POEMS TO CHOOSE FROM FOR BROADSIDES
Nights on the glass rug
God give me
a walking city
through the door at midnight
through again at one
boats going by or trains
lines where light begins
everything less wholesome
than a rhyming little song
For E
Since your death we
haven't spoken but I remember the
way you speak, with
your collarbones wrists and
black hair, limping
through the flat room like
it was a mountain
Dear American Jesus
May you and the moon queen
keep our stripmalls safe
Summer Poem
Been alive too long and somewhere
there was a window
Heat Wave, October, Topanga
A warm battle for consideration today,
to be considered. We both dream
of guilt and death and guns. All night
the fan shook and the walls shone and
the croaking of frogs was missing from
the stream which had dried out. Without
metaphor I'd like to tell you that the cactus
wilted.
For Zoe (in Texas)
Heave the
heavy
flowers
over
Y'r shoulder
and become
someone
'R else
Schlachtensee
A grand name for a grey pond
It took all my strength to
Not fall into the lake
Clumsy thing with her
Twist-turn of the head like a
Death-defying acrobat ic
Dip of the body I
Watched you clutch at your own
Chin, your throat, and twist.
Carried under water-lights
Through chest-high sting
Of cold, then shoulder-high
Warmth,
With the clouds too close
And one eye on the shore.
sink
the wave and its collar
the moon and its flowers
to swan in-to the sea
filled and undressed,
seeping
to hear _____ explode
"Living"
Living
You tell me you want to die I don't believe it anymore. When you tell me it means you don't know what it means. If you really don't want to live you don't tell it. You don't tell it when you know what it means.
Living Still Living
Mostly I don't want to go anywhere but this world.
Poets
Don't make this about women. Poets have always hated each other.
Turnpike
The tree is green. The porta potty is green. I wish I had a motocycle.
Living And Waterfalls And
So hard and so soft all at the same time.
Second Chinatown Poem
Between the train station steps
and my house somewhere still
walking watching you
adjust your watch clouds
sliding over and under
sidewalk turning over grey
yellow whenever light came
through I said,
It really feels like a Wednesday
doesn't it and you said,
No
(Something about clouds)
They reached their fingers toward the moon were
there for a second went away. I know how I would
like to be touched.
Called "Irreverent"
All the clover by the door has been fingered
through for fours but it’s threes, all threes
And what feels better anyhow
to live on other people’s dimes
or your own pennies
And who cares
Absolute Ideal
Pray to whatever god you like, but
there is no replacement for that
pantheon of girls with heavy-lidded eyes
who look up at you over palms, through haze
with that heavy-angled look and you say,
it was as if she knew me.
I’d like to know where you grew up
In a valley
so
I don’t know much
about
horizons
On a mountain,
so now
I believe
everything I hear
Our beautiful landlocked thing
Meaning: grids
Meaning: lines
flowing
And so life
And so lawns,
so palms, so pools,
recircuiting:
Screens, to cars, to rooms,
To want
To do
or want too much
If
you want
to become a martyr
stay alive
***
Morning,
woke up filled with (something)
Romantic, a feeling like
if I had a thousand dollars I
would fly to Italy or
get lasik for the apocalypse
Sun jar
Us: No more apocalyptic
than anyone who came before
us but we
learned how
to measure it
Car door: Open
Leave the notes
playing
Come back to them
later
Moon: blue
as something else
The world
so uneven with
its blessings
Five Years
The sun blew open and
through the door
came you,
on your legs. Five years
Must be
Just long enough.
Wet Poem
Slow wily wide water
which bluffs
would try
Us again
Was wiser than
I know how
far to go
but allow myself
to be led
Anyhow
Berlin, Nevada
No, I didn't think I was in
the right place
But what place could be better
And how lovely that we get to choose.
Have you been to Berlin,
Nevada. You feel anything
just as much.
Romance vs. Liquid Times
I arrive hungry
I arrive
Please, try not to say anything obvious
even if that means you can't say
anything
like:
Everywhere you drive me
I've seen before, in a movie
like:
Is it personality?
Or is it: cells firing
wet breathing
trauma reacting
like:
Baby, if you died today
It wouldn't even make the news
Care
"Care is not control," he told me
but ever since they wrote the Bible
Isn't it that the secret Is the word
Isn't it
2015
In the year I stopped thinking
I went to New York City
I thought the yellow of the license
plates was obscene
and the sun was too bright
I looked into faces
and nobody made me nervous
I thought, what a relief
it is to not be in love
Gabriel
(on the Agnes Martin film)
Gabriel walks through the desert
straight ahead without looking
like he's walked through it before
or a desert exactly like it
like when you walk through a party
in a city you've lived in too long
is how Gabriel walks through the desert
Arizona
The moon rises softly
over white knuckles of conscience.
Glaciers carve glass, or
the glass drips with fog.
My hands grew so cold
that I forgot what I was holding.
The highway pours forward
like a slackening noose.