the writing machine

reposted from "futility closet"

2011-10-03T19:16:00.000-04:00

For Children Three Years Old,” from Lessons for Children by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Philadelphia, 1818:

There was a naughty boy; I do not know what his name was, but it was not Charles, nor George, nor Arthur, for those are all very pretty names: but there was a robin came in at his window one very cold morning — shiver — shiver; and its poor little heart was almost frozen to death. And he would not give it the least crumb of bread in the world, but pulled it about by the tail and hurt it sadly, and it died. Now a little while after, the naughty boy’s papa and mamma went away and left him, and then he could get no victuals at all, for you know he could not take care of himself. So he went about to every body — Pray give me something to eat, — I am very hungry. And every body said, No, we shall give you none, for we do not love cruel, naughty boys. So he went about from one place to another, till at last he got into a thick wood of trees; for he did not know how to find his way any where; and then it grew dark, quite dark night. So he sat down and cried sadly; and I believe the bears came and eat him up in the wood, for I never heard any thing about him afterwards

2011-09-06T14:29:00.002-04:00

There is a secret that we cannot face directly, you hope it isn’t true.There is a doctor that can help, but his address is a vacant lot, old houses leaning together and filled with strangers. You go to find the doctor, there are flowers in their own glasses of water, you begin to gather them for your children. Your wife tells you you have not noticed, the way people are lead off behind a curtain, the misdirection of gum wrappers, of a test, so you follow the three, who take off through the maze, the streets of the worst part of your town, suddenly unrecognizable. There is a house filled with the ghosts of children, speaking gravely, there is a hollow tree, with a rope and a counterweight, and within the tree are books, but you cannot read them. There is a house, smothering in silence and in the house are bottles of something that will let you see the things that squat upon the rooftops and drink our sorrow, the terrible kings of the earth, but there is a sound, and the streets are a web that runs in terrible filaments back to the dark heart of the unsayable thing. You run. There is a man in black with a book, with a film on a dead medium, there is black ice cream, and something falling.

Re-Posted from "Harriet the blog", the blog of the poetry foundation

2011-07-07T15:17:00.001-04:00

NYFA Award Winners Announced
By Harriet Staff
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), “the nation’s largest provider of funding, information and services to individual artists,” has awarded 115 NYFA Fellowships to 118 New York artists representing eight artistic disciplines. Today, they’ve finally announced their 2011 NYFA Fellows in Poetry! Awardees receive an unrestricted cash grant of $7,000 in support of their poetry work in New York State. Recipients, finalists and panelists below. The entire group of winners, which include practitioners in Crafts/Sculpture, Digital/Electronic Arts, Nonfiction Literature, and Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts, can be read here. Congratulations to all!

Poetry
Desirée Alvarez (New York)
Ari Banias (Kings) – Gregory Millard Fellow
Jose Beduya (Tompkins)
Cara Benson (Rensselaer)
Michael Burkard (Onondaga)
Ken Chen (Kings)
Barbara Cole (Erie)
Susan Deer Cloud (Broome)
Robert Fitterman (New York)
Tonya Foster (Kings)
Rigoberto Gonzalez (Queens)
James Hall (St. Lawrence)
Brenda Iijima (Kings)
Garrett Kalleberg (Suffolk)
Amy Lawless (Kings)
Ricardo Maldonado (New York)
Ryan Murphy (Dutchess)
Jacob Rakovan (Monroe)
Wendy Walters (Kings)
* Wendy Walters was also nominated in Nonfiction Literature.
Finalists: Poetry
Urayoan Noel (Bronx)
Stacy Szymaszek (Kings)

Panelists: Poetry
Jennifer Hayashida (Kings)
Anna Moschovakis (Delaware)
Willie Perdomo (New York)
Claudia M. Stanek (Monroe)
Paige Taggart (Kings)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/07/nyfa-award-winners-announced/

25 of 30

2011-04-30T12:07:00.000-04:00

she opened her mouth
that kentucky church door,
and all the birds came out,
honkeytonk whiskey and river bottom
catfish and fog and brown water
and some raw,mean old barrelhouse woman
that lived inside her opened her mouth
and sang out knives, and razors and done-me-wrong
she carried that hurting woman in her mouth
a secret everybody knows
till she could wail, all bright eyed
till the music fell back
and went away, till the angels
pulled their wings over their eyes
and the clocks just hung their mouths open
just a long sweet lonesome note
that crawled into your guts and made a home
singing the blood like a river, the heart like a sun
the bones like hills in the morning,all rock and antler
and that song tearing you down and stitching you back together
that song like a name you forgot
like a hymn in a graveyard of teeth,
hillbilly praise song
you always knew, plain and true
simple as morning, jesus knocking on the door
of her throat, whiskey river coal barge,
simple as truth, as birds
and fog in the hills, deer in the corn.

24 of 30

2011-04-29T18:22:00.002-04:00

In the oldest story it says
in the wild place, of river mud
of silence, and emptiness
she built him.
and his mouth knew no language
only water, and the beasts
thronged thick along side him,
a mute company of birds, and gazelles.

a trapper, looking up
saw him, wild and covered in hair
his eyes black as a dog's
as deer, and mindlessly delicate
he drank from the stream,

in a brick city, his not yet brother
weary with a crown, with a people,
weary of history and the machinery of war,

They sent, that priestess, that whore
to divorce him from the beasts,
for we are a filthy river, a muddy pool
of language, of wealth and poverty, of lies

and yet it will be he, to die
and the king is the nation,to see the death
as we have seen it

to startle us into eternity
though the snake tricked us into death

and this is a story, told in every city
every where the streetlights cast their circle
and the water pools in the leaves in the dark,
to catch the moon

there was once a race of men, small as pygmys,
terrible giants of ice, of fire
blue with woad, with feathers in their hair
they lived in the barren places,
in the wood where it is darkest
below the bridge, in the hedgerow
bright eyes in the woods, false lights in the dark

we came, with bright iron
we came with roads, and law and churchbells
and captured them, green children and hairy men
cowboys and indians, radio antenna
knackers in the mines deep delving

because we know there must be men without language, without meaning
free of god and hell, free of law and terror, naked, new
eyes black as cave dark, silent and empty and clean

the filthy clatter of our heads assure us it is so

23 of 30

2011-04-29T14:10:00.002-04:00

writing exercise # 53

Theda Bara in chrome

It's the retro-futurism of the aluminum diner,
chrome and saltshakers, the formica and mirrors
of the hyper-realist painters, everything gleams like
new teeth, like rocket ships and chevy bumpers
and she walks in, a cloud of sand, a palpable darkness
hovering over bones

To be good is to be forgotten.
soundless, on her black lips
her eyes still burning, like they can peel back
the plastic countertop , to unbeing
she is the devourer of boys, unlight

laughing silent at the ghost of Mary Pickford,
draped in monochrome flowers and saccharine strings
she lounges across the vinyl seat,
all langour and shadow,
black wings and jewels

bride of the sphinx, weaned on serpents blood

the waitress comes, all messy blond and soft south
a red red mouth,
and Theda rolls her eyes.
the coffee is black and starless,a shewstone,

there's a dead cincinatti girl in a grave
and theda sits over her bones,all whispered story
crowned in snakes, white gold and skin
an exhalation of steam from black coffee
witch of burning celluloid, the magic lantern show

always silent, a pantomime of desire
of hunger, of arab death and starless desert
of the hunger of empty places

the well lit dining room, the gleaming meringues
spinning in a chrome case, the weary wives
over eggs, the husbands and babies
and grease

and Theda, dark spot against the light
in the corner of your eye
other lover, wife of the dark
always hungry at the feast
always childless, the envious one, with the owl's feet
haunter of lonely places, robber of cradles,
pale madonna, upside-down saint
torturer of monks, lover of stagnant water

the dark is not a mask you take off at the end of the day
not a face you pretend to wear, an outfit to hang
in the closet,a poster, a reel of film

it swallows you in the end, hungry ghost
lost in the idol raised in your name
they hang thick in the air,
supplication and sacrifice of
american gods nameless and unforgotten
n

22 of 30

2011-04-29T12:38:00.001-04:00

Screaming Lord Sutch 3rd Earl of Harrow
Founder of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party
takes his own life by hanging
June 16 1999

there's a point where the joke ends.
where the tophats and rubber skeletons
the driving drums, the oversized axe
the cardboard coffin
fail to satisfy, the girls quit screaming
the politicians so ludicrous
even the parody looks tame

when they miss the point,
when the right winger said he was your minister
for flying saucers,and you kicked him out
when you said if they sold the school's playing fields
the politicians should have to give up their back garden
that police too stupid for policework
should be retrained as vicars

passports for dogs,
dumping milk down mineshafts
people hungry in the street

it stops being funny, after a while

21 of 30

2011-04-29T07:35:00.003-04:00

After "Vertumnis" by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

the world is crawling with faces,
ruined gunny sacks,
fat mice full of suet,
gnaw lips in impassive flour sacks,
and their sorrow frowns out
Arcimboldo stacks library books,
fish and roast chickens,
fruit and weeds into heads,
makes hair of fire, of thistles

before clocks, and fish, before breton
before this modern cleverness

we carve eyes out of gourds,
stretch faces over our own,
plastic skulls and greasepaint
and pretend not to notice
the onion of faces below the ones we choose
arcimboldo sees the whole world grimace
laughing and shouting, all the dead singing,
the paint brush's austrian moustache,
the powdered face of the canvas,
eats plate after plate of nightmare

the occult king, that collector of alchemists
of Brahe and Keplar, that cabinet of curiosities,
that doomed king of prophets
with wheat and apples bursting from his head

20 of 30

2011-04-28T18:24:00.000-04:00

a bedsheet ghost in linen,
with razorblade breath,
a pillowcase full of theft
and the dead

the headlights cut through
the woods where they fired buckshot
at us, peppered the trees,
the grassless house,
dog on a chain

here the mud bottomed lake
we jumped bikes into,
here warm water in a hose,
here 24 beers in a cornfield
here tar in the sun
liquid and black

here are oaks, scored with lightening,
here mushrooms and old papers
here the rags of your clothes
your rotted camper

there's a black phone i could call you on
if i could remember your number,
there's a white dog, a mirror full of blood,
a totaled car, a copper-jacketed bullet in your teeth
there's a place where the tracks meet,
where it's always almost morning,

a field of fireflies and crickets and gas station wine
an electric hum, a wheatfield,

I'll meet you there.

Manuscript Found in a Bottle, Popklavsky

2011-04-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

The Russian text of this poem by Boris Poplavsky was scraped from the website, "Literature of the Russian emigration: Boris Poplavsky."The Russian and the English adaptation (below) both appear in the the 1968 anthology Poets on Street Corners, edited by Olga Carlisle.

РУКОПИСЬ, НАЙДЕННАЯ В БУТЫЛКЕ

Мыс Доброй Надежды. Мы с доброй надеждой тебя покидали,
Но море чернело, и красный закат холодов
Стоял над кормою, где пассажирки рыдали,
И призрак Титаника нас провожал среди льдов.

В сумраке ахнул протяжный обеденный гонг.
В зале оркестр запел о любви невозвратной.
Вспыхнул на мачте блуждающий Эльмов огонь.
Перекрестились матросы внизу троекратно.

Мы погибали в таинственных южных морях,
Волны хлестали, смывая шезлонги и лодки.
Мы целовались, корабль опускался во мрак.
В трюме кричал арестант, сотрясая колодки.

С лодкою за борт, кривясь, исчезал рулевой,
Хлопали выстрелы, визги рвались на удары
Мы целовались, и над Твоей головой
Гасли ракеты, взвиваясь прекрасно и даром.

Мы на пустом корабле оставались вдвоем,
Мы погружались, но мы погружались в веселье.
Розовым утром безбрежный расцвел водоем,
Мы со слезами встречали свое новоселье.

Солнце взошло над курчавой Твоей головой,
Ты просыпалась и пошевелила рукою.
В трюме, ныряя, я встретился с мертвой ногой.
Милый мертвец, мы неделю питались тобою.

Милая, мы умираем, прижмись же ко мне.
Небо нас угнетает, нас душит синяя твердь.
Милая, мы просыпаемся, это во сне.
Милая, это не правда. Милая, это смерть.

Тихо восходит на щеки последний румянец.
Невыразимо счастливыми души вернутся ко снам.
Рукопись эту в бутылке, прочти, иностранец,
И позавидуй с богами и звездами нам.

*
As adapted by Denise Levertov:

Manuscript Found in a Bottle

Cape of Good Hope, we left you in good hope . . .
But soon the sea grew black, a gleam
of obsidian knives; the red sunset
chilled over the bows, where weeping passengars
clustered. The ghost of the Titanic
veered after us, following us through the ice.

At twilight the dinner gong echoed a long time.
The orchestra tuned up in the lounge to play love songs.
St. Elmo's Fire was seen between mast and funnel.
The sailors crossed themselves - oh, three times over:
the wildfire remained, a sickly gleam.

We were perishing in the mysterious
down-under ocean. Steep seas began to sweep away
deckchairs, boats . . . As the ship slumped into the dark
we turned to each other. Slowly kissed.
In the hold the prisoners howled and shook their chains.

We saw the Captain put off in a small boat.
Screams, the sound of blows, a ring of shots.
We kissed; behind your head - your
curly head - up went the beautiful, useless, disaster flares.
In what intimacy we were left to go down!

The decks were bare. What gaiety filled us!
The endless water blossomed with pink morning,
the sea sheathed its knives. With tears
we celebrated our housewarming. The deck
sloped like a hill behind us.

