going the distance

To feel my insides melt in the august rain
and blithe footwork on the clockwork cakewalk!
oh, my poor heart swells and I take my blood-pressure impossible
new lows at the harvest moon

Yet this logic compels me,
by market research and vague hopscotching,
and in a moment of divine projection
my mind hovers enormous on the horizon
then sighing submits to the muckraker's deranged mathematics

Now going the distance, feet bared to the ogling passerby
I will rub femurs with the serotonin dandelions grown enormous
fingers curling skyward
closing one eye and touching the object of my desire in a tour-de-force
performance of my death-defying love

✱

10/23/12

✱

5/1/13

Three
Poems by Philippe Jaccottet:
New
Transl-
ations

Parler est facile - To Speak is Simple
To speak is simple, and tracing the words on the page,
as a general rule, is hardly risky:
a work of lace, enclosed,
peaceful (we have even demanded
of the candle a softer, more deceptive light),
every word is written with same ink,
“flower” and “fear,” for example, are almost identical,
and should I repeat “blood” from the top to the bottom
of the page, it will not be stained,
nor I wounded.

So it happens that we begin to detest this game,
that we can no longer imagine what we wanted to do
by playing it, as opposed to going outside and making
better use of our hands.

This,
This is when we can no longer escape the suffering,
which resembles an approaching figure
tearing apart the wisps of fog that surround us,
batting away obstacles one by one, closing
in from a distance - suddenly so near
that we can see only its nose,
larger than the sky.

To speak thus seems untrue, or worse: cowardly
insult added to injury, and wastes
what little time and energy we have left.


Assez! oh assez. - Enough! oh Enough.
Enough! Oh, enough.
Destroy that hand which no longer knows how to draw
but vapors,
and watch with your eyes :

Thus embarks that boat of bone which bore you,
thus she sinks (and the most profound thought
will not mend her junctures)
thus she is filled with a bitter water

Oh that there were, barring a great net
of light, unthinkable,
for every old human boat in these deadly waters,
a remission of pain, a softer breeze,
childlike slumber.

Parler donc est difficile - So, to Speak is Difficult
So, to speak is difficult, if it is to search... to search for what?
A loyalty to moments alone, to things only,
which are so low in us, which evade,
if it’s purpose is to to braid a vague shelter for unassailable prey...

If it’s purpose is to wear a mask more real than its face
to be able to celebrate a party long ago past
with the others, who are dead, distant or sleeping
still, and have trouble lifting themselves from their beds by
this rumor, these first trembling steps, these timid lights - our words:
rustling of the drum as long as it is grazed by the unknown finger

what it is

what it is

A reckless drive along the California coast
     what's what in this world
getting my kicks here there or wherever
flying kites with an ex con, bathing in a hotsprings,
and him telling me about the miracles of fatherhood

taken from a certain
per
     spec
             tive
a lot of birdwatching and navel gazing is what
             it is

i-
at 21 years by way of time travel
     -unconvinced

hollywood vs. applied linguistics
all plaster bed/room-living/room
(communal bathroom)
laminated map of space-time-continuum on the wall
now this
     this must be what it is:

shoplifiting botanical supplements, 2am, somewhere in New York
     ginko extract ... 70% daily reference value
     echinacea pills and I am one with everything
          this is real
          this is real shit
          don't even need the tv to sleep
          this is real shit.

✱

10/23/12

Little Hooks

little hooks

sink little hooks in me
and pull me in different directions

if i find myself under a full moon
in a desert
with one cactus
and a coyote
i will be the cow skull

if i find myself in the fog
on a dirty Paris morning
with fast walking people and pigeons on the brass statues
i will be the revolving door

there is practically nothing keeping me tied
to the earth now
the stars shudder and i dance
with little strings of starlight tied to my fingers
i am tying the knots tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter.

the bottle of Garnier Fructis shampoo
that you left in the bathroom
reminds me with a certain sadness
that i am not a ghost
try to pass through me,
its not gonna happen
still, when i enter a room it gets a tiny bit colder
soon i will bring the fury of an upstate new york winter
wherever i go

pulling on the loose ends, one by one, tying the knots
tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter.

✱

12/2/12

3D MOVIE (3 poems)

✱

11/27/12

3D MOVIE

#1
green tea in the
beer steins
the leaves are
 soaking and I
read my fortune:
i will win the lottery
 i will spend the money on sleep masks
 and soap products
for my mom

a giant steps in front of the sun
there is a new shadow
it stretches to the tip of your
ring finger
fish are leaping out of
the water
and dying in mid
  leap
    is it because you are
    near me?

salongsberusad is a Swedish word that means
drunk but sociable
    hahaha

i am salongsberusad when I am
smelling your hair
tiny lightbulbs are shimmering and
 squinting makes them seem prettier
a cat lived here
now it does not live here

#2
On the wall
there is a green box with a flower pot
in it
and like   a pine cone kind
of thing in the flower pot
you point to it   and laugh

things are rapidly melting into a big
    puddle at your feet
it is like fusion
    we are in the sun, literally.
    i find alt lit poems on google and you seem
interested
    i look at the clock that is shaped like a sundial
it is so stupid looking, we agree

then we are kind of laughing
in a room that is not our room
    it is not anybody's room
    it is a sedimentary room
the way some rocks are
sedimentary rocks
    We look smaller
in a city that is not our city
laughing together and almost touching arms
i test my love of you
the way a fisherman tests the give in his line
 very deliberately and it is sad

#3
there is a groaning;
 the kitchen is not on fire
the dishes are all different colors and the
sink
  is a rainbow pool
i will leave at 4:00am

the wood floor is uneven
it looks 1 million years old
i press my face to it and there is wood
grain pattern
on my face now
your cheek is rosy
the room is tucking itself in for the night
there is a freckle on your lip
    and the freckle looks like a tiny bit of chocolate

i put my hands on everything
    except for you
saying goodnight to things with my hands
The rocking horse on the dresser is wood,
very smooth and good to my touch
The lamp is faux marble and the paper lamp shade is red paper
The ivy on the chandelier is faux ivy, but it looks
like real ivy
 some things look real but are not real when you
     touch them
 that is why most people don't like to
    touch things

then i am in the door and then i will never
see you again
it is november in Paris i am
imagining the remembering of that room

i pee on a Fiat
i give a Romanian guy a euro
i walk in the street
    because there is nobody
    around to be mad

    i will touch everything i can touch
i will always mean
goodbye when i say goodnight

Night Terrace

Night Terrace

I will smoke a cigarette on the
night terrace and blow smoke at the
fat moon thinking we are old
you and I, and dopamine will
rock my shrively brain

I will hum Tangled up in Blue
and say "I totally feel Bob Dylan," drawn
up in my dowdy jacket
emaciated and ugly, I will be
so proud

Paris in the early morning
can smell and be like an ocean
I would toss my too large body into that ocean

behind me murmurs of pleasure
issue from the teeming darkness
my soul gets hard;
my soul gets soft

✱

10/23/12

Untitled

It might be staggering
the sadness of the red neon
turning the yellow brick pink
but it does not touch me

so full am I of backyards in the rain
of a certain light that brings me to you
rotting mulch and eggshells, you remember
the cicadas that died suddenly there.

No longer am I moved to sweep the porch
or throw out the decaying couch that sits,
creaking amongst the empty cans of beer,
from which we glimpsed the frontiers of the real.

Lift a bony finger
to my burning cheek, tug gently.
If I should remain unmoved,
tear at my stony flesh.

If these past years have clouded my blue eyes
spoon them from my skull; better be blind than
keep idle watch Youth like the cicada
drops from the summer sky despite its bloom.

✱

10/23/12