Plea

almost toxic
the kind of stuff taxis roll by
my lawn is covered in make believe right now

statue leans meaningfully
on her hand as trucks roll past her

tires that have been everywhere
lend scent to a dog’s sense of meaning

    in the middle of all this there’s a dictator
    who is so evil and powerful that he cannot
    be taken as anything but literal
    he lives in a mansion three thousand miles from here
    but even his grin affects everything
        to deny this is to chance
        shortening your life
        and everyone else’s 
        by decades

from Trump Tics (2020)

Outside the Gas Station

last night i dreamt
that i was leaning up against a gas station wall
the stars spun themselves into a pattern
that formed the skeleton of piltdown man

i felt all of my energy    driven out of my veins
like blood seeking refuge in nothingness

the new sky stood almost fictional
like the moment between pulses 
when you feel the possibility of death

    bones    even bones that never existed
    even bones described as ancestral and sacred
    by the mouth of a petty dictator
    the stars seemed dried as dessicated wood
    i wonder if my very own bones still glisten
    if the world still pumps alive outside of sleep

from Trump Tics (2020)

His Welcoming Smile

when the fat dictator smiles
why do we all feel like skeletons
gathered around a desolate fire
that will gradually dry
the last of life from us?

from Trump Tics (2020)

Catullus Thinks of Donald Trump

"Spaniards/ use their morning urine/ for tooth wash." -- Catullus

it doesn’t bother me at all
that you clean your teeth
with piss as orange as your hair

    rome is a republic

clodia right now sits watching the street
waiting for me
by a window on the second floor of her husband’s mansion
she does not think of you

    rome is a republic

here    settled in my favorite seat
in an outdoor theater watching an awful play
about gods i barely believe in
i do not believe in you either
o one of puffy eyes and hair of rotted straw
that would shame a wild animal
or even a barbarian    the true order of things
i do believe in that   precludes you
who would turn crowds mindless enough to riot
before your games and after you came to power
who think that the world is made for yourself
while even my loves    all of them
do not think it is made for me

so here i am    watching some idiot on the theatre floor
instead of writing love poems to my clodia
she who may be the one who murders me
before i’m thirty    before the name caesar
is anything but a family name
before anyone with orange skin and hair
of a texture that almost defines disease
seeks by his presence to defame the name
of anyone from any old roman family

    rome is a republic

from Trump Tics (2020)

Within Sight

i wonder how to keep alive
in political fogs like this

try the bright eyes
within clouds

you need to remember
your own bright eyes

that they can live like fire in grief
for you to be able to see

from Trump Tics (2020)

The Election of Death

how could you even
pretend you had life on your mind
when you voted for this guy?

atmosphere that is deep and inscrutable 
humidity of your own anger
your own tears

from Trump Tics (2020)

Post-Election Fog 2024

windows blindfolded
waiting for the execution

even the sky is closed in fog

the music on the radio
is turned so low
that no notes can get through

there was an election
light lost
a ball of dead lead
sits unsighted
where there used to be sun

A version of this poem appeared in Trump Tics (2020)

Exchange

last night barry i saw you
walk past the glass walls of the diner
and in through the door as i talked with my boss
who excused himself as you and i 
recognized each other

you still looked twenty-three
after these thirty-seven years
yellow shirt     brown jacket
cowboy hat and the hair still almost yellow
and delicate where it was bound in a ponytail

you nodded     got a coffee
sat at the table where the boss had sat
you were still twenty-three
clear skin clean eyes robust self-assurance
i was sixty and imagined myself desiccated

i couldn’t imagine what to say to you
we used to talk for hours together
you sprawled and set your legs parallel to the table
played with your mustache and took another sip
been years     you said

here i was at the edge of old age and
what had i really accomplished since i was young?
here you were     still the age you were when we met
all future     all coolness     all good humor knowing that the gods
still held you as their darling

what could i say to you?     what could you say to me?
i finished my coffee and said i was due elsewhere
over due really     and you nodded and put your hat on the table
i said good to see you then walked out the door
you were still at the table     snow crunched under my feet







from Yew Nork (2014)

Epaulet

i caught sight and was on my way
the building looked familiar appearing on doors and guys
zones of affluence and poverty     say
my old neighborhood never looked so prosperous

restaurant at then     too
store across the valley looking small crowds in their twenties
it’s no longer the house of fire i remember
laundromat and a small motel asleep calling it lunch

	my consciousness is made up of storefronts
	i go to a different one every night     the haze
	seems static that way     i like to stay there
	i stay on the same block for the rest of my life
	buses go by about three blocks from here
	my passport crawls     up my sleeve to my shoulder

from Yew Nork (2014)

