the 90-year-old blind man will blink and so save the Spiral Jetty, the flour sack and larder will make room and so save Laura Ingalls, the untiddlywinked will fall off the wall and so serve Yoko and John omelets in bed, the plumby ingénues will jangle their car keys and so save Tinkerbell her tubes tied, digression will wear a chastity belt and still deliver virginal births like sharks, the doctoress will refasten the eye to the aye and so save us from Hammurabi, the shrink wrap will serrate cleanly and so preserve our unwanted consumptions, the pharmaceutical conglomorate will find its feet in concrete and so catapult to extinction, Angel Corella will finish a triple reveltade en battu on one knee and so send the dolphins in sun-glinted arches over fishing lines, the postman will deliver a letter

written by a human hand that wrapped its flesh and tendons and bones around the cylindrical length of an actual object dispensing ink to the individual cadence of a particular human’s muscular pressure and with refined twisting and flexion of that human’s wrist scripted letters into words into sentences as dictated by thoughts formed first in the human’s brain, and then having transferred the subtlety of these human ideas on the actual paper surface, slipped the letter in an actual envelope wet by the human saliva of (maybe it would be his) human tongue. all this that it might give you recess from your weeping pores, you who are a Styrofoam cup with every millimeter riddled to a wafer, except, in the end, more compostable.

Written in 2003

1.      numbered sheep hurdle the chain link
          like lemmings, where one goes all follow to extinction.
2.      deductively, celestial fragments propelled
          through Newtonian forward,
          inertia thrusting the eons in motion.
3.      in the unidirectional hollow of the sockets
          eyes converge on the sagittal plane—
          an arena for symmetrical limbs
          to abduct, adduct, pronate, and supinate,
          the synovial fluid suspending the refinement
          of articulation.

the difficulty in daily center practice—
Pẽna would have us retrograde the petit allegro exactly.
more thorough than reversal:
           an inverse of momentum,
           the body’s instinctual onward,
           inherent mental sequencing;
yet there the task was—
unmake.

[a time of day]
each cloud a modification descended
from Genovesa, Rabida, Santiago, Isabela, Santa Fe,
Bartholomew, Fernandina, San Cristobal, Santa Cruz,
South Plaza, North Seymour, Floreana, Daphne—
between which staggered beacons
slip through if only to illuminate pine trees
like sticklers on the socks
of a lone expeditioner.

[in the aging hours]
King Herod scooping out the tongues of Israelites,
Beckman’s paintings peopled with the nameless
and exposed, whose last tangible link
to a world that might cup a semblance of reason in its spherical halves,
is amputated brutally.

[…]
You are a jerk. You who are also me. Annoyed with
the DVD stuck on pause, but be damned if you’ll
fuss with such tryingly small remote buttons.
A drink in the hand tepidly attempts to soldier you through
the thrall of being folded in the night—an egg yolk
held, cradled, and gently smothered there.

                 Don’cha know when you’re sad as all that
                 no one loves you?
                                         —song lyric from Little Miss Broadway,
                                         1938, starring Shirley Temple

‘dees tattered titters would speak but for a tongue
mouthing amen to enemies for whose monks’ robes I have torn off
the back of a holy man thinking it simony, cinnamon-shimmery scurries of a roach
to the dregs of the dressing room years

brewing blisters that mostly burst still in the shoe, and maybe
manymelodiousmountainsofmoney
could reimagine with difficulty a less tolerant foliage of utterances eroded and adoring
the foot crumpled like a simian’s paw

I am not through, I am not through, Daddy
                payin’ and someday regrettin’
                my buckshot dinners, the crumbs nursed off my greasy “neeners”, the britches
                stretched over my fattened fenders
                dishin’ out and someday put out
                by your new release foreign movie rentals, your organic soup and lentils,
                the cost of having just more than essentials

insufferable sweet cinema taint of a daddy, I am stuck through, I am stuck through
wallflower ass adding one more sweat-stain to the bench fabric
hips like flint sharpened would still grapple but for a handhold anibaptismal
the whole rosebush in a bouquet, glitter-glue dewdrops
refracting the sparkle of one tear that glides a path of scoliosis skewed and

if by happenstance when pulling off the damp shoe
a stinging pocket of fluid still held
I’d loose the flesh like a thermos cap
whatever crudely seeped out escaped with a faint stink of tune
there she is, just a few toenails lighter
indeed with enough tulle for a tutu

as if the silkworms themselves
                         pull the most frail threads, shirring the face to replete

and chewed nail stubs waft and wither,
                         a bouquet of pouch-like petals ragged by heat

as if our startled bird outbursts
             are illustrated only as intricately stark woodblocks
                         of the plague doctor’s mask

                         beak tight as a coffin
                         bead drop eyes feral and lustered

to intently and with caution track the green, wilting stalk of a story

             a porously sticky stem
                         our hands regret reaching to pluck

             a thinning, sugar-veined stem that fades down the generations
                         like a national past-time

to hold it, almost weightless

             is to smear the sheen of meaning
                         displace the chrome plate of pattern-finding

and to mull a scrap of gold-leaf like a rosary

             is a yawn towards the parabolic sense of never quite arriving

this is a story in which the darkling pond puffs up its thick reeds.
time to think, if only
to think of the orchid’s sweetie-pie lips
sipping in time with the vermin-tail.

was that this evening? did that never happen?

there is godot and also godard.
a film in which we skipper
out from the swampy lense,
hoist ourselves up

as lambs, nestle in
to the impossible mold of obligation
our breath makes us nuisance to,
as we love family, despite the inconvenience.