Slowly the sun rose (over your curly head).
You woke, turning at once to touch me again.
Diving into the hold, I met a leg
floating. Dear cadaver! You gave us
a week more of life.

Now we are dying. Come closer; closer.
The sky is against us, its hard azure is crushing us.
Dearest, we are awaking, this is a dream.
Dearest, this is not true.
Dearest, this is death.

Slowly a last blush
mounts to your cheek.
Souls return to their dreams: that is happiness.
-Stranger, read this letter sealed in a bottle,
and envy us, as you envy Gods and the stars.

2011-04-28T12:54:00.000-04:00

Richard McKane

Air Spirit
From the Russian of Boris Poplavsky
To Anna Prismanova
Maiden autumn came down from heaven.
Sky blue to the brim.
The white ship of the lonely sinks
quietly in high, bright-eyed seas.
Under the birch tree in the yellow forest
sleeps a handsome forest Jesus.
A gentle hare stands over him
warming his paw on the yellow halo.
Maiden autumn you are beautiful
as my dead soul.
You are quiet as the dawn mist
in which she went away from the earth.
O Lord God, how easy it is,
how deep, how far from this earth.
She lived in a dark house.
She did no evil to anyone.
She cried a lot, slept a lot.
How good that she died.
If there’s no God or heaven,
she’ll sleep sweetly in the dark.
Sweeter than lying in golden paradise,
where I’ll never come after her.

19 of 30

2011-04-27T07:09:00.001-04:00

there was a plum tree in our yard
that grew fruit once,
dark and unspeakable sweet,
and then never grew them again

though the bees
crawled through the blossoms,
though the pears fell soft and rotten
and the wasps came to drink their broken sweetness

there were no plums. No November Moth
the house is gone to ash, to broken plates in dirt
to a driveway and a septic tank and a garage full of parts
the bicycles rusted into the clay, the fruitless tree all twisted

years later, there was a summer, and a broken heart
and in someone's yard, a heavy laden tree,
plums dropped on the sidewalk,
that infrequent flavour of flowers, of perfume
that gorging on sweetness

who knows if it will come again

18 of 30

2011-04-19T15:19:00.004-04:00

One careless word from the father, that bristling bear,
and the boys are all turned into blackbirds,
the daughter given in marriage to
the monster that saved you in the woods
or the baby given over to godfather death.

If your mother buries your bones
in the backyard, you will come and sing, and
drop a grinding stone around her neck,
if I lose you in the woods you will breadcrumb home
with blood on your hands
if you meet with a poison apple or a spindle
or lose your shoes, or fall asleep
or dance with dead boys till your clothes are rags
or any one of a million misfortunes
someone will come
and kiss your body back from blue sleep.

Parents dance at weddings in iron shoes,
roll down hills in barrels full of nails,
have their bellies stitched shut full of stones
those wolves and grandmothers and giants

even happy kings lose their daughters,
and their kingdoms, to wandering foolish boys
with pockets filled with beans and flutes
with talking cats and singing swords
and all manner of unlikely gimcrackery.

Every task and test and riddle I'd set
(even scratching out his eyes
and setting him wandering in the desert
even locking him in the tower with the dead men,
even sending him to hell itself to sell his salt,
to the end of the world, to the war, to the stable,)

cheated with fairies and the devil's mother and
whatever it takes, to steal the child away,
to the hollow hill, to the hidden lake,
to the other side of the mountian of glass,
to the castle of thorns and iron.

Swans and crows and goosefeathered brothers
the dutiful daughter , the dimwitted son, the tailor,
the soldier, the foolish heros
all fly,
all fly
all fly
over the hills and far away,
eventually.

17 of 30

2011-04-19T08:17:00.001-04:00

16 of 30

2011-04-18T08:10:00.001-04:00

Writing Exercise #43

The Man with No Mouth
made of staring into the sun
of phosphene burn the back of your eyelids
and he moves, mincing
like a puppet, pantomime,blood colored
he is skinless, tailor-fingered
in a high coat and drainpipe trousers

everyone has laughed and laughed
until they are transparent as aquarium fish
and the laughter rolls around inside them
shaking and shaking on the ground
the man walks, each to each
high stepping as a clown on stilts
leans his terrible face in, spider quick fingers
darting around them and he breathes and breathes
their breath until it is gone

there is nothing he can say.
there are no answers here, in his grinning, mouthless predation
he is an ambulatory scar, a frozen smile, an endless hunger

15 OF 30

2011-04-15T07:31:00.000-04:00

I have said your name till the meaning fell off
and came back, like god, like copperheads on the ridge
like home, you sleep on a bottle of pain,
your spine a beanstalk that the baby climbs
and you are home and warmth and light
sleepless beside you is rest

the boy in the black plastic nest
ran off, he thinks he has to kick his house to pieces
to get out the door, he thinks every bridge is on fire
all the rehearsed grandeur of his lines fell flat
gone as good intentions, as the reasonable face
he wore into this house

there are houses along the road,
trailers squatting on dirt and plastic grass,
tenements in every city piled up sad and crazy
and arguing in Russian so many places
for a boy to set down his suitcase
and decide to be a man

and i know those roads at night,
the weight of that bag full of nothing
the way a father is a punching bag clown
a mother a witch on the moon,
you have to dance with those ghosts
how the burned down houses slink along the road behind you, kicked dogs

I hope he finds a sunny spot to sit down,
i hope he falls asleep next to someone beautiful
finds the small towns, the church steeples, the ocean at night
spits out that black highway snake, the words
that poison a boy into a man

An important request

2011-04-13T14:42:00.006-04:00

From Rachel McKibbens:

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine who is also a teacher, poet and all-around phenomenal human being had her laptop stolen from her desk. Knowing that it was most likely a student of hers devastated her, but she has been awesome at moving forward and trying to just let the loss go.

I don't think I have to tell you how little teachers make, despite everything they do for our kids.

April is her birthday month and I'm thinking, with a little help from my friends, we might be able to help defray the cost of a replacement laptop. All who donate will receive a mini-chapbook from yours truly.

Thanks in advance. You are bowls and bowls of sugar.

14 of 30

2011-04-13T08:15:00.000-04:00

When Jay Wright found the shark's jaw
he was 700 feet below the ground,
in the mine's dark ocean

It was black on black,polished as coal
black teeth in the dark
for 300 million years
waiting for Jay Wright's hand
to free them from the rocks

Only the teeth remain,
as though time swallows all malice, all thought
all hearts and bones and terrors
leaving only the hunger behind
only the teeth to wait, scissor-sharp
in the secret and dark places
four miles down

they dragged it out into the light
and marvelled at the size of it
the doorway-mouth of that leviathan
that had swallowed all light, and life
and stone and darkness

13 of 30

2011-04-12T07:41:00.000-04:00

Yelena, they say I said
I did not see him up there,
strapped in and hurled
like a stone at heaven

I was not looking.

The doctors said
"handles celestial mechanics with ease"
but he has never sat in a vostok,
in a biscuit tin atop an ICBM

before I went, I consecrated you to the saints,
I pissed on the tire of the bus
and the great monolithic state spat me like a seed
into the face of god

and I came back with him all over me,
and they carved my face in stone and gold

12 of 30

2011-04-11T08:06:00.000-04:00

They sleep in the hill,
hunched in the too-small grave,
withered flowers, corn, stone blades
a jawbone like a harp, a tumulus of a skull

sons of the angels tasked to watch
they brought black powder and iron,
brought walls and brick,

here is the sky, a bowl of bone
pierced to let the light through
here are bones in the mountains,

here is the beanstalk, rope ladder
to a city of lapis and stone
here is the hen, and the devil's grandmother
the stone in the well, the toad in the fountain
here is the secret kingdom below the stones,
the hollow hill, the beehive grave
the staircase without end

here is the world we inherit with their death,
the silent monuments, the mountain tops, the silent oracles
the city is fallen and become a habitation of owls

here is the road at night, and the light in the distance,
strange music, black birds against the sun

11 of 30

2011-04-10T12:39:00.000-04:00

"it is a house set on the foundations of the rain" Pablo Neruda

ruin, i am tired of you,
muddy midden, ash heap
garden of broken crockery,
house of rusted engines, of radio wire

rust sown row of worm eaten turnip
I am sick with your dirt and tarpaper
your thick black mud and oil
has stained my hands, my mouth is filled
with gravel from your half- moon walk
my sleep is the pond filled with old washing machines
and bedsprings, catfish

spider filled mailbox of unsent letters,
tinsel and burnt christmas lights

I am sick of dragging you behind me, a mule
and you my dull and worthless plow,
my wavering track behind me, a line of
sickly sprouts grown from a handful of penny nails

I am weary, and i you are heavy
my father's worthless skeleton lashed to you like a scarecrow
my mother's empty wedding dress
a row of baby dolls with blinking eyes,

my regrets roost in your eaves, blind and shrieking
burst copper pipes and coins green with verdigris

tired of this goddamn paper wasp's nest in the wall, these mice
this black handled phone that never rings
there was fruit, there were pears and pulpy apples
there were days i could forget
the walls, the dead, the way i walked
on the outside of the world because of you
there were sour grapes and onions, birdsong
floorless outhouse and chicken coop,
dry tub and tattered ceiling

i have haunted you long enough

10 of 30

2011-04-09T13:26:00.001-04:00

today i woke oorm a dream of broken guitar strings
moved the lemon mint,
gone tough and smelling like furniture polish
into the sunny spot by the chimney. I ripped up
the creeping charlie, but it always comes back
like green sadness,growing in the rocks, the bricks
I put all the strawberry suckers into the ground,
moved the weedy-looking thyme.
I put two spindly sprouting garlic cloves in the dirt,
and a few carrots that somehow survived the deer
and the snow,. all the old paperbag leaves
i put in the compost, all wet and cold still
and the chives growing wild in the old wooden pail,
i moved them all around the chimney
i wiped the gnome's faces, and set them up again,
found the lone tendril of miraculous oregano,
survivor of spaghetti and snow and deer and
thieving skunk,. curled pale under the creeping charlie,
i set it upright in the sun
tomorrow is beans and peas and filling the frames
tomorrow is cucumbers and pumpkins

today is hands in the dirt,
today is housekeeping,
and the kids on the plastic slide
it is sweeping out the winter
an unasked for kiss, dirty hands

it is enough to live for

9 of 30

2011-04-08T08:06:00.000-04:00

The man with black wings growing from his head
is the brother of death.
Poppies clot the entrance
to his lightless house.

In the grey kingdom, there is an elm
where the angels hang like gallows fruit,
to fatten, till they are cut down,
sent to whisper in the ears of men,

there is the sleep of bones in clay,
there are windblown seeds in gravel,
the ocean at night, a great and terrible animal
stricken with a wound,
a king in the hill,the devil in the oak

and myself, strapped into my machine,
dreaming of drowning, the morning crouched
pale and luminous as foxfire, as glowworms
in wet grass, as a city in the distance
where they do not speak this language
where they do not speak

8 of 30

2011-04-07T08:43:00.000-04:00

After Bocklin's Die Toteninsel or "Isle of the dead"

Again and again, you painted it,
the island, the boatman with the draped casket,
the trees growing towards black,
the doorway harser, oblong

an island like a broken tooth,
dim windows in the rock face,
a glass sea, avalon and ys

how they almost claw the sky,
that black and frozen fire
of cypress, the hole in the world,

where you lost eight of your fourteen children
"a dream image" you called it, but she knew
that not-yet countess with the name of your child,
and asked you to paint in the casket,
her husband, dead of diptheria
the woman in white that will not face us

and once they were there, you went back to the first version
and painted them there, and every one after
like photographs of the same endless day

He knew it too, that charnel house builder,
that gravedigger with the Chaplin moustache,
knowing something of the kingdom behind that door
he bought it and hung it in the Berghof,
then the Reich Chancellery in Berlin
where it hung through the war

One version lost in a bombing raid,
a fire of german marks and pound notes,
a burning bank in the skeleton of a city,
a sacrifice, holocaust, library of alexandria
adornment for Dis, for Xibalba

still they row towards black,towards the stone house
the tiny coffin, the faceless pscyhopomp
the rower, in the still and ceaseless day

7 of 30

2011-04-06T09:16:00.002-04:00

today a day without invocation.
no summoning rattle of barbarous tongues
no sigil to scratch around circles and mirrors
in the clock of heaven, this gear is nameless,
this broken tooth in
the mouth, this forgotten word, this undream

silence of half an hour, eye
of the maelstrom,
intake of breath before trumpets

there is no prophecy here,
the cards all pasteboard blanks
blank river stones drawn from a bag one after another,
the tea refusing shape, a lineless palm, an empty newspaper

here is a mute and eyeless idol
here is headless god, a broken clay hand
a cloth poppet that has lost it's buttons
a nameless, swordless angel

6 of 30

2011-04-05T06:28:00.002-04:00

You start out of your sleep, shouting
grab the blanket and stand in the dark with it
so i leave, and you climb back in the bed
treacherous horse on a staircase

I cannot shower the villain off me,
the pantomime moustache you have painted me with
the paper horns our son is glueing to my head

A flapping of terrible wings
against the brittle dark
a grey light insinuates against the curtains

so i go down into the dark house,
the child's faint complaint in her sleep
each in your bed, a silent film

It is not death. Spring is coming

5 of 30

2011-04-04T07:55:00.002-04:00

"Of his bones are coral made"

