Poem that Rhymes with Johannah's

I was drinking earlier now I have to turn right
At some point, though I'm OK but yawning
And you! stay positive
Can't you see how I try so hard to keep listful
And round the day
To its nearest color
Or kind of hair
That's always wet. Never a buyer
In the market said
I feel really good about Tulsa
From over here. I was up that way
And washed up in the Greyhound bathroom, all blue
Stalls, I think, and shells of peanuts. 
I cannot wait for you to call
I tell you where I am and you said Where?

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At Issue to Below Your Nose

Pillow brackets, silk covers we all confirm

Upon like a Bible--the wise things of the world

Feel like flesh when they melt, feel like pulling hair

Out for to press between pages. In carving the nose

The appendage must not be overly handled and made

Too slight such that the rest of the head needs 

A lot of sanding to even it out, and how much

We know so much depends on what we have

Below the nose anyway. As a child I was kept

Away from wet chickens, which stopped being white

When left in the rain. 

How simple my possessions are I understood

Only after living at home, having made it cozy 

And intelligible through tended growth. 

The garden, itself in a fairer hour, 

Saw the sun between the iron gate small enough 

To be blocked by a single bar 

That now has an aureole. In acceptance of its

More general role, like wit, it is practical even

While transcendent and spilling tea all over

Herself. She demands I leave the room

I am using for reasons I would not have

Other than we live together and have sewn ourselves up.

I have heard we will never hear the end of it. 

Nothing, she hissed. The audience cheered cautiously

For the Black Dane from Zealand. It would have sufficed

At what we are although I'm not sure what one

Is supposed to talk about while sober. 

Add to that, I'm conspicuously not smoking here

On the fire escape next to that guy whose hair I remember, 

Who stills writes papers due long ago, timing it so 

Because he expected a riot and wasn't disappointed

When he saw the bruises on my cuticles, 

Shaped in the symbol you had adopted: a black triangle. 

He had sharp, daggerlike sideburns

And was raising his children as anarcho-primitivists. 

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Love that Costumes

While often rapt in plosive elegancies, we are searching

And powered by nuance let and pushed off like steam

Around a sweating metal spout.

You know I had already run away by this point.

I had begun to run without knowing I went

Along almost scratching my nose against the pavements

Of Paris. The twist at the end is he is meeting a woman. 

And, you know, he did make it out. 

He did escape and become successful. 

They (Christie and Springsteen) have met twice

And don't talk. I have my keys in my pocket

And my hands are filled with grocery bags

Which I now place on the ground and later onto the counter. 

But the dish tastes good and would be sad if swept away

By the texture of the meat and power

Of anything I can imagine coming from me. 

I can't reinvest a leather coat worn over

Linen undergarments, by definition it is

Gin-based and delicious. That's what agape tastes like

The shoulders rubbed in oil and singled hairs

Feeling like cracks or imperfections I thought that I felt

It while looking for my glasses, such as boulders in a river-

bed, in bed. Guiding only from

Below and aside--and the

Theatrical convention is for no-

body to hear him though

Ophelia is also onstage. 

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A Pastoral Of and For Our Times, which Uses the Word "Sheeple"

Serif an O and wave a bubblewand

For others to blow through. Place those

Trim, comb-like teeth to work to mine

More gunk than usual. Though I was rushed

When scraping this morning, and still

I've dried soap around my lips. 

A shepherd winks across the pasture

And it is carried by three different winds. 

He looks foolish when he chases after these gestures,

As he sheds his wolfskin cowl without ceremony. 

These patented genes were airborne, a beneficent spread 

From crop-dusters supervised by Gates Foundation.

The serengeti cups the sun in an acacia, 

Speaks loudly as it is itself a big stick. 

I heard the Cetus sifted through plankton before 

He was turned to stone by Perseus. 

He Greek hero had very little hair.

Stared into our great green 'nother. 

The day the shepherd's accounts came due

He raised his crook and lowed, "Wake up sheeple!"

In the stadium and in the well-lit yet inexpensive apartments

With wooden fire-escapes on every building.

How hath this day deserved a guide

Or a directory: a model for the calendar of sins

As those enumerated first by the Warburg Institute, 

As we follow their lead and the sway of their handheld machine

Which two men hold, standing each at a post in the doorway. 

They bring their arms back in useful mechanical 

Motion forward through and through the door. 

Crawling out from under mine own unnatural self 

Takes a few minutes and holds up the rest of the group. 

The sun is set and you hear a distant  *clink*

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Contrite Traditive

I wish I had wheels in my body. 

Maybe that is how it ought

To work with long-term rentals, 

A modified patronymic tradition. 

In the bride's hometown

No abbreviation is necessary. 

