Tuesday

The bear head on top of my head
now covers the lion skull
from yesterday's party.
Things could be worse.
Most days I make only
one public appearance
in my bear head covering
my lion's death's head
but I make it count.
I show up really early,
drink all the coffee and
shoot the afternoon in the back
before silently marching
over the snowy hills
like a staircase in flames.

The Direction

The birthday party winds down
though this was always
the direction.
The applesauce
at room temperature,
the marathoners on tv:
Dull, dull.
It's like watching
someone die of old age
which is a thing
you do, a thing
you're doing right now,
and which is
also a reason
I put the lion skull
on my head, wouldn't answer
when anyone said my name.

From A Citizen Of The City Of The Future

We carry bombs in our underwear.
Makes us feel secure, you know,
like we don't need your sissy
tales of love long lost on the high seas.
Other things we don't need
include sympathy and bumblebees
and helmets and polyurethane suits.
Yet still there is a feeling
of a hollow ringing, like rocks
chucked against a silo
blotchy with rain and rust,
booooong. We've never seen
a silo, though, only read
about 'em in our glowing e-books,
which we also carry in our underwear.
Makes us feel smart, you know,
though none of us actually read,
more just look at the pictures
of denuded gray lands next to our bombs
and we feel, like, you know,
yeah, we don't need your poems
about our beautiful world.

Another Note From Management

David Doody, one of the gents who runs InDigest, has a pretty great flash fiction piece up here. Go check it out, why don't you! He also keeps a very nice online home here.

What The Arbiter Thinks Of You

I will mop the floor with your happiness
and hold a picnic in the basin of your hollow skull
before fleeing to the deserts of Arizona
and though you've never heard of me before
you will never hear from me again, forever,
large across the sky like exploding pink flowers.

A Friendly Reminder From Management

If you haven't already, do go check out the newest issue of SUB-LIT. You won't be sorry, comrades.

Thanks For Coming Over

Probably you are here because
you want to hear how

I sailed from Peru to Tahiti
in a raft made mostly of bamboo

but that wasn't me,
that was Thor Heyerdahl.

He's dead, I'm pretty sure,
but you can read all about it

in Kon-Tiki,
which is a really good book.

But now that you're here,
what should we talk about?

This is my pet pony.
His name is Blackbeard.

This is my pet turtle.
His name is Shelly.

This is lightning,
it reaches temperatures

of 30,000 degrees C,
it can kill you

and scientists still don't know
just how it forms.

In the movie Frankenstein
lightning is used to great

dramatic effect, bringing
the monster back from the dead

or many different deaths,
depending on how

you look at it,
and even though later

he accepts a daisy
from a little girl,

I can think of nothing
more terrible, nothing.

The Briefly Considered Future

It's not that the light
refracted makes me un-dizzy

or that I suddenly think
I'm not being eaten

by a million microbes
or this one shark.

A certain darkness gathers
in the waves,

but it's not darkness,
exactly,

just as these
aren't exactly waves.

It's more like I haven't
not forgotten a tree house

half in shade and smelling
of sap and grass,

which is what
I'm thinking about now.

Poem In Which We Break Off and Drift Into the Sea

Shot through with heavenly light?
A trick question?

Is our island getting smaller all the time?
Mutable definitions haze meaning.

Is there no empirical objective?
I do not speak English.

Can there be a method by which we may configure
our personal experiences into a collection of knowledge?

The collective merger has left us depleted,
look at the dogs in the street.

Are those ribs bulging?
Damp flanks heave in the sun.

Is this your signature?
Moths cloud the light source.

A collective fecundity ready to spring forth?
Crammed into a mason jar the root system plainly visible.

How will we handle the cold winds?
Already they arrive.

We are almost ready.
In your dream your love leapt newly into your arms.

Poem In Which We Attempt to Commute Our Sentence

Now we envision a warship at sea?
The moon digs into you.

How painful is this moment?
Bored and bored through.

Moonlight opens a hole in the waves?
Moonlight digs into the sea.