In the lightless water of my dreaming,
you, father, are an eyeless totem,
a bagged cadaver papoose,a broken bottle
engineblack and gasoline in water

here is your house, fish in the leafless trees
catfish, barbed, electric and swollen
in tall grass that sways, invisible mover

you do not speak,
and the dead gather in your devi'ls chapel
on the bottom of the muddy lake

how you shook like a puppet last time i saw you
pale and grey as hospitals,
as mornings after terrible things

there are sturgeon, fished for with the hooks of cranes
their bellies filled with glistening black eggs, salt fruit
here are the swollen ditches in the spring,
frogs with pale appendages dangling, useless and poisoned
here is foxfire and lantern light

cloudy ice that blocks the sun, the muddy hole

here is your black book of engines, prospero,
that i never learned, here the fire that ate your rotted curtains,
here the broken shells, the fossils in the limestone driveway,
sea bed broken into gravel road, black tar liquid in the heat

here the black, the cars rusted on their axles
dissolving in the mud, here the eyes of mice in the farmhouse
here is a sea-bottom of wheat, a ghost of a pig,
a chickenhouse smell, a flooded field of rotten cornstalks

flying dutchman, saint's fire, jonah
how it comes behind you, your fury
with it's chrome teeth
to swallow you down to hell, you spoon, you feather
you rusty hook in worm

how the fungus gathers on the oak of you,
lightening struck and hollow
ripe and rotten for the fire,

you are sick with prophecy
a scarecrow stuffed with doom

cuyahoga oilslick, poison water
cracked bells ringing in the lightless towns on the hour
on the lake bottom, iron ingots strewn on the muddy bottom
shipwreck, worlds end,

4 OF 30

2011-04-03T10:07:00.002-04:00

This crazed chinoiserie face,
cracked statuary head i scrape the whiskers from
ape and beast in the hollow saint,
chipped bottle of bloody flux and black humor
comes off in my hands in sleep,
flakes like our water damaged walkway
trap for the mailman. here is a tooth,
a charm, a mask

in the worm-rich dirt of the front yard,
bulbous roots put forth snaking tendrils
crawl towards light,
red rimmed eyes opening
i am holding a jawbone, a talisman
an ivory rattle

there are tutelary spirits,
dancing dead, great bears
jeweled snakes and blue devils,
grey doctors assemble at my bedside
every night i am bound to a wheel, flayed
awake reassembled, my guts filled with stones and ice
extra pieces held in my hands

3 of 30

2011-04-02T08:27:00.002-04:00

after a surfeit of sleeplessness, i am
hollow as bird's bones, a calliope of reeds
a stagnant pool of undreaing,
black as mirrorback,

i have stood guard over you,
your hands closing in fists
still clutching the magazine
where you read your wide-awake nightmare

I am splintered and combustible,
when you start away
I am skinned and dressed,
my eyes are rotten chokecherries, ignored by birds

you think me indolent, luxurious,
thoughtless to rattle and scrape beside your sleeping
every night of the last six i have awoken,
starless, dreamless, my mask broken in my hands

I sleep a shallow drowning,
cold vigil over you, these bulbs in frozen ground
the boy playing solitaire
every greasy card of his resentment
my head with a sword through it

your nightmare comes to me, not in dreaming
a man without a face, the fattened birds, a dry and terrible place

2 of 30

2011-04-01T13:30:00.002-04:00

The road, a rock and a rose

Leaves, wrapped in blankets.
The boy whispered. “Just a little ways” he said
I’ll hear you

Looked into Nothing when he walked out.
The country lying. The visible shape, the moon caustic light
The murk, a river, the blackened quadrants, burned city, the morning

At the edge of winter, they opened up the hillside
With pick and mattock, serpents collected, a common warmth
The dull beginning sluggishly,
The bowels of some great beast

The gasoline burned
No remedy for evil
The image of it

exercise from http://www.rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com/

1 OF 30

2011-04-01T08:09:00.003-04:00

you spit it at me in greeting, to my good morning
the dead snake you chewed through your ink-bottle sleep
in the rafters our son has built a nest
of all the un-taken out garbage,
wet black plastic and milk bottles
full of borrowed anger,
he is trying it on, like a wig
like a dead soldier's uniform in an attic trunk
a cloudy salute in the mirror

when i sleep, it is cave-black, memoryless
but i wake with my hands full,
a broken piece of diving mask in my hands,
a mouth full of library paste and missing teeth
the stripes you laid across my back

there's a worm in my heart, a black fly rattle

when we were young, i burned my garbage
i cannot unremember the smell, the blue-green flame
how we watched the pages turn back, naked women writhe
in oil and potato peelings, in the midden heaps of secrets
of broken dishes, how the black eyes of the mice
stared out of every corner, the paperwasp walls,
black grease and radios

all the chickens clustered in the rain, the door to ruin

every house has a secret room you find in dreams,
where the unsaid things and the dust
and the king of the mice, and the unforgotten insults sleep
a still filled with rotten mash, uncarved halloween pumpkins,
a library of coverless books

even the stars curve inward on themselves and go black
chasing their own hearts down a stairwell
where no light can escape, and the detritus of worlds
spins and collides in the hollow dark

from the first fire, we are fleeing and falling
to ruin and cold, time itself a wound spring
in a junkheap alarm clock, radium dials glow
for the sowbugs and silverfish,
a stateroom on a sunken oceanliner
and heat-death inevitable as sundown

still i wake with you.
still we are here
and today, i kiss you,
i take out the trash on the way to work

An Untitled Poem

2011-02-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

For Mike Bryan, and the community he left behind him.

2010-12-23T15:45:00.002-05:00

Karyn had asked that i post what i sent her to read at Mike's service:

I am truly sorry I cannot be with you today. Mike deserves to be celebrated the way you are, right now, coming together as a community, strengthening your connections to one another. That's kind of what Mike does. I remember, when it was my honor to be editor for the Portsmouth Free Press, titling one of Mike's articles “let's raise some hell” over his objections. His preferred title was “let's start a dialog”, a title that seemed to me hopelessly...Rotarian, but that now, with a little more time and wisdom on my side, I see the truth and necessity of. Mike's music, writing, activism, were always directed at making the world around him a better place and I am proud to say that Mike was my friend. I will remember him for his humor, and for his commitment and passion. A discussion with Mike could be an almost physical thing, ranging from room to room, from revolutionary politics to the absurd and back again, and Mike always laughing, always arguing with a kind of bemused, straight man look on his face, while he suggested the most outrageous Swiftian proposals ( the invasion of Appalachia was just one among many). Mike really cared about people, and his constant, tireless commitment to Habitat, to the peace movement,to Appalachia, to the local musical and artistic community were more than just political or aesthetic poses, they were an outgrowth of a genuine compassion and commitment to improving the world around him, and a kind of damnable bullheadedness when he was sure he was right, regardless of how the world swayed. I think I will miss that bullheadedness most of all. Mike could be relied on to be Mike, no matter what, and he kept us all honest. Mike was so incredibly prolific, always writing, always organizing, always making music and planning the next project, always running,always active, I don' t think it ever crossed my mind that that voice could fall silent, or that Mike would not be here for me to come home to some day, and talk and talk and talk. I will miss him more than I ever had the chance to tell him, and I miss the community that Mike has left behind him, the many people whose lives he touched, building houses, collecting food for the hungry, telling truth to power and singing his heart out, even if we kept turning the smoke machine on, just to give him a hard time. So many of us, those in this room and scattered around the country carry a piece of Mike with us, a memory of “di-aspora”, of marching in the snow together,of “Pudge Parchisi”twisting the night away, of a joke in the middle of chaos and cacophony, of a good talk. Mike leaves this world a more connected, better place than he found it, and I know with absolute certainty that the only way he would tolerate all of us saying nice things about him was if it was directed towards that greater goal, of continuing the struggle he so gladly took on himself again and again, to fight for the rights of people who cannot speak for themselves, to speak the truth no matter what, and to be some shadow of the good and gentle and committed man that he was. The world needs more men like Mike Bryan, committed to doing what is right as they see it in their corner of the world, of following their own vision, no matter where they find themselves. We can only do the best we can. He has left us each other, and a million jobs that still need doing and the only way I know to honor that kind of love and friendship and commitment is by doing what he would have wanted us to, to mourn him, to laugh with his friends about him and then to put our shoulders back to the wheel to making the world a little more like it seemed so clear to Mike it should be, to make it a place with more homes, and less hunger, more dialog and less hell raising, a few more twist songs and a lot more truth.

Mike, I miss you. I'm sorry we did not talk more in the last few years. I'm sorry I never convinced you to run for governor. I'm sorry I never properly thanked you for the work that you did. I'm sorry we had to lose you to tell you how much we love you, and miss you, and to realize the size of the hole you left in the world. Thanks for being my friend, and for letting me work alongside you for a while in your struggle. Thanks for singing and reading and organizing. Thanks for the houses and the soup kitchens and the Retros and every other project you had your hands in. Thanks for the stories, and the songs, and the dent you knocked in the world. Thanks for everything.

War

2010-11-05T05:30:00.002-04:00

he talks with his hands, and moves in exaggerated dances when he gets excited, so that every conversation is a kind of performance, in whihc what he said, and the way that he would have acted are blurred together into a sort of spastic onrush, an endless torrent of imagined violence. he has a wooden baseball bat with "nazi tool" written on it in sharpie, and a fondness for pain pills that started with purloining his mother's sleeping pills, her antidepressants and pain medication, we'd drink on my roof, forties from scraped change, robbed wishing wells, car drink cups growing warm in our hands, listening to the coke dealer fight with his girlfriend downstairs, the fake dawn of the city glowing yellow against the clouds. he is filled with boundless energy, and so he likes to get high a lot, to soften the edges, the hostility from being the small kid, the kid with delicate features, the white kid with the curly hair, the dark complection. we call him rosanne rosannadanna when we want to fuck with him. from the way ti sticks out on the sides of his head like a cleopatra wig.
He likes megadeth, Exodus, Metallica, and Nuclear Assault, so i show him DRI and the Misfits. he wears a ratty old "peace sells but who'se buying" backpatch on an icewashed denim jacket that smells like bongwater. the walls of his room are covered in pages torn from circus and hit parader, he's got a spindly pot plant, probably male, growing in his closet under a fluorescent light.

chapter 6

2010-11-03T09:42:00.001-04:00

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. 2And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. 3And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. 4And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. 5And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. 6And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. 7And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. 8And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. 9And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: 10And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? 11And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. 12And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
17For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

waiting for the end of the world

2010-11-01T22:44:00.000-04:00

there's always a fire, and you and the three gathered around it, a pinjoint going round, warm beer and creedence and the river. the catfish jump and fall into the water, the coal barges roll past with foghorns and spotlights, down on the muddy bank on the Kentucky side, and the shitty town lit up like a poor kid's Christmas, long bars of light across the black water. they found the old copper axes not far from here, the sunrise sights up along roads plowed over the tops of mounds and the mud and gravel beech is littered with bone beads, the flooded fields behind you littered with pottery shards, sometimes the plows turn up skulls, or lead shot.
you are waiting, waiting for the Russians to drop the bomb, for the war to come that will swallow the boys trying to fish, for the bottom to drop out. you are waiting for a blue fog of crushed pills and heroin and coke that will make the pin joint, the fifth of Beam, the Keystone light in cans seem innocent as milk.
someone is always fucking somebody Else's girl, someone is always hustling someone out of a few bucks on a bag of dirt weed, there is always a reason for someone to be looking for someone else, for shifting alliances, and bullshit drama, for fights over who is controlling the stereo in the car that runs, doors open, radio blaring out over the foghorns and the river, headlights in the fog.

this is the era of spraypainted pentagrams and shoplifted black candles and misformed prayers to a destroying angel who will not deign to come, it is the season of denim, of gutteral screams and invocation and apocolypse, and the four horsemen arguing over speedmetal and Creedence and Hank Williams and Danzig and Venom and the girls just want to dance under the big ass moon, and tonight , at least everyone is content to wait, for the world to hang on the edge of the black river, that line between never and always that feels like dying, and you never know there is a place for nostalgia for this waiting, this anteroom to your life, the fish dropping liquid int he dark, the taste of cheap beer, the sound of your friends laughing, and you are all dying, sick with smokestacks and yellow fog, sick with hopelessness and the hunger for anything outside the damned bowl of these hills that girdle round the horizon and the hollers and the pigshit and garages with poached deer hanging and going to school with pigshit on your boots, with stealing pills and smoking shake and waiting for the black curve in the road that will be the one where you finally shake the hills off for good, where you finally will shoot out onto the plain towards the city, over the rim of the world like a ship on the ocean, like a coal barge on a black river hurtling towards a light that might be a fire, you are staring into, the speedy blotter acid spinning behind your eyes like a kids toy, you pupils eerie and big and the stars all pouring in, or houses in the fields beside the road, the lights of something spinning around your head, and you wait, and a ball of fire rises in the east, and it's done.

the most butt-kickingest story in the history of the world

2010-04-30T18:59:00.002-04:00

World War: 1
(Toy Version)
by: Holden Vance

Once upon a time, there were Army Men, Cowboys and Indians. They were all at one base having a party with beer, music, and all kinds of other party things. And out in outer space there were two medium sized meteors then, they obsorbed into one huge, giant, humungous meteor and then, It crashed! By the base

Cpt Rex: Wow! Is it a earthquick? Everyone let's go investagate. What the? ZOMBIES!
Zombie People! Zom Zom Zombie bugs!?!!? Oh No. Zombie Dinosaurs! Everyone fire all you got! Throw all your gernades and smoke gernades

Bug Cpt: All Flyers take one bug or dinosaur and everyone else ATTACK!

Cpt Rex: And Remember men shoot them either in the head or in the heart

All: ok, yaaaahhhhh!
Everyone get to a log. Oh yeah, turn on all the traps. Get all those zombies slaughtered!
Oh no that praying mantas just bit one of our men. Get that mantas slaughtered and get that man wounded. Aw Man,they killed half of our men. Wait! Gray leader take out those zombies this instint!

