A WISCONSIN POEM

so docile the trend, a pill
untaken, stop them from murdering gays,

       "arcanum"
        made this pulse
        with deep historical resonance

a splatter of plant gut
into the opponent, so plough up the road,

        nevernomore gotta
        whole     'nother
        where they got it from
        nope  it's enough, yeah?

property of spine-chilling horror
gave us this tantric biscuit to suck on
Argos retreats!  It's that kind of thing

that makes us more meaty, a little
more crosseyed, and appreciably stylish
in the coiffure.

                  He says he's not going to stop them.
                  Who will drink of the scurfy tide
                  of propositional attitudes, voted
                  meaninglessly in like pate?

                 "Me! Me!"
                  cry the Bozoid thinkers
                  in the land of boneless ham,
                  rallying for the "downsize
                  me out and defend the sanctity" package.
               
                  It's electrostatic perm season! The apes
              abundant in four-thousand year hangover, an
              overdeveloped sense of danger rotting in the
              gene pool
                       Pulpy discourse fills
                   the space where frequencies
                   are worth millions
             
                                       Very, very often

tree w/sequin leaves, alternating
novelty and threat

shoes seem less hyped
w/closed ear

racist because fucking idiot
aha!  clunkety-

                   the age of fortunes
                   in parking, rattling pearls
                   in the cold, froth on the mouth
                   as imitation cattle

                   aroma b/c outsourced

                   Billy Collins in coitus on jacket?
                   They prefer this to the legality of the anus.
                   Figures.  Slush breaks up the light.
                   In Associated Bank, my name refers to $3.92,
                   I recognizes Bonaparte.  Popular liberal moms
                   push everyone named "Jackson" south amidst
                   malls.  Shadow the capital.

dumpy torpor calls in the season or the guard
neutral unless subsidized a crane in eliot
haircut endeavor eggs on news grasp eludes
meningitis comes slow if it comes to blows
amateur night at the carved species breast
theory of aspartame theory bombs at conference
haven't decided shrubs go back and forth ok?
laboratory signals ok crust ok view and now
washy-washy brings out the best in death

crab lake      water more shoes
isn't going to like     motoreconomics
very      enzyme occultation, nourishing
very small farmers squeaky monosyllables aim to

sham nudist arcs
                     toward questionable conclusions
earmarked
                     for waged demise
somebody explains:
                    "you're less than ten percent"
scattered their seeds
                     clung at sleeve
in season
                     with the prey
at hand
                     quiet for
once

LATE

(a strange little lyric scribbled after being up all night in San Diego)


Turns out
I share a birthday with Duncan’s mom
—a discovery made
two days
too late

Eight
is the cruellest time
to be awake—your job is finished
The Kinko’s song
cycle repeats

You haven’t seen the indifference of nature until you’ve been pegged in the forehead by a pigeon diving to follow its cohorts to the hot spot in the parking lot while you move to evade the suits beelining for the recycled air of their offices, oblivious as you stagger, catch your ass on a hydrant and just avoid tumbling into the street, winking under the trickle of blood and thinkng that your meter must have run out and you don’t have any insurance.

But what’s
nature?
you ask

(my lost, longed-
after and deeply
imperfect darling)

on the bus, the only place
you can’t see

the ad
in which

none of this occurs.

WE/ WITH/ OUT PLACE


UP ON

the wrong side

of the continent

the wrong side

of the baby

the trend in

home maker trends

IT NOT

being fair

unless they were marginal

it not

being the same complaint

in the other mouth

it not

being the mere presence

of a thing intruding

it not

not being

A WAY OUT

Flicked nipple. A

gasp. Memory operates

the tongue. Or is that

you? I, no or only

singular experiences. No

way.

The Obligatory Story

1
At nine o’clock, just as the sun was rising,
she crossed the threshold, head in her hands.
Whose head it was must remain a mystery.
The shaded garden had drawn her, like a caricature,
under the trees. Squirrels and crows screamed
at one another, limb from limb. Images
of arterial behavior were avoidable. A flag
got flat, rented a room, lived out her life
exactly as expected. What had seemed like
the lights of distant radio towers turned out
to be the inferno raging through the forest
on the other side of the mountains. Still,
the soft rock of San Diego. Three days of
rain in the discarded denouement—not everyone
can identify with that. A positivist posited;
an ironist ironed… until it adhered to the bumper.
It was certainly nine somewhere.


2
To tell a story would take architecture,
which means arches, laid in interlocking patterns across
or sinking into the marsh of a history.
There’s be some kind of innocence…
Anything bright enough would have been
in the past, the telephone almost a curse, partnership
a model of mines collapsing or driving shrapnel
into soon-to-be-Islamic bones unless it extends to,
or makes room for, at least the image
of limitless others. Without unanswerable questions,
the hero dies for the merely unanswered.
And that makes the sale, a telling tale
leaving radical skepticism horny
or challenging to the touch.


3
In the kitchen, Tex had a special agent
carve his chicken, before sending him off
to the sub-basement for a long, electric debriefing.
No-one analyzed the national transference,
gripped as we were within the newsy detail,
drowning in analogy like we liked it.
Peel away, peal away, o bells of the starry
specific locale, o decals of forgetting,
forgetting the hope left in thin deposits
beneath their shrunken flesh, their next flight
through the catacombs, the next bill,
coming due with the inevitability of hunger,
of the twitchy panther eating what it’s told.


4
How lovely to flee all these rooms,
to see the breeze as we hear
language, moving arms,
moving leaves.