Fame Strikes

I have seen his whiskers against a chalkboard.
The school of pledglings with its missing roof.
Fame eats his host while the host eats toast.
His dentures contain immeasurable sadness.
He drinks milk from a bottomless carton.
There is a locker without a key, there is a shadow.
Principal nothing, I have your report.
Nurse something else, I have innumerable fragments
Atop my head. I’ve given up playing
Long distance Monopoly with anyone who asks.
A jungle vine – let’s swing across the gym
And out the front doors, which are yawning
Just now, as a car’s doors open.

Still life with Telescope

Across the marsh the calls of sound,
And I received them in a trance.
Undead noble princes and teacher’s chalk
With eyes flaming to advance.
No meteorite, no angel of night
Swimming naked across the swill.
And I was above the splinted dove,
And the days were getting darker, darker still.

I’ve lived a lie, an ancient lie,
With a slogan too silent to detect,
And fool’s fire flaming from the blue
With nothing solid to protect.
My beautiful dreams in headlight beams
Throwing everything to the spill.
I must remake myself awake,
And the days were getting darker, darker still.

The stylish crowd at the gates of noise,
The same as those they think they aren’t,
Dive into the charges of lily pads
And get caught in preacher’s web of rot.
I’ve fought too hard to sign that card,
And their commands begin to trill.
On this road the concrete corrodes,
And the days were getting darker, darker still.

The frogs have flopped on the boardwalk
With its self-important slime,
Which leads me awakened and unsteady
To the fisheries of the mind.
There is a space, there is a place,
Shimmering way up on the hill –
And I will go when the truth’s aglow,
And the days were getting darker, darker still.

A Career in Baiting Judges

A precious artichoke has a heart like a beggar’s
Trampoline. See how it silhouettes,

See its name in print across the chalk line
Of the flywheel. Your birthday was ordained

With a spray of gnats, and you toasted “life”
And “mystery” with your flute of water.

I came to celebrate, but I was years late,
And besides, I have no hands. I cannot change

My bandages. I just lie on this trampoline
While beggars jump for artichoke hearts.

Protective Work Apparel

I saw her glove in the snow
And I thought about it for nearly
An hour, until my boots were covered
In freshly fallen snow. I had no idea
How deep it was at this point,
But only birds were moving freely,
And there were no birds.
I was up to my ankles, my knees,
And still the light was so delicate
And harmonious that it seemed a tragedy
To move. Tragicomedy, I corrected
My posture to embrace another bale
Of the white stuff that everyone loves
And hates. Soon, I was sure,
I would be just like her – but would that
Be so bad? She had been taken
By the scene and stopped to stand,
And been buried up to the glove.
Now I was going where she was.
I felt like a child going to bed;
I felt free with possibility.
Snowing as it was, a winter that could
Last and last, like nothing else seems to.
I extended my hand and poised my glove
So that I may, when the time
Strikes, pat the snow
On the preverbal backside,
Calling it my true love.

Coming to the City a Stranger

The roil of so many pigeons –
Forgive us, and also ask our names.

Dark city with a dangerous cliff
And encroaching bald spot,

I of five hundred horsepower
Wail your traditional song.

Your streetwalkers do no fear
Me, and your floodgates wave “hello”

To the bus of tourists passing through.
Ah, a runner has taken root.

An ice cream cone slope droops
With melancholy, or is it something else?

Do not ask me, says the brave city.
Any minute now, I will need a vacation.

Everyone’s Wild West

The old wagonette has met its match.
All of the genuine rock,
The fake too, is puzzled.

The militiamen descend
To reenact tax season,
But the air is too dry

For even a pancake feed.
Everything is glistening.
The path: glistening

Like a handful of flour
Thrown at a bird.
They came to settle the land,

But it’s not something
That good planning would advise.
The hills want what’s wild,

The quills of propane tanks
Allow one to stroke in a single
Direction only.

They do not know what
Mystery in the dark between the tines
Of a cactus, which is taking

Aim at them when they turn
To go inside. Aiming, always
Just that, and never cracking off a round.

A Black Train Roaring Through the Night

We were having cocktails on the platform,
Me and my Daffodil, who was pollinating
My mouth with little kisses, yes she was.
It was dark, but the proprietor had set up
Brooding lamps for us to flutter around.
The tracks were little lit fuses burning under
The moonlight, the train perhaps a plunger
With the gray-sleeved bandit ready to set.
It was the train we were waiting for,
The train that kept its own time, made its own
Moves, wore a little stovepipe hat as it fumed
About the markets and the headlines.
My Daffodil was becoming daffy,
And all of god’s children began to urinate softly
In the soft, soft whimpering rain, and still
The train would not come any closer,
Which is known in the industry as a shy train.

Lunchette

It’s known that phantoms eat alphabet soup. They like the language like beans like butter, but better to have all of its parts drowning in a dark sea than to weep through what time you have without ever scrumptiously creating an apple to fall on the dead.

The Experimentalist

Sometimes in order to remember
We need to forget to take the pill
That causes us to forget to remember –
In order to remember, we must remember
To forget, or forget to remember….
This could go on forever.
Here is my card.