January‒March 2006)
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It’s All Solid Lines (January‒March 2006) 1/1/06 it’s all solid lines or fantastic waves, (the rope around my waist tightens, exasperating) . What are you? Light. They wrote another American Kiss-Off letter to me tonight. (Framed my head with the lights as we pass through Central Park in a taxi, East-side to West-side.) Wrote another Kiss-Off letter, American-style. Light. To me tonight. Claiming to know me better, and “Your services won’t be needed here anymore.” They tell me I’ve been irresponsible, been making the wrong kinds of noises around the office. “Bon voyage.” “See if you can find a better place to take it, you’ve got nowhere else to go.” Light. And what are you? Who are you? Are you there 1 | Complete: 2006-2009 pronouncing another preposterous recitation of selfhoods, speaking out loud into the chaos attending, the night perforated with trees and witnesses? You’re alone, except for the light light light light light. the end of the road stretches 100 yards ahead, clear enough for everyone to see. another valkyrie from a darker place hovers in the dry air, and is gesturing me toward the last barren peak past the final milestone glimmering off the asphalt̶ “you go this far and stop,” she says. the end of the road stretches 100 yards ahead, clear enough to make out the valkyrie carved in stone 2,000 feet up, mountain pass with clinging pines and this granite sculpture, made by unknown hands. we pass under its watch, into tunnel and through the peak itself, into light again on the other side, with road glimmering as it passes the final milestone 2 | Complete: 2006-2009 and we entered a new state. “you go this far and I watch you no further beyond this point.” . most American to speak in other language, to eat from other plates. 1/2 be a theorist, but be smart, first. think it through, player, idiot theory’s to blame for thoughtless risk and wasted deaths in your name. surprised yellow and red color, fresh from two-year-old apples, speaks to me that these fruits are the sweetest of all. they go into the garbage, along with the rest of what I cleaned 3 | Complete: 2006-2009 out of the fridge. not listening to anything real. birds up in that tree are telling it. call and comment ̶waiting clouds lick the sky. religion is a messy business, but somebody has to do it. psychic armor wouldn’t’ve saved the Count of Monte Cristo. 1/5 oh, look! visionary patriarchs nailing their left hands to the old temple doors. what you doing there? you old rascals! you’ve got it, see 4 | Complete: 2006-2009 the embryo of consciousness and pull back earth’s seedy skin̶ don’t need to go moving ever again. don’t meet your friends, your friends are visions! and they process, go in and out from the god’s stoop and inner sanctum, to the peace hidden under a willow in the garden, along the bridge, to the bank they come, and back, following a stroll in the order. and you scoundrel patriarchs, only stand, watching, one hand nailed to the temple door, their eyes latched to the other dimensions of their heart. 1/7 iPod Buds Cause Premature Deafness “best to use your ears while you can still hear,” 5 | Complete: 2006-2009 said the blind man on the circus merry-go-round. 1/8 a superstitious people I come from a superstitious people. (You said you wanted confession?) We believe in something̶ the demiurge, the created creator, the thing that moves among the people and creates thoughts for them. That’s what moves us forward, like a riderless wagon pulling us. Because of this, my people have been forbidden from throwing our curses down the lightshaft to Hell. For us, prophecy’s always a telescope: but people are scared by how things will turn out, so they didn’t want to look. But there was nothing alarming̶ you could see it all clearly through the lens. 6 | Complete: 2006-2009 For example, the Whore of Babylon visited us last night, she sat at the end of the bed, and told us stories until we fell asleep. No bad dreams. Did you expect something? What are you as we enter the chamber as though it were some holy place? Philosophy leaves the body when the clothes are all gone. Men have no philosophy without their underwear. What are you? “I have no philosophy at all.” “am I not the truth?” Snakes emerge from her open eye sockets. She bends down before the chacmool. She is a goddess. She is sacrifice. 