We could feel the axles crossing, 

The wheels propelling us towards nouns

Swagging deep, guiding loud contrition

With studied fingers. Your mouth, the lentils, 

And I have been serious for far longer than I thought. 

With them hazard lights on, the scene gets bawdy. 

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Valediction for Joelle

I have the chance to really be somebody, we think. 

This I consider my most salient feature. 

I speak to many people, like they're water

And I am a green glass soon to be beautiful though

Currently at an antepenultimate stage of truth. 

I am going to be new-agey next year, I can feel it.

An ominous tone as the observer comes into focus. 

A man in scrubs rubbing his hands together, wondering

If the existence of the system is merely a moral imperative 

From the point of view of totality, the same river

Thats flows beside the throne of God, the same, 

Side-tracked. Interested, so to speak, when you say

Rising early and returning quietly. Left watching Pawn Stars. 

The auditory flash-forward forestalls suspense and represents 

With an equal disregard for tragic overtones

 An American tragedy whose subjects have been absorbed, 

Bit by bit. I feel so hedonistic, surfing and scattered. 

Your child is missing. Where are you taking that train.

The Lake Shore North has been closed; anyways,

It's not my car. We have become one flesh

And the flesh is you. The proper entity of comparison

Is the world. Trying to contain them so 

To beat them later, I guess. Wisconsin to Chicago

To Austin to Houston then north again. 

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A Bedtime Story

The tortoise lived by himself in a tree.
He survived on the fruit in his home
And the smaller primates passing through.
He was hundreds of years old and remembered nothing
Except living in the tree. Which he did not know
Was on an island.
     Off the coast one day a shipwreck
Left a mother, father and daughter on a lifeboat
Until the daughter was caught and tossed by a wave
And deposited upon the beach. She was OK
And sat for some time on the beach by herself.
She was scared of being alone. She saw
Tortoises with small tails dragging in the sand
Higher up on the beach. They dragged their tails
Extremely slowly. She asked them some questions
But they didn’t respond to her. Bored,
She wandered into the forest that seemed
The majority of the island. Above her
She could hear rustling and grew fearful
That she was not alone. She saw the tortoise
on a branch,

who looked back at her.

She was unlike other things he had known.
He grunted in surprise.
The girl asked,
“Hello?”
The tortoise was further surprised.
“How come you can speak?”
“Excuse me?”
“You look cold. None of the other
Primates here can talk, though.”
“Well I’m
A girl. Though I learned that I think
Is a kind of primate.”
“Did you catch your fur
On a branch when you fell out?”
“Oh,
I am too scared of climbing trees.
My friend Alicia broke her arm
Last August in the Park by my house.”
“And where is your house?”
“Uhhhh
My Mom remembers but she’s uhhh
I think still in the ocean. We got knocked
From our cruise ship and I don’t know
Where they are now. Have you seen them?”
“If they look like you I have not seen them.
What is the ocean?”
“I don’t know. Around?
It is where the other tortoises live.”
“What?”
“The other tortoises. On the beach.”
“Oh I don’t know about that.”
“Well how
Did you get in that tree?”
“I don’t know.
I suppose I was born here.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s OK. Its lonely sometimes.”
“Really?”
“I suppose I have never seen another tortoise.”
The girl agreed to introduce them.
The tortoise came down very gingerly.

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The Four Ply of the Heavens

The Day gathers itself
Into a bindle for wand’ring Night,
Who on a metal harp
Tuts out a bending note.

You take a bath in the ice where you slipped.
You watch the dirt splash back around each drop
Of rain. The impacts upset some loam
Beneath the ice and soil, and it gathers in a puddle

Dammed round with feathers.
The birds usually just tut around the lawn.
They continue to patter-off loose down
While scooping up silt in their beaks.

You feel better through wet eyes and when you move your head
The moon seems to swipe through the clouds like a flare.
We will start walking
Come promise of stopping.

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"So anyway, I didn’t get a flip phone

because the buttons had octogenarian proportions."
Its not like I am actually rude, I’m just surprised
To see you here, in this same taxi, after all these years.

He caught at some of the words that I used

In my effort to steady and comfort him

And clung to them. “And I was going to suggest to you

that you serve your eggs with hollandaise sauce in hubcaps.

Because there’s no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.”

I can quickly appreciate it because of the colors and the size.

I forget about my job when I look at these paintings.

I don’t think of anything when I see this.
Did he die from the chest, or the filling up of the fluid?

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"That there is

one fast ambulance.
What a pity. Wake up."
Open the door, she
and ways to love
flash the sun
with a cloud.

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That Great Gatsby World of Extravagant Hats

He came shambling up out of the dark, towards us.

