so
charming. And when they
bring you to trial for just
such a crime, you will
deny it while the moon
looks on, dejected and
wondering what happened.
You jerk.

The Mountain King

We wanted something with the
word love in it. I always felt that
we met so that both of our lives
could be better. I keep scratching
at it, trying to get into it. I'm sorry
I don't know all the things you want.
I bought you some clothes. I'm in the
living room. Someday you'll want
something and I won't be able to
give it to you. I know it's hard to
understand, but everything is going
to be okay. The only thing keeping
you from being happy is the belief
that you are alone. People don't
change. I don't care if it's snowing
or hailing or a hundred degrees.
Please don't tell. I almost called
the police.

Maiden Form

I think about the summer
they executed the Rosenbergs.
It's a tradition that we have our ribs
and fashion show every year on this day.
Coordinated sabotage and rebellion.
Everybody's happy. I'm building
a bomb shelter. Let me know
if you need a reference. I see her crossing
the widow's walk with an eye to the sea. I'm
very important to the agency. Call me from
the emergency room where she loves to
do the watusi. It goes along for a while, then
it takes a turn and ends up exactly where you
thought it was going. John Wayne shot him.
Apparently I've already signed off on it. Two
sides of one woman. What, you didn't think I
had a mother? It's okay. People start giving
you things -- they think it's cute.

No one told me about this.
I'm taking pictures.

A Change of Heart

Good Friday at my sister's condo in River Peak.
Salty fish brought out the worst in us.
Under the table, you removed your hand
to curl two Xanax between your lips.

The children inverted themselves in the den
and the dull pains in my arm began.
I considered our basement of childhood ghosts
who pinned my forehead as I slept.

Eons ago, I failed St. Francis elementary
but climbed the restricted staircase
to the green yard, cool with the breeze of your face.
Now, before the resurrection, I've drooled.

Have I made the right decisions? A hair fell
from my head to your halibut and blurred.
I clutched my chest and sank, singing
for "aspirin, four aspirin, please..."

You placed the doctor-recommended Bayer inside me.
I crushed it to receive the vascular release,
a new brand of ghostly fingers. Today, I learned
effective relief, damage reduction, to expect wonders.

HIP

Spring fools the rushes
in slow deliberate thrusts
of bird through stone:

a single crane and
a thousand paper pebbles
casting off wearisome battles
for the snow.

While marbled tigers net
bull profits and bare markets,
NASDAQ's photosynthetic finish
and blood-green veneer slides

into the roots and garlands
of an old woman's rosary
hiked thin up her thigh,
exhausting arthritic teeth.

Molars bend in the wind,
incisors break, pollinating
the subtle real estate of age
and need, bone-brittle reeds of poverty.

In The Room

British colonists cauterize the asphalt
lashes of the hands we've held,
the fingernail irises crossing
hairy retinas in the sand:

a humid sign-language that reads you,
some semiautomatic carpal-tunnel
diem, wiggling fingers pointed
backwards beyond the blind triggers
and sloshing at the surf of our genitals' fist.

Inroads and ice break ships and trucks
across palms and cheeks, a steamy sweat
hacking tangles of eczema fronds,
follicles grown from our jointed knuckle
speaking a deader Latin:

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
Ujiji and Mary Tyler Moore come on
the face of the same mountain with one knife
tied behind the other's back,
locked fingers ending slavery

and the triangle trade between you, me,
and the elephants

*Summer, Winter: Squash, Machine*

The chugging motion
of the seasons
forms an egg, cracks inside
jokes
outwitting us all.

"One way to beat
this system is to join
the army!"
he railed, fingers
snapping. And that's how

we clipped the topic, dropping scissor
explosives, reviewing
the internal designs of the land.

Blame us and we will fill
the cracks with cement.
Lips close
heavy with burden: the concept

of time, enormous
apples, odd thoughts,
grunts
with blacked-out faces
plucking the dead
skin of summer
squash upon our neon highway.

Protected identities
blossom in salt and ice.
Wordless whispers
follow the borders
of four territories
with unique code names:

Winter, Spring, Fall and Summer.
Only not exactly in that order.

The process does not change --
it simply repeats.
Again. And again. And again.

Eventually we may run out
of raw sources, cell
numbers, complex
thoughts, small potatoes.
Eventually
we might just leave it
to the living
room around us,
'cause there's always time,
time to leave and let

the automatic system
of 100% natural bodies
quell the verbal riot, eternal
complaint of the innate
ability to do ourselves in
right,
right in the nick of time.