Light clattering like a shackle?
Clattering over the waves.

Is that a flag in the distance?
Projection of meaning.

Do these colors represent a country?
Signifiers dissolve in salt water.

Through and through?
Bound together by subatomic valences.

Poem In Which We Make Mistakes

Misapprehension in sharp and public relief?
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain," wrote Shadow via Nabokov.

Do we realize our terrible error?
In scrambling for purchase the rock face gives way.

What is beneath the rock face?
Spray of salt, heaving sea.

Ring of salt crystals in sea gull's wing?
A batch of sugar cookies in a basket crashing to shore.

Streaked with blood?
A misapprehension in sharp and public relief.

Poem In Which We Follow Up Our Earlier Undertaking to Understand Something Fundamental

Now we labor to describe light on sand?
Let slip our reflexive lens of irony.

Post-modernity purifies the water supply?
Light clatters like hangers in the closet.

And what of lightning?
Fills the mouth like water.

Light clatters across the plains.
Light snagged in scrub and scree.

And the application of Reason?
Parenthetically.

Doubt hollows the tree.
A family of chipmunks lives there now.

And now we begin?
The revolution always falls short of its highest ideals.

Poem In Which We Undertake to Understand Something Fundamental

Is that a child actor over there?
Neither one. Really.

Is that a large marble fountain?
"Darkness visible," wrote Milton.

Full of bubbling water?
Meaning to drive toward the essence of terrible contradiction.

Do you enjoy crossword puzzles?
The drive to a procure a sense of completion channeled into tiny squares.

Black and white?
Black and white.

Milton went blind during the composition of his greatest poem.
Joyce suffered from painful glaucoma.

More discussed and claimed as part of one's own tribe than actually read.
Firecrackers under a sand dune.

A hotbed of philosophical talent?
A child actor in his trailer.

Are we in the offings of a wonderful moment?
A terrible beauty descends.

Guess Who Called Me Again Today

"Hello?"

"Brad, have you ever stopped to consider the possibility that you're a child of the utmost privilege?"

"..."

"That in fact you've been weaned on guns and butter for so long -- indeed, these have been the twin ingredients in your diet for your entire life, nothing else has made any successful inroads despite the fact that you claim to have diversified your holdings, your intake of esoteric literature of the curvature of the spine, you are still dimpled globs of violent baby fat -- that you've never seriously considered otherwise?"

"Who is this?"

"You know who this is."

There was a long pause.

"Whitney Houston, this can't go on."

There was an intake of breath.

"It will go on until I'm satisfied that you've managed to peek out of your black hole of self, your me-vortex. When I approach a camera, for instance, it is with the full knowledge that I am being imprinted onto the collective psyche of many nations. Indeed, even now I weave myself into the fabric of world history. And you contemplate blogs and line breaks while soaking in the tub."

There was another long pause.

The water suddenly felt very cold.

All Our Moves

The sky gets purple-y.
In the uh-oh way.
In the uh-oh way
the sky circling.
Uh-oh circling
through the bathysphere,
full of sky.
Straining the winch.
Grinding electron.
Stay calm.
Dragging a line of white foam
through the waves.
Everything tastes
soapy.
Purple-y.
Right now someone
is thinking:
intransigence,
transient,
milieu of selves
which is which?
Straining the winch.
A foamy white line.
Uh-oh circling
the purple-y
bathysphere,
grind of electron.
Retribution right now
someone is thinking
only not
in those words.
Straight into
purple-y waves
under a black sky.

More Facts About the City of the Future II

We don't have many enemies but those enemies
we do have we blast into the trees.
We love tapping watermelons,
hearing the solid thump.
We love watermelons but not the seeds.
Our seed bank is huge; we are prepared
for anything, which is one reason
we feel little compunction
doing all that blasting, blasting.
Vinyl siding cooks and peels away.
We pierce entire faces.
We store our water deep underground
in vast tanks surrounded by barbed wire
and angry dogs -- the largest technological
hurdle was not the movement and storage
of enormous quantities of water
but the handling of dogs.
We no longer recognize countries
beginning with the letter "a"
or any city other than our own.
Our papers are electronic, full of holes.
Buy slippers, four for one.
An island of garbage migrates between
our city and another with a funny name.

