Interlude

From Maggie Nelson's latest book, Bluets:

67. A male satin bowerbird would not have left it there. A male satin bowerbird would have tottered with it in his beak over to his bower, or his "trysting place," as some field guides put it, which he spends weeks adorning with blue objects in order to lure a female. Not only does the bowerbird collect and arrange blue objects—bus tickets, cicada wings, blue flowers, bottle caps, blue feathers plucked off smaller birds he kills, if he must, to get their plumage—but he also paints his bower with juices from blue fruits, using the frayed end of a twig as a paintbrush. He builds competitively, stealing treasures from other birds, sometimes trashing their bowers entirely.

Emergency Exits

I ran face first into last summer 
while sorting out 
a repeat of last spring
in line for lunch,
for a concoction conjured 
to relieve the humid boredoms
designed in spite
of distaste for (melo)drama—the kind now
tugging at my leg
in prophetic visions starring
bill murray and an alarm
clock that sets off
cold sweats and forethought—excuses 
to get out of this pollinated
mess of new leaves
grown in animal heat.
and considering lust lacks a conscience for us
it is fitting I’ve already cooled off
and moved on.

Good Reasons For Leaving

there are few distances
          that can’t be breached
today, old longing memories
          are usurped electronically
by trickles of youth’s data
          turned to streams
reunions become clicks hello
          the update’s nice
          but could you all
          go back to when
you regularly ignored me?

Cataracts

It may almost be better to go on half blind
and wander aimless away from the gaze
of the shepherding legions who are paid to mind
out of coffers opaque and untraceable when
all the interested parties appear intertwined

in mahogany smoke rooms of shadowy men,
the popular figments that time has refined
as the image of gilt, ostentatious display.
Relief at the ease of displacing our sins
onto secretive men with nefarious ways

has the helpful effect of making a pen
out of what was a hive. And our playful signs
become empty rituals for passing the days
averse to the risks taken out on the limbs
and accepting of what’s seen with atrophied eyes.

Untitled (Static Fragments #2)

These dead eyes, this blank stare
Do not lie; they are mirrors,
Reflections in bulletproof windows
for you.

Little narcissists take in,
But they don’t project or give
So don’t forget when you gaze
into cold,

Sodden nothings, those
Unflinching pupils with irises glazed
It is you, that is your own fear

Watching you reach toward this
Pair of fogged, bloodshot jade
In time to remember it’s me
who’s awake.

November

you make it so hot here,
i sit back and sweat. let’s
not let go, our eyes
prisms we'll rust together
in pieces to get out
the salts of raw thighs.

i taste your oils—
please, savor the steam
condensing on walls
where windows thrown wide
it smells of lighter fluid,
you smell like wine.

if there are traces left
later I’ll play detective
just for a last taste of
any lingering suggestion
before the whiteboard’s erased
of incriminating links
just to make future space for
your invisible inks.
                                   let’s
hope teacher knows
to draft fresh air inside
lest the students get wind
and melt in their hides,
from steam that we made
with windows thrown wide;
that spyglass made fire,
you still smell like wine.

Dreams of Better Jobs

you were in need
of tiny arms
embedded in a chain
of subterranean gears.
he’d been caught
drinking straight
chlorophyll again
on an overcast day
like a ring of reflective puddles.
and too many
podiatrists were
receiving office calls
for anyone to recognize
the ordinary
nature of their shift
in gait.
              it’s all
the heavy lifting
you’ve done and I
can understand
the adrenaline rush helps
but maybe, just
maybe, you should
let the kid learn
his own tune. sweeping
the floor is american
              zen.

(Static Fragments) #3

I have days
when my field of vision jerks
and shifts. That blind spot
in the middle
that the brain makes
up? It’s always fine
while the rest, the processed
input shatters.

One time
I thought all the light
fixtures loosed toward
the floor. Another day
an entire room
jolts to the left.
I just stand there.

Now

Then..., what of it?
It just passed, is over, is always
The future, is six months from
Used to be flying cars and fear of
One-world government
Is a fractured nuclear age, is the deli coffee
I drink, café-outpriced
Makes me feel like
An old man of twenty-seven
...elderly adolescent.
It matters if I do or do not
For anyone can try anything.
I'm done
For...

Aspirin For An Aching River

if there is feeling more pronounced I must
         know it
for now it evades and, frankly,
         I doubt
it’s my most fulfilling enterprise
to gain from the plenty of persons near
and yet the right person never near
still I sit alone to read, reclined
as blood drains out my lifted legs
         ‘til I can’t stand
and tea goes cold
though when the nerves return
reheat the kettle without stumbling and drink
to the sirens outside
my window always open
even in dead of winter,
needing to feel that chill breeze
         on my feet

Untitled (Static Fragments part VI)

I recognize you in the print,
framed and boxed and closeted
to hang unbecoming whispers,

it was always –who?- so it sits
back boxed and closeted. You’re not
really there, you’re behind, but

I know what went on along
the paths through the reeds and sea
oat and sumac. How many burned

out carcasses did we count
for posterity; thieves’ getaway
landfill sculpted from another

man’s sunken treasure. Robert
Moses never met a golden calf he could
not leave his name upon but this

brackish arm meandering a warm
November? It’s a long bus ride and
a longer hoof-it to find your way out

there so no, I’ve yet to make it back.