*Before the end of the beginning*

In the ear
lips move
no words
if I
could ask
I would
ask how
we escape
your father
who knew
from bulbs
heads hung
in gardens
we dug
naked
before
and will
when they
bring us up
to speed
I buried
my nose
inside
your neck
you buried
your mouth
inside
my ear
as we
buried
your father
inside
your head
you said
this must be
the end
but I heard it
and I said it
simply
never began

*An toll-free number appeared on the screen*

We sat down to a hot cup of decaf
at the winged oak table in the kitchen
of our modest colonial three-bedroom.
The children were frozen on the lawn.

We felt our toaster produce
the two slices of machine-cut bread
you bought at a Stop 'n Shop
perched by the entrance to highway 9.

The omega-3-rich margarine on my toast
reminded me of the way you spread your legs
that night in Atlantic City;
you were watching my cholesterol.

I signed my name on the 'X'
of the AARP supplemental life insurance form
framed on the Martha Stewart place mat
your mother once glued to her television set.

Steam rose from the coffee,
scattering the lines of your Libran figure.
The gym membership paid off after all.
All of it will.

Landscape w/ the Fall of Somebody

I woke to the windowpane, licked
by rain. Busied in the tedious exit of dreams,
I first failed to separate his noises from
the spattering of weather and walls.

But I could taste thirst -
air worn thin like the inside of a balloon.
In my dumb coarseness
I felt a trembling from the formless above,
And then knew the panting of a shrunken mouth carried
through faint and quieter seconds.

Why was it born
here in the belly outside of its desire -
Pissing blood and swollen
against the floor, dry heaving
in the eyes, senseless from a dead gain?
Hungry ghost

one hundred ears made
For drips not drunk,
For water spent over my roof
under the spell of his old itch -
The moon-burnt and skinned old thing
it hurts to pity.

Detectives

Gritting our teeth
with guns, down to the gums -
we're spat mouthfuls of crumbles,
fully loaded.

There were long trial periods
between our investigations,
legs. Let's just say
every place became somewhere
to shove something into.

The organization was arduous;
We could barely keep track of each other,
let alone the insipid things below, and

I ain't allowed to keep innocents,
according to God - But I've seen him
spew forth our own flesh
and make a big mess of the selves.
I've seen him gnaw on his tale
as if it were our tale and then
throw 'em a bone.

We had once, with great efforts,
tried to explain what lies
under there - in sight and shame,
plus love and pain and all the other
blah blah blah that was popular
(and against the law) last year.

All ears!
I said, then,

but it’s no use - they want
themselves and don’t
need to hear or see or be
any of us, unhappy.

As a compromise
we kill their sympathizers
and, together, have a good nod.

*Apoptosis Today, Odysseus!*

“A life in the postal system
is not a life worth living,”
said the man in the postal system.
The stars are many. Come
address them, then dress them
before they turn cold.
They should wear sewing machines
made from clothes mailed from China.
My lover's vagina is an envelope
and my penis has been mailed
back to my brain. It’s a new form
of cell suicide, just another way
to be mailed to the cross. One head
crawls into another, two and then one,
imprisoned inside a program
of sad returns post-marked
direct mail marketing,
fragmentation of the nucleus, sad clowns,
a warm feeling when she seals your flap.
I want to leave again.

Dead Hand

We started by dividing the universe
into what can and cannot be named.
Me, and everything else. And
Everything happened, especially you
who believed - to a fault - the shamed
distortions of our personal spaces.

The dictionary was one of them,
once completed, and eventually worn soft by the words
we read most: Is now broke.
We fucked a bit to keep it coming,
but what? I’m not sure.
- Me neither.

On the weekends, or occasionally
after work if the mood was gamey,
I’d chase old untellable things
that we’d failed to define or crammed
into small pronouns that meant little.

Hard work,
considering the ethereal ambitions
of what moved us back then, and now backwards
towards nothing. I never found anything,
but was glad to not come home.

All at once tired - smoked and stalked by the hunted
I curled up and slept in the dead hand
of a body of what that wept,
but would never be living.

*Sunday night vigil*

During the night, a cold rain pours.

A light, on the third floor
of the fifth apartment, dims.

A gray bus drives by
with no one at the wheel.

A shadowy figure in a hood
leans against the seventh window.

The water runs down the street
into a hole and stops.

