Dented Chrome

THAT UNDER WATER SMILE

2011-05-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

don't run home to mama
don't run home to pa
the flood has reached the kitchen
the flood has become law

Dylan hung out at the corner
with puppets from his past
an allegory was lynched in the morning
a silhouette ate up adversity real fast

don't run home to mama
don't run home to pa
the flood has reached the unconscious
the flood covered everything I saw

PHILOSOPHICAL WORK AHEAD

2011-05-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Bacon boys scatter in all directions.
Grief overloads every boat heading for the sea.
It takes the square root of five paving stones
to reveal that a big step can turn into a tumble.
With a thigh graft taking hold on the top
of my Danish head, I take a long left
at the corner of confusion and critical mass.

TRAVELING UNDER DOUBLE VISION

2011-05-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

The sulfur flamingo took the day off,
leaving her best powder pink caked
down the spine of a grizzled God of
the Fender bending booze drizzle suitcase
who was left with struggling to mop up
all of the fleshy Moorish blend of
Stones and Zeppelin that could tongue
the African road in a genuine
attempt to steady an impatient
cascade of melting linoleum lips.

BUILDING A BETTER HIDING PLACE

2011-05-15T04:49:00.000-07:00

It was being said before I even got there.
It was nothing new or memorable or
anything close to sincere from my vantage point.
It was like a thousand tantrums later and
no one was budging from their place in the sandbox.
I remained on the outskirts of the argument.
One more impossible punch to what the moon
had to offer kept me at a safe distance.
It was ribbons to rivers of disrespect in the palms
of unscripted hand signals that had scattered
us all so many elbows ago.
I followed the cat out of particle range and
settled in behind the assets of real poetry.

FLUENT WITHOUT WARNING

2011-05-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

The eyes squeeze through
a vision at every turn
of a dozen unpacked appliances
looking for ears to
hear their opposable notions
unearthed by millions
of worker stars banging
from one end to the other
without a stringy sky to
settle all the issues
of an unmade garden of glass.

AS FUNNY AS A FLOOR BURN OF LOVE

2011-05-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

I wear blue earmuffs from Sears on
bingo night in her kitchen.
She keeps goat cheese from Trader Joe's
on a short leash near the hall closet.
I mean to hold her with the vibrato of a king snake.
She means to flog me with the ponytail of a go-go dancer.
City ants take cover in cheap chardonnay.
Funny feels as sharp as soccer cleats.
We will finally pop all the buttons off every
clean garment that we own.

PERHAPS INTERROGATIVE

2011-05-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

content under the chair of
a sweeping bigness that bulges as
much as a notion of rolling in
cowhide coital positions with
nothing benign or standing on
a keyhole protocol down burrowing
fleshy doom that cuts unequally
among moral write-offs and as
polite as piss with a Sunday whistle
tickling the inner thigh of poetry

TRAVELING UP THE STRIP ON A DOWN DAY

2011-05-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

The fingers are done with counting for the duration.
They have grown to mistrust all numbers like the plague.
Life is a paper cut away from crying uncle.
I'm keeping a Gaza Strip on the top of my jealous head.
An abstract wound has gone jigsaw on my future plans.
I can't read the small print fast enough for the surgeon.
No one is left in the waiting room from Hangover Heaven.
No cross is large enough to correct my unraveling in snow.
I'm out of the woodpile and into an itchy abyss.
All the Calvinists have frozen in the dead of the desert.
All Egyptians have lost themselves in a pyramid scheme.

THE TAKING OF GLOW OUT OF GULLIBLE

2011-05-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

It is the technology of the cricket that
takes me on a donkey run across a folio
coughed up in Shakespeare's time with
rubbed edges and shavings from dead
furniture near the door of an opium
confession cradled in the hands of
a Chinese empire driven to a teaching
moment when bears sleep top to bottom in
a rudderless bed with assassins cutting
into the waterline measured in red
petals from ancient roots bobbing beyond
warm hills where herdsmen are enamored by
long evasive pursuits down a thousand
miles of gullible getting low on glow and
glitter in the bloodshot eyes of salvation.

