1. pushing away all the seaweed around looking like blue baggies.
to be cleansed
which way is hot
the car parked to be cleansed
it was good seeing her
good seeing them
seeing the hands open
i dropped my little butt to the false floor.
seeing the short-haired eyes open too
but i scooted my feet
sculpture shop floated away
would rather give her shelter
as she pees behind these water kegs
dangling nozzles filling my cups so many times so quickly
so i can throw a cupfull on the greying haired boy
all skim shoeing over the mud grass
really needing salt water
to fill all my unplayed ear drums
skins needing less string brown wisps
french man on my chest
alone
and with all my wishes to be here
and with everyone else
the jug of Hawaiian Punch i held
after leaning back to a slow credence
promised to be something for me
left it next to the tent pole
and partly on the hole it opened too big in the tent mud
i will tell you
i was sad to see
the white tent structure
all opera house, all parabolic
but so many poles making short spans
i will be thinking of you when i will be swimming
pushing water around. pushing my body around.
pushing away all the seaweed around looking like blue baggies.
2. Two Dinners
Two Dinners
Two Dinners
Old souls
New Ones
Dead ones
Cold Ones
Of cardigans
to trade
for sunglasses
not other lips
for mine
otherwise
too many words
not enough breaths
nerves tripped
and useless
i will be the nodder
you the talker
the compliments
i’ll take
Faces faded new make-up
Glare of gummed stone
Marbled up steps round spectacles into which falling,
sunk
Pealed sweat away
Unshowered skin, sucking cotton itchy oak
Embroidered stuff
Stomach bags swallowed cushioned thickened spellings
More helpings please
Added twos,
added ones
These broken lines
Drawn Bent
White hole then more
Some rippled grey
Petty stream fell whimpered
So long could be said still
All in dark eye trembles
Toys I take for granted
planar puzzles
jointer puzzles
table-saw puzzles
jig-saw puzzles
This step
and this one too
run me far away
Only during
Without fragmentation
Do gothic fake black suits.
Old snows rests
Who is closer to them?
3. Why Does John Giorno Not Want To Get Dinner With Me?
i am between two chairs
but am still a column
two cheese
Tunechi
stone (stone) stone
look at me spawling
i saw her teeth
moving like i couldn’t see her words
much more about a true longing
since my osh-kosh itches my thighs
i itch my foot’s arches
there’s
the veins
of my left eye
indigo bunting
everywhere a hem passing
digital prints
the daffodils
64 photographs you smear on a scanner bed
this line you can trace
probably not draw
an assemblage of traffic signs too big to draw
i put this yellow wall here
5 times wavier than hejduk’s windows
i put a see-through purple one in the same place
atop a piece of milled basswood tree
that you could paint grey
make it look like something you want it to look like
fly a tiny thing from the foundation building porch roof
pretend you’re looking down
i can’t tell
if it’s me who’s breathless
or if my brain
just needs
to die for my heart
because i am scared
nancy pelosi’s finger on the bullet
in milk’s head
of shame
grabbing his sister’s open wrist
fist in an open stomach
of these legs
bending the wrong way
where did i go
where is john giorno
and why
does he not
want to get dinner
with me?
4. Riding My Bike to the Ocean, Which Reminds Me of My Mona
i am thinking
and writing
like the carolina wren
the chickadee
like indigo bunting
like the blue caffinch from the canary islands
a sparrow.
definitely a sparrow
the blue-backed shrike
and soon
i hope home is good
i was swimming
in a Minnesotan lake
in Eastham Massachusetts
Empty of that now
empty yet
i was on the song
of the pond’s surface
the fuzzy lightning’s too
my scabby bike wound all fresh a fire
like burning
On canvas
on orange and purple
striped towel
overwriting each wavy line
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
until the sand is swept
or escapes the grains
just cannot get
the sand off my salt filmy hands
Today is not of the heart
but of blueberries
poured from their carton
into a brown lunch bag
Picking them out
like popped corn kernels
the movie ocean
whites of porch sitters’ eyes
you couldn’t see but by bi-cycle
and you put that
next to our Vanceburg graveyard
Memorial day bouquets
compare me to shaded cows
and to the St. Augustine sea,
into which i will pour my grandmother
all of this driving
all of this driving
a bridge of lions
in a focus
catches up
tummies tuck in their special qualities
of me being there for encouragement
like the pulp fiction girlfriend,
who wants a potbelly
does it look like i have a potbelly?
too many words
coming out
of my mouth
makes seagulls seam upright
makes hawks beaks into tree bark
i will let them
eat my lung resins
or follicles
just right off my forearm
tell me
are you a swimmer?
i would
tell you
everything
you would ever
want to know
about me
5. For John Giorno
All of the tiny colors
Between the bay’s waves
Today
and the dream’s too cold.