7 | Complete: 2006-2009 The river swells down the cliff, through the trees. Bare feet on brown mud̶ no one to hear the ritual end. But here’s what comes out̶ we can’t stop being superstitious. I have in my back room a jar of jiminies, a slice of sarcophagus̶ try this remnant of the late Pharaoh’s last meal. tender, wouldn’t you say? . Damn you, Minneapolis! and your light-rail trains̶ how am I ever gonna get across Hiawatha? Longfellow Avenue: don’t think you’re not on the hook, too! . 8 | Complete: 2006-2009 1/9 Nostalgia makes point-to-point sales the most powerful market driver there is, as witnessed in the dream I had last night: CocaCola one-calorie̶ Slurpees, ten flavors̶ Metrosexual lads, greased-front sharpie haircuts and big-collar pale blue shirts, idiot O patterns̶ too big to take it all in̶ giggling, shouting. And girls are there, equivalent cool-but-not-cool, because conformist styles look different everywhere. They’re in the ground-floor department store space, congregated around this CocaCola bar that serves all the drinks you remember from your childhood. Are these people old enough to remember what they drank in their childhood? They don’t remember much at all. at least you become 9 | Complete: 2006-2009 a series of nonsequential digits on shredded paper, on the way to be recycled. sometime. goddamn. animals in circus cages. starlight over Albuquerque. quiet oaks and stars for foxes. I wouldn’t read your poem. I wouldn’t read like my poem like my poem. I wouldn’t like to read your poem like your poem like your poem. I wish it sounded like my poem like my poem like my poem. I wish you could read it like my read it like wish it like write it like my poem like my poem. I wouldn’t read it like you read it like you read it like you read. I wish you would read it like my wish it like write it like read it like my poem like my poem. I wouldn’t like it like your poem like your poem read it like read it like wish it like write it. I wish you could read it like 10 | Complete: 2006-2009 wish you would read it like think you should write it like my poem like my poem like my. Cute and aimless and intelligent (and scared) the locked arena’s your only outlet, with all those safe audience members politely clapping their praise. Poseur style and surface affect, preliminary to the avalache of rock & ash will soon bury̶ as time tends to̶all things. the tone always fades the wind picks up you can hear birds and children from here. sun has its own feelings. this isn’t your exile. this isn’t your messiah. go back to worshiping sticks & idols̶ you’re children, you’re children, you’re not the inheritors here. this is not your war. 11 | Complete: 2006-2009 . “she wants every poem to sound like hers” Elizabeth Bishop kissed Hitler, and after she did it, a thought came to her: when the lips come together order restored to us makes the lesser races see (once and for all) that the breath of life is in order, not in strife. he scores with a losing proposition. listen to that man, kids: he’s the new voice, that’s the truth he’s telling. love it or pass on by, that’s what he’s got for sale today. 1/13 12 | Complete: 2006-2009 crash on the lonely NV highway, north of an outsider art enclave̶jazz on the portable radio there, which was thrown clear of the burning car. 1/14 “plenty to see here̶don’t stop gawkin” . the sweetest chicken soup is made with rotten vegetables. waterproof gloves fallen on the linoleum kitchen floor. and look! the northern lights over the last passing clouds! . more important are the thresholds when the light fades out, and you have so many pens you don’t have any room to take notes. looking at the face of the man I ate for dinner the other night, now 13 | Complete: 2006-2009 floating in the toilet bowl, I wonder: did that chump ever dream of cannibals? . life’s just not as precious as people claim̶ someone’s dying pretty much all the time. eyes close, the grave widens, too many mistakes. the problem is, we keep evolving, except for the simple truth: that we so easily break. 1/15 I am a captive I am a captive I am a captive. The wind on wind on molecule, on becoming empty and flushed full, on a captive strain a touching soul, full out of potential captive to chance. 14 | Complete: 2006-2009 1/16 on the disjunct, on the outward knowing a sensation of escape comes to fill approaches to this foothill fortress, the orchards damp with rain, sparkling other places beckon with newness as the ground dries̶ go out, send a note to the warden that the bars were made only of styrofoam, and you had only to press and you took flight.