WORKING ON A BED OF BETTER EXCUSES

2011-05-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a bag of raw pecans since Christmas.
There is a chance that rain clouds will take all happy zealots hostage.
The Big Dipper was trashed by a flock of Galileo's dyslexic friends.
Caravaggio gave flagellation a good name.
Picasso poked a hole in the piracy of purpose.
I got a Christmas card from a cousin doing 3 to 6 in a California prison.
The revised atlas of alcoholism has gone to the birds.
The Supreme Court replaced ephemera with regret.
The defendant took door number 3 instead of justice.
Titian threw cold water on a modest nymph.
I let my cat shape my lap into a bed.

Coming on in Grim Fashion

2009-08-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

An eager rooster takes a wrong
turn at the corner of river and trees,
misses the mountains entirely,
races beyond the limestone pillars
that archaeologists had drooled over.
The morning mysteries give me
enough nausea to last until lunch.
Hens spend the afternoon laying
eggs in hammocks before they
succumb to a barking Walt Whitman
on his way to the refrigerator.
Construction on the apocalypse gets
hung up at the city council meeting.
A shaky rooster is ferried across a parched
reservoir disguised as a grim Allen Ginsberg.

Remembering to Forget

2009-08-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

A black cat warms to the cushion on
the kitchen floor as obedient eggs
scramble up in a skillet from the import store.
My concentration is broken by a front
door bell that has put its teeth into the bright
temperature of my early morning examination.
The day seems to be divided between piles of
impertinent socks and insistent shoes that
attempt to measure imperfect space.
The potted plants go bone dry before I can
flood them with a watering can full of mathematics.
A black cat stalks field mice in the tall grass of
the bedroom where babies used to gurgle up amnesia.

On Top

2009-06-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

I want the June version of success,
the egg up a tree with feathers in the mail.

The barking cat remembers when its world
was nothing more than a clump of hair.

I condemn the morning for keeping me in the dark,
the sparrows nest in the small of tomorrow's back.

An empty continent is shipped to my
door with a manual in five languages.

I grind giddiness into a bad excuse for going out,
acceleration goes barren in the cut of the bloom.

The sea sits on my kitchen counter in an eight-ounce
glass with a potato taking root.

I muscle summer into sweet submission,
the sun shoulders the curve of the source.

The crow follows the morning, the grasshopper
follows the crow, the ants are left to clean up the mess.

Carrying On

2009-05-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Eddie Pancake waited on the bar stool for

a personality transplant that wasn't coming

anytime soon as a bucket of kangaroo spit

kept the red ants out of reach of the piano

lesson that raged down the greasy stairs.

On AA meeting night, Eddie kept pigeons

under the armpits of his dented dreams.

Over the years, the sweet debris of indifferent

sex was swept into the corners of a conceptual

life that was very Danish modern.

There were ghosts in the upper bunk

heading for Cairo on a drunk camel.

Eddie was left wearing army boots and

a party hat as a piano was crushed by

the power of a million frantic butterflies.

Tijuana on the Half Shell

2009-05-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

The girls stick to the bald guy like Elmer's glue.

Burgers buried in grease sizzle on a side street.

20 arms stretched out behind a plastic curtain

donate blood for some sex money.

While a laid-off bus driver downs his first drink,

the bald guy leans on a sticky handrail and fingers

pesos like they are being devalued on the spot.

The girls bust out laughing as they each

grab for the arm of a pressed white sailor

who has testosterone calling the shots.

Slices of yellow cheese bubble over the

horizon as the laid-off driver stumbles into

one last strip club for the night.

If I Were ...

2009-05-23T04:54:00.000-07:00

If I were a caterpillar on page one of a children's book putting its fuzz to the grndstone, I probably would not stop believing in the power of camouflage to keep me safe from the scrutiny of an English department that feeds on Foucault and Derrida.

If I were leaning over a hospital bed mercilessly murmuring about misplaced meaning with the spark of dementia setting fire to the drapes, I probably should not lead an invisible crusade to fire up a camera full of family brushes with delusion.

