WE'VE HAD IT with
the go the go soft
the go hard go softly and hardly.
Because
I meant what I said when I said it
but I don't mean it now.
Or
As in I missed my train but
the trains stopped running here
way long before I ever.
And
I hardly ever rode them when I could.
So
Some of this is a soft fiction.
It goes cheap. And it goes Have you thought
how you might not like coffee after all.
But
I go Sure all the time.
And pretend none of these sirens are for me.
Well
We hardly have time for it now
that the engines go Moo and the windows go
hard and go
for us
now
for these shaky corporations.
the way a hawk … lights up
suddenly nothing … solitude
as important ... not to stare
or stay put
they
take their language with them they spend
it
on not understanding or so texturizing themselves
they
put our sexes or categories to use in pronouncing
all
good to go for now through next december
we
seem to be exchanging breaths for twins
yours
for a minute of mine so no damage to
mine
after some feast in the bounty of
yours
now carelessness … thinking money
had an insight
& poems of
nothing to do with as or like
lying down but not dead …
archeological punctuation ends
me … well … that search for
a workman like … assortment of glyphs
… hidden relations in my theory …
as with the bird … i don't kill it …
as with the road … i let it tremble …
like … you said it once & rhymed
"Greet Ben & Anthony who risked
their necks for me … " all one
then capable of … the play comes off
in silver lines & busted wings …
always busting … the strings …
just … before the radio goes
"Here's your chance to hit it big"
… you can do everything at once
as like broken & like fixed
w/out degree
making strange
Murphy "writes out of his experience of"
"potent poetry topics" The New
Attention requires notation
of the ordinary and "extravagant"
respiration just below the actual
breath it took to climb this far
Said notes found
illegible in dream journals. "I practice
listening against
impending blindness" resistant
in places
"turning one's back on every
and any priesthood."
Make your own
way up the sacred stream. Make
your own. My ordinary
pushing into the wilder. Did you say God looks
especially handsome today. I thought
you did. And accomplished something.
No poem until something happens
and later is found
waking and walking or waltzing
up the banks of everything
I forgot
NEXT IT
pertains to circumstances none of us are handling well ...
in which later on a dog collar is found in the dresser drawer ...
in which one unmarries the other on that very night ...
in which a stranger comes breathing fire ...
in which one must learn facts ... only facts ...
in which the robots refuse to work ...
in which the partisans rest on the hill grey for days ...
Listen HERE.
SOME FOOTING
Why you just say it and mean it.
The world will stand for your invisible children. To a point.
Talk to something that is not human. This will demonstrate a mentally healthy shift toward biotic engagement.
My rock, you are older and better looking but are you wiser yet than me?
See. A rock isn't.
Speak with conviction about that area of matted grass where deer slowly turn their shiny heads to secrets after a day full of eating sunlight and pooping out sturdy round bundles of the residue of their delirium.
Now on to the pores.
There's nothing not invisible available to my sense that you just looked away. I was talking and you looked away.
Take up singing.
dude you don't have to listen
dude you don't have to rearrange or reacquire
dude you don't have to sing so loud
dude put it there put it here put it anywhere
dude we've got a whole bunch of perforations already
dude the apples the apples
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ONLY LATE IN LIFE
Something happening. Rhetorical forestry.
Moon in the cave of a sea drift log. Not mine.
Its ugly world drove me to buying. Then.
Nothing. So I approached its limited light.
And forgot to sigh its unmanly sighs just
Because the boys expect a timber tone. Just
For gentle's sake. I traveled off-world to
Specify which crow had spoken aptly to
One of us who had come upon the book
Of speaking crows. These trees are not
So numbered now. Some chilly orations.
Listen HERE.
INVITATION TO THE SUNNY AIR AGAIN
Moving from here you expect you have what you need.
[the new poets are young and/or handsome and/or pretty]
You suspect they've come with the best boxes, the surliest protective pads.
[the new philosophers are invisible]
And we'll get to our end without the extraordinary bruise or the catastrophic goof.
[the new president]
You might have failed, for example, to acquire the right paper, but this you know is not failure but opportunity.
[the new artists take long walks]
As the sun today hardly bothered the air.
[the new parents are with child]
It can get away with anything specific and not too expensive.
[the new fat people are more portable]
Spitting in the grass, and such.
[the new film-makers are in parentheses]
The insurance people come to gape.
[the new discussions explode]
So we pack.
[the new]
We want to bring it with us.
[the new]
We just do.
[the new disclosures are less offensive]
Our desire isn't the hubbub we thought we needed, and the end's a comfort even as improved oral hygiene is.
[the new farms are beautiful in morning overalls]
It's a convenience.
[the new delight congeals around a sentence]
And we're on our way
Listen HERE.
SECOND OR THIRD GENERATION
My engine wasn't the public school. It was
A private infantile devotion to becoming &
Turning into. That which rhymed with. Here.
I earned my wax by burning my fingers so.
And excluded. Sense in a full blue bottle of.
Fragile thin maps made me a beachfront.
I turned warlike & popular as a far cliff & you.
Later found in county records a score of me.
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TO THE SEETHING ON MERCY'S ACCELERANT
Hadn't been a fraud long
But long enough for reasons
Feeling myself to be an Optical
Knot, faithless, a cork
In time. But fraudulent as
Pork. Making whistles &
Whispers of what was not
Ink. Out-scale juicery.
This then the next and so on.
Unequal to the national
Challenge to be
More a new shirt than
An extra one. Artless.
A loss I couldn't count.
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MY VOICES WILL NOT SHOP
This following was found on a rot-splintered log and transcribed last fall by one of the factors of the place. It was almost awake when he found it and pulped it with two capable alphabet stones. Its corpse expresses an other-worldly scent of cultic purity within which some can only sit and shiver.
Our autopsied said … chocolate or …
In … tenders … to open … grow on in …
Of exile … unpublic … himself of …
One agent … qualms … ethics … as one …
O blue beans … tell me … a new bowl …
To pay up … blood use … pretends to …
As it was the last of its brand, we thought it fitting to arrange this mechanical service; and now, thank Jack, our duty's done. Vivat Coagulate!
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FOR THE SERIES WHERE NOT ENOUGH GOES ON
Blow the sun
to gadgets. Why.
Then a landscape.
Burnt upside brown.
Just. Find verbs.
Go prettify. As
genius has to
guess. I'm now
telling you to.
A list of
new cleansing agents
bold as sunlight
organizes our sleep.
So tells us
it's inexperience
that breeds these
death cults everywhere.
And now. Here.
Listen HERE.
OR ADVISED
Journalism
to dissolve nature into three
conversations
toward the vile separation
of what it means to or
for political poetry
or how it came from
cities big enough to know
you know better
Journalism
to underestimate this
year's skin and bone
as the
broken audio at the end
or an appendix to Greed
Journalism
to be thrown off
the complimentary wine
easing some of us
into zombie days of
attraction to our
solar parts
Journalism
to have written
all that
and
still
not be
free as one
disappointment
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