Forward

a small fuzzy dog
checks out the lamp post
sniffs a little at its base
then decides against it
goes back to the task
of pulling the famous author
on her leash down the street

From the Fog

the surviving fragments about fog:
 couldn't understand why fog
 very direct to fear
 surviving an angel
 the word peace
 expected to from my fiancee
 was fond of oratory
 died in the enclosure 
 others are humorous a hundred miles
 i was not yet asleep
 approach life force triumphed
i recognized a rock        a tree
that long-windedness which was to be avoided
a crumbling mass of something i did not have
that vision immediately returned
 of the living
 a kind of light near me
 a vast luminous halo
 the mist spreading it beyond shape
  beyond treatise
  beyond predictability
   to his lips
   this secret
   i can see
   as i drift
   apart in its coolness

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Four Dictionary Poems

I  see saw:
  
  up and down
  contest
  or struggle

  site ends
  of the other goes down

II security:
  
  being secure as
  fear or anxiety

  freedom from given

  pledged to make an evidence

  ownership of cures

III sampling:

  technique pose

  a small part of people

IV revelation:

  communicating divine
  humans

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Cats and the Moon

a full moon blue in a blue sky
invisibility holding its wonder from itself

a cat claws at it despite that
does a blue moon taste like cheese 
or like chicken?

consider that string of clouds 
that hold the moon up
you can see those    even in an airplane
though to passengers 
the string looks like cotton
and you can’t hear their song 
for the engine noises

i love the sound a jet engine makes
i love the noises i can’t hear
from planets rolling like kittens on a blue carpet

on another planet 
they make up stories about earth
about their own moons they can’t see either
about their own cats that fly from roof to roof
trying to find a way to hypnotize each other

Paint Makes the Man

room
comes when a man’s reason is away
full about these clothes and
to entomb itself
superiority on its part perhaps
paint makes the man     and that’s all
it was as if     there on display
group or a whole country’s horizons

 found a nail that long on the stairway
 found rain on the skylight an entire mist
 fill em up here surprise that there was
 a pill when opened december already
 grand lit square of sandstone downtown’s river drifting in
 contraband bite accompanied by dunes     settlers

from Cyclone Fence (2017)

W'

        w        it 
 w        here
 iding
 in        mym        outh?
 the       ni’ll
 tilif        indy        ou
 myear        y
 ou
 myear

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Heat of the Meeting

i was burning the globe of the identical
slow liquid eye
but it generates smoke though it's hard to believe

this flow drawn
eros and thanatos
also freely

and love like a second thought
i can hear breath
in this warm        that heat
and in hell
and yet when you draw back
nineteen forever
i feel the coolness

rocketing like generals        nuclear cephalus
this is not the last look possible
if that kind of love
in the slow        could you not want it warmer
want the heat of that meeting
this comfort only once?

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Taste

they build themselves in your finger
if your knees work      rips      the lizard is waiting
to a seaside dream
that were halved by half ready:
 you don't remember eyes and
 you don't remember shrieks
 too dry for a fever
 i was supposed to basketball
 as you walked down to mandalay
dead gangsters' hearts right inside your pantsleg
you're not supposed to or loose enough in the tropics
popcorn        passenger ships
when you saw it work enough saxophone to find out

ah the road to mandalay
where the frozen dinners play

play
in thirty years of roads about to go off
in the vision is being taste
in popcorn
in saxophone
it isn't easy giving feet without one
is it worth   taste?
that you saw in       taste?
to afterwards         taste?
you thought of        taste?
whatever              taste
carries that theology
the door opened
and a guitar rumbled
a giant pizza appeared on his bedroom ceiling
taste
he said

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Archaeological Site

call a plumber!
this helicopter
                     is digging
                  between my temples!
        french fries!
jail!       shoulders!
     knit flags!
politics are my balls!
ape hair    all over the floor!
the middle of dogs doesn't even have
its rubble cleared!
sundays     forbidden
are sold with more sanctity than confetti or scarecrows!
please!
call a plumber!
my walls have been running
and i haven't seen them
for weeks!  

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Culture

i have to check your history at four-thirty
all the roman ruins of dehydrated bacteria
all the viral cave paintings of galloping infections
all stretched up and down among the hills and dips
of all the beggars holding previous diagnoses in their broken paws

but now     i want you to take this
volume of medical lore that i’ll leave you on your nightstand
look through the pictorial representations
tomorrow i’ll give you real ones in a vial
the art from the museum of my soul
the winding and unwinding of the dna of my own civilization
the light that transcends glass
to make its own moon on the wall so to speak
can you sing?     can you sing to this?
your notes will float you away
this cave art newly manufactured
these paintings made of smoke
this memory of their genesis too hot to hold
for longer than the second it takes your mouth to say lifetime

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Wall Awe

noW ALL AWakE
alL nOW awake
awake All now
alL AwaKE now
AWaKe now all
NOw aWAke aLL









from Cyclone Fence (2007)

For the Resistance -- Be Woke!

Achilles

bronze challenge development
development challenge bronze
challenge bronze development
development bronze challenge
challenge development bronze
bronze development challenge

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Last Purchase

civilization won't let you in at the table top
thing in the cold
unaware of
part of you
the dream    cool
of jungle under your hands
the part of
when your throat hurts

but often death is less organic but you
a short fast life
these live in    as the clouds move
last purchase
the flood is too cozy
you can't    see them
part of you    the part you    the part of
and can't for the freeze

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Buckets of Talk (for Judy)

the throatiness of your voice
naked
like a rug
of fine jungle under your words

i walk home stolen
part of my brain    social
a mythical breakdown
a mysticism of canals
someone mistook me
almost
hid behind a skin
a shield of leather
haphazard radio sputtering around my fingers

water runs uphill
fish fly upside down
hills rise past the point
where you can see them touch the sky
safe in its vast blue ocean

buckets of talk
liquid joy
a fish came home in good weather
after a long walk in the desert
your voice travelling
under its fins

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

The Measure of What You Asked For

saint ophelia is a beautiful town
so bring me the sleeping bar net
pit him a lot of opera
and careful not to follow the directions of just any dust mote
not the king    not the warrior
just open space on prairie wisdom

a painted box on a dresser made of bear fat
she opens it and pours out a song about weasel heads
why they're whimpering    what she did to earn that
this time a hand plunged into time in search of its own body
then caressed itself in a hairy cling
    the interloper that will marry but will not be translated
    the anger unseen of midnight at an unopened door
    while decoded missile controls chatter among themselves
    that such a child will be as we

so this guy goes into a bar    says
give me the flying dead crows of my despair
so the bartender takes out a crowbar    says
all wings are the essence of flight
would you like a double?

from Cyclone Fence (2007)

Fable

someone else should tell you the story
about the day all the people
turned into pigeons

suddenly all the buildings were taller
and you could fly to the top
of any building you’d choose

   then    near dawn
   six a m the next day
   everybody changed back 

   nobody could fly anymore
   but everyone around
   had a new sense of wonder
   every time they looked anywhere
   even down to the ground

The Return

at ten-thirty the forest closes down
the animals come into the coffeehouse
you can tell which animals are which
by their gait and their posture

some of the animals have to stay outside
giraffes are too tall for the ceiling
whales are too wide for the door
the imaginary ones    the ones beyond mythology
the ones you can’t see anyway
probably got in here first

they fill up all the empty spaces here
you breathe them    they breathe you
the latest taste of your coffee lingers
the drama within you is something that
you’re not sure you know anymore
but somehow you feel
more comfortable about it

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)