If I were hyperextending myself into ultimate fighter mode in front of a rowdy Vegas crowd, I probably should not be leaving a cab with the meter running on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

If I were rummaging through a trailer home for my childhood and I found furniture floating out of a full-length mirror, I probably would not break out the Yahtzee dice and roll up a storm of sixes.

If I were channeling Charlie Parker on a Saturday night with clouds hugging the mountains as a wind tears through the valley, I probably would not punish the babysitter who taught me about nakedness in the chill of my parents' bedroom.

If I were riding on the back of an Indian elephant through a national forest with my feet talking trash, I probably should not shock myself into believing that my ATM card is home building up an empire of nondeductible debt.

If I were listening to the White Album at midnight in bed with the covers over my head, I probably would not want to be grinding my teeth down to the source of the Nile with the clocks running backwards up Victoria Falls.

If I were flipping through a reference book in search of the year a German novel was first translated into English, I probably should not be expected to remember that I need to pick up a new supply of filters for the house ventilating system.

If I were curled up in a sleeping bag on the beach just south of San Felipe in Baja with a big wind blasting snakes out of the rocks, I probably should not take the time to relive the Thirty Years' War and how whole patches of ground were denuded by careless armies.

If I were standing in line at the market with five items in my basket, I probably would not have enough time to run down the list of all the girls whoever made me lose consciousness with their earthshattering French Symbolist kisses..

Not Losing Sight

2009-05-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

Eileen's eye focused on

the sea and not

the arcade that was

morphing into a hazard

for everyone in

the extended family.

The day was full of

vermilion petals and

feathers that floated down

from a previous generation.

She watched the ocean be

transformed into a palace

full of fragrant myths, and

a gallery ready-made for

swimming away from

the geometry of dread.

A New World Order

2009-05-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

The gulls carry whiffs

of salt to the suburbs.

A small boat is beached at

the on-ramp to the freeway.

Three coins wash up at

the doorstep of the governor.

A can of tuna shimmers

in the candlelight.

A schoolboy reaches for

his shoes at the bottom

of an aquarium.

There is a new world

order many fathoms deep.

On the Clock

2009-05-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

The sanguine answer didn't come to me
soon enough to make a difference in
the big picture, but I was there when I
said I was there and not any later as has
been rumored in circles that i refuse to
acknowledge for purposes of this discussion.
The ticking continued as I spoke up for
myself in the center of the fray that was
not of my making in any sense of the word.
It could have been resolved in duplicate but
no one was pf a mind to carry through to the end.
Things were left to fester and my reputation
was left in tatters by the shabbiness of it all.
There was not one scintilla of truth to any of
the allegations that piled up at my door.
I merely paused before entering the building in
the back and could not have been standing
near the melting clock after lunch was served.
To make matters worse, I banged both knees on
the banister that was bulging beyond usefulness.
Although not trained in the law of diminishing
returns, I surmise that bald face lies should not
be left unanswered and that I am well within my
rights as a jester and a rube to take issue with
all the unsubstantiated accusations hanging on the clock.

And as I Slowly Turn to Walk Away

2009-04-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

The blood work will tell the tale, will run the wires from here to there and back again, will fill the deep end with meaning and a sweet, sweet refrain.

The royal rube goes to the doctor to get rid of his rubeness only to find out that it can't be removed, won't wash off, doesn't respond well to medication.

The strange girl with the bum knee waits for something tumultuous to come to her on a Tuesday in broad daylight near the pet clinic.

The hardwood floor takes a deep breath before prodding the Greek gods to take their debate outside.

The tragedy in five acts between mother bird and baby bird is played out above the slanted driveway that winds around a cedar tree.

The mystic in a muddle manufactures a message that all good boys and girls can place under their pillows for a future reward of monumental proportions.

The razzmatazz boys take the softball game into extra innings humming a little Benny Goodman and inhaling some sloe gin fizzes.

The rehabilitated cousin stands in the street with his pantlegs rolled up and a crude smile plastered to the middle of his face as a spaghetti truck loses speed at the top of the hill.