There Were Warnings

we gnash with a mouthful of broken teeth; eat
each other whole. bellies with no room
for remorse; not instinct, but ingrained, inbred

crushed like statuary amidst unhewn stone,
the gap between what marks the spectrum’s ends.
mottled bleedings inhabit muddied pictures,

otherwise straight lines, any definitive scratched
into lenses; these cameras covered red swirled
on hands, on faces, on everyone: pray

and find solace in the end of the world if
this empire crumbles surely it is the last
and greatest

Bureaucrat As Religious Scribe

it’s an expressionless face in a
three-walled hole of reflection

druids believed that
writing compromised secret

mass long lost to desire,
unresponsive as trained

and memory; for all their work,
only Roman accounts of them

that’s how I imagine him
definitely a him

survived, whatever that’s worth
when I write, my memory

he, who will pass on the orders
to begin the immolation

failed; will the only traces
in fifteen hundred years

any traces of us that we don’t
keep ourselves, gone

of any of this come
back to light as the hand

emperors never light the fire
it would be unconscionable

cuffed stiffly at the desk
producing reports and documentary

but the ashes on an unthinking
lackey’s smooth fingers

satisfied, however, so when the works
of the eternal volunteer elapse

grant a pass in the eyes
of the gods, the state, enduring

without conscious notice the fury
rages inside, demanding to be acknowledged

Untitled (10/9/08)

My friend Sophie knows
all the names for god
even if she says she doesn’t

I don’t believe her
just like I don’t believe
in god. But if

it’s real it probably
doesn’t want, or need, me
to believe

Because how relevant
to its aims
could I possibly be?

Then This Is A Dance, I'm Dancing

I thought I could dance
everyone said
because I had rhythm
I thought I could dance

But all eyes were on me
and I fled the scene
they said I could dance
since I knew how to sing

Alone in my room
I was ready to dance
with two curious knees
just holding me up

I could sing with my feet
if I knew how to dance
and because I had rhythm
be the life of the night

Now all eyes are on me
joints stiff as a line
unbending to will
and the threat of clapped hands

These curious knees
as unsure as first kiss
to chance with these feet
thinking we can all dance

(Book 2, pg. 128)

Something thicker filled the air today than water it was leaves, dry, and apple atmosphere. granny smith. No the next day is cold, wet, without lingering trimmed autumn grass. That’s all been smothered tomorrow into the soles of children’s shoes. They want their games on the wet field, they hate indoor gym class especially the ones with overzealous parents ready to sue over a lopsided game of dodgeball or anything with probabilities of pediatric peril. Like walking outside. Take away the processed sugar but god forbid the boys use sticks for swords. I should have gone outside more then, make up for it in thunderstorm bike rides today my gears are slowly rusting.

Notebooks

I know I’m nowhere but
that nowhere would be even less

knowable if there weren’t
stacks of you keeping track

the passing thoughts in pen
instead of doodles I have a record

what was in my head almost
never what a professor professed

and every year since a calendar
to mark the holes in my memory

whatever I failed to write or forgot
or flippantly left out of your mouth

Breakfast

we wake gripping hides
shaking the sleep from our eyes
digging nails reach for
pleasures inside
kicking and screaming the silent
waves that emanate
two prone surfaces stretch for days
every inch struggles to make its way
under the fingertips
under the crushing weight of heightened state
under the sheets that wrap us tight and aware
and when we finish we stare,
fall back
and dream

Eschatology

A fortnight
is but the lull between paychecks,
the family vacation’s patiently
collected days, maybe
to some the loss of
forty three names for lichens or
another’s recipes
for tree root alchemy.

Over that span somewhere
instinctual knowledge of the river’s
fluid mechanics, a herd’s migration
unwritten, goes missing
afar, isolated
or conquered
as the lost knot language.

One more phrase has dropped
golden and wrinkled, withered;
the gods who brought rain
no longer called upon,
their names cease to be relevant
now, those limbs bare
come spring.

Worn stone inscriptions,
pass the lips of the last
remaining elder
whose world was shaped by this
dying grammar, these breathing
vaults filled with knowing turned
to bide time as artifacts

by the young, who learn
like Dacians, Mahicans, Huns
the tongue of another;
the tongue that promises
work, new life, new phrases
to define a world, a universe
a missing afterlife

while whole galaxies collapse
in the failed hunt, the bad harvest
in that final breath
of the ultimate speaker
the echo,
the silence,
the vacuum on the 15th day


(updated 10/28/08)

Sleeping In A Crime Scene

Insomnia rides these sheets
minds never cease
without white noise,
incantations,
lullabies of distraction
so that I may have some peace.

She's always lurking right behind me.
Any time is better;
rest my eyes and
let it go
but night will never
leave me satisfied
to know

If I had maybe gone and killed this.
Someday, someplace
we both get over it.
I'll say
your name again
the way I always meant it.