Cauldron of Newton’s law goes without saying, as all are subject,
eye of newt (also goes without saying),
New York and the apple of my eye,
the New Testament, which goes well with red wine, also a leaf turning over
and the whole ballgame.
Not me, as I am the old dog, and you are off turning new tricks,
though I have promised every year to ring out the old, and wear in the new jeans,
even if it takes a coat hanger and severe camel toe.
Of course, I am a woman and therefore always thinking, “I just knew it! That bastard!”
If you were wondering,
I knew the ropes because of their delightful chafing, whereas
that new car smell is an air freshener made for the flickr accounts of newlyweds,
so I will not be nuking myself with such potion, as yet.
Once, though, I was the new kid on the block,
and, by God, I had it, that is, the right stuff.
It’s why the moon periodically causes me to howl most vehemently in my gin,
and snow turns the earth into something like it, or the most we can hope for,
though we should really only expect (most tentatively)
for neutrons to anchor all atoms,
and nuclei to center all cells housing our bodies.
At least Bob Newhart was well-loved.
On the other side of noon, newspapers became a nuisance because
they only had breaking news, none for healing,
which brings me to something blue and borrowed—
I discover the wind sometimes whispering, “What’s up her snood?” and to answer,
I’m not sure but maybe it has something to do with Gingrich Newtpants,
although I do feel, like, branded and spanked with it, that is, before he said,
“You must be exotically gnu at this.” Yes, America is that kind of World, bitches,
and perhaps nothing else is, under the sun,
but there is at least one whole universe outside the bounds of
that dying star, so don’t make me
recite all the alien states and cities to which I now pledge myself.
Don’t make me start a fresh brew,
when I always preferred your tea, tendered with milk and sugar,
delivered warmly into my hands.

our small hands obliged to
spread like starfish around the doorknob

the hinge wheezing acquiescence
lungs like leaky tanks in our chests

what seldom clings to the bridal nodes of memory
—snag of tissue paper on a gift corner—
impossibly lingers in its ionic charges,
flutters its moth-y untruths to the lush patina
of a canteen lamp

we waited just too long enough—the room is empty now
and underneath the wood floors and concrete foundation

is the muffled rumbling of tectonic feuds
the earth’s igneous flesh catching and scabbing

with something called forgiveness

1. All drift is vain. What you snatch is the sift and sag of your own breasts on your belly and the sweat that catches there like reverse pockets.

2. But here is the lawyer with a pencil and his wedding ring swinging to and fro. “See how hard it is to make a prick?”

3. The rapier snickers. Rebuttal: “There is a thing that slices the night into fat, dark portions. There is a measuring stick short and thick in the haunches. There is a thrust of a thing we vaguely admire. There is the mouth puckering like a wound, and the wound jabbering some bloody nonsense.”

4. All thrift is plain Jane, plangent Hemingway, osteoporosis of the Calliope. That is how he proves she’s merely a whore with regret.

5. In a written statement: “On my iPod I was playing that song that goes, ‘Last month was May, yeah. This month is June. Next month is July, sweet baby, and August comes after only you.’ I saw that bees have always enjoyed colors with a vibrancy we can’t even contemplate.”

6. A little grift is inane. You should have gone to self-defense class, learned the Vagina Wiggle.

Togas swish-swashing, testacles like simians swingin’,
they swagger about the tripods of the banquet halls
for a few hours of work, then out in the streets
to sputter through the vinegar of their wine, bust some lines about
similarly strung out hobos like Icarus—

how his mama was barking jokes in the hair salon
while his hoarder of a daddy mashed together wings
           from burnt perm papers, used hair curlers, canned earwax.

Story of a son so built up in his head
it was all destroyed—
           down to last,
                              fried,
                                        styrofoam core.

The venerable poets would fill this line with something ‘bout hubris.
The venerable poets will steal the stone lions
           right off your patio in the dead-hot of night,
those darling lambs by the brook
           softly gnawing dry clumps of dirt,
put ‘em in a cage ‘n watch who battles it out for the blue-ribbon top.
                                                           Take this,
they’ll shake ass just to more generously feel
           the bounding heartpipes babble-burble
down to the dribbling, do-nothing syllable of crotch.

It sure ain’t rocket science. Gods, there must be
a thousand names for the way the jambox speakers sizzle
           and shriek in this heat.
We passed, like, 17 McDonald’s on our way
           to this sweating patch of grass in the park,
and you still act like I’m talking Chinese.
Honey, I ain’t asking you to fucking finance the next
           brooding boozer of our internally infernal generation.

We’re gonna sit here in the direct sun
and count every shimmering leaf on the bush
glistening of its own sweet, girlie sugar. That is some sweetness,
some song that will sting the most beautiful, the most poor.