My Ripped Shirt

a herd of crabgrass
an elephant snake sneeze
a philosophy of parthenogenesis
from the collected giggle in your pocket
a collusion of laundromats
that the sneeze not be narrow
that its path be epic and tropical
that the word laugh be named specifically as law
and that your satchel be not named chicken soup
	no murinated mountebank minnesinger
	imaginary amphibian hitchhiker
	entanglements of the liberty of roadmaps
	open decanter of the dilemma of mixed certainties
	let me sneeze as cosmically as i want
log    fossil    cremation    blue star    octopus telegraph jibber jabber
conflagration of hot work bench sweat
sunset lawn chair of mouse and rat torsos
trepidation of false furs at the counter of dimestore truth
hilarious explosion of tea kettles at the last word of the gettysburg address
the crown princess’ ruffles at the furthest edge of her dynasty’s solar system
	these petroglyphs are written in english
	ants swimming in fossilized water
	you’ve been singing them since babyhood
	my ripped shirt is having an anxiety attack
flags wave wildest when wildflowered apes are waving them
into their armpits and declaring it everybody’s national holiday
as fireworks invent themselves out of sawdust
and castle towers spurt glory openmouthed
excitement and lust are mere curves on your roadmap
their voice beyond idiocy
their truth beyond believing

from Yew Nork (2014)

Armweary Traveler

the statue of liberty is much less impressive if people wear hats in front of you
those eyes that remember everything that happened
from the point of some choice that you made when you were twenty-two
you the platform     the laundry blesses you as it hangs across the torch
and there you stand wearing california around your neck like an amulet

it’s strange having california hanging from my neck now
and it’s so huge you can’t move     speaking those accents
emotional threads wide as a treadmill obscuring every other direction
then you’re big     you’re supposed to choose
then disappear

the statue of liberty is much more impressed if you see it before it sees you
then she looks     then you think you’re so small you’re invisible
so you carry coney island around in your pants pocket for your last day here
she’ll spend her life in thrall to that image
as you wave your torch in celebration and sink knee-deep in concrete

and the statue keeps staring     staring
and blessed are the subways     their clattered tempo slowing
to become your heartbeat
she’s been my friend most of the time since i’ve been back
whatever of that beauty goes into your walk is worthwhile
you’ve made your choice     now you can’t get out of the way
so please come back with me to my hotel room night doesn’t set here
it made that decision when it first got out of college
the city’s lights redefine night any time of the day
and any day still sits still just west across the water

from Yew Nork (2014)

Moos

le t’sst art
le aw ake with th
e cows in theb ranch
es the irs ong
	the hope that
	though they sing
	none of them 
	lands on your shoulder
theh opet hough that the ysing
the ru mor sin the moo sic
the mosaic chat terof it so perating sy
stem lou den ough tos
sing the moon
	the quiet     relieved ex
	halations of birds
such moos
to hear it
so lightly
	its vert
	i calm e ado ws

from Yew Nork (2014)

Fast as a New York Sonnet

down this horizonless sidewalk of coffee
the buildings are supported by the doors of coffeehouses
the sidewalk runs as fast as caffeine will carry it
each step each stride each dance step its very own

some day     some say
the free music will end and you’ll have to pay the piper
for all the shoe soles you’ve worn out on these walks
but you’ll only have to teach the piper a new tune

	noah’s ark landed in washington square park
	it landed there over and over again
	at least every five or ten years it landed
	but lots of times it rains and washes the old footprints away
	people forget about that even with coffee
	that’s why this place is so wonderful

from Yew Nork (2014)

Notes for Auto Bio

i take my pasts     each
examine them
each in a sepia of its own dust
through which i can see
only when i look away

    one was college     natural but sometimes it stressed
    once my father called me
    a communist drug addict
    and generations of hands came down
    in the flick of a half second’s time
    and decades later i found myself asking
    exactly whose political mechanics i’d betrayed
    and how many of his own ancestors
    my father was betraying

in another i slogged on through thirty years
of full-time work on the gravity of nothingness
my fingerprints are all over its surface
but the box seems completely hollow
all but the details grown over
by layers of mechanical dust
seen through the stone age of my imagination
as on the mechanical back of someone else’s android hand

and the lifetimes of memories of people i’ve loved
    of your lives entangled with mine
    so many of you freed now
    in the mechanics of what could be called fate
    but is only a weird form of temporal physics

and my rage that time’s just another machine
with my and everybody else’s living meat
throbbing like pain momentarily held within it

from Auto Bio (2010)

Listen

listen to me    
i’ll listen to you
i’ll try to listen to everyone
who isn’t me
if you will too

so know    then
that we are all different joints
on different fingers of the same hand
and that there’s another hand as well
that we have never heard of
so listen    listen
if you speak i will listen
so that both hands can speak
and listen    and move
as two hands together