The garage sale goes into overdrive by putting on the market some really cool dark matter and slightly worn winged spaceplanes.

The king of the avenue of oaks faces a flickering globe of light that rides the back of a painted turtle.

The circus clown with adverbs for shoes reclines in the metal chair that has dug into a flower bed full of adjectives.

The ocean takes issue with the river and the river is not happy with the stream and the stream is no longer on speaking terms with the puddle for allowing humans to muck up the works with their waste and religious fervor.

The crickets start up a band in the bathtub and keep the spiders up all night.

The film crew lights up the evening at the period gas station on North Lake Ave. while the starlet does her best Marilyn Monroe in the backseat of a vintage Rolls.

The sidewalks are sagging under the weight of horrified buccaneers who have been given shovels for swords as dazzling dirt clods fly into oncoming traffic.

The mad scientist flips some cosmic flapjacks for the extended family on a mid-week morning with a pack of starlings taking over the power lines.

The hapless young husband attempts to dig a trench around each rose bush before taking a beer break as his gallant young wife climbs the ladder to the highest point in the galaxy of weeds.

The waitress in a leopard dress spirits away the empties before her partial unraveling in the parking lot with the dessert chef from Fargo.

The family picnic is dismantled by a swarm of bees and uncle Joe hitting on the Goth girls hanging out by the restroom.

The retired schoolteacher flexes her tattoos on Mother's Day under the shade of a gazebo with ghosts gardening in the geometry of family.

The paper cut conversations between interrogators and messengers cannot be contained at the edges of intersections that ancestors find divisible by sky.

The juggler dumps her bowling pins into a duffel bag and brings out the chainsaws to the delight of the middle-school gymnasts.

The petulant gulls break up the monotony of the morning by pelting the windows of the newly renovated library.

The great ballplayer trips over a first base dream and splashes into a nightmare before any peanuts can be shelled.

The three-story apartment building on the next block is moved to a local parking lot until it can be adopted by a needy town somewhere between here and Las Vegas.

The bag lady of Ventura pushes her cart full of pelicans to the fish market where the summer wind pulls its weight in shrimp.

The wandering soul of Saticoy gets lost in a seventh hole sand trap and keeps on digging.

The cynical older voter predicts that California will never stop relying on propositions to make matters worse.

The sun goes down on the lost continent of Oxnard forcing the eight ball to teeter on the edge of a corner pocket.

The ice cream truck does a midafternoon spin around the nature reserve parking lot before going for a psychic reading.

The neighbor's dog goes into the dance of the infinite tail spin as the first star of the evening gets a running start at the whole sky.

The ghost with a grudge takes up residence in the childhood home that had kept him quiet at all cost.

The movie starts at the drive-in as the freeway traffic zooms by and young girls suddenly pop out of the trunks of several souped-up sedans.

The garden rat lets the air out of my tires, puts a hole in my radiator, shatters a side mirror, keys a door, and leaves droppings on the hood that spells out how he's not leaving the Republican Party anytime soon.

The pool guy pockets the tips he earned rubbing lotion on the backs of the bridge club ladies before heading for the pizza place at the end of the street.

The Derby crowd with long-shot dreams and domestic beers hunkers down in front of the big screen to watch twenty horses go the distance.

The tipsy tourist with a terrible rash and a tragic sense of direction tumbles into a taxi on a hot night in Tarzana.

The woman with the mesmerizing freckles takes a dozen cell phone calls in the produce section to fill up her Sunday morning.

The Jackson Pollock of main street leaps into the air during a hailstorm flinging red paint with the brush in his right hand and blue paint with the brush in his left.

The excruciatingly bad street musician continues to make up songs on the spot and share them with his public hanging out at the red light.

The uninvited mathematician pulls a formula out of his hat and presents a family with a fresh frame of reference.

The acutely sensitive researcher stays late after work to feed into the computer new variables that he hopes will prove his suspicions to be correct.

The Florida guy with animal magnetism and alligator shoes takes the microphone at the city council meeting and wins support for a new dog walk behind the crumbling industrial park.