Leaks me
as a water drop
down my leg
And on this blue cover book
over and over again
As I had too much tea
too much cookie
Drowned in this wigwam
all of this sticky pine needle too
And rub off the granules
between the last of my ear
and my prickly sideburn
Tombs in each other’s breast pockets
Other sands
burying abstractly her feet
french snails saves
The padding between
shipments taking my body with them
It is so wet here
I wonder how you found it
Tra-vel-ling
To these sting-less globs
Pebble my treading limbs
floating ribs
Every line of the tide
As a wavy line like this
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We could chart
the advance of these waters
Make a book
of these lines
bumps on a formless body
peeling skin
faintly sing ready murmurs
when they should be quiet
asking for me
nudging
when i am knelt
only so holden as to when they are holed
a bucket still tips over
it is a crisis in your golf swing
throwing yourself to the fake pin
on the driving range
once hardened
as the ground of those greens
i had the figure of their holes
the golf holes
appropriately so
for what would i see
had i not followed
a dimpled white ball
across the sky
so many times
guessing its distances
plan of rays
pt. reyes
ray eames
think of being fired up
i was raised
new rays of colors
by in-betweens
two is still so much
the strongest
morning ray
i saw
the moon did rise
my senior street partners
some spanish paper
waited on their walking by me
telling
two porch statements
of rooftops with more wet blankets
goopy grey caulk channeling liquid over tar
beneath tatamis
there’s a million thoughts to share
but what do i think about that
scooping earl grey pistachio
melt, even through my helmet
you know, to be taller
could take place
scaled up
confronting the smallest points
to the elbow’s back
like it’s cool
ok
no reason
to mull this minute
over with maunderers
keep different two chairs
in your living room
in the earth
feet tops free
above the clean circles
leading all the way in
some pigeon waiting
to send a fly
through missing mesh
biting soon your kneecaps
your temple
tanning dirts from straight on you
darkening even the space of your white parts
i took a break from the street
in the curve of the park
sun for my free coffee
here’s one i will tell a lie
about what today was
shopping for hours
for shorts
i waited with peppermint tea, Houston Street, tiny presses
For the start of rain
And for it to quit
Boats still waked in the river
listing my erstwhile faintings
pointing to the concrete’s bumps
pick me up please
skin scraped from a new layer
video the roadside
framing only the guardrail
i am by myself in a car
Alto’s Pass by La Rue Pines
green sigh
white lettering
would-be-blue and white pixels
as a quilt and a mound
for curling
snail-faced whale
nodding mariachi-like
bulldozer-tread tree barks
umbrella handles too
we’ll leave this coral fungus
stuck to a forest stick
poking floating rednesses
hand-deliver Sprout certificates
regularly to Philadelphians
do you ever feel
every bump of your front tire
on every protrusion in the road
travel from the rim
i also spoke through
the fork and the frame
entering your bar hands?
and clouds
do they quake
mineral doors vibrate funny
quick wind wasn’t blowing
no good section of what’s below us
i mean, a circle?
between roofs and those nimbuses
was probably still
and my eyes unknowingly not
shaking those stuck moist wisps
what streets is grumpy
what streets is grumpy
yes on a roundabout
i’m on a roundabout
to ivy the blank walls
my new “Blink182” tag
the poor oxygenated brain
i feel like something
is going to happen
to me
my heals have too long
been riding on the end of my sandal
my left arm
on the door rest
my right one rests too
on the middle rest
days so slow long money
should probably find a CD
and put the email written
on the track smartphone
in our book on how to drive
mouths cling on chapped lips
broken lapels soiled by cold
juicing ice bearing hairied skin
themselves minds as desperation
tuesday’s comes again
graphite fingers print paint
bar moon’s crater vellum
empty of space for this
quiet seat
waiting
for sitting
no two likes of me
breaking car
dearest
is tumbling
plain words shelter boards
written name
crumple
snow’s fielding
boot prints to cover
filling holes
red ears
seem redder
and this one
this one is
for and from john giorno
He appears to have
embraced it
though he did not choose
If he were not falling
he might very well
be flying.
And I am writing
this letter
as my last one.
You’ve probably already
received word
That I am dead
they Wish to express
deepest regrets.
Believe me,
I did not want to die