Gray Ldr: Ok
Gray leader checking in. Gray two checking in. Gray three checking in. Gray four checking in. Gray five checking in.Gray six checking in. BOOOOOOOM!!

crrrrrrraghhh! ZrzzzrrrrZZZZZZZ!zr!

Gray Ldr: Ok, all done.

Cpt Rex: Get into groups of six to check it out

All: Yes Sir! Come on lets go check it out. Ok theres ten more zombies left. I don't know how they survived that big constroction. Ok their coming get ready to fire lads! Ok their close enough men. FIRE!..........ok wait for the dust to clear.

All:yeahh thats what you get zombies. Oh my god that was the hardest war we ever had

And then they all had another party and they all lived happily ever after

the most butt-kickingest story in the history of the world

2010-04-30T18:59:00.000-04:00

World War: 1
(Toy Version)
by: Holden Vance

Once upon a time, there were Army Men, Cowboys and Indians. They were all at one base having a party with beer, music, and all kinds of other party things. And out in outer space there were two medium sized meteors then, they obsorbed into one huge, giant, humungous meteor and then, It crashed! By the base

Cpt Rex: Wow! Is it a earthquick? Everyone let's go investagate. What the? ZOMBIES!
Zombie People! Zom Zom Zombie bugs!?!!? Oh No. Zombie Dinosaurs! Everyone fire all you got! Throw all your gernades and smoke gernades

Bug Cpt: All Flyers take one bug or dinosaur and everyone else ATTACK!

Cpt Rex: And Remember men shoot them either in the head or in the heart

All: ok, yaaaahhhhh!
Everyone get to a log. Oh yeah, turn on all the traps. Get all those zombies slaughtered!
Oh no that praying mantas just bit one of our men. Get that mantas slaughtered and get that man wounded. Aw Man,they killed half of our men. Wait! Gray leader take out those zombies this instint!

Gray Ldr: Ok
Gray leader checking in. Gray two checking in. Gray three checking in. Gray four checking in. Gray five checking in.Gray six checking in. BOOOOOOOM!!

crrrrrrraghhh! ZrzzzrrrrZZZZZZZ!2r!

Gray Ldr: Ok, all done.

Cpt Rex: Get into groups of six to check it out

All: Yes Sir! Come on lets go check it out. Ok theres ten more zombies left. I don't know how they survived that big constroction. Ok their coming get ready to fire lads! Ok their close enough men. FIRE!..........ok wait for the dust to clear.

All:yeahh thats what you get zombies. Oh my god that was the hardest war we ever had

And then they all had another party and they all lived happily ever after

30/30

2010-04-30T13:04:00.001-04:00

Walpurgis 5

Rachel, I have come through
a world of winters on my belly
and found myself reborn, an old man
and you are joy and spring and life

Our babies crawl on the rug
on this first day of a new spring
and every day, the sleeping house
awakes to a new world,
crawling from a grave of sleep

I have left so many conflagrations behind me
a trail of burned down houses
at my heels,
a closet of ghosts in my shadow

can you take me, broken as I am,
a bent stalk turning my head to your light
a scarecrow of rags burning bright in your fire?
Will you come with me, out of winter
into the sun?

Come home, come home
the tree is full of flowers

29/30

2010-04-30T12:51:00.000-04:00

Walpurgis 4

The bells ring.
The cockerel screams
the morning rises on wet grass
and ashheap, on discarded flowers

you are the light that comes
the mass for the saint
you are the first flower
of spring

let the earth cast off its cold,
let summer come again
and I will be the sun
and the scarecrow
and the berries in the hedge,
I will be the dust swept behind the door,
gladden me with wine, with fresh water

I am the briar in the churchyard,
jack of the green,
toadstools in the deep wood

I am the last sheaf of barleycorn,
and you are scythe's bright blade

you are birdsong in the thicket,
you are fresh clean water,
and the moon
and the moon
and the moon

28/30

2010-04-30T12:39:00.000-04:00

Walpurgis 3

when the villagers come, and leap through the fire
follow my song
when the stone is wet with blood and wine,
I would take you in the shadow under it

in the hills, the dead kings sleep
and I would take you down into the hill
where our revels do not cease,

in the grey land, the shadow land
the dead eat beans and ashes of glory
come down my winding stair
I will hang the ribs of the earth with marshlights
I will garland my table with pomegranites

I will show you bones in the brugh,
the broken house, the angels of the middle air
eve's nameless children

I will wrap you in moth wings,
in the owl's cry, get you with a mandrake
hedgeapples and briar, the crossroads and the doorway
this land without salt or iron
yours on a throne of sorrow

27/30

2010-04-30T12:30:00.000-04:00

Walpurgis 2

You are queen of the flowering dark
Life come crawling from the mud,
Supplication of satellites
Lily in the graveyard, flight of doves
You are the skin’s book,
Your hair the night, thick with threnody,
The dance of farmwives in the mountain

I am the black, the gravepit
The bonepile and ash, the knifeblade
I am the black goat and cockerel
I am blood in the furrow,
Shadow on the mountain,
I am terror, and slaughter of lambs
The winter’s teeth

26/30

2010-04-30T12:22:00.001-04:00

Walpurgis 1.

Tonight,

Build fires of the winter’s dead,
Old doors, unloved books
Unsent letters, linen closet of ghosts

Let the may queen come out of the dark
Let her don funeral lilies, her pale warm
Her bones, her flowers

Green tendrils snaking from cold mud
Flowering bulbs, alien
Shout down the wolf

A man, standing on a mountaintop
In the right light, throws his shadow
On the clouds, a colossus

Let him drape crown himself in horns,
Still I know him, let them dance back to back
In the dark, still I know them
Bring your black book, devil,
Your stained turnips, your black wine

Turn the world over and burn it down,
All the rotted scraps of history
In an atomic singularity, a bonfire of yesterdays
Still I know you, cold may morning sun,
Lonely shepherd, scarecrow on a stick
Crown of black winged birds,

Here is a dish of milk in the hedgerow
Here is a twist of salt in your pocket
Here is iron and bright silver
A rhyme against the dark,
A prayer for spring

25/30

2010-04-30T10:03:00.001-04:00

for the transplanted poets calling Chicago “home”

I understand, the taste of all that blue collar
makes you want to sing
makes you see yourself
in the heart of the broad-shouldered, meatpacking city
a city of cheap beer and losing baseball teams
and you think
“i can be the voice of this”

the way every Brooklyn newcomer
spits out subways and brick and Coney Island
like they built the place themselves
but I know something you do not.
Your city is a grave

I know the way the fat and jolly polacks
call you “nigger” when your back is turned
I know the way the catholic schoolkids call you “dyke”
you think “i am in the northernmost city of the blues”
you do not hear the talkradio venom
dripping like ballpark mustard
all over your dream of a new and historyless new york

you do not know how many fiefdoms you walk across
a tourist, Disciples and Counts and Kings
White Aryan Resistance,C.A.S.H.
a forest of upside down tridents
and six pointed stars,swastikas
the way Cabrini Green festered
like a rotten tooth, the rats at water tower place
the hollow winter echo of holy name cathedral

your mouth is full of pizza, and Old style
you don't know the way
the streets you walk on end,
in cornfields in shithole towns,
in the hellfire belch of indiana
I-80's ruined artery in a diseased heart

in the south, past the quaint
where they used to make pianos
and bury mobsters, down a gravel road
are the roots I cut, a burned down house
a handful of dead, ashes

you may have them

24/30

2010-04-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

ghost houses of my memory rise
fungal fire of dead lights
burning in cracked window's eyes

rain on paper wasp nests,flies
acid bile of whispered fights
ghost houses of my memory rise

the kicked in television screen cries
through a flip-book of nights
burning in cracked window's eyes

crumbled chimneys scrape the skies
can dead dogs bite?
The ghost houses of my memories rise

here stand all our swallowed lies
with none to see the sight
burning in cracked window's eyes

puppetshow of endless reprise
walls of wasps in frozen flight
ghost houses of my memories rise
burning in a broken window's eyes

23/30

2010-04-26T08:20:00.001-04:00

I dream of a sumptuous hell,
an endless department store
of downward escalators,
of peacock feathers
a hell of silk and fur

leatherbound copies of
unpublished books,
hand carved faces
of nameless deities,
the mall of the forgotten

doors in storefronts
in all the cities of the world
announce moving sales, fire sales
an open throat that enters only downward
a pitcher-plant of masonry
and airconditioning, of light and inoffensive music

false exits, dusty windows
where flies die, beating their confused heads
against the glass, buzzing in prayer
the stairs leading ever down

22/30

2010-04-25T15:54:00.002-04:00

21/30

2010-04-25T14:47:00.002-04:00

Yard sale Sunday!

Drumnadrochit
Inverness-shire, IV63 6TU
Scotland, UK

Many Great Items! Come Early!

1 Rand Mcnally map of The United Kingdom and Ireland, slightly waterlogged.
3 mismatched boat oars.
One fishing net, repaired
1 “scotland is for lovers” tee shirt, size medium
men and women's clothing, varios styles and eras
1 picnic basket
1 gingham checked tablecloth
Contributors copy of Time Life Mysteries of the Unexplained book set, unopened
2 rowboats, repaired
National geographic magazines 1888- to present
1 toy submarine
17 leica cameras
7 commemorative keychains
18 pentax k100 cameras, 7 with lenscaps
10 rolls of unshot kodak 35MM film
2 video cameras w/ waterproof housings
1 english to japanese phrasebook
1 autographed bigfoot photograph
17 metric tons of fish

20/30

2010-04-22T14:31:00.001-04:00

There is a hidden constellation in the banknotes
that keeps them safe from photocopiers,
from the peasants dream of wealth,
that neverending horn, saltgrinder in the bottom of the sea
the tablecloth of the devil’s sooty brother
your suite at the plaza, your Paris apartment

We burn our bills in the furnace
The blue flame of the hours, of blood, ash
tally marks on a slate of days
a sweet for the baby
a dress, a house
warmth and light, measured hours
my life, wrapped in a bouquet of bills,
An idol of clock arms and cutoff dates
An endless succession of numbers and spreadsheets
Of recipes and things to be nailed, one to the other

On an altar, surrounded by the perfume
Of the archangel, by the glittering skull
By the saints and rabbits
Is the hour of the morning
When you are mine alone,
When I am in the house we carry between us
Like a tortoise shell,
The littlest ones asleep, unknowing
When we are only who and what we are
And the dead world breathes
the smallest leaves pull their shoulders up through the dirt

In this hour is paradise
In this hour are all scales balanced,
And you

The people of the world look for heaven
for the ancestors, they burn ghost money
engraved with the Jade Emperor, the bank of Hell
burn paper-mache Rolls Royces and televisions
repaying debts, they give coins to the boatman
flowers for the dead, fruit for the god

Here is this unsteady light we have shored between us
against the hungry, the empty, the lonely
that squats at the end of the streetlights,
shored against the crocodile teeth
of the sky

here is our sleeping boy’s head, filled with sugar sharks
with fish in cages,
all these porcelain lambs, these rabbits
this sweetness in the face of the dark
and you

19/30

2010-04-20T14:08:00.003-04:00

Before you were born

Your small hoofbeats ran circles in your mother
And I had not known love could eat the world
Your two hearts so small, thundering
the world so bright and sharp

A drowned man sang with a broken voice
you came, in a blue panic
A knotted rope around your neck

Your aunt held your mother’s hand
And I stood, overwhelmed with joy and terror and
a kicked hornets nest of doctors

Your tongue was out to taste the air
They told us, gravely
Of your beautiful pony markings

Under lights, at first she could not hold you
So I told you to her, like a story
Your hands so strong, the wet pooled still
In your eyes, each song of your breath
Till they consented to give you
To that wonderful world that you had left,
The sweet home and hive that is your mother

From you I learned to demand sweetness for her
Learned the terror of your loss before your first breath
Learned howshe has broken herself
Again and again, to bring such wonder to the world

You six, who are one, who are my heart
Have taught me what it is to be a man
What a life is, what price hangs from it
how quickly I would lay mine down
for one more breath of yours

18/30

2010-04-17T09:52:00.000-04:00

The abess kicked the abram cove
down the steps into the street
he was a gentlemen of four outs
in love with a fireship, a round heeled wench
who taught at the floating school

he was beat all hollow
arsy varsey in the dust
the article yelled out the window
that he’s best angle for farthings
ere he returned

his brains were in his ballocks
and he beat Banaghan
to the admiral of the blue
thre was a fellow, slow dying of barrel fever
as sold him a pair of barking irons

when the bats flew out
he went for his chick-a-biddy
thinking for to play the blanket hornpipe
but he was born under a threepenny blanket
and bottle headed

the bran faced brat
was bread and butter fashion
with a black fly when he burst in
the old fellow lept up
to lay cane upon abel

but ere he had his cauliflower on
abram lay his chitterlings out for washing
in come the cock,
and laid him in irons
and in the morrow
they set him to climb three trees with a ladder

the trull wore weeds for a week

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/dcvgr10.txt

17/30

2010-04-16T17:55:00.001-04:00

"didn’t i tell you” you say
“the last time i was on this road
i saw an armored car
on it’s side," with a smoking hole blown
in the back

you say “ i rolled down the windows”
hoping some money blew in"
i think of a flock of dollars
of a beard of bees
of a swarm of angry twenties
lifting the car, and you, away to paris
your body ascending on a cloud of engravings
a million birthday cards, gutted
our stiained matress made green in a sudden spring

the mole on your left buttock
is a lightswitch that i am never sure
is connected to a live circuit
till the bulbs glow
and i picture you glowing now
with a light to shame the moon

would you pull me from the shipwreck?
take me along, a bad tempered lapdog,
an uncouth butler for your summerhome
an aging cabana boy?