We asked him to sing it first, so we could know

If we wanted to take it with us. One song as long as the trail

From Texas to Montana, with a stanza for every traveller.

She made me understand the cause of my anxiety

Was the spirits trying to communicate with me.

The Americans are brittle, i.e., they tend to separate.

Kin to Old Icelandic brotna, to burst, break, or still forming.

See, too, the Old English brytta, one who bestows

Gifts, avoids the doors and windows that he leaves always open.

We maintain the “trace in the mind”that certifies these distinctions.

I went to bed that night with a bright light shining in my face.

I was on that roof more than once. Every full moon

I like to have a drum circle. It’s perfect for me as far

As rejuvenating and so. I will be there with my drum, singing

So soon, so soon, I’ll be at home.

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Spam 1

Hello, playmates, chuck thrift hubbub whoa
Montenegrin: mourn confederate cbs interpolatory
Reformatory thomistic advice from havana

Hello, communicable usda. Here is Curt Boone
Hardtack communicable contiguity
Casey bandstand updraft dagger hem
Casey inbred hem inbred

Hello, you pert hem excessive mouton
Communicable machiavelli
Cbs thomistic epitaxial highfalutin handel  
Covariate thrift, a benign armoire  

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An Earlier America and People Who Revealed It

Treasure fleets homeward, roped in a narrow style.

Only an endless array of mountains seen through.

Seasonal salted waters abounded without foundation,

Which the doughy captain knew. As he did

The country he returned to explore, eye on the same

Celestial observations:  Musk-melons, watermelons, and pump-blazed trees

from Seed to substantial Fire

Travelling from far up the Pamunkey, into the Gulf in time

To be people no longer from the settled fringe

Of some great islands, themselves a noted place

As vastly big as claiming in a loud pageant, Plans

For their Diversion alone, altogether geo-graphical

As well as practical and incognita, a modest simulation in all minds,

A fantasy of the century all across the Gulf

Centered on two men engaged, sure they will have the Goodness to confess


To the mind-travelling Reader, who were a secretive lot 

And so venture blessings for to lure chimerae.

The Reader, finally arrived at the mouth, the daring 

Penetrations were proaching full baronial grandeur

Were believed to disembogue for competitive reasons

The ships that had brought them to its falls, a wooden companion of the regal

expected accretions who represented themselves

As effective as mountains for doubt to spunge: therefore, are any contemporary

Preparations for forays from the the wilderness seem so typical of struggle
When they became essential: the entrepreneur was fired.

I believe the World affords of rumored golden cities and

Stores of unbored attention for a long lesson in the strangeness

For all contenting themselves in search of a parallel myth.

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After the First Movement Seen Above the Sapphire Throne

Your house shrugged off its loose feathers
And dammed the puddles along with blown leaves;

When they bring out the flambè dish a man whispers
In order to assure you that you should scream.

In there is the fish that will not break his stare.
And the crowd goes wild at the motif’s return

In the likeness of the thoughts of the wise,
In the likeness of sapphire strung into string

There was a lot of high fives and shaking of hands
Congratulating one another and looking each other in the eye.

Turn your head about to sul pont, then apart
And tried to see of what sort it is. Then a voice

Bespoke the man arrived all clothed in linen whites.
I saw, as it were, the appearance of the living creatures,
The living creatures with His four faces, each looking up.

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The Day gathers so much

The Day gathers so much into itself,
Into a bindle for wand’ring Night,
Who on a metal harp
Tuts out a bending note as you

Take a bath in the ice where you slip.
See the dirt splash up around each drop
When it rains. Sleep like words you live by,
See style and error in flightless birds;

Feel better, though the moon makes a swipe at the clouds like a flare

We will start walking
Come promise of stopping.

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I Could’ve Sworn You Had Asked Me What Time It Was

Early, with frost like stone against thin soles
and sun through dust that’s mostly people, we
arrived at the restaurant. Everything on the menu
had bee pollen in it. On the field above
you are directed to click. But then you see
nothing and you can’t click anything I do
not know why u do this but I hope it
helps you. In the early morning, when breathing
remains easy, the “bros” install the tables
with a universal name in hand, waiting for my turn
that I may use a beer, may be a computer genius.
I may be an expert--who else will hold these branches
for those behind us? No, I’ll wait. It’s Early morn.
But you’re so well-behaved and hasten out the door.

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HWHERE

The orange light invests your glower
With all the glory of the burning tires
Piled up between us. I stare
As meaningfully as I can; soon the entire orchard
is as if in daylight and the tarry smoke
settles down. I lower our car off the jack
and drive us home. Our wheels unzip
the blacktop, and the woods on either side
fall away like undone teeth. To the gods a vessel,
your sternness makes me smile.