Black Friday

Dumbed by food,
my brother and I - bloated, bleating
joined others and waited for the doors
to bust open.

Sure, we understood the gravity of our numbers.
Behind the glass, we rattled the hinges
for effect. The floor buckled and
groaned in the language we spoke best.

By now, there were several of us storming.
In other words - risen, humid,
stalked by the shadows of great balloons:
perhaps weather, and gift certificates in bloom.

Our pants, let in before the rest of us,
were grown tight and tearing in the pockets.
My eyes grew bigger than my stomach
and had to be plugged in outside the sockets.

Inside the door, deep in shit,
we all grabbed all and ran with it,
taking turns down the aisles
and bored, like when we were kids,
yelling something. What he said
I can’t say, and vice-versa.

With fat thoughts left over
a small flame to crust at the edges and turn old,
I gave killer thanks and headed
home, or so was later told.

Fall-in/Fall-out

Our boots grind partial prints
in what looks like sand
but is really sounds
made so strongly, so loudly
so thickly and longly
that they become things
solid like ground,
ground enough to walk on at least
and you and me.

That's what the world
is made of I heard.

Sounds.

Like an orchestra playing
very slowly.

Every now and then
the sound stops
just for a moment
and then
we can hear something
else
not for the first time or the
last
but still
we can hear it
and we know that we do
and are surprised that we never noticed before because
it's just so loud.

But then again,
maybe we don't hear anything at all?

Whatever the case,
We don't notice
when the string section starts up again.

Instead:

Hold hands because
we are molded together
from the blast, not love.

The radiation
wave's already rolled through town.
The worst is over.

Our skin is grafted
below the wrists and some blood
starts to run between.

I don't know how it happened,
but where I used to have a
hand, now I have you.

"Is your blood going
into my body?" you ask.
I don't know, really.

We start to believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me -- under cover
of skin and muscle.

Waves of earth pulsed through
the city and carried us
like ocean liners

to a refugee
camp made of electronics
and old plaster casts.

We wait in the soup
lines for a message from the
underground network

that we still believe
exists, that we dreamt into
existence at least.

Messages don't come.
And if they do, we can't tell.
It's all just the same.

It's not here with us,
but we are united by
where it isn't. Some

strings of nothing that
we imagine are something
are holding us tight.

I've never felt so
comforted by anything
besides this nothing

that we made up for
each other and then donned like
Hawaiian flowers.

We are going to
join the underground network
as soon as we can.

Someone said agents
are running supplies from one
city to the next.

You don't see them come.
You don't see them go. They don't
do either one maybe.

"Is your blood running
into my body?" you ask.
I don't really know.

Do we still believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me? It's turning black
and we're wondering.

In either case, it's
running out just as fast as
it runs in, okay?

So let's do something
quick about this before
we go all the way
in or out.


The sky is ashed over, black and grey.
And on some days, we
gather around the General.
He has strung
out some nerves which he has collected from men
and formed
into the shape of a man
just there on the ground in the yard.

He sits us in stadium stands
and tells us to wait for it to dance.
We wait.

The nerves dimly vibrate
and emit a gentle hum,
maybe,
but they don't dance.

There is popcorn and soda
and a generally good feeling.
It's fine here and I'm starting to like you.

But I still can't hear you.

*On the Second Day*

We need medical disorders
Because what are we?
And from which sleep
Will we wake? Hell
With this neuropathology
Of manuscript wires.

Award us depression
And schizophrenia, certain
Disturbances of mood,
Reproductions, etc.
Provide us with information
to aid our silliest agonisms.

Our requirement
Of sleep maintenance is
In the brain, in
The brain where
Sleep is prescribed most.
Empirical evidence
Is needed to help us
Suffer. This is our image
Crying out on the image
Screen mail box.

Also, bring us some
Soil, some tin foil,
A glass of water
And maybe a clock.
Then in the morning
When the sun rises
We will choke on the cock.

*Chocula*

You hold yourself
accountable
because
the first thing you learn
to do
is count.

*Daylight Savings*

It was daylight savings time.
You built a boat in the living room.
I sat in the sun depositing rays
into a free, online savings account,
which is turning brown and wrinkled.

I try to keep it well oiled.

Life takes a very long time, it’s true.
Don’t be afraid to leave
because when you do,
I will wire all my rays.

They will bring you joy,
and they will keep you awake.
They will form your bulwark
and the bulwark of your enemy.