would you buy yourself a new body
to drape in diamonds? a house and title?
rolled english lawns and turrets?
a cloud of ink to vanish into
like a squid on a reef?

i would collect what you left behind,
the name, the hunger, the cloud, the numberless parts
transfigured by your millions
come in the night and burgle the rest,
jewelthief of your mole, your skin, your rags

you are a horde of jewels
a heist, a mobsters jewelbox of joys
i am already the richest thief
transfigured by sudden and miraculous wealth

16/30

2010-04-15T16:28:00.001-04:00

Of the coming of the companions of God to Ireland
taken from divers annals

In 673 there was a comet, and a star of great brightness
Seen in the months of September and October
In the year of our lord 690
It rained blood in Leinster.
Butter in the churn turned to flesh and blood
A wolf spoke with a human voice
The sea between Ireland and Scotland froze solid
And there was travel across the ice

In the year of our lord 721
in the monastery of Clonmacnoise
While the monks were at prayer
A ship was seen,
Her sails filled with wind
Sailing above the round tower,
In the upper air, where the fallen angels
Throng thick as fish

And a great iron anchor was heavd over her side
And dragged in the dust of the street
And into the church, till it stuck fast under the altar

and the chronicle tells us
that the monks were sore afraid
when a sailor swam down the rope
to pull it free, and they saw him drowning
in the goodly air, and rushed then to his aid
to pull the anchor free, and the ship sailed on
with no word of human language shared

In 734 there was the appearance of a dragon
“both huge and ugly to behold
And a great thunder heard after him in the firmament”

in 743 an awful marvelous sign was seen in the stars
in 745 in the night a terrible and wonderous sign appeared
amongst the stars

in 759 three showers fell in Crich-Muireadhaigh in Inishowen.
First pure silver of an unknown working
Then a shower of wheat, and last a shower of honey
Of a fair and rich flavour.
In 760 fire came from Heaven
and slew men in Dearthach Aedhain
In 765 “a terrible and wonderful prodigy
appeared among the stars”

and in 805, the Ceile De,
the clients and companions of god
came over the sea with dry feet, without a vessel
and a scroll was given them to preach
out of heaven and carried up again when the sermon
was finished

this year, cakes and bread bled when cut
and the birds spoke with human voices

15/30

2010-04-14T14:22:00.001-04:00

You’re green, boy, so I’ll tell you
Cain killed Abel on the first Monday in April
So we don’t leave harbor while the blood’s still wet
No women on deck, lest she’s carved of pine
And has her tits out, to shame the sea to calm
Keep your whoring for port
This tub’s your woman now

You’re running from something, sure as salt
Anyone who’d go to sea without a reason
Would go to hell for a holiday

Jonah, put your right foot first, and never trust the left
Lest you want it to buckle under you
Put a silver coin under the mast
Pour wine on the deck
Stay clear of the captain when he’s drunk
Hammer in a stolen piece of wood
And she’ll go faster, if she’s got a reason to run

Never throw a stone in the sea
No plants in the wheelhouse or she’ll seek bottom
Don’t you never whistle
It calls the wind and the rain up with it
Don’t bring flowers or you’ll give em to the dead
Priests and redheads are bad luck
but a black cat will bring you home
it’s backwards here, someways

Never kill a gull, even when he steals
They are sailor boys washed over the side
And you can hear em screaming, of a time
It’s lucky if a petrol shits on you
Don’t cut your hair or nails till we make port
they are for the dead queen
Down in the dirt
Never wear a dead man’s clothes
Don’t fix a flag on the deck,
lest you want us to wrap you in it

if you go over the side, every day after is borrowed
and she’ll take you when she’s ready

There’s a fish out here big enough to house a man
There are whole cities on the bottom
And the churchbells ring in the storm
But if you hear em, you’re bound for the locker
Same as saint’s fire round your head

Watch the rats and leave when they do
Stow everything tight, and mind your business
Leave the duck-fucker in the kitchen
Or he’ll take a taste of young one like you
Never say the curly tailed fellow’s name

After fifty years, if you go
You’ll go to fiddlers green

14/30

2010-04-14T06:13:00.001-04:00

once they praised the queen of heaven
with epithets, tower of ivory,house of gold
so I would name you, gnawed-on end of all my days
bone and gristle kingdom
ship of my nights aground
island of sleep
my portable hills

queen of the skin's book,
laughing hellmouth, still pool
my starless dark, my velvet house
my effulgence of giant's fruit
my walled garden, mother of
these glass dolls, beloved

you are a heaven with lamentation
a multitude of flowers in iron
orchard of books, feast-table of my bed
you are my library mouse, my tea-cake
my honeyed knifeblade
song in the throat of thousands
artificer of jewels, handmaid of hammers
unscaled siren of this tangled water

they collapse around you,
the tiny wingless things,
their faces sticky with my heart
their tiny hands in your hair

in the garden, small plants wrapped against the cold
this three part song of your sleep, and you,
pearl and rose in the jewelbox bed,
you sovereign nation
you, song of my life and dying
you are my first and last light
my thread of dream, my first book of color,
my birdsong in the dark's tree
my named and nameless garden, my heaven's fruit
my phosphor, my quintessence
my ever burning bone's pyre, my limestone water
my joy, my life,my home, my love

13/30

2010-04-13T17:16:00.000-04:00

Poem for Sam Cheuk

2:00 PM
me: you are a filthy canadian
a ham eater
a goddamned frenchy
you are round eye butter-people
you are a sack full of mackerel
in the backseat of a 72 charger,
parked in an abandoned lot and pissed on by bums
you are the tapeworm in the guts of the educational system
your fleas have fleas
2:19 PM your breath is like a rancid anchovy cunt
your eyeballs are swollen with festering cum and rat milk
that hat looks like you took it off a dead wino
2:20 PM your teeth are blisters
you have an asshole in your throat,and fuck it with a rotten cucumber
2:21 PM your mother's pussy is like a pot pie filled with snuff spit
you are a soupeater, a gargler of cheese
2:22 PM your fingers are fat little sausages, and you jack off obese sea otters
2:23 PM your dad puts white pee in your front butt
your dad pisses in your mom's ears
your dad eats raw bologna slices out of a dog's pussy
2:24 PM you put garlic bulbs up your mothers asshole and sparklers in her ears
her tits are like leathery pancakes
2:27 PM your dog is a lousy fuck
me: your back pussy is dry and flavorless
your sweaty hands squeeze the lethargic asscheecks
of manatees, you eat spaghetti off the tittybar’s floor
you strain dead flies from tepid beer through your teeth
and chew the wings.
You are are a maggot-fucker
You are balls deep in a rotten cantaloupe
You re balls deep in roadkill
You are balls deep in a headless chicken
you needledicked bugfucking son of a horsecunt

12/30

2010-04-13T14:30:00.002-04:00

11/30

2010-04-13T13:45:00.003-04:00

First, she swallowed her words
But they whispered
she ate her fingernails sharp
to skin it
And a crucifix, on a chain
But he pawed her open
She swallowed her tongue
ate a rope of hair, to climb out
It coiled a question through her
magnets and padlocks
To hold her to the bed
But still he came
So she ate a box of nails
And a hammer, and pinewood plank
built a house to live in
But he crawled inside her like a tapeworm
And lived in her drainpipes
in a nest of unsaid things
So she ate a box of candles and a book of matches
But he blew them out, and came in the dark
So she ate a string of lightbulbs
Just to be safe
But she opened her mouth,
And it was dark still
So she ate the streetlight, and the sun, and the stars
And the planets, ate airplanes and jackolanterns
Till there was only the black
And he was the black, so she ate that too
switchblade motoroil thick and greasy
brittle as a mirror back
broken combs and crowfeathers
iron and tires and asphalt
till there was nothing left
then she ate the nothing

10/30

2010-04-09T13:58:00.001-04:00

After a painting of Circe

1.
How they come, to the house in the wood
to be devoured, the green boys
fresh from ships.

They elbow one another

Outside the house, the wolves and lions
roll on their backs for their bellies to be scratched

Hers is the sweet-house, the gingersnap house
Baba Yaga’s cottage on chicken legs
and the boys enter in to be eaten.
so eager to throw their bones amidst her furs

She is Theda Bara. She is Barbara Stanwyck.
She is Rita Hayworth, the tutor of boys.

What does it matter, that she weeps when
the cup falls clattering to the stone
and the boys run off, squealing

There was a man, once
who had snowdrops in his teeth
who drank her wine, and stayed
but he is gone, and the sea is dark

The boys come, one after the other
To become something other than they are

2.
There was a girl once
bound in marriage to the muddy dark
To the gravepits and the furrows
to the shadow's house

How she ate one seed of sweetness at his table
and could not leave,
How they brought her flowers and pigs
to lure her from her dark,
Sent heroes and boys like weasels down after
a rabbit in her hole,
when she wrapped herself in burial cloth
and refused the sun

Still they sing and sing for her
And call her bondage spring

3.
When the broken men became her priests
they cut themselves with the sickle
they bled for the moon,
who comes to the crossroads
three headed and blind,
stands in doorways,
brings a black dog, and a torch with her.
when the moon has turned away her face,
when the moon’s house stand’s outside the child’s window,
It’s door open as a mouth

Here is blood, and honey
Cold mother, be kind

9/30

2010-04-08T13:46:00.005-04:00

When I was thirteen we were parentless
and you were our general, by dint
of being oldest, by
the scar from a broken bottle
that crossed your chest
by the time you had already done.
There were never any adults
save the occasional ex-con
with pin joints, or pills
cases of old Milwaukee
Kessler whiskey, Marlboro reds
bonfires, Dramamine
shitty blue unicorn acid.
parties that ripped the doors off the house

How we climbed on rooftops
breaking into the abandoned movie theatre
rooting through boxes of old bulbs and porno posters
behind the molding screen, looking for something worth stealing
how we crawled on our bellies through the air ducts
of it’s disused heating system, under the streets

Appetite for Destruction
The feral army of the street kids,
The homes of the homeless, Silverball Arcade
basements and empty houses
A tower of bottles
A silver airstream trailer on a gravel driveway
clearings in the woods, a wood-paneled downstairs apartment

I was lieutenant, skinny and with a wise-ass mouth
kept mostly unbloodied because of your
kickboxing, and your crazy grin
when shit started to go down

I remember

How you sat beside me
with that crazy grin the night I put a pistol to my head
and leaned your head against mine
and told me if I was going you were coming with me

How you stole that car, crossing state lines to see me
singing "midnight rambler" till they took you down in Terra Haute

How you cracked the window of the county jail
you’d drop string with the nailclippers attached
I’d clip a cellophane of joints, or cheap speed
you’d reel it in
How you kept ashes in a jar, and told them they were the spirit “OVOMBO”
Till they transferred you to the asylum

How you knotted those bedsheets together
climbed from the windows of the county
before they transferred you to the state pen
How you made the national news for it,
they could not believe you had done it

A general no more, our king in exile
and I was there
The night they took you back

We had a ride set to smuggle you out to the country
We were behind the middle school, drinking beer
the lights flashed
the cruisers swarmed, and I ran
through the woods, by the melon farm
jumped a stone bench into a leaf pile
that turned out to be a goldfish pond
and found myself, suddenly, unbelievably drowning
walked to the house that used to be mine
dripping wet with fish in my pockets
and you were gone

I did not hear from you again, until today
You call me brother, tell me you remember
you are happy, with your babies
your straight job
the home you finally found

A weight I did not know I carried
is lighter than it's been in years

8/30

2010-04-07T14:07:00.001-04:00

After John 8:44

The devil and his angels speak
a mouthful of flies,
a bloated roadside body
naked in the foxglove
small bones in the crawlspace,
slow poison in the tea

they laugh when the old woman falls down the stairs
when the egg sours in the nest
when the house burns bright
on an empty road, no bucket brigade in sight

their tongues are razors in feathers
their teeth are stones in honey
their throats are uncovered wells
their hands are ours,

there’s a undiscovered boxcar, on a siding
that is their church today,
tomorrow, the house that is too still,
the newspapers piling up outside the door
tonight, a swarm of beds their altars
and the hissing command of their prayers
will be whispered urgently
into a thousand ears
and war and war and war and profit and mystery

tonight we will raise an abomination of towers
to scrape at the belly of heaven,
the railyard bible flickering
heart diamond cudgel shovel
in an electric sleepless city in the wasteI
tonight we will listen to the buzzing of flies
in a thousand blue boxes,
satellites that spin above
the tired old dusty earth

tonight doom will be augured
in a flight of birds, in haruspices
tomorrow the tornado hits the trailer park,
the father’s heart gives out
the city walls break before the flood
the fire comes, cleaning nothing

this jeweled crown of America,
this maze of merciless cities and highway
this drowned kingdom

7/30

2010-04-06T13:00:00.003-04:00

The mine is black mouth,
And she has fed all her boys to it
In the hollow of the hills

The mine is an upside down church
And her boys have come back
With a blueblack mark no water can erase

Her boys have come back
In boxes in their Sunday clothes
Then gone back down again

The mine is a family reunion
The bloodline pools just below the earth
In the cold and the dark

It is hellmouth, and her green eyed devil
come up from it
Every Sunday, to spit, to sing
And fill her belly full of children

Till he went down to stay
To wait on Jesus
Coming in the middle of the air

Church of god
With signs following

The mine is more bitter than strychnine
Dark as a dungeon
And the coal cars crawl like rattlesnakes
Through the topless hills

They will burn his bones
To light the city at night
She will sit on her porch in the dark
Waiting on her devil who will not come

6/30

2010-04-05T14:15:00.002-04:00

When the neighbors burned a cross
in our yard, it was for practice.