Written in late 2023

Invitation (for Judy)

so walk with me along this     ocean’s edge
the island     springs and rocks along the beachfront
the cold wind houses noises      makes the long walk reminiscent
of other seasons     when flowers sprang with faces
of bedeviled carnivores at war      have you tasted the ice cream?
smoky clouds still numb away the horizon
quicksand and a sputtering ocean     knick-knacks lined across the harbor
to talk about dream is silly as steam evanescent in the warming weather

someone has been bouncing bare toes on the beach
someone has been making sea lion sounds at the hot dog stand
someone has been celebrating weather by reinventing it
a long leap for landmass and a lush dance of sand
a trill a thrill a leap of words and bodies
a reanimation of the whole soul hallelujah i love you so

from Auto Bio (2010)

The Trip Back

a hurt youth     face garments of open sky and laceration
he was easier as an earthquake now
he flew on outstretched arms of his own leather
uncured and vulnerable     history pacing itself in its own gold threads

troubled     unsaid     the sign melodrama     ape awakened
and fake fits in the nursery     alive as inside his ribs
and take it as biography made uneasy
tumbled when born     but have always bartered

	steepness when chutes had already opened
	i call that beautiful because they wear their beginnings
	a child myself     stop myself there
	the chide is father to the monkey wrench
	i was crying over a spillover of red ant stings
	people wrestle all night with their own angels

from Auto Bio (2010)

The Sparrow at the Door (ChatGPT after Mary Oliver)

This poem isn't really mine. I generated it via by inputting the entire poem "The Mystery
of the Dancing Windows" (which is also on this blog) into ChatGPT and asking for a poem 
in this format in the style of Mary Oliver. I didn't ask for rhyme or for the last 
stanza. I think that ChatGPT isn't as good at generating poetry as it is at generating 
fiction (see "The Eldritch Mariner" on my companion blog Things I've Done for 
Blood), so poets may be a little safer than prose writers from AI "writing". 
Although the prospect of hybrid written/generated work is possible.



The Sparrow at the Door (ChatGPT after Mary Oliver)

Beneath the tapestry of time's embrace, 
A sailor from a bygone age did stand, 
Knives like shadows, a creeping lace, 
Upon his leg, a touch from some strange hand.

Windows joined the cosmic ballet, 
Dancing to the rhythms of the wind, 
A language only they could convey, 
In whispered tales that the stars pinned.

An hourglass, an ancient voice, 
Sang an aria of grains so fine, 
Each note a choice, each moment a rejoice, 
In the symphony of hours' design.

From plains, a sparrow's mystic flight, 
Badge and spurs, a tale to tell, 
A pizza's scent in the fading light, 
A messenger from some enigmatic dell.

Detective's gaze on the cellphone's screen, 
Not for words or messages, but fleas to seek, 
Mysteries in tiny worlds unseen, 
In the digital realm, a puzzle to peak.

"Ribbit, ribbit," the canary's call, 
Echoing through twilight's hush, 
A cryptic song that befalls, 
A chorus woven from nature's brush.

The emperor, with robes so grand, 
Bows not to realm, but inner grace, 
A moment's gesture, a whisper in the land, 
A monarch's humble, silent space.

Kumquat's revelation, humble and profound, 
Beneath its boughs, the earth does lie, 
Flat and still, beneath its sacred ground, 
A secret known only to the sky.
Before the stadium of feathers, a scene unfolds, 
Detective's voice a compass true, 
In tales of knives and mysteries old, 
The case unraveled, the truth in view.

In Mary Oliver's spirit, we explore, 
The sailor's journey, mysteries to embrace, 
Knives and windows, a symphony's lore, 
Nature's secrets revealed in gentle grace.

The Mystery of the Dancing Windows (or Feed This into Your AI)

a medieval sailor finds that a parade of knives is creeping up his leg

windows dance in response    an hourglass sings an aria

out of the plains just west of town a two-ton sparrow wearing a badge
and silver spurs stops at the sailor’s door with a pizza

a detective examines his latest cellphone for fleas

ribbit ribbit calls the canary    the emperor bows

a kumquat discovers that the earth is flat
especially under its tree

the detective explains to a stadium full of feathers
how the case was solved

Middle School

I       i extend great days
    	encourage youngsters
    	to be required by state law

    	all students will not run in the hall
    	all students will salute the food in the cafeteria
    	all students will enjoy their rodent lives in the film that
    	every student will have a current
    	you will take this task seriously
    	all students will lock their happiness and joy
   	whenever asked to by faculty and staff

    	you will invite your mother and dad to
    	one’s education held in the auditorium in december and 
    	the edge of a cliff may affect study materials
	
	you are here to learn


II 	each student is furnished the bell in emergency
    	each student will also be a phone number
   	home rooms are assigned in the anticipation that
    	are the lockers located in the students