The Dorothy Parker of the fast food set opens the day with a breakfast burrito and a brilliant retort addressed at a belching bus carrying Catholic girls down the straight and narrow.

The bourgeois poet with bags under his eyes secures another blanket for the night by taking down an ornamental banner from the wall of lost causes.

The crazy American editor living in Myanmar heads for the border hoping for another strip search serenade to make his day.

The senior citizens lock heads over a game of chess on the back porch while Sixty Minutes gets to the bottom of the vice president on a portable TV.

The exhausted wife sits in the center of her garden and glows while a wayward husband inflicts his wrath on the corporate world and future children remain frozen in time.

The good son takes out the trash without being asked, runs a bath for his little sister, removes his toy soldiers from the dinner table, reads more Edgar Allan Poe, keeps all evil thoughts to himself.

The loitering crow eyes the remains of a sweet and sour TV dinner that had been purposely dumped at the edge of the driveway before the first sprinkle had turned into a downpour.

The young woman who had just outmaneuvered a brown bear is clipped by a passing car before she has had a chance to change her luck.

The family of skunks runs into a wounded possum behind the prison chapel on a moonlit night in July.

The fire victims appear on the network news in order to thank their lucky but singed stars that the winds died down long enough for the water drops to blanket the remaining structures.

The movie people point the bright lights toward the mausoleum and call for action.

The light changes from red to green allowing a well-equipped infantry of middle school recruits to advance into a hapless neighborhood with full carte blanche privileges.

The morning sky brushes up against a battered sphinx that has been nervously shaking off its protective scaffolding.

The local librarian with an imported limp posts teenage constellations above the sliding doors to the meeting room where Earth Day becomes latticework for the undead.

The Santa Ana wind carries all the crickets rescued from bathtubs, sinks, and closets on a new journey across the deserted streets of commerce.

The midnight coyotes rush north to drink from a glistening trench that has been cut near exposed sprinkler heads.

The homeless man returns to his side of the philosophical divide with a skinny dog under his feet.

The Consumed Poet Prepares to Cross Over to the Other Side: Or, Aphorisms Run Amok

