Category: poems

Dreamtype 1.x.3000 initiated
sequence sequin-styled,
m-channel open at 10Gig Baud
blank screen, check

Fastforwardfindreplaced
Sodomy hoax indexed
sex screen silk-scene�d
future shift

lobotomy initialized.

asphyxiated on these the —
definitive beasts
climbing out of sentence trees
to throw their poop at thee

how shallow an article be
slimy worms at sea
a worthless word to me
any floating tiny decree

equally useless are these
noun wanna-bees
Pronoun’s bell rings at three
he drools his mind thinks feed

an it and a the
with letters two or three
bad poem feng shui
avoid in good ones, hehe

My pants say:
“vvvvvt-vvvvvvt-vvvvvvt-vvvvvvt”
when I walk in the snow.

The sled goes:
“ssssssssh-ssssssssh-sssssssh”
when I go down the hill.

The watching crow says:
“Caw! Caw!”
from a tree-branch.

My brother’s leg goes:
“SNAP!”
when he catches the snow wrong.

He cries, and we go home.

Seasons change like agates smoothing
You could never notice something so slow
But from day to day the burnt umber clouds settle later in the sky
Like stones on the horizon
Slowly wearing away to smoothness
In the sunÂ’s relentless stream

hours and hours into it
eyeballs screwed in their sockets
drilling those lines
down to their finest word dust
participles and particulars
alliteration and slam
banging in the back seat of
the bookmobile
structured poetry sweating
out our backs and legs

punctuation or not?
singular or plural?
first or third person?
that or this? in or on?
on and on, point after point
finessing words into weapons or
love handles
gripping the poem
by its horns
wrangling it
into this form I’ve arbitrarily chosen
sonnet or villanelle, haiku or triad

and I’m pumping the lines like a fireman
beating at them like a blacksmith
I’ve twisted them and
bent them all out of shape
structure and form are out the window
and still
these words —
they will only spell you.

Design and definition —
rhyme lacks ambition.
Diddling in wordplay,
lounging on letters,
lackluster limericks
taunting their betters.

Poets whose words
black and filibuster,
line stuffy magazines
like cotton-lined coffers.

Art without structure —
taste without buffer.
Mouths drool phrases,
and sticky words dangle.
Lips giving twist
to some infinite angle.

Poets whose tongues
swollen asunder
fracturing phrases
like �ya know� teenie-boppers.

[poem unfinished or instantly-abandoned]

snow after snow
flakes like shotgun shots on my windshield
wipers making cricket noises
harmonizing with the dashboard rattle
snake swerving through the city streets
padded like fuzzy patchwork blankets
warm and white

Dan came over last week
and admitted he couldn’t remember
the simple mathematical procedure of division.
While Nate ridiculed him,
I realized that some specifics
were fuzzy in my mind too.

Fuzzy like last night,
when you wanted me to clean
and I just wanted to relax.
This simple procedure —
picking things up and
putting them someplace else —
was a headache, a fuzzy hole
in my happiness.

And the whole night we were divided.

You slept without touching me.
I woke to your absence.
“What?” you said.
I left for work.

It’s the part about remainders I don’t remember.
When you’ve got the numbers stacking downward,
I know there’s some subtraction involved…

And what is a remainder anyway?
Just some arbitrary number left over,
left out of the real answer.

And in the car, I imagined all the things I left out,
unsaid apologies and explanations.

Now I figure,
as long as the numbers come out even
we’ll be fine.

fast approaching,
this gregorian exit wound

a distant thunderous applause,
curtains for this itchy trigger-finger year

passing like the titanic sinking through my bowels
(perhaps it’s viral)

my head encrusted
with nose-jewels and sinus-clinging glistening ponds,

a reflected treasure trove
dying to see the light of blog

So… last night I went to balls, (which for those of you who don’t know, is this wonderful midnight cabaret / open-mike every saturday at the southern theater). There was one poet. A guy I’ve seen perform there in the past, but always music. But it wasn’t really even his poem that struck me so much as a poem he read before his poem. I did some web searching, and it was called Very like a whale, by Ogden Nash. It’s very funny, and well worth reading.

Of course, I hope it’s tongue-in-cheek.

I wanted to write this whole big diatribe about metaphor, and how it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I spent so much time looking for that poem (and I’m glad that I did!) that now the wind has been taken from my sails like a blowjob on prom night.

Here’s something I wrote this morning thinking about all this:

Metaphor is a bitch.
The bitch-winter of understanding.
Metaphor whips reality into submission,
leaving little bloody trails
like roadmap clots.