End of the Great Migration

look    dream you requested
aren't the ones?

we had a very small thought tonight
destiny cat-smiled
oh    no    i whispered then
            another wheel to observe
            then we'd have walked rickety
            not seeing there are other car parks
            tinny music    bumper car range
            families with toy kids

              i was
              generous balloon
              expanding well

                 he other world's dark outside
                 you can hear it yowl
                 and i    just one national crisis
                 played rainbow on the front steps
                 it was too early ahead as time
                     so i petted the spider and her covered wagon
                     the whole pirate family
                     listened
                     sometimes i'm my own grandfather

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Babel

In reality there were many towers at Babel, each built by a different manner of being, and in reality few of them fell. The others continued to exist, each invisible and irrelevant to all outside of itself, all eventually forming a network. On tower became the lungs, another the bones, a third the skin, a fourth the heart. Those towers that had fallen formed the brain, babbling at once in many languages, with all of the babblers totally deaf to one another.

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Coffee Shoes

found nothing sexual with of shoes
blind spots
and finds the golden rhinoceros milk
several houses down    pissing it off
guy five years of
red fur cup phone color of the traffic
where they serve coffee straight

practicing    five too young to drink it for you
some guy gets before a robe and his shoes are jealous

the red upstairs caesar paint! 
red slipped or burnt toast!
loving it this read neon sign reason to
awful here trading t-shirts for logo caps
blue suede drapes gone red!

here    somewhere
some guy gets tundra tongue
existential crisis machine
too cool for loopdy loop
cars in your coffee    gasoline in your gut
your feet hot inside    angry shoes crushed inside them
look!    up there!    it's the ceiling!

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

News Report from the Front

like the skull tattooed inside of my skull
like the teeth in the crotch of your elbow
like the knives at the end of each finger as you wave
i am only watching as the sun fades into the swamp

waiting for the brazen caterwaul of the owl
with steer horns and a dead child's face
waiting for its chess move to your chess move
bishop captures knight and eats him without genuflection

we are protected in this house    here
on stilts as the bombs roll the swamp and all the agony
is as beneath our sight as someone else's genitalia
cheats fantasy and only the report
of shriek and afterward moan decides

on this our vigilance screen the cameras swing
deeper into the water and dirt
we are told what to believe    we are protected    how joyous

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

After Max Ernst

now    that    now    that
the the the the
fist is clenched
firecracker explodes
maid scours
wind trims

there on that hill
why haven't they been reported to me?
calendar gun
bottom of the bear fine cilia
forward like that ourselves
like an aphid

ground ground ground ground
fumes fumes fumes fumes
understand how to accommodate yourself
with stalactites as puff pastry

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Cell

imagine any protozoan cell
as a room full of people
nucleus large as an elephant in the middle of the conversations
that people can gawk at
and cilia invisible on the other side of the wall
taking the whole shebang on its way through town

people flow    talk flows
the whole party flows like the totality of plasma
the cowboy stands up there on the butte    pale horse beside him
watches the protozoan row itself giddily through town
down the main street with its lights
cilia happily playing themselves off walls and windows
imagine his laughter

his chaps    the leather of his chaps
his saddle    his horse
all the other various membranes that float through space
all the laughter    all the stillness
all the enclosed laughter

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

The Blood of My Radio

my radio's blood
    is quaint    evanescent
it seeps into air without touching wood or metal
animals on strange planets worship it
    its grease
    the major tourist attraction
    in thirteen cathedrals

i would kneel to it
but its rhythms
are too irregular
could not sustain
a rodent
even one
wearing an officer's uniform
or a business suit
and holding its breath

so as an entrepreneur
i'm out of business
i can't even sell
its source
since it comes in in waves from someplace else
and my radio's blood
is only a translation
before its own language is conquered
and it disappears

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Hands in Mist

children of dead alibis those with wide-eyed alligators
in this nightclub district in the politics of fire
bring careful mice not the king already
he must not be asleep this time

of refrigerators not stomachs we are waiting for you
in a heap    of slag ham
combing the feathers on the wings of our sandals
a box on the table    already we whisper and caress

   already they passed the eyeball hand to hand
   and sat on the chair of forgetfulness
   where they made squeamish babies
   stingers comfortable as stingers
   horses asleep in the airplane hangars
   apples dancing in a war of elevator logic

siren is a voice of someone startled
medusa didn't stone us she just turned us to smoke
we are here    an atmosphere    you are here

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Automobile Landscape

he who joys among buses like sharks' teeth
could criticize curses
the woes that go here define the current so swim anyway

and particularly a static land
traffic jams for the centuries
collection of stomachs
a landscape of undetached sleeves
a place that's almost impossible
who would have looked more than i know your vistas

who needs so
upfront:
     1) always be also
     2) heaven and it me
     3) because it's salty and covering their wheels
     4) are not mold wipers

the other source of limousines:
     1) be a mystery to myself
     2) relax and breathe deeply
     3) springing sounds next door
     4) brainfads toward loving broth

someone i love like a motorpurr
repeat to me:
     1) has large eyes
     2) hourglass
     3) a boy wants
     4) uncursed and exotic
     5) hubcap

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

The Gold House

here    downtown
is the ruse with spare for animals
is the great house he's told servants guards
fear everyone to call into pretending

he's god    a hall of mirrors to fool himself
emperor and that he lives on a farm
tempered or that this is really his nature
seize food    with wilderness near

   he wears his house on a hill on his head
   crown badge sycophant veracity
   a small hat   shapes subtle when he bounces
   a mall fever colors seem to move forever
   town in no matter that stay no matter how long
   beware in his head his subjects remembering







from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Note: This poem was originally about Nero and political paranoia. These days it may be interpreted as being about another political figure.

Palmyra

the bright pink painted on the woman's fingernails
is awake and makes live the worn brown of the door
even more than her smile or the reflection of her sunglasses

   she strides into a brick coffeehouse
   and when she comes out she's
   twenty minutes older

the deal    agreed to there
twenty minutes of life for twenty minutes of table
twenty minutes of life for
everyone in the place
yes watch her with the vivacity
of sunbeams reflected on the window
of the red van parked across the street

   the tattoos like smoke
   adhere to her arm
   in the heat of this weather

even doorjambs are sensitive to her memory
so when she walks in here the house of bright colors
salutes her    she stays    life whirls    then she leaves
a mere twenty minutes older    close
to the age she was in ur    athens
rome    palmyra    when at first lively and unafraid
she entered into the house of liveliness
she is joyous in leaving    as she was in entering
and her happiness spreads to anyone
who aspires to watch her