2009-03-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

The early poet prepares to not let a rendezvous with the cubbyholes of history to deflate any and all aspirations to be resuscitated by rapture.
The distracted poet prepares to take the shape of a swan in a pinch as a sweet wall of blossoms protects intricate exchanges of impoverishment.
The early poet prepares to retool the kinetic dichotomy that took assimilation off the table.
The marauding poet prepares to masquerade as a permanent structure on the prairie in order to trap intelligent life.
The early poet prepares to footnote the fleshy approximations of prodigious testimonials.
The Harold Pinter poet prepares to be as menacing as a lump of laughter.
The Willy Loman poet prepares to skip the sales pitch and go directly to the sample case from hell.
The biofeedback poet prepares to buy a kiss from the redhead who lives in the burning house on the next block.
The Our Gang poet prepares to belt out bad opera on the backlot of a second childhood.
The early poet prepares to alter the dosage on erratic approaches to windmills.
The conundrum poet prepares to bend a thunderbolt into a sturdy bookcase for the torn mandates of heaven.
The boomer poet prepares to live forever inside a nonjudgmental Venice bungalow with three dogs, two cats, a turtle on Prozac, and a dragonfly that knows all the answers.
The mailman poet prepares to deliver inspirational sketches to paranoid shut-ins across the southland.
The early poet prepares to be preoccupied with the purification of a prurient plot.
The canal poet prepares to dredge up an arcade full of noxious obsessions.
The receding poet prepares to cut back on all unnecessary rhetoric around the edges.
The early poet prepares to pour water on the exception instead of the rule and watch rows of struggling languages snap back with time-lapse film.
The Pandora poet prepares to wrap a bushel full of fancy presents that will stain the world with a lust for dread.
The disingenuous poet prepares to take back everything that was covered by the previous agreement.
The early poet prepares to search for an infinite freshness through the wrong end of a telescope.
The intruder poet prepares to divert all attention away from the helter skelter commingling of indeterminate repercussions.
The severed poet prepares to give numbers to all the parts left out in the rain with the riffraff.
The bicycle poet prepares to do a barefoot flip over the handlebars.
The Parcheesi poet prepares to commit perjury in the arms of a prime location.
The Ozzy poet prepares to think up a few very eerie polka metal tunes.
The early poet prepares to chime in down a windy road where perception counts eviction notices.
The preacher poet prepares to take a big plunge into two nonparallel faces of hospitality.
The harebrained poet prepares to fly south by way of the cobweb of melancholy.
The early poet prepares to disinherit all insubstantial mirages.
The route 66 poet prepares to wax up the corvette before landing in the middle of a family feud with a pretty Peggy coming between friends.
The tall poet prepares to look an unbalanced mountain dead in the eye and tell it to shape up before buzzcut season comes around.
The early poet prepares to not be undone by the iridescent bliss being offered by the heart.
The chameleon poet prepares to take up residence on the underside of a spring moon as wildflowers grow yellow to the sky.
The early poet prepares to redirect all the water under the bridge away from the frayed castles and family cups terracing around a floating choreography.
The Viking poet prepares to set sail for the outer reaches of the back porch with puzzled squirrels jumping ship for the safety of the wobbly roof.
The early poet prepares to step clear of all the banana peels that could take this day in a whole new direction.
The Monty Python poet prepares to serve a meal with prawns and stuff fit for all proper English mothers dressed for sleep.
The method poet prepares to mumble all the way up Mt. Hollywood in hopes of meeting the ghost of a young Marlon Brando.
The early poet prepares to not fall prey to a professorial exclamation collapse lurking in the halls of collaboration.
The contraband poet prepares to smuggle a batch of thoroughbred dust in a bag of loose fitting skin across the rope bridge that spans a conical depression.
The supportive poet prepares to attach a transcendental amount of weight to the words of others.
The door-to-door poet prepares to do some heavy cushion inflation for therapists with sinking sectional couches.
The early poet prepares to oversee the meticulous alignment of a mountain gazebo atop the molehill of a mind.
The Medici poet prepares to walk in vermilion with the weather relegated to a private wing of the Louvre.
The inverse poet prepares to scrub the navel from the inside out and the touching of the toes is once again an Olympic event.
The early poet prepares for the aftermath of something as the ripple effect carries the mother of all wighats out the window.
The curveball poet prepares to have some scary optical illusions ready to go for opening day.
The alchemist poet prepares to bubble up into the atmosphere with Clint Eastwood riding shotgun.
The shadow poet prepares to do the dance on the far wall of forgiveness.
The early poet prepares for a rapprochement between hard cider and overhanging trees after hours of diplomatic negotiations held in the hand of magnified wings.
The birthday poet prepares to save the midnight snack for the daylight hours when the shambles of celebration will be in full tilt.

The rural poet prepares to take the first dirt road past the dairy farm where the honeysuckle and variegated ivy collide.

