New Poetry: Billy's Myth Fit

Billy's Myth Fit

Wherever
pinion strikes
he does, palm roads.

We rally, knock
Billy down Billy
comes back.

Negotiate
the engine and stand
with your teeth together
stand with your limbs
fuck stand up
can you?
Billy's dead.

Billy's back.  
I remember when he
was popular he used to
have parties
inviting the poor
he nestled next to
taxpayers, clicked
castanets
sang Bibles, called to everyone

"THESE PEOPLE!!!!!"
he said
"THESE
PEOPLE KNOW NOT WHAT
THEY DO!!!!!"

what did we do

New Poetry: Buckshot in the Apple of Your Eye

Buckshot in the Apple of Your Eye 

Buck
shot in the apple of your eye,
scary worms that do their best
still all they confirm
is decay.

Until you sensed
a big wig glancing off a car,
which we hit while pushing
75,
you were laughing with
a cigarette leaking smoke
against your eye.

We were burying him up 
to his jacket, and we sweated
while the moon unpeeled 
one cold eye,"Them ones there
are gonna have one helluva
hangover."

Buck
shot in the apple of your eye,
slithering as you dance to depleted song,
looking your best as you think
you don't look but look
aren't I looking.

If we drank till we died we'd
have no fault to live up to,
no one left to teach us how to live
no one in the restroom no one
nobody nowhere anywhere

no one at the bar.

New Poetry: The Entire

The Entire

beach.  Soaked dark.  We're walking along, careful
of sharpness, the icy water bursting on the shore.

We are incessant creatures, our history is troublesome.
"The trouble
with the trouble
is the trouble I'm in."

"We" meaning us.  Us meaning I & you meaning
the two of us, three?  No.  
The trouble is I don't quote without
learning it in order to associate
my own language:
my own language.

The entire beach is used to this nothing, these
nobodies, bodies meaning us, anyone, everyone.
Used to crushing, rubbing the rock until it sharpens,
swallowing the dead things it tosses up that it tossed
into itself.  Into its mouth.  Maybe there is meaning
when we walk.  Our troublesome minds
that have to be ordinary to that violence.  Sea.  Trouble
is a human idiom, like death.  We fear death.
We really fear life.  Now we brush against each other
along the cold water, there's something here isn't there.

New Poetry: Little Machines

Little Machines

Home after a success, elephants I saw
tangled in the dirt & brought to their
thick knees.  I hear their roar split the hairs 
of each thought--small up to the mile.

We lit cigars soaked in brandy,
resuscitate the threshold that was lost,

eye to head to neck to 
shoulder to arm to hand
to finger to fire the bullet.

Sneaked into my home to surprise 
myself crouching under the shower curtain.
Wash to feed the body to sleep the body
enough.  Little machinations of thought.

Shall I break my mouth over a spoon?
The edge of the table where I might set
a teacup, and should it fall, tiny layers of hand
to reassemble it, should it fall I think
I'll grow anxious, thought by anxious thought.

New Poetry: None None

None None

None none to say, keep saying nothing but

be backward on the floor, as you wander

toward the back door, move as you might

move your heat along or 

sweep along your heat to hear

the static crackle of clothed feet

Every spark, sister, meant

only chance repletes chance

danger completes steadiness which

holds the air at the very back of throats

ready to gasp at danger's behalf

None none.  Just minutes until 7 pm

someone on the other side of the world

is waking now

New Poetry: Optimist Empties Cup

Optimist Empties Cup 


Now he mentions his oncoming death
to Time but says its not worth mentioning
so he stares deeper into his shadow

This is the way the world ends with
Just so you know
he wondered what chemical revolves
the body

Where do people touch to feel gone
together
oh yes the mouth

New Poetry: Dream Record of a New Moon

Dream Record, for a New Moon

Like a foot's palm

the blank moon has

busted across a world with

iron belly, a small record squashed

beneath porcelain flesh, out of history

out of science out of days adjusting

to the light.

I welcome heaven

that is worse than life

I welcome hell

better than death.

In these imaginations only the bad dream

is badder than I can muster here

because I'm worse off

with no control than here

where I look it flashes and write it

write it again, yet again I can write it

I can mean it do you know

the concept beneath a sun

that is hotter than hell ?

moon lighter

lighter than my mind.

New Poetry: Milwaukee 5 AM

Milwaukee 5 AM

Tangential
station in Midwestern landscape, some lights 
some flicker some room spinning
like an earth can't be known 
it spins--it's warmer on the otherside
but the moon has its way to
turn the earth bluer

The narrow hall
my god, new carpet
the entire floor is covered
in synthetic fiber
manifests slowness--
many people roam
no one has walked these floors
without wanting to be
disappeared

If there's ever been a man who kneels
he questions his conscious
his conscience, his mortal thought
he brings himself around to knowing
nothing
and he believes he's allowed to fly

New Poetry: Keep Old Mary

Keep Old Mary

Keep old Mary 

her carriage car

swings the street

tackles light

light that sticks

to daylight

blessed & simple

keep her worry

the old laughters

trot like horses

not these who

trot like men

they mingle with

derelict lives

pick their avenues

lie & sit

mangle the sick

the health that stands

the breath that stinks

the hair that pulls

the air that rusts

rusts that air

pulls that hair

stinks that breath

stands that health

New Poetry: First & Second Death Poem

"There's sap in the trees if you tap 'em.

There's blood in the seas if you map 'em."