They'd never done it before.
They wanted to get it right.
It was not much taller
than a first grader
covered in gas and burlap.
They sat around it in lawn chairs,
drinking beer. I didn’t know why,
but I was ashamed.

Most of our acre was hidden
from the road by our house's
dirt floor and tarpaper.
A good place for secrets.
They asked permission of my father
he said it would be fine.
One more thing not to tell at school.
Kids raising hell. Just practicing.

A week later, when they burned a cross
in the front yard of the only black person
in our neighborhood,
(the adopted girl from six houses down
who shared my bus stop)

There were no lawnchairs
That is when they they were serious
That is when they meant every word
of what they did not say.

5/30

2010-04-04T10:27:00.000-04:00

There are days when I forget
How much I have taken
Your good and holy heart
How we kissed till our jaws ached

How much I have taken,
still want to hold onto, like a thief
How we kissed until our jaws ached
How you loved me before you knew me

still want to hold onto, like a thief
The way we sailed together
How you loved me before you knew me
When I stole you honestly

The way we sailed together
an outpouring of stories
When I stole you honestly
an endless day

an outpouring of stories
how you called up your dead
an endless day
your memory a churchyard

how you called up your dead
how I poured out my life
Your memory a churchyard
How I wanted to die there

how I poured out my life
every moment not with you an error
How I wanted to die there
in the house of your heart

every moment not with you an error
I am learning to be a better man
in the house of your heart
I have broken all the windows

I am learning to be a better man
Your good and holy heart,
I have broken all the windows
There are days when I forget

4/30

2010-04-03T07:26:00.001-04:00

Jenny Greenteeth squats in mud and duckweed
with her broken mouth and her long bony fingers
She is a swallower of apple-cheeked babies,
the riverwitch, the willow's lover
sweetheart of suicides

Jenny Greenteeth has weedy hair
and long bony fingers, to clutch at the ankles
of boys skipping stones, swinging from ropes
she is the tangler of fishing lines
her teeth are broken bottles
her father is a grindylow, a nix

Jenny Greenteeth combs her hair
and children piss their beds
she is the dark, and the man in the car with no windows
and she will take what is left when he is done

Jenny is the fish that eat the eyes of the broken dollies
she hisses in the grass at the waters edge
Jenny is the lover of the boy with the pocketfulls of stones
Jenny fills her bed with cold water on the nights he comes
she is swallower of crime and sorrow

she is the branches where the drowned boy tangled,
the rot that puffed his belly in the cold and the dark
the kiss that took his lips
when he rocked in her arms for a fortnight

riverwitch, hungry lover
her splintered mouth whispers
of how they knew her once
how she could teach a secret song
to charm the fish, to knot the wind
to swell the bellies of the kine

how the river rose, black with mud
for the crops before they broke her
how they gave her bones and blood for barley
for their beer, called her mother
for the good black earth
she left behind her

now she is hungry, and the weed
a green carpet of scum, runoff rich
tastes of oil and poison
jenny remembers songs to reap to
remembers lovers in her good black mud
fires in the autumn
remembers dollies of corn

she waits and whispers in the dark and mud
for the babies with their apple cheeks
for night swimmers, for the sorrow-laden
to come down the weedy shadow
to riverwitch, to unfed dark
to jenny greenteeth

3/30

2010-04-02T06:07:00.000-04:00

My house is a ghost ship
hung with yellow lamps
foundered on the reef
of the morning

my little fish huddle
in their private sleep
the shadows of their little terrors
passing over and away

here the bed you left
here the plate and the bones
here are such rags as have draped around you
but you are gone

here is the mast I have lashed myself to,
here the jackline of your hands untied
here scylla. here poppies
here your song still hangs
above the wave and the seabird
and the starless dark
here the shipworm heart
in the carved and painted girl

birds throng the crosstrees
it is good friday
the sun and the moon-pulled water rise
and you are coming home
but not today

2 of 30:

2010-04-01T06:59:00.001-04:00

because he cast the books upon the fire,
because the angel stands at every locked door
we took to the sea in search of paradise

and the storm drove us on for fifteen days
till we came to the island of silence
where we followed a dog
to an empty city,
the beds turned down, the lamps bright
the larders stocked, but not a soul astir

long shadows fell in the quiet houses
clocks kept the hours till the world falls

we would not be satisfied, and
cast off again

and came to an island of sheep
the streams thick with trout
and another thronged with wheeling birds
and one lit on his shoulder and laughed
“seven years you will wander,
and still not find what you seek”

and ever west, we came to land
on a great stone resting in the sea
and going ashore, found nothing
and lit a great signal fire,
and stood round in a ring
and the ground trembled
and we were sore afraid
and returning to the boat,
saw the beast whose back we had stood upon
sink beneath the waves,
one black eye like the moon below the water

and rested, after, on an island of men whose tongues had died in their mouths
and their silent abbot, only, his voice cracking from disuse
said “eighty years”, and his voice was as a library of dust

and leaving them, we skirted those shores
where the head of judas rests
one side frozen, the other burning
speaking in a strange tongue
and weeping stones,
and men with the heads of pigs
scream among the flames
and rivers of golden fire pour from the black mount of hell
and one of our company was swept overboard, and lost
and worms devoured the outer skin of the boat
and the sea was still and white as milk
and still we chased the sun over the world's rim

and a beast rose up, horrible mouth
open, the fish fleeing before him
till swallowing his tail, he encircled the boat
and closed round like a hangman's knot
till the ribs of the currach creaked
and he sank like a stone, and the storm came after
and our captain sang, and the fish circled round to listen
and calmed the sea

and we came to a column of ice, or glass
that rose up from the sea farther than we could see
smooth and windowless
surrounded all around by golden nets
so vast we sailed between their meshes,
and called out, but none answered
and three days we sailed round that watchtower
and into fog so thick we could not see

and were met in that grey land by a youth
so curious I could not describe him
who took half of our company ashore
to a land so green one could not believe it
and for fifteen days we wandered in that blessed place
where the sun never sets
till we came to a river so wide we could not cross
and the sound of far of singing, and a grey light
as a city casts its own false dawn on the horizon
or the glint of metal seen from afar
and our guide would speak no human tongue
but would take us no farther
and there was sound of thunder

returning to our companions,
we were met with much alarm,
for they had waited in the harbor for a year and a day
living only on such fish as they could lure with lines,
and rain was their wine

and the wind lifted, and we sailed back
the way we had come, and now I am an old man
and still I do not know what we saw there
here we keep the hours
and after Compline, we enter the great silence.

1 of 30

2010-03-29T01:10:00.001-04:00

The women with the heads of birds

are singing in the bright place

their tongues stitch the bright bones with flowers

on the final beach, atomic eggs on the white sand

the vanishing point like a well of ending

and the pail drops down, the water ringing in the dark dark dark

and the women spit stars in the wormy eyes of sailors

o my soul, have mercy

when I am stripped beyond naked

when I am undone, a mouthful of ash

when I am come at last to the hollow city's drowned battlements

when I have stretched my skin's boat across these splintered ribs

and sailed beyond the edges of the world,

o my kindly one have mercy

boatmen stand in the bright blast of heaven,

scraps of film develop in their pockets, tattered insignia

dropping among the bone thickets, the copper briars

and still you spin out the promise of angels,

honeyed traps of heaven and the faces of the dead

flowers turn their deaf heads towards the sun

in the windless calm, among the blooms sirens

sing a mantic song

prophesy to the worms

because the end of beauty is death

and when I am come at last to that shore I will carry your name

in my mouth, a bird with the head of a woman,

your fingers hooked in my collarbones

your breath in the windy hollow of my skull

in the marsh

in the islands in the sea of milk,

the labrynths of my days unwound

and you, spinner of my days

perch at the end of all threads and ways

at the end of all tales,

o my bird

o my tongue's confusion,

o my heaven, be with me even past the end

where the cold rocks scrape their tracks around the sun

where the radio coughs out its last in the icelight of stars

writing exercise number 16

2010-01-06T15:44:00.001-05:00

I will give back the armless engineer
I put in my pocket,
his moustaches curling in the dark,
over my lips, thick as secrets.
The songless egg I put my thumb through
The naked heads of the mice before they went under,
The cat I left in the tall grass, the ruined house

The bloody girl by the carnival stone
The envelope of money behind the bar
The purse left behind in a phonebooth

every broken window, every brick
every dumpster fire, every kicked mailbox
every candy bar, every book, every breath
blood daisies, gravestone roses, concrete saints
the furniture of churches
how many pounds of salt?
How many hours of your good heart pumping?
Your voice on a wire
This book of lead, these millstone promises
This broken lock.

I should have cut off my hands.
filled my lungs with coals
should have stitched a barrel of stones in my belly
and drank from cold deep water,

I want
a vinegar-scrubbed plate of a heart,
White linen on a laundry cart, my angel-collar
Boiled in starch, I want warm snow,
Cold fire,
Crumbless time, with hospital corners,
Bleached history, and a forever of clocks
To give to you

Jehan de Mandeville,returned from the East orders his affairs

2009-12-02T13:30:00.003-05:00

On Michaelmas day, when the divil fell from heaven, we took to the sea and it was a black going, and long ways we came at last to the holy land, under letters from the Sultan, I saw the blood stained rock, and going further then we came to the sea of Ind, where adamant stones bristle with the masts of ships and iron, and going on, went through that valley where the head of the devil stands, and saw the heaps of gold and murdered men and touched them not, and came round at last to the kingdom of Prester John.
And what telling is there of that black king, and the wonders and terrors of his land? How they honored their dead, throwing gobbets of flesh to the vultures and called them angels, come to take them to heaven, and drank toasts to their fathers from the brimming bowl of their skulls, and yet marched the cross before them into battle, and how I kissed the yellow robes of the patriarch of St. Thomas the doubter. In the north of that land there is a wall of steel, set by Alexander, who they call Dulkannon, to bind Gog and Magog, till such time as the earth shall cast it asunder, and beyond that end we could not travel. In Tartary I drank once, from a well they said could keep a man from death, but now, in my own country, swollen with gout and wonders, I await the opening of that other door, that other angel, blacker than buzzards against the sun, wait departure for that other kingdom, that other king.

Writing exercise number 15

2009-09-03T13:42:00.003-04:00

On the night you died there were no apples worth stealing
all your mother’s liquor bottles woke in their sleep,
every bed in every ward they ever put you in slipped out of its sheets.
Lights came on in the windows of a half a dozen burned down houses,
and you could hear the soft ping of a baseball bat
thumping mailboxes down a gravel road,.

The trains lowed on the crossing,
the storm sewers clotted with cats.
the trailer rusted on its axles.

You were alone when you went,
no one to catch your tossed bag of clothes
comic books, bullets and baseball cards.
no accomplice to boost you in the window,
to carry the gasoline,
to wear your jacket when the man with the gun came,
no one to ride your stolen bike

fire ate the rooftops, kicked in the windows.
A white dog licked blood from a carnival mirror
Green cubes of safety glass sank in the mud

poetry

2009-07-09T16:55:00.000-04:00

"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

H.L. Mencken, on Warren G. Harding's inaugural address.

held in the outstretched hands of plaster saints

2009-06-29T07:20:00.004-04:00

There is a kind of grace
in survival, in mornings
after, my mother's white Lincoln stopped spinning
in the intersection
the wheels on my Father's old Buick gripping road
again after rain
the averted fall from a willow over rusty metal,the skinned knee
the nail driven through the foot sure enough, but missing
any nerves or veins
the serial miracles of breath

it is morning, she is sleeping
Hank the dog is nosing through the wet grass
of the parkway
the expectancy of monday's six am
is still silent and waiting

and there is joy.

there is joy in monday morning
a tumble of laundry, half a cup of cheap coffee
and fluorescent light,
ratcheting up the first climb
of a wooden coaster of duty and day
joy in bandaged hands and traffic

joy in these five dreams in a silent house
put behind you like a good wind, like
the sun at your back, like everything
worth defending, like
the steering wheel in your chest
and someone's azaleas utterly ruined
cold milk and loose change
rattling in the backseat
a single shoe on the side of a highway
waking up alive, again

writing exercise 13

2009-06-16T17:50:00.002-04:00

In the long silences, your moon-pulled tongue
Crashes against your teeth, salt , water and,
Unsaid words schooling in your rib’s reef
your boneless heart , eight armed
picking locks in a shipwreck

hot sharks in your blood, circling in the white
fall of the wave in your eye, remoras of regret
darting in their open mouths, the ceaseless circle,
the fins gliding below your skin.

Here things drift down, my words like
Wineglasses, like amphorae,
Unopened in the dark

“There is a winged-woman kneeling in the corner of the room."