The early poet prepares to align the swaying window silhouettes separated by receding paper.
The offshore poet prepares to float a few vowels in the face of a flotilla of consonants.
The early poet prepares to expand what is containable and to contain what is expandable.
The pickpocket poet with the scratchy talent prepares to lift a line or two from the tomb of the undiscovered Bedouin scribe who fell off the globe on flat day at the cheesecake factory.
The early poet prepares to inhale the semiprecious vapors of an anxious migration of thought.
The whispering poet prepares to tone down the static emanating from between the ears.
The pack rat poet prepares to stuff the cupboard with cans of immaculate mischief.
The revolutionary poet prepares to pin proclamations to the shower curtains of the dead.
The early poet prepares to turn the unsaid into a ruckus.
The campfire poet prepares to tap into testimonials of the trees.
The early poet prepares to ban fidgeting from the breakfast table.
The maybe poet prepares to make words cough up a new angle.
The fussy poet prepares to sweep up the shards of sunshine that have gathered in the corners of the driveway.
The LA poet prepares to advance up Mt. Washington at dusk.
The wise poet prepares to relish the divine pull of emptiness.
The early poet prepares to be charmed by the baritone of the river.
The intermittent poet prepares to be pelted by sad syllables.
The skittish poet prepares to set up camp under the grand piano.
The early poet prepares to make room for puttering on the shady street of purpose.
The giddy poet prepares to give the thesaurus a breathalyzer test.
The early poet prepares to put the fatted calf through its paces.
The early poet prepares to laugh at the private asylum built by the past.
The hardboiled poet prepares to keep one eye on guard the whole night long.
The stowaway poet prepares to disappear among some disheveled deck chairs.
The early poet prepares to paint fanaticism into a neutral corner.
The brute poet prepares to do battle with the blank page before sundown.
The early poet prepares to take the temperature of an indescribable banality.
The late poet prepares to put one big psychotic tooth under a diaphanous pillow.
The early poet prepares to acknowledge the tyranny of parlor indiscretions.
The Dylan poet prepares to go as cryptic as crayons in Sunday school.
The Elvis poet prepares to scare the sun out of its socks.
The early poet prepares to measure the morning rhythm of the insect world.
The village poet prepares to have a conference call with subterranean termites.
The early poet prepares to drag the sky for lost luggage.
The punk poet prepares to do a header into the mosh pit.
The early poet prepares to gaze at the blueprint in the mirror with the steady eye of an engineer.
The fanatic poet prepares to work the alphabet until it drops.
The early poet prepares to be a handwritten note in a spring pocket.
The early poet prepares to disappear in the strength of astral ligatures.
The early poet prepares to terrify the day with lustful silence.
The mid-day poet prepares to have a gondola moment on the way to the market.
The early poet prepares to be humbled by the nearest living accident in the garden.
The restless poet prepares to talk about seedless metaphysics with the gardener.
The early poet prepares to be less intimidated by the density of an unexpected smile.
The uneasy poet prepares to confront the intentions of a double-edged thought.
The early poet prepares to pocket at least a day’s worth of plausible deniability.
The cranky poet prepares to push the already dented dream over the dam.
The early poet prepares to ride a dromedary deception through the day.
The sleepy poet prepares for the BBC on the radio—war, pestilence, cricket scores.
The early poet prepares to play golf with the Buddha in scorpion country.
The cool poet prepares to not care about the cowgirls kicking down the barn door.

Gone Missing

2009-03-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

I was the missing son who
lived under his mother’s feet,
not the dead son who drove
her crazy from daylight to
sundown with a father who
begged her to shape up and
fly right in the eyes of God.
He had been a farmer’s boy
with a nose for local history.
She had been a city girl with
the hands of a poker player.
I was the skinny kid who
drank extra rich milk and
loved crunching on hard candy,
not the unborn son who was
a genius in the making and
would have loved to pin his
parents to the wall like Amazon beetles .

An Early Morning with Subtitles

2009-02-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

A daughter lost a foot in her
sleep as a distant train was no
longer distant but was whistling
through her philosophy and her flesh.

A mother put away a lawn
mower after losing a husband in
an all-night poker game with
wild cards raining down like leaves.

An Indian chief with a bad case of
irony whittled down an English
sonnet to a blistering haiku in
the early morning hours of betrayal.

Poetry on Parade

2009-01-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

The dogs were first on the scene, first to

look puzzled at the scraps of poetry

flying across the hardwood floor.

Desert lizards let themselves in through

the open window in the back and

slid their way toward a batch of experimental

sonnets that were swirling around a fan.

I was the last to know that my

girlfriend had trashed my bell bottoms,

the last to know that my rollerskates

were still hanging out on the stairs,

the last to know that poetry was making

a comeback among the creatures in the hall.

Opera on Ice

2009-01-22T15:11:00.001-08:00

It was time for the tenor to walk
the walk and belt out some polar
bear tones with bloody feeling.
I saw it from down under as a
walrus in steel helmet kind of
German persuasion thing that
would make even the freaky Wagner
proud to be shivering in his boots.
A pretty soprano with tits that
could make an orchestra cry took
center stage and melted the hearts of
many a frozen passenger.
Without missing any of my toes,
I skated away with my baritone
still intact and my magnetic north
settling in for the season.

