NaPoWriMo April 12, 2011

Oh No, I'm the Mariner

Where are you, where were you, whose cat is that, how does absolution work,
why not teach abroad, did you ever pick up a hitchhiker, what is the lostest you've
been, the catholicest? How many years do we have, do allergies die and go to heaven,
does subterfuge ever talk amongst itself, why would you believe this mouth, is
there starlet in that boy, do the books tell us about the necessary ambiguity,
the on in which you are the actor and I'm the audience or the other way around?

NaPoWriMo April 11, 2011

UNDER TO BE FILED

In retrospect, I want a diet pepsi; it's too late for diet pepsi.
In retrospect, I want a baby but only the broad strokes. I'm
getting old and forgetful, sickly, but try and test my introspection.
steely and pilloried. In retrospect, I'm a yeller, but pardoned
because of childhood. I'd like to sleep. I'd like the Italian actor,
but looking back, it seems like an effort beyond my capacity.

NaPoWriMo, April 10, 2011

FInding Some Old Shit of Yours

I remember loving you in a parking
lot nowhere in particular. It was love
in that moment, but other than that,
melancholy and need.

NaPoWriMo, April 9, 2011

DIVERSITY

Here's the overlap:
You have more
than you need, yet
your cyan stutter
treads the vessel,
heartless colonialist.
You're a liar below
and above also.

NaPoWriMo, April 8, 2011

I'll Admit I Like Nature


leading like a startled flock of
out of the canopy of trees

this was what outdoors was.
the daughter with the scraped leg.

the flinting wall of the mountain
and my tenuous hold.

the dispatch from the bernhardian
forcefield of dread, i called it.

no internet. trees, caverns, rocks
made perilous by green.

NaPoWriMo April, 7, 2011

Mondays

The bell’s chain holds it back.
from striking against Wonderment
under the heavy lid
of Sunday. Sunday is ruin,
the decline of us. Not me.
The decline of me is in the coiled snake
heart of our old stories.
The nightmare of history. A woman
can’t hold all her teeth in her head,
so she surrenders them for prosperity.

NaPoWriMo, April 6, 2011

Wicked/Gathering

In, we found ourselves
a pointless trance, the object of our pollinated
travels. A head in a lap in a
head in a lap. Someone said
busting through.

Someone said when is when you start to change.
We chartered through plans thirsty and twisted.
This could have been somebody, these were
effervescent occasions. Alit on oracular wings
confession made up our pithy matrix.
Usually parties ended like that,
but we never reflected.

NaPoWriMo, April 5, 2011

OBLIGATORY LOVE POEM 13



I waited my whole life for this. Can’t Remember
This is luxury. True
I inhabit this all day and night, run through the scripts of it for you. True
Not Mormon, but sealed forever to you. Sometimes False
A series of sublime encounters. False
A series of rage and resentment. On Occasion, False
It is something benign but beautiful and safe. Mostly True
You broke my spirit in courtship, collateral damage. True
This one is me. False
This is me. Mostly True
I keep your secrets. N/A
I keep your house. True
I dream of strangers and me. Seemingly True, False
"Every little thing you do is magic" Pretend

NaPoWriMo April 4, 2011

Cruel Optimism


This is not deliberate stagnation. It's complicated by other forces, see Manual.

We are all made of two: public-goodly-gladhander
and shadowlurker-stabber.

The policies are apocryphal, numinous and subject to change.

Get tough and smile!

You are like a tangle of contracts, and I've forgotten which I signed.

I love mommy because mommy loves me.

Someone is choosing teams, so don't be the knock-kneed.

I simply can't wait for the next set of circumstances.

We'll all say the right things, and we'll feel better about how well we enacted
that culture's vernacular.

I think the hero's on vacation. I think the hero's got the decoder. I think of the hero's bill of goods.

The hero pushes the button, and we go to battle with a paradigm box
around it.

The customer is always at the table waiting for her apple pie.

NaPoWriMo April 3, 2011

Baba Yaga


Because she's better-suited for villainy,
the unsolvable Old World type.
Wants breathtaking, but really buttered
by the 'forest trees' diffident reach. Turbulence.
Coming at you from the center of ahistorical
spyre. She's of kohl eye, greasy darkness.
Night, night, night takes the total human from her.

NaPoWriMo April 2, 2011

COMING SOON



1.
It was delight, that capital city,
so we built a shanty town
on its periphery. We were certain
one of us would be lifted onto
Simon Bolivar's horse, and garlanded
by the king. Our idealism was both sexy
and tonic. LIke how not understanding
the assembly line, but servicing
your own car gives you cred.

2.
My children are the transition.
They are the opposite impulses,
my alien work. What they will
not come to know will fill volumes.
It's the least I can do.

3.
When they undo the ribbon on the box
they'll see I've gotten them
fancy clothes from Bloomie's
and tennis lesson entitlements.
That's my gift to my children,
what I came here to accomplish.

NaPoWriMo April 1, 2011

A NEW SPECTACULAR

Don't trust me because I'm early-century.
Don't trust me because I'm staging a coup,
and I'm mostly concerned with aesthetic ones.
The coup comes to me in memories
like snapshots rehabilitated with time.
What I do is find the hungers and archetype them.
One is Meadow Envy and it has to do with that self-
conscious lyric. Another is named Inflationary
Cosmology and it's when everyone is compelled
to reference dead thinkers.

My mother was not a librarian, but a cater-waiter.
She wrote beautiful rubber checks. She taught
me how to braid a rope of my hair out of the abyss.
This will come in handy for our coup.
I think there are three of us so far, and I've brought cherries.
It won't be like war that way.
Instead it will be like collaboration with squabbling.