2009-06-15T16:51:00.001-04:00

her stone eyes steady on the opposite wall
the light stubbornly refuses to turn to gold
the lapis sky is what it is

granite feathers ache for a basalt heaven
for a dented golden sun,
she is no caryatid to hold the roof up,
no ornament for treetop or creche
she is no herald and does not speak

still I petition her with joss sticks and candlewax
heap flowers and fruit in her open palms
sticky with juice and flies, unbending and sad

I have chalked your name on the stone

here is the hour in heaven of your moving
here is the throne, the power and dominion
of your order, here is your name writ in
a script of men long dead, your watchtower,
your wheel

in a tongue of books, here is your name
a supplication to your face,your hands
immobile and impassive,
bereft lover,
last lonely guardian
the thin note of your song,
echoes in a garden gone to weeds,
across the black and white tiles
of an empty house

you last lonely angel that never fell

writing exercise number 12

the mother of knives

2009-05-13T00:20:00.002-04:00

has a flashing tongue
of cutpurse silver, her
throat is a well, the kiss of sugar

she is garlanded in such terrible roses
as are the heads of men
such flowers bloodbloom their way across her
lilywhite and corpseblue,
bowls of snow and birdsong
where her children drink

terrible terrible terrible
is she in her wrath, a storm of razors
threnody of locusts and howl of dogs
a wineglass on the stones

the lesser ship of the moon at her feet
the oars of the dead scraping on the paper sky
the orbit of the sun's black ink
a labrynth of nested spheres and fire
words from the broken book
the cracked throat's song
cannot trace her name
in this drapery of dust
this house of silence

she is the star's needle and bible black
she has birthed the day
over the rim of the world
and grinds the head of a snake
with clocks for scales

she breaths the milk breath
of the earth like a cat, she
does not know

how fair she is, her smile
a door in an alabaster house

of boys:

2009-04-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

“You are about 10 feet above the ground nestled among some large branches.
The nearest branch above you is beyond your reach
Beside you on the branch is a small bird’s nest
In the bird’s nest is a large egg encrusted with precious jewels, apparently scavenged by a childless songbird. The egg is covered with fine gold inlay, and ornamented with lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl. Unlike most eggs, this one is hinged and closed with a delicate looking clasp. the egg appears extremely fragile”

From Zork I : The great underground empire

The ground is riddled with secret crypts
With doors that are unmarked
The forest beyond this point is impenetrable, the doors
Of the house are boarded
There does not appear to be a way
It is dark

And this is the point in the story
In which you must find
The matches and the candle,
Find out the monster repellant does not work

Ladies, we have had such practice at this
Learning to be monsters
Pulling rubber faces

Every pointed stick
Is a gun, or a sword,
Is a tool, a lash, a switch

and we have killed
each other, over and over again
taking turns with the armband, the stiff armed salute
the machinery of war

every fort is a prison we ward over ourselves, every
patch of woods is a kingdom of natives
to be beaten into submission
and made to kiss the cross

the game is boring, the game
must have a winner
the game must have a king
if it means me must take turns as the enemy

eggs are for hurling, are grenades
and stinkbombs, a cat is for catching
a dog is to kick

here you are, in our story
and what are we to do with you
it is dark, and you
appear to be fragile

Warning:

2009-04-28T13:38:00.001-04:00

When you play
This record backwards,
Use a feather from one of
Heaven’s captains as a needle, spin
It back, by hand
And let your mouth be a gramophone horn.

Do not operate heavy machinery
Do not operate on
A willing patient, even to graft wings
Onto his back, because of
The sun
This record will not withstand high temperatures
Or harsh language

There is no resemblance in this
To the trapped loop of voice
In sticky tape and rust,
Or in a row of lightbulbs
On, or off

This is the inscription in the tablet of stone
This is the tablet of law
Keep it in a box with kissing brass angels
For handles
Wear rubber shoes
When you carry it

The management is not responsible
For incorrect use.
The management is not responsible

If you should play this record
From tinny portable platter spinner
Strapped to the roof of an old jeep
And drive around the city walls
And if you should happen
To see the walls fall
Into the dust
The management is not responsible
For incorrect use, if upon playing this record

you should find your housepets
Becoming angels
The walls of your house crumbling
A mouth of flames in your barbecue pit

The management is not responsible

If you should quit your job, your body
And ride the dustmotes toward
some overwhelming answer,
some checkered flag

the management is not responsible

There is a song

2009-04-28T13:26:00.001-04:00

In the throats of fish
In the whirlpool .
They have learned it
From the performing bear
In the barrel, from the lost
Seagulls
With their shouts
They tell of
a lake that does not end,
of the place the world
drops over the edge of itself

there is a song in the throats of fish
they have learned
from girls drunk on hopelessness
and novels, from swimmers trapped under stones
it is a color of blue, a thrash of bubbles
a hymn to dirt and cut grass

there is a song that the fish have for themselves
it is called heron, or hook
it is about a jab, and a bright place, after

the fish have eyes like cold stones
they are knit from dimes
their fleshless lips
cannot sing

3

2009-04-25T23:30:00.002-04:00

3
and on the third day
jack swopped some flour
for a fresh caught rabbit
and he skinned him and
set him stewin

and a scrawny old cat come up
and jack throwed her a bit of rabbit
while he waited for the moon
to drag somethin out the grave

and the cat come
to where the rabbit was stewin
and she say"sop doll"
and go to dip her baw in the broth

and jack hollers
"you sop your doll in my stew
and i'll cut that paw clean off"
and then he see a ring of nine
catswith their eyes glowin
like foxfire sand the first cat say

"sop doll" again
and she grin her pointed teeth in the dark
and dip her paw in the broth

and jack whip out that silver jacknife
and cut her paw off
and throws the whole damn pot
in the corner, disgusted

and the cats run off
and that was the end of the third night

in the mornin the miller come round'
and check on jack,and he say his wife is feelin poorly

and jack go with him up to the house
and the wife is laidout under a blanket

and jack say "show me your hand"and she show him
"n t'other" says jack
and she show him the first again

and he whip off the blanket
and there is bloody stump

and in the mill, in a pot ofa rbbit stew lies a hand
with a silver ring on the finger

and the miller sayshe never knowe'd
she was a witch as coudl sour milk still in the cow
and sell the wind in a poke

and that the town was dyin
on countof her dealins with the devil
snd that she had wanted to sop her doll
to lay jack out
and shut the mill

but he figgered he'd meant it
when he said till death do us part
and he burnt down the mill
with them both inside it

which was a hell of a note, and left jack out of work anyways

2009-04-25T23:15:00.001-04:00

2.
so in the mornin'
the miller and his wife come round
ready to haul him outand bury him like the rest

and jack jump up and put his britches on

and all day he grinds
and when the dark come
he sets himself some chicory coffee to bile, and a hoecake in the fire
and he watch the moon come up
like a unhitched barge
and he waits

and up out the millpond
come a drowned gir
lwith mud in her hair
and her eyes white as a bankers shirt

she open her mouth
and little fish come out an cold water
'stead of a song

and then the restcome clamberin out the mud
old jenny was there,
whatthrew herself off the greenup bridge
cold and horrible as anything

and she come clawin at old jack
but he reached into his gunny sack
and pulled out
his busted old one string fiddleand played

and all them dead girls danced all night
and there were'nt nothin left
but puddles on the stone floor in the mornin
and a smell like a riverbottom
or rain

and that was the end of the second night

1

2009-04-25T22:58:00.002-04:00

it was after the mine fell in
jack set out a lookin for work
and willin to turn his hand
to just about anythin

when he come to that town
they'd boarded up the storefronts
and the bridge looked set to
fall in the river, on account of the rust

folks just standin in front of a gas station
and jack come up the road, lookin worse for it
asks where a feller c'n work for summat to eat
they all look down, like a bunch a hanged men
on invisible rope still finally one of em mumbles
aboutthe johnsin's flour mill

so up goes jack,and asks for work
at the milland the miller and his wife
give him a place to bed downin the mill,
and show him howto tend the wheel and mind the stone

and they tell how noone has lasted more than a day
and they brought the last one out on a board,
with his mouth all white frothand no spots in his eyes

so jack sets to grindin and weighs fair
and its comin on night
when an old man come off the hillcomes up,
with a lousy two buck grind,
gonna carry it backin a poke on a beat old mule

and the old man say he's sorry to come so late
but he needs to grind his crop
whihc aint nothin but a double barrow load anyways

so jacks sets the wheel a spinnin
and grinds up his wormy wheata
nd thanks him kindly

amnd the old man say
you are the first to do me right
and give jack a silver buckknife

that night, jack cooks up a soupbone and beans,
and the moon comes in through the hole in the roof

and in come a dead man with red hair and a broke neck
and then another just like him
and another
till the mill is plumb full
of wanderin boys that comelookin for work in hard times

jack says he saw john t albot there
,from up mcgoffey waybut that he dint say nothin

but jack sayscome share the fire boys
and the dead uns come round\
with eyes like dinnerplates
reflectin the moon and the fire
and teeth like broke-up mill gears

and they keep draggin their windin sheets
into the fireand burnin up,

and jack finally says
get out this mill, you damnfools
and they shuffle outliek a shift change at the mill
and that was the end of the first night

2009-04-20T23:44:00.001-04:00

i go, slow loping behind you
into sleep,you are a rabbit
and i all jack-scrambling hillbilly
hound all clumsy hurtle and slaver
you have darted to the hillsto the tall
grass and the flushed birds rise and escape
the mundane sour-grape hurtle of shot
you are the slow doe trembling
at the edge of the wood i the head-
lights scraping trees
i am a tangle of fenceline, of wire
i am the treeline of the hedgerow,
you the pheasant eating the rich
corn of dream
i the badger among the mewling kits,
the dog loose
with a rope and peg
around his neck

2009-04-20T23:36:00.001-04:00

past the cruising grounds,
where boys underwear and porn
hung in the trees
past the nests of liquor bottles and ashes
,the remains of night fishermen
the tall grass and police training grounds,
past the last tracks of four wheelers
on the river bottom mud
amid the saplings, the rotting catfish heads
the septic smell of the river and storm sewers

we'd smoke beneath the crumbling loading docks
victorian pumphouses brick facades, sun bleached plastic and tanglse of rope

in the morning, the fish leapt from the water
to eat dragonflies skimming low
the mist burning off the hills
weekday, schoolday sun glinting on golden cans of beer

2009-04-20T23:25:00.002-04:00

the ceiling hung down
in solemn tatters
of cotton-candy insulation
my dead relative stared out of a heavy glass covered photograph
a brown-glass chandelier rested on the yellow moulding carpeting,
lamps with golden grapes
a the burst couch,nests and beetles in the mattress ticking,
cold sowbugs and centipedes crawling among the papers
lay beside the burnt fireplace,the andiron and tongs rusting
dry aquariums gathered manuscripts of oak leaves
and golden straw fish mouldered in a hidden drawer, swollen shut

in a sprawl of old records
i hid behind the mirrored doors
a welt of blood running behind my knee
the sound of voices calling my name
outside the sodden door
smell of chicken feathers and dust
my eyes closed, wishing myself away

2009-04-20T23:17:00.001-04:00

in the attic of a farmhouse
that sits in the middle
of rotting outbuildings
brown eyed susans
rusting lead-gas cars
with dry-rotting uphosltery

there is an upright piano
with an out of tune high c
in the silence of that attic
are songs i carried on my back
there are cats,
that swarm throughthe rusting tractors,
the crates of junk
the barrels and cages and bones

there is a red linoleum floor
where i am forever dropping
a puzzle piece out an open window,
where i am stackinga chair atop another
atop a table to climb to the ceiling
a stone i am flipping over
where the black ants are running
away with their babies in their teeth

in winter, the ghosts of pigs
stare through the greasy windows
at a black handled phone
still under my name

2009-04-20T22:46:00.001-04:00

in the city of my birth
there is a window
in an old school-come-municipal courthouse
the light chases motes
across the yellowed surface of a filing cabinet
where a cutting of a houseplant
stretches white roots into a drinking glass
of murky water
a muddy slope of dike and concrete floodwall
holds back a river of spring rain
the hills are wetly verdant
on the kentucky side
visible through the window
and in the dark,
between manilla sheets

sits the paper that certifies
that iw as born alive, and acknowledged by my parents

somewhere, in the same building
are the records of my arrests
for public intoxication,
the nightsspent in the blue room
with stars cutout of the plywood
where drunks howl, sing or sleep,
the marriage certificates of old friends

i have been a poor son of this place
to flee its crumbling buildings
boarded storefronts
choosing diaspora over ruin

leaving friends and family to
die in the blue grip
of opiates,of cheap speed
the house of my childhood,

with itsindustrial carpeting and HUD-approved
metal handrails
it's boarded fireplace
still squats
in its narrow allotment of mud
like a headstone
over an empty plot

2009-04-19T23:01:00.002-04:00

dogwood and hawthorne robins
grow on ridgetops,
along the quilted seams of property lines,
the place that is not a place
dogwood is junk wood, good for nothing
but paper pulp
and an embarassment of fruitless flowers
that the hilbillies say come at easter ,
because the tree was cursed
to never grow large enough to crucify a man again
hawthorne grows in small stands on the hilltops,
black clusters of cruciform thorns
waiting to prove them wrong

the robins rest in their branches, their chests still spashed
with the blood they never touched, the thorns
waiting for a head to crown