III 	never wear which will not conform
     	to average adult employment

     	never open an attitude of respect
     	for a tin can of other students

     	dissections continue
     	until school is dismissed


IV 	during the animal’s sleep
     	modification will be fully gloved

    	you are arousable

     	the walls of the room      dissolve
     	to the hot wet inside of your ribcage

     	you do not need
     	to consult the principal or school counselor

     	you can hear the gentle breathing beside you

     	is also sleeping like you are

     	the side of an animal you cannot identify

    	its warmth radiates from you

V  	make it a point to know your counselor and dental appointments
     	a note from your guardian or parent or telephone
     	the note should include your upset stomach

VI 	zits are the flit gun wounds
	of adult hormones!

	grey is a mass of colors
	their admixture is worshipful!

	i hold your abrasions in my heart as useless
	i chamber within myself
	and volcanic explode in enthusiasm

	your cardface temple crumbles
	the hill on which it sat is one
	character in a lifetime of players

	     all you taught me was wrong
	     all i learned i hope was true
	     i salute you as a rock i step over
	     all the rest of us
	     walking
	     onwards

from Auto Bio (2010)

Business Art Sonnet

o suffle me loong foo rort
o suffle id doon o
fur the leem iss o o hardt
fur the hardt isso isso

prof ver a soaky soaky
noblique a hex itching rinds
so leek clog are c’t hollow
sof mir usiness hoggy so

	ganizat quaintance lict a lict
	nob purpo orcer amat o
	ti pladform bulltinis ape hex
	ti latdorm hey a haney haney o
	slob clog a rasende oser dex
	zat clog a rasende soaky soaky o





note: rasende is Danish for furious

from Auto Bio (2010)

Monday Afternoon

i’m gonna get tattoos

i’m gonna get little file cabinets 
tattooed all over my forehead

with all of the file drawers
closed

from Auto Bio (2010)

Peter Pan

this life i cast before myself like a shadow invisible to you
is my own private joke:
	sixty year old heart seventy year old lungs
	hid beneath skin     that looks twenty-five
someone mistook me for a student last week
almost all my friends look older than me
but they’re all healthier
	especially wendy
	who     is     twenty-five
people tell us we’re a cute couple
when’re we getting married
i think of her     almost as a daughter

it’s appearance that you applaud
mainly because     no one wants to see inside
	where it’s dark
	and there are thousands of cupboards
	filled with ripped hearts
	and hypochondriac livers
	and memories congealed in greasy plastic bags
	all in the dark
	with nails driven deep in the doors
	and coated with blood
	that long ago dried dead
	around them

from Auto Bio (2010)

From a Dream

last night i dreamed i was 
stuck in a room full of sleeping old men
and that it was the house where i grew up
and that i knew most of them
as my own mediocrities

the moon shone through one long high window
i marveled at its yellowness before clouds overcame it

i stepped carefully between the men’s spread mattresses
mattresses everywhere
these old guys two or three to a mattress
all asleep     half of them snoring
as i tip-toed in the dark until i got to the front door

where the rhythms of their snores paced the motion of my hand
as i reached for the doorknob in the weird yellow light

there was just enough space     to swing the door open
and stand in the face of the cold alien air
i saw the lawn     the street
the old sycamore that i remember from as early as i can remember
how quiet out there     deep three a m
i stepped out closed the door and the cold air took me
the snores seemed so warm     i could smell their breath
and taste their breath in my own mouth even away from them
nothing moved     even the squirrels were asleep
blocks away i could hear a car running

from Auto Bio (2010)

Life Among the Bubbles

this year made a nice family out of the garage
with pale green     then cream
fine     newest
winter
i suppose in a way winter’s new
lotsa pizzazz
with an earnestness that would impress any fair-minded person

have a glass of wine
relax
take an off-season vacation
hear voices
a physician in hell has no motility
so you won’t get any surprises

the sex
the sex
the sex

the bubblist movement 
that decisively broke with renaissance aesthetics
a twenty-two foot statue 
of a nude man with the head of a chicken

he found
a dark brown shard of pottery

she wears dark sox taking off her athletic shoe
it fascinates      the archaeologist
have been touched by a monk or a pilgrim

she gesticulates about an intellectual matter

you can almost put your finger anywhere here 
and discover antiquities
she wears black
her hands are more perfect
than any renaissance sculpture

we can’t stop construction
red plastic shoes
it required them to build a raised
o please don’t go upstairs     i don’t know you yet

the sex
the sex
the sex

from Auto Bio (2010)