No Decaf

Every morning fight through congestion,
drifting motes in sunbeams,

the cheery news anchors
letting you know about portentous

moments of collapse that you could spend
all day trying to understand and fail,

consider the likelihood that your life
is a only slipped cog in the cosmos

but keep going and those little holes
in your head will begin to sing.

New Stasis II

Looks a lot like
the old stasis

New Stasis

Looks a lot like
the old stasis

Zombie Town, USA

It wasn't so bad when the zombies first started showing up. You quite literally bumped into them at supermarkets, had to maneuver your cart around them to get at the canned pineapple, but hey, not that big of a deal. Life is full of little inconveniences and they can't get you down. Their numbers swelled slowly enough to escape notice for quite a while. Then they were in line at the bank. The post office. Mumbling unintelligible things, ranting about glimpses of the afterlife, sometimes biting people. Lately there seem to be more and more. I heard on the radio that about half the nation is zombie-folk now. Anyway, what they never tell you about zombies is that you don't become one if they bite you. That's silly kid stuff. The other thing the movies got wrong or never mentioned was the smell, which really isn't as bad as you might think.

Beep Beep

The sound of a bicycle in the rain is not the sound
of a swan devouring its young which is also the sound
the void doesn't maybe make as it presses against the window
and all we know about eternity is it doesn't curl up
not like a kitty or snake in your handbag next to the
travel pack of tissues not smelling like lemon cough drops.

More Facts About the City of the Future

Talk shows will be highly venerated.
War heroes will line up to get inside.
Often there are fights outside
among those trying to get inside:
blood is spilled then latchkey kids
mop it up with tissues then sell the tissues
on eBay to obsessive collectors
of war memorabilia for smack.
Young people slash their beds with razors.
The ecosystems in the tops
of redwood canopies liquefies
and drips onto the heads of the people
below, some of whom contract strange diseases.
Parades are held every weekend
but no one remembers why
so mostly they are ignored.
Boom sha boom shake it yeah.
Baseball is still played.
The ball contains tiny transmitters
so when you watch on infra-tv,
which is beamed directly through your eyeballs
and into your brain, the ball
is the glowing face of the president.
Green Jell-O shots are de rigueur
for some classes, of which there are two.

Try Harder

I don't want to write poems
about the machines we make

to bore holes in people's skulls.
I don't want to write poems

about cutting our throats,
columns of fire, atrocity,

no police in riot gear,
no deadliest month

or deadly apathy,
not even a dead dog.

I'd rather write about
a dance party at a retirement home,

if only for a moment,
not the indifferent hurricane

just beyond tipped wheelchairs,
the crinkly oxygen tent

packed with lilies.

No Future

Is that Martha Washington stealing bananas?

Ruckus Is Our Middle Name

The sky is one big gray microphone,
testing will commence shortly.
Is that the feeling of time running out?
Oh, halcyon days squandered
in arrogant fuss! In that case,
your heart is like
the world's largest particle collider,
the monkey race at the zoo.
Now that I think about it,
it's also like
pandering political advertisements.
The referents explode
and multiply, shrapnel
injuring the first three rows.
My eye, my eye.
Angry people everywhere,
the ambulance crashing
through the department store's display.
I love you like I love a fake mustache,
a barbershop quartet.
Testing, one-two-three.
Will our concerns and foci
ever transcend the resolutely childish?
One-two-three,
the waves get closer to shore.
I love you like the waiver
I had to sign to get in here.

No Hope

Your animatronic bluebird impresses the kids
but kids are dumb, and easily impressed.

Would You Like To Come Over?

Someday I will have you over to my house. When you arrive I will ask for your coat, if indeed you are wearing a coat. Then I will ask you if you'd like something to drink, and I will tell you your many options.