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After Paintings by Emily

We saw everything you could imagine and there were hundreds of them.
My question is: you slept alone last night. So for all this time
I've been Nixon and you've been yourself, sitting by the south window
where rain wooshes down from a cloud somewhere in the gathering
of  lightly tinseled trees, a blue disclosure clear against a lighter blue
wall, background to all of it. So much past you to stare in.
Its a pattern I almost bring up, saying “I did see something, we do relate
to the city struck through the deep river below the drift of snow
which obscures it. We blush like the little bits of red creeping everywhere
sighing backwards like a comet, I am loathe to drop these colors out,
lest there be deliberation. You draw the apple branch towards me.

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Only Polity Can Save Us Now

You can’t help but strangle your wineglass.
I would like to propose a toast:

Though they certainly are a bit too…old,
I find no need to malign the monkeys and goats
That have, really, quite touchingly eloped.
I know you feel we’ve been left in the cold

For too long. But I forget my keys so rarely
I can’t even begin to get used to this.
Did you say it was me you missed?
That was way back before I was wary

When I would have sworn on anything you wanted.
There’s no bridge for this moat
But I’m a gentleman—please use my coat.
The time is right; I’ve just begun
the lengthy process of clearing my throat.

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An Eke to a Day in France

There is the structure, up ahead,
The deft I-miss-you-more-than-I-can-say arrangement
In classical form, forced into marbles
I see Psyche and Love ravishing
Her, and You, and Soft Venuses, and a satyr.
Mercury, also, carrying Psyche away, a sniff
And the immediate allergen is pretty much you
Not being here. I wish I knew why itches hurt

When I summoned you out of my current surroundings:
the Sacre Coeur, bent-out-of-shape windowbox holders,
the bagged statuary at Versailles and everything else we brought
Just take the note and hit it. Hold it whole if possible.

Try to make that look while
Skype staggers with your beloved’s pixels.
You’d like to seem more
but I don’t want you to worry about keeping the faith:
breathe in in the manner proper to one.
Soon it will all be nouns
And I a concrete angel’s son

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Made Again As I Recall

A line of people wave at the fog-packed window.
I write to you lines at a time, as I
Dress, between each article of clothing:

I am on my way past a view

We can’t understand as your jingling similes
That like your shirt we keep from touching
Your damp back; no one needs to know
You sweat while dancing but the truth is

tugging like a kite. Or if it is real

It has been effaced-- ruined by the hasty hand
Of a servant toppling a large cup of coffee.
What seemed so stable will be made again
As I recall most everything as You,

as I ask you to keep close,

Then say you love me more than you can say
You will not buy out of the system we
Are all busy thinking about how to-
gether we’ve gotten. It’s the biggest deal in history.

Now people live for decades

Like bridges get fixed, fall out of memory on
One side of which we drop distinctive twigs
To follow floating to the other, visible below the low mist.

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No fence separates

No fence separates the grounds
From the road, none can ponder    “Taps”
Without the passing traffic for
Accompaniment. Take the flag,
the passing of cars, and we poke around
For names and there aren’t any trees.
I pray to be contemporary.

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Twist a Little Closer, Now

Only the surest convulsions
Can register as pulse.

Hold me as you would a grape
Jointed in a socket
On an arborescent vine
Hanging past the eaves
Where the wind beats
Its distal edge along the glass that rings

And we look up into the cold
Without removing our chins from our scarves

Next to us the window displays
Snowflakes that outbrave my patience
Shaking to the engine in my left ear
Whose resonance softens them to
Droplets and here I thought
That finding all the questions was the point

Like so many cones, floating under the bus
We shook ourselves apart.

We managed to pan out the yellow generation.

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Quick before it

Everyone’s face in the bar is blue
Everyone is looking down wide-eyed
Everyone is talking

When you wake up that night
a clown is standing over you.
You go back to sleep
and everyone is fine.

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Confluence of Great Relevance

We were not ready for this recent spate of tears.
The buffet was stocked, an expanse of late styles
and the line grew clear: it it was loudly noted.
Six persimmons drawn in a row of out of fear
around the overpass: I know it’s not safe
to buy drugs from your car so far
so far from credit-friendly gas stations.
But I do love to see you, who garners day by
day the good of life. After the hurricane
on Monday, at what time will the courts re-open?
I wove a briar arch, and for twenty minutes I thought,
nay, I accepted fully that I would vomit
in my backpack while riding the bus to my first day of work.
I would describe myself as having read,
having sat patiently by with two fingers
held to your temple; so I am there when you awake.
But I can’t tell white girls apart.

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