- Bill Callahan

First Death Poem   

This evening at rim of the sun we dress

in flammable cloths, dressed head to foot

welcome soot, welcome angels of death

all manner of beast, feed on the dead

the clenched bodies, mind-ignited children

dreaming of sex and milk

that never goes sour, plant tobacco

in their burnt lungs, shower their body

in the canyon, this rain is gold

this pain is red this hour

on this day today we walk into the sun.

Second Death Poem    

A red lighter, a knife, a paperback

(some author they read in prisons)

someone of note, I, elite man

nudging a guitar into position

I wish to painfully crush a note

My type-

writer

up from 

brighter

ground I

sold old

armchair

for it

obit

relax

I died

calm and

sipping

red wine

New Poetry: Avenue 64

Avenue 64

Found scratched-out penny

with a name, a dull mark

a groove that lets the water work.

I've simplified all fractions

to big numbers, kept my hands,

look, kept my hands clean.

You pull me out 

the threshing field

with my arms tattooed with

heated rock, the avenue

broke me.  Step off your car

and save me.  Lost, I'm lost

believe me.  I tried to sleep

under this telephone pole

as if I was a willow hiding from sun.

New Poetry: Part of the World Works

Part of the World Works


Part of the world works without silent l's, I was taught
The weak are slaves to adverts, the strong ride pale horses
No saddle, stripes on their asses, for to face the real
The real that was better displayed in adverts

They know, put their clothes on, stretch
The palms to form a road to lean on
Silent smiles, all of them quiet as dogs
On back porch steps, trying not to worry

The smells are overwhelming
The atoms are forming as clouds break across
The heat of the sun
I wish I could say something really great
I stand on the floor with you thinking

New Poetry: Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle

Came you from danger, black body
dealing inside an outcropping
starving, ragged, cold, and wet
you risked everything
saw us painted like rusting fences
or peeling fences or
perfectly white, danced all day
in the sky and looked
through scopes at wounded prey
felt they should be dead very soon.

And really strayed you strayed away,
masked green over brown, the natural grass
screens some dirt, you hid in plain sight.
I wonder to myself if strangers meet
if the living outnumber the dead.

New Poetry: Print Show on Venus

Print Show on Venus

De Milo.  

It's the way I dream 
a workhorse drafting a bull
in blueprint, my weight

held out heavy
in the cloud, would you blame me
if the soul of her

pushed.  I have very little
left of me yet I'm sleeping
just to rest and yes

I'm beyond anxious
I'm still awake this hour
instead of arms 

New Poetry: Fire-Breathing

Fire-Breathing

Silly minutes
deal death
the breath
the war is lazier
lazier on TV
the kind of pain
stuck in a cold tooth
teased-out
hairnets full
of dust
simple minimal cafeterias
adjunct professor's advice:

Keep the press away from yourself, kid, keep the press
sticky, stick to yourself, news from the moon:

Our lads are coming home!

Just because I was born does not mean
I can breathe outside the womb
been trying
and I stay
I've been looking
for the way
been looking
for the kind of light
that was taken
that I took?
I'm sure the blood in my throat
cauterized.

New Poetry: Gentler

Gentler

I start with the idea
move apart and keep holding

keep trailing 
I do not push away
I start with the idea making sure
it starts to work

hold onto your body
I work with percentages
minute calculations
kept in motion
the following way
two drawers opening into thought
leaning open like rivers grasping at 
new streams
the price of lusts been written
in the right hand

New Poetry: Land's End

Land's End

Green water waste, white peaks
black sands

Through all this history I still
don't see 
how the water was

I used to swim along the banks
my arms and legs kicking out
not thinking of being crushed against the rock
but thinking of the idea of leaving
my own edge

The water's temperature
sun's brightness glancing
the water--silver layer
silver coat
a seagull's body

I've noticed
the entire planet has to exist
for this one place to breathe
and me
to notice

New Poetry: Poet Laureate of Hollywood

Poet Laureate of Hollywood

Sister, it's the untamed that repeals us

because they're too hard up, too heartbroken

to move away from the broken line

a line result, resting, wasted, troublesome

Every time I go into a church I feel like I've

forgotten something or other, or the other

I'm the dislocation expression

I've got hardwood floors in here

Just

the same thread

to sew a man's eyes shut

I want to thank my mother for these moments

My father for the sensation of the enemy

the risk (sweet risk) I thank you for nothing at all

besides this sunburn, these lost keys,

this lost money these are the ways

a heartbroken man earns a living

These books are for sale

New Poetry: Lawrence

Lawrence

Alligator 
blows its horn
looses a tooth in the brass

An angle of light
brightness worth the dollar
it was printed on

Blue cranes
enter the sky
without their big wings

Solid clay 
the ground is made of
the entire division
falling through the world

Every stance is made of perfume
Less and less temper
Less bees
because the idea flowers stopped
when they hit the ceiling

New Poetry: Dinner with Homeless Woman

Dinner with Homeless Woman

Understood.  I have not started to think.

Before you watch watch again.

I remove my jacket, set on the chair.

Fork and spoon.  Wine and knife.

I could cut the bottle open then 

you'd probably see the liquid out.

As if it swims like blood swims,

seeks its way from broken skin.

I would console it.  I would feel

consolation but without myself

you are alone.  Without a bottle

you are alone.  Stutter to say

this this is what loneliness is

because I don't know.  I just

pretend sometimes I roam the earth.