Probably you will want something to drink, having come a long way to see me, which was very nice of you. Perhaps it is cold out and you'd like a whiskey, or a hot toddy. Maybe you'd like a seltzer with a bit of lime. No matter. I have it.

I will retire to another room to prepare your drink, but not before I ask you to please sit and make yourself comfortable, indeed as if you were in your own home.

That will be difficult, however, because you will soon realize that I have furnished my home exclusively with hard wooden chairs. They are not conducive to reclining; in fact, you must virtually perch on the end of your narrow seat.

At this point I will re-enter with your drink of choice. I will also be carrying a platter of burritos, each with an exotic ingredient: curried yak, chicken feet, fish cheeks.

Initially you will be wary, but in due time you will succumb to curiosity (even if it is only feigned interest -- after all, you are not rude), which in turn transforms into surprise and then delight as you find each burrito more delicious than the last! These burritos utterly consume you!

By the time you regain your senses, your legs will be unresponsive from hours of contorted perching; your hindquarters will be painfully numb; your spine will be a column of ice. But your pain will be offset by the loveliest of burrito-induced glows, and I will be sitting across from you, coolly examining you over the rim of my drink, memorizing every detail for my masterpiece.

I am not a bad man for doing this.

State Takeover

Swans drift over the pond
like a troubled mortgage giant.
No, an embattled prime minister
drifting and sparkly.
There is a slow coup
between the baby swan and the bread crumb.
On the shore, ballots are cast
with hushed breath.

Tarnation

The president will speak now.
His face: red
but in all other ways
a runny avocado.
His hands yesterday got drunk
and today they still smell like smoke.

Stand Up

Check out the big red X.
It's on your face and in your eyes.

Your spleen, even.
Holy shit, dude,

what are we supposed to do
about that? How can we pretend

you're not full of targets,
launching pads, remnants

of an old mystique filling us
with shame and dread? Hey,

you should run for president.
You should make a hip hop album.

You should tell me what to do,
I'll wear all your dresses.

My Little Dear

The mountains ring
like an orange grove,
the oceans getting
larger all the time.
Your body fills with blood.

Outrageous!

Enter Malvolio with a plan
and a passel of issues.

Lights fills up the woods,
the woods fill up snow.

Enter snow, full of light.
Little yellow bird, full of light.

Too late, the lovers swallow
the poison. Too late,

the oligarch steps to the podium
above the floodlit throngs.

Enter Malvolio with a plan,
his hands full of snow.

Lost and Found

Turns out you were wrong
about how you weren't going to drink
a margarita in the tub and weep
but you were wrong about so much else
who cares if you're gouging
the soap with your crazy straw?
Turn the television louder,
another station with nothing but snow.
Outside the birds are calling.
Soon it'll be dark insects
whose names you don't know,
whose young grow up by devouring
the adults. They just let it happen.
Their lifespan is one week, enough time
for things to turn around, for
a golden retriever to appear one morning
at your door, a latte between his paws.

Literature, Be Humble

If it's the job of poetry to try to say what cannot be said, to articulate what we feel within our deepest selves, to wield language to be the means of discovery...well, then this truly transcends language to achieve a very high level of intellectual and emotional meaning.

What Was That Noise?

There's no other way out,
I say, or scream,
flashlights flickering
and the flames licking higher.
It could be a dream,
how we are tied to each other
by this short length of rope,
on the verge of reviving
our moribund marriage
only to be beset by vampires,
the undead, terrorists,
republicans, stuck
in a dwindling passage
of red clay or shiny metal,
your pick, getting hotter,
the musical score rising,
you still refusing
to disrobe.
I've done my best
to embroil us in this
bloody catastrophe, it's true,
I've done my best to snuggle down
in the woolly havoc.
It's like accelerating
into the hairpin turns,
blundering into the spider-filled
crawlspace. But hey, I like
how you hold your canteen,
darling, how your hair
falls in a russet wave
when you look like
you're about to throw up.