It Will Be a Coltrane Day in Heaven

2009-01-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

I walked the walk as a soprano

sax warble splashed against the

walls of blue and sweet sand.

It was Coltrane condensation that

ennobled my pebbled heart to

thread the margins of a cascade eye.

In the afternoon of arabesque

organs, a pumping heaven found

the stain of Medici on a baritone

gallery of vermilion love.

Representational Rocks

2009-01-21T10:13:00.000-08:00

As I take one last shaky step
away from the light, I pocket
my count of the dry rocks on an
inverse path to a psychic waterfall.
Soon there will be representational
art in the center of the canyon that
can outlast my unstable astronomy.
I dig up mothers who had manipulated
their fuzzy children as if they
had been testing one of Euclid's theorems
without a pavilion of spiral netting.
It is the pathology of rocks that sweetens
my salty fluids as a spherical palace of
silver girders supports the knuckled horizon.

Boating with a Butcher

2009-01-18T20:40:00.000-08:00

We counted by the leaf, by the
fingernail dug into the desert.
It was ours by default, it was
our green oasis with folding chairs.
No one saw the tinfoil swan take a
dive, it was up to me to tie the
cartilage to the bridge that spanned
the endless flow of a gardener’s grit.
The water fooled us all by cracking
the bodies down to their knuckles,
by breaking the backs like a butcher.

Versions of Henry and June

2009-01-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

If it is the Paris Henry remembers, it
is not the one that June claims to inhabit.
He followed all the skinny legs across the
melting snow until he had rope burns at the knee.
Henry recuperated in a trapdoor apartment with
a photograph on the bed of June as
a burglar with her legs living in a penthouse.
It was the Paris Henry could not know in
his corrosive days inflicting bruises on a typewriter.

Speed Limit to the Moon

2009-01-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

At first, I couldn't fathom the possibility of

speeding off to the Moon at a moment's notice.

I mean, I don't remember hearing of anyone

else taking the chance of putting the pedal to

the metal and flooring it to the stars.

So on Sunday night in my aging Altima, it

came as a big-bang sized surprise to

come upon a route that seemed to go

off into the sky, but also there was a

speed limit of 25 miles per hour posted.

What was I to make of this sign, this

speed limit to somewhere way out of my zip code.

Not to be discouraged, I didn't figure that

the Highway Patrol would be chasing me

down for speeding around the Moon.

With nothing better to do on my Sunday

night (I was going in search of my own

Golden Globes at this point), I took a

chance on visiting the outer reaches of

something before daybreak and once

again gravity would be cramping my style.

Dropping Count

2009-01-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

I started counting from left to right and

still I couldn't keep up, couldn't keep time.

It was a Beatles song or maybe the Byrds.

I settled for something less, something for

me to lose track of, to wash down the wall.

It went fractal on me in a shifting moment.

My eyes subtracted dimension, my fingers

reached for random drops of infinite rain.

Playing Tennis Without a Net

2009-01-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

There is no correction on improvement in
the sway of ambition and routine redefinition of
bread as first judged to be reputable.
All encouragement was crowned with
mercy and spit, and driven like a spike into
the humble institution of tennis.
I took an oath, I cleaned a revolution of all its
spots, and took a frosty sojourn across
the field of knife fights and pick ax excursions.
The poem returned to abstraction without
vowels, without sprung rhythm.
I was of no help with my humanist
palms and grasshopper syntax.
The truth needed to be worked over
behind the woodshed, as our good neighbor
Robert Frost let the air out of radicalism.
It is the crooked way that wins the worm,
that farms the bird, that converts the net into grandeur.

Where Poetics Live

2008-12-29T20:04:00.000-08:00

There were overtones in the water and
fish on the downstairs side of deep.
I woke up with filthy feet and bebop on the brain.
My last hope mermaid skipped town after
writing too many bad checks.
The drool of success had lost its fizz.
Aristotle cluttered up my kitchen with
some pretty toxic scraps of poetics.