we are painted an earth red balancing over.

more vertical if not

and not earth no.

whether we had seen it or had.

are dented our had.

a selfish costume and dense

or right cut living in.

and not an earth

not an earth and.

we may have living more we

we may a more shift.

more vertical if.

if living if.

if painted earth.

I am asked to put my trust in a company every day.

It’s the Freudian Form
found in gravestores
for sale
Yom Kippurs
Katrina’s Shores
ocean oars
and men cut swords.

Awful in redemption
come
Awful in repentance
none
ever more we shall
come
never more we
shall be
come

Lawful as a civil son
in every way
a pro . di .

prodigious
prodigy
produce
producers
product

procure
procurement
prodigal
prodigality
n. 727
prodigal son
n. 727,
841

FORGET RHYTHMS
Two H’s in
special places
and forgive me if
I am more mum.

The law
is not
to be
broken
Because
it is
a law.
BUT
Because
it is
broken
the law
is not
a law.
BUT
Because
it is
the law
is not
a law
broken?

nekorb
wala
tonsi
waleht
siti
esuaceb
tub

BUT
Because
the law
is not
a law
it is
broken.

Thousands!
And thousands!
of Poems!
They’re
everywhere!
And they’re
filling up
everyone’s
toems.

Fi Fye
Foe Fum
I smell the
blood of an
englishmun
Fiat Fire
Forest Fumble

I smelled a
nun in a
Finnish bible.

Den Dun
Turn Dying
Tire’a babble.

Scale the walls
with hooks and grapple.

Scale the eggs
with horse and apple.

Scale the skin
with
Hurried Scratches
and dot
the ashes with
dust and matches.
and Othello’s trespasses
with distant
knotted underclasses.

Under fascists
people were happy
they rioted inside
and people saw
the happiness
in life.
A liberal democracy
on its hind haunches
is a diligible
theatricy.

Madness is passe

and we will
be lost
forever to it.
or is setting
a sign back
the same thing
as aging?

They’ll be here
any time now
and they’ll be
here soon.
Lacan the lacoon
is crazy as a loon.

[three women on inkjet paper, 3.0 x 1.5”]

it turned out to be that duct
tape idea with the fish
and the dangling
lenses near the patella

the marshlands get stuck like ketchup. if you
read carefully, you can hear the thixo-
tropy brewing in that water.
in the face of the hollow steed, we collect
multitudinous bodily adornments. the lyre in the pantry
continues to suggest that we have not yet lost it, but the
catgut comes to this.
the third block past the light gets you up
in brambles. with a cigarette. as you like.
the water doesn’t work, if you remember thixotropy,
but this wasn’t in the book anyway. years later, the telephone’s
still on display as a sort of wax-slug prophecy.

Wallpaper is paper and requires attention.

In more ways than one, the power’s out in Denmark,

where the dryness of a mouth is the question

of the feather,

and though they say sorrow is the salt

of the learned, the book’s been bent

and the river netted

where once we tapped clay to egg and aster

as a matter of performance.

Once I was a syllable,

and you a slope of steam.

But since you came over the cliff with intention,

my gender’s called in sick,

and not only has the sandbox rented depression,

now the wolves have come into the milk.

I hear your hands have been off in the desert,

and most have gone hungry

this week.

As I slipped into the opposite

of cultural construct, you wept and slunk as a deer;

for the camera captures what never

was there, ever

a spook the excuse we’ve made;

how softly we fuck the rain.

The guitar’s a green-grey beauty, tropical scene airbrushed on the back in vivid red and black, intricate lace-like soundboard shining holey and singing rich and sharp to the ear. When the brass slide and fingerpicks start workin’ on the steel strings, the steady plunk-and-keen should connote relaxation, or sheer, unadulterated laziness. But that guitar gives me the willies.

Dad’s steel guitar whines and sings with him in the dusky kitchen. He’s barefoot, leaning against the blue counters. An iced coffee sweats next to him. I’m six, just back from Michael Godeck’s house and a screening of “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the first scary movie I’ve ever seen. I’m shivering in August, sure that a wraith will jump from behind the bathroom door. The evening light isn’t a respite from the heat like normal-it’s the portico of night and harbinger of further terror. Dad’s deep in his playing, and I approach him gingerly to stand by his side, leaning against his hip in the crook of his elbow. I try to communicate my terror silently, hoping he’ll feel it through my skin. But he keeps playing the green-grey steel guitar as I shiver in the dim kitchen.

Because the poem I just had up here sucked (even for a poem), and so I had to take it down and replace it with nothing. I’m sorry. Let’s kickstart a new stream of worthwhile posts with something better and a little more freshly brewed. Sometimes I think a good nothing is better than a bad something.