another day sniffing the armpits of angels humidity rank with birdsweat their spent avian fuel the air close with burnt feathers heat shields that gave out on re-entry now God hacking up hairballs of spark plugs and broken wings all the Gabriel-class hawks gone to ground even the sparrows hallow-eyed
TSM 118
dear god please no more flinging bling bling rubble at our blue green sea streak soup no comet kamikazes flaming ‘saurus burgers and kebabs no asteroid suicide bombers their ocean seafood boil we've got enough with tsu tsu namis tse tse flying tsk tsk virus its all too much playing planet pinball down the middle no free games flippers flying you swear and tilt curveball space and time
TSM 117
now I think the instructions to perform a CAT Scan didn't mean I wave a cat over you while you slept as I looked to your body for poems my love, not scratch and struggle and Howl in shamanic pain or the dog doggerel barking frenzied free verse waking you my dear I'm sorry for the caterwaul, the catafalque of poems I've scrawled, their jagged arrhythmia ECG monitor boop boop hooked up to arterial dreams scanning and probing for heart murmurs
stfu ode #12: to my morning coffee
oblivious my coffee speaking to me too early while I am bleary as cold cream no I don't want to hear your stupid story again about the mezcalero and the jumping bean playing poker all night in the back of the truck on the way from the Yucatán you so poor nothing to wear but sackcloth the men in the fields stripping sugar cane with their machetes toothless from sucking cane all day rotting their teeth and no I don't buy the beautiful girl in the factory had eyes only for you picked you only you your anguished parting your torment like an oven from hell I want only lightning or silence between words the way I want only lightning or silence between buttered slices of toast lightning or silence in the interstices of morning storm and wind to wake to the smell of ozone the smell of burnt air zapped alive and cupped in the rain
TSM 116
ok I squeezed the mirror like a rag to wring out a jangle of silver how you said I could help myself to coin of the realm that mirrors charge for passing us from front to back and back again pitching quarter after quarter from the car window into Charon's plastic toll booth bucket on ramp off ramp rewinding until no quarter from the reflection of your face so much faster than the current of the river Styx in rearview you Windex my eyes and place an empty shard of glass in my mouth like the last dollar to buy passage ferry what's left of today's failing light to the other side
TSM 115
are you asking whether my mind is gin-clear as anyone who drinks to sterilize their blood and wash away the viral crown of thorns lodged like a burr in lungs of the faithful or are you just checking when I roll a whisky stone to close the tomb I wipe it down with alcohol
TSM 114
bleach baby beach bones walking down the boygirl burial sand I step on a fury of roses thorns from the vine of casket-strength sea spines tail of tales of sting-ray die-off sun's rays sea's rays sting rays risibly risking sun and waves of denial anger grief the long spike spiked with shark tooth hunger red sun rising in a weather bloom off my foot rose madder and madder and madder still life blood nor pain are lightfast offshore seals moan what's my tune sharp scaled staccato of bones
TSM 113
beyond any reason's sky, it makes me angry – this beautiful Oxford garden of 100 years ago with two young girls dressed in baby blue eyes why would you send me light forever trapped between two plates of glass like a virus mounted and stained with the lives of saints on lab slides for cathedral windows if light bears witness to the past I want for war paint the distant, ancient stars – scars, galaxy blue across my face, novae, my catastrophe of sight
Atomic Dog w/ Whitman
every day, second or third hand, the dog gets a new name: "Bismarck" say, or "Windham", or whenever I peel a clementine – the skin fragrant and loose as a nom du plume – my lingering mind confuses the prerogatives of gods and poets right now she's "Walt" because someone said to sniff the grass and that is for sure her dominion, the adoration and open door of scent, and what she assumes I too will assume, breathing atoms of the restless and faceless tide then checking her for ticks and tocks, and time's re-reading of the leaves before they curl and fall and blow and I forget what I most needed to say, what was meant as song now more like the growl of a lawn-mower, the madness of wild seeds cut down to size
Rooted
You sniff and snuff for me next to your pillow like a sleepy truffle pig rooting for your prize even in dreams Maybe love grows best in darkness – loamy, unseen – a carrot say, or turnip tapping our longing In the morning, all we can eat is before us among vases of daylilies, begonias, the table set for two