2009-04-19T22:49:00.000-04:00

there is a crown of robins in your chest
when you sleep i hear them weaving old papers
and dry grass in your ribs
a tinderbox
your breath is a ragged banner,
a standard at the head of infantry
the blankets a mountain range
where you spit out a reel of stars and swallow them again
you speak an incantory language of dream
unknowable, and the small head of our baby
claims the space between your body and mine,
as it did when she grew,
when she was engendered there,
a hot spark in dry tinder
a flame in a bookstall,
a tiny open mouth in a nest

the first time i tasted your milk

2009-04-19T22:40:00.003-04:00

we had between us no children
as of yet,and you said to me
"i still have a little , always"
and squeezed your breast in your hand
till it beaded on your sweet brown nipple
and i tasted that tiniest drop of your mercy
that tasted like nothing, or like everything,
tasted of your skin and your scent
and of nothing the way a kiss tastes
i did not know that i would drinkyour milk mixed with blood
did not know the babies coming,
how you would teach me to drink
how you would become my bones

low low prices

2009-04-15T21:38:00.004-04:00

the escalator to the center of the earth
is just past housewares,
and behind the customer service desk
you can disregard the chain over the stairs,
and the "Caution! wet floor!" triangles

the first few flights are the same as our floor,
only with chained doors
after about fifteen floors , they have labels,

every three floors there is a restroom, every seven a waterfountain

the music keeps playing,
and the lights flickerin that never-quite dying
way that fluorescents have
i've callen maintenence at least thirty times: they feign ignorance

eventually it is darkand the music gets fainter
finally there is just the sound of the stairs
it is hard, in the dark to notice
when it finally opens up into the caves,
maybe you catch a cooler breeze or the scent of the bats
eventually, between flights, you no longer feel the linoleum,
there are a few floors with mud, or batshit then stone

there is a flutter of wings in the dark,
and then the walls start getting hotter,

then it's linoleum and lights and waterfountains again

some of the doors here are open though,
one is a library that is always on fire
another is the ashes of a church
there is a rainy ditch, a trashheap
stockpiles of rusting ammunition
rooms of lost things

frank, from menswearsays one of the rooms has an old plane in it
i myself have heard something roaring
behind one of the doors
that's as far down as anyone has been

we were hoping you could tell us
what the upstairs is like
you're the first customer we've ever had
that came from up there

with apologies to thomas disch, jorge luis borges and jean paul sartre

of fear

2009-04-14T18:40:00.001-04:00

A curio cabinet of nights
With our bed empty
An atlas of anxieties
Indexed in a library of silences
That unstitch our sheets

A scream, below the water
In a salted tub,
Hot sharks
Of your anger swarming from your throat
Blackbirds escaped from a piecrust, stealing noses

Here is the safe filled with water
Where we kept my honesty
A vault of mermaids in your ribcage
Drowned at last, and songless

Here are the unwashed dishes of my apologies
The empty bottles of your forgiveness
The skeletons tongue of our vows,
Writ in dust and the language of bones

Here is that house
With cold beds, a phone anvil
Here is the television hissing amnesia,
Silent cries from a baby’s mouth

Here I build a dollhouse of my terrors,
Filled with untenanted rooms
Run my fingers through the stone hair
Of a shoulderless statue
A throat filled with saws, with knives

Here is the swallowed song from behind the rusted teeth
An unwishing, and the way we wake
Like a swimmer greets the air

written in a workshop with thanks to the magically delicious ms Rachel Mckibbens

the horrible is commonplace

2009-04-13T18:27:00.000-04:00

Poor Mercy Brown, fresh in the grave
Was dragged out into the light
A rabbit grabbed by the heels
And kicking

She was still the ripe 19 year old farmgirl
When she was laid down with galloping consumption
Beside her mother and her sister
In Exeter Baptist churchyard
There was blood pooled wet in her heart

Her mother was a husk of dry leather
And her sister , too, a discarded shoe
In a wooden box
But Mercy Brown was radient in the dark
Her cheeks, a hectic bloom

For two months she had lain in the cold,
an unstruck match in a box
and Edwin, her brother
back from the dry climates to die
was sick

and the family and the village gathered round
looking for a marvel

surely only a bloodfat tick
would lay in the dark
and drink poor George Brown’s family down
surely there is something... unnatural

So in March, when the ground was soft
they pulled her from the dark
and found her turned over, a restless sleeper
her liver still filled with liquid blood

and in 1892, the year that Ellis Island opened
the year that General Electric was founded,
they cut out her heart
in the year that Edison patented the two-way telegraph,
they burned her heart to ashes
In the year of the birthday of Carnegie Steel
They fed the ashes of her burnt heart to her brother
Who died, regardless, two months later
Leaving George Brown alone

Later that year, a hidden lake burst from the side
Of a mountain, killing 200 holiday guests
The city of St Johns burned to the ground

And in Fall River, Massachussets
Poor Andrew Jackson and Abby Durfee Borden
were found, their heads burst like rotted pumpkins
and their bodies laid out
as if they were sleeping

this too, is an age of monsters

to the adopted son of minos

2009-04-13T15:19:00.000-04:00

When the cunning engineer built the gilded cow
your mother crawled inside,to fool the god's white bull,
and let her have her pleasure
did he foresee you,
your awkward crown
and the palace he would buildt o hide you in?

When you squatted
at the center of the maze
like a dull spider,among the bones and greaves,
inevitable
did you see your death
come strolling, unwinding thread behind?

And when he had taken
your life from you,
and left you in the center of that story
and began to ravel back the thread
did he see, tugging on the other ends

the woman avenged, and the children
thrown, bloody and dead in a heap
the dragons teeth that sown
sprouted armored men?

Did he see the them carving, even then his seat in hell?

the northern country

2009-04-08T23:27:00.001-04:00

the robins are starving in the thin snow
their blood splashed chests, a false fire
in the glass branches of trees

there is a river, that is falling,
over stone and ice,
that has been falling
since the stones ground flour
that now decorate unused parks
and an empty museum, with a gift shop

each day, i sit in half-burned down factory
where 36 men burned to death
beetled on the edge of the cliff

from the empty office
across the hall
the water is steady as time,
as the water that carried a trained bear
over the falls in a barrel,
that killed Sam Patch the daredevil, in 1829

the engines that ran the streetcars
rust in a disused bar's basement
and the river, indifferent
to living and dead

drops through the broken wheelhouse
riming the bones of abandoned scaffolding with ice
this is a brutal country,
still half wild
beneath suburban streets.

the old hotels and whorehouses
keep their secrets
masquerading as chain resteraunts,
as boarded storefronts

at night, with my hound howling
at the swollen udders of the moon
trying to hang himself with his leash
we chase deer across the frozen lawns

the difference between hell and purgatory is that purgatory has an end

2009-04-07T22:38:00.004-04:00

"We haue also with vs in hell a ladder, reaching of an exceeding height, as though it would touch the heauens, on which the damned ascend to seeke the blessing of God; but through their infidelitie, when they are at the very highest degree, they fall downe againe into their former miseries,"
Mephistophilis to Faust the english faustbook'

The kingdoms of hell are manifold,
Lacus mortis, the lake of death
that sterile mirror
with a namesake on the face of the barren moon
Gehenna, the smouldering trashheap of Jerusalem,

there are the kingdoms of lost things,
the sea of shipwrecks,
the tumbled confusionof the world unbuilt,
the house of broken promises

kings once carved in the walls of their tombs
"let me not walk with my head downward
eating feces in the land of the dead"
raised altars that they might not thirst in that place

and what will you do, when you come?
oathbreaker, devourer of hearts,
prideful liar and despoiler of innocence?
will you find your house of panderers,
the indolent aids in your self devouring sideshow,
the flattering audience to your atrocities?
will you drag the hollow idol of your pride
to that house, too?

there is a city, on the shore of a lake,
surrounded by marsh
if there is enough liquor
perhaps you will not notice
where you are

The ballad of Tamlin

2009-04-06T13:00:00.000-04:00

I forbid you, maidens all
That wear gold in your hair
To come and go by the woods of Carterhaugh
For fell Tamlin dwells there

For none my go by those woods so deep
But leave to him a pledge
A pledge-ring or mantle they cannot keep
Nor their maidenheads

Janet ties a mantle green
A bit above her knees
With braided hair
And a stolen mare
Away. away to woods goes she

And when she came to the heart of the wood
Beside the well, below the night
She found in the briar a two-headed rose
And pulled with all her might

And then his rusted armor rose
From beside the starry well
With a tangle of briars and starlight
And wind from the pits of hell

Says Tamlin
“why do you pull the rose,
Or break and crush the wand
Why come you to the heart of the wood,
Without my command?”

Say Janet
“Carterhaugh wood it is my own
My father gave it me
I’ll come and go” she said
“ and ask no leave of thee”

Janet ties a mantle green
A bit above her knee
With star-loose hair
A fattened mare
To her father’s house goes she

Four and twenty maidens fair
Danced her welcome ball
And into the hall came Janet
The flower of them all

And out spoke her father broken and grey
And brought to the house his shame
He shouts “you see the swollen mare,
Who shall bear the blame?

Says Janet
“hold your tongue, you greybeard fool
An ill death may you die
I’ll lay me down where I please
This child is none of thine

And if I go with child
Myself shall bear the blame
Their not a knight in all your hall
Shall have the babies name

For my love was an earthly knight
And now’s an elfin grey
I would not give my own true love
For any lord you have

He rides a steed of storms
Much faster than the wind
shod with the silver moon before
The sun’s own gold behind

Janet ties her mantle green
A bit above her knee
And braids her hair,
Milkwhite and fair
Away to the heart of the wood goes she

And beside the well of stars
The briar in the wood
From the darkbelow he rose
And beside young Janet stood

Says Tamlin
Why pull you the two headed rose
Among this grove so old and green
Why have you a moonbright knife to kill
The bonny babe we got us between?

Says Janet
“tell me Tamlin my love,
How came you here to dwell?”
Says Tamlin
The queen of air and darkness
Caught me, when from my horse I fell
And carried me off in the wood and the briar
And into the hill to dwell

And pleasant is the fairy land,
But horrors are to tell
For at the end of seven years
They pay the tithe to hell
And I am fair, and full of flesh
And fear it is myself

But the night is hallows eve
And tomorrow hallowday
And win me away from the wood you must
And we shall be away

For at the knell of midnight
The host of fair folk ride
And if you love me truly
At Miles cross you will bide

My right hand will be gloved,
And bare will be my left
My helmet open to the night wind
And I’ll ride silent among the rest

First let pass the horses black
Then let pass the horses brown
And run you to the milkwhite steed
And pull the rider down

They will turn me in your arms
Into a foul and hissing snake
But hold me tight and fear not
I am your baby’s father

And they will turn me in your arms
To a bear so grim, and a lion bold
But hold me tight and fear not
And you will love your child

And they will turn me in your arms
To a burning brand of iron
Hold me tight and fear not
No harm I’ll do to you

And when I am a burning coal
In your hand an in your heart
Cover me over with milk
And throw me in the well

And then I’ll be your own true love
And seem a naked knight
And cloak me in your mantle green
and keep me out of sight

cold and dark was the night
and eerie was the way
when Janet came in her mantle green
and at miles cross did stay

and in the mirk at the midnight hour
she heard strange trumpets sing
and she was as glad at that unholy din
as any earthly thing

and past went the knights on the night-black steeds
and past the earthly brown
and she ran to corpsewhite, lilywhite horse
and pulled the rider down

and changed he then to snake
and a bear and lion bold
and changed he then to a
burning brand
till the well did make him cold

and naked as a baby
in green she shrouded him
and stood at miles cross naked
and trembling stood Tamlin

and the queen of air and darkness
and all her troop cried out
but Janet held her husband fast
as circled they about

‘had I known, Tamlin, “spoke the queen
“what tonight I would see
I would have taken your two grey eyes
And set them in a rowan tree”

“Had I known, Tamlin” she said
What tonight I would see
A heart of stone would have been your prize
And honor in my company

based upon Child Ballad #39A,

In the menagerie, in the mud

2009-04-05T23:56:00.000-04:00

we are greeted by the rhinoceros,
tapping horns over a mouthful of hay

there is a branchless tree filled with tires and windchimes,
a punching bag. Little birds hop
in the stagnant water that fills their footprints

the children mill around your feet,
our boy peering out through a shark's mouth
our girl teetering atop this newly borrowed body

they face each other like railcars
in collision, like stormclouds or sumo wrestlers
in the mud

leather behemoths, creaking, the delicate hair of their ears
like pennants in the slightest breeze, the long hard slope of their foreheads
bony as triceratops

and you, and I, and our half healed scars
walk together
and the little birds sing at our feet

2009-04-03T23:44:00.001-04:00

the babies are in their beds
the dog is snoring
you do not forgive me
and are sleeping, a rigid knife
in the bed and the shiphouse
is moored to the front trees
you are gone, into sleep
today you have been a dying woman
you have given the beauty and mercy of your lies
to strangers and so given me this unforgiving truth
before sleep, the house I allow myself to think
we share, sleep is lonesome as a storm,
and the dreaming face you wear is not for me
is an imagined cancer for yourself
is imagined crimes in an imagined city
I will go and sleep beside the
blade of your silence, and chase you,
a keystone doctor herky-jerky with apologies,
my silent mouth spitting black and white locomotives
and mimed apologies, cards between scenes
in a script noone can read

Part the third: the father's creed

2009-04-03T09:05:00.008-04:00

toothed-wheel world unwinding

Hobbled gear in the engine of heaven.

See here,the secret library

beneath the pyramid

the spark plug embedded in stone

the clay jars filled with electricity and stale wine

here is the prophet of virginia beach

here is the fifth world

here is a jar filled with ashes

here is a stone calender stopwatch for humanity

silently ticking

here is a layer of black ash with bones beneath it
here is grease, and engines and steel

here is the map of the world-that-was,

the islands of the antarctic,the lost kingdoms

here is the map of the world-that-will-be

the tilted bowl of the lakes

spilling down, new york and los angeles

dreaming below the swollen ocean

here are saucers, buzz-sawing through the sky

the water teeming with lake monsters,

cryptozoological horrors and wonders

yeti and the hollow earth

in mass, say only this:

“lord I am not worthy to receive you

but only say the word and I shall be healed”

know this:the world will end,
the lakes will pour across
the center of america,
the cities are doomed
to devolve to beast-men,

to burn without ceasing

while planes drop from the sky like stunned birds

know this: I live here,

with my library of secrets,

my heart filled with monsters

on the lip of the lake,

the edge of the city

waiting on the word

waiting for an end