I will be your ally, enemy and wall of dirt.
Don’t over analyze it.
Today’s word is “paradox.”

For now, time goes on
and you won’t run out
of it, of sun, of money, on me.

Let’s sleep on it.

*It isn't brain surgery*

But time gone is brain
gone, and these tiny
bursts keep coming on:
the doctors look

worried and away
and want each other
to measure each other
to erase each other solid.

Our memories break water
that blocks up
the outflow, but we know
what we know and no more.

See, when the road forks
we will anticipate
shortcuts to the dawn,
we will manipulate

happiness. We will
press the electrode
lever and the memory
of our past

heads will crack.
In the mirror,
the smell of her hair
will likely disappear, so

fold away or bend over,
my deep brain puppy,
and in this sleep
feel our limbs with limbs

that feel like rain.
What do we want?
We still want people
we still want and we

still want to react.
Good things are happening.
Bad things are happening.
One option is surgery.

*Untitled*

Freshly divorced
from this sick season
where the trees strip
revealing hips pink with the sad tread-mark
of panty elastic,
damp air against a dry tongue packed
with nuts,
classic renditions
of tragic Italian folk songs,
and emerging from the mucous,
a new throat.

*On a T-Shirt*

You'd be set on me
if you were you
like you must be you
so come on
my nice shirt
all my life & you
look great yes
just you & you
must make me
from this dance
in these pants
believe in money.

Pants believe in money.

And I don't need anything
but directions to die happy.

I want to fucking jack off to God.

*Decadent Spirals*

He had his mother’s eyes.
Hereditary baldness from his father
had yet to set in.
American castles and pumpkin pie.

“Every” “single” “word” “in” “quotes.”

A pair of fishnets in the toilet.
He wonders what they’ll catch.
Nothing, of course, but still,
he couldn’t help but force it,
when he wanted it to come.

They found his body in a limousine
w/ glitter pouring out his sides.

He was always speeding
faster, faster and harder, harder,
A velvet-lovers industrial revolution.
A poor man’s poison apple.

A cure for cancer isn’t far away
and perfection is oh so fucking worth the wait.

But all the plastic in the world
won’t conceal his nudity,
nipples of bubble wrap threaded
thru and thru his tongue
like waterfalls along the rocks
like genitals strung around the Christmas tree
w/ popcorn and flickering lights.

Lavender perfume from a variety of women.
Sexual favors in every flavor.
Incessant metaphors prying their fingers
between the space in his eyes
and the hole in his nose.

He’ll never trust the personal ads again.

*On the corner of Bedford and North 11th*

Your belly is a bowl full of bellies, so
spare me the self-righteous rapid-fire
of rhetoric. Grab a mirror and watch
it pour out your widening hole.
(Where would it go if I shoved
the balderdash back with a ten-foot pole?
To the bowl full of bellies, of course.
Maybe I should borrow it sometime.)
Your sunburned face excretes faucets
of death and despair. And the few
strands of uncut hair fall limp
over conjunctivitis red with pride --
and god how did you welcome
that bowl full of bellies, which hangs dumb
under the sweat and severed nails,
like jagged half moons, on that dirty t-shirt?
The clothes you sell are draped
on a stubby fence; the useless skins
of your dreams on a crowing cock,
too early in the morning or too late
at night, limping sadly out of sight.
Tell me again, poet, how
to treat my neighbor. Tell me the way
you told her. I am dying to hear.
Turn the corner with me.
Follow me down these stairs.

*Talent*

"I have an eye for it," We says,
munching the tit of our heads.
And, "I have an eye for it," We thinks,
without alibi or reason but instead

We forgets
Really We's only always wished We had an eye for it.

Wishing suffices for having:
Clad in ourself in a forest of our intention
we become invisible.

We can't see us
but We can hear us
scratching at the pine wood

We bursts through the dirt, one
hand thrust like lilies
We stands, shakes, and stumbles
toward referenceless cities:

We isn't done.

We isn't done.

We dresses up what We wants
and calls it a part of us.

We kidnaps it and beats it
until it talks.

We ransoms it to ourselves
and makes the drop off.

We stands with the briefcase,
millions aligned,
and We hands what
We wants to what
We wants to receive what
We wants to

believe that We is.

But We looks down both ends
of the highway and don't see We coming.
We turns and turns against the stretch but

We don't have the eye for it yet.

We's given We away to We and this --

this is what We calls seeing?