Mozart found it hard
to live in Los Alamos.
And then there’s Columbine
on Hitler’s birthday. The
world stinks of bad news. Here,
however, it’s a beautiful day w/
the dead folks, birds twittering
in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Kenward Elmslie is seventy.
I walked all the way from
Harvard.
George Francis Kimball –
dead 100 years before
I was born (sneezes
across cubicle –
must be the dust).
Say everything!
Or say nothing at all.
a backlash against the dailiness
and the blogworthy. these blanks
their quiddity humiliated. breath
pours from the body. the body
lies under a cedar gateway.
we’ve got the beach with the
cedar gateway. it goes poem.
flower fluff on the waves a
plastic fork with french fries
and a napkin. fresh lunch on the
plaza wrapped in a bandana
Japanese style. a sketching
of you sketching. I sat high
above on a mound. I sat
wrapped in cedar watching you
watching the waves. I saw
a seal. this is written. these blanks
poems their multiple planes a
napkin. this breath in a box.
this box a body. this body
trapped in the scream of a sneeze
down the hallway.
what a leftist mix tape.
I’m disappointed to be dealing.
back at work a tree background in cubicle 3.
words can’t describe even spent me.
never even me. chin up. cut spinach.
throw myself toenails into a blank.
one umbrella in the mist memorization.
blue babies in the bay baby blue.
it rains the day
I know I was
almost perfect
but now
it’s Monday
ocean seagulls
are digressions
here I can’t
so much get
dizzy with
gossip but
I drink fog
and bid on
forty acres
I am Arkan
sas the sun
California
Boston
and Maine
I haven’t had
a vacation
in over a
year and
this is justwhat happens
this movie’s an example
of the quietness of rain
or the neighbor
typing up the bedroom window
something comes out
it turns slick garbage into plot
a cliché illustrating nothing
is it a taxi or tax day
the Premier leaves the building
operatically for China
the page he left included sex
and romance
both I don’t remember
except that I was there
and would rather have gone to Portland, Maine
which movie is this an example of
hello dream of a new month
signing a lease we blew up
its national flag flirts online with our own
greenness
Saturday night Brian the elegant nurse
Jake the sixteen year old Indian
Easter
nothing like you
our traditional walk in a pink shirt
so as not to be funereal
we breathe
he’s unimpressed so I sign the line
it gets things rearranged
but I want to think about bloom bottoms
everything frozen like the internet
in greed
disappears in a puff of smoke
each argument over religion
gets me closer to the stars
in bed
everything on the floor you fell down
making an announcement
you’re leaving for good you don’t feel safe
you want to hang it on the wall
so you can see some you there
or me
it’s too confusing
puff
over nothing
a new month another spring Bill Moyers on teevee war in Yugoslavia
a nice date he likes The Muppets and The Simpsons and also Tori Amos
he has a beard and we even smooched and snuggled after Daniel Auteuil &
Catherine Deneuve got him weightlifting gloves for the war in Yugoslavia
we had a double moon even and the sky was a smokey smoky blue then
poetry attacked my omelet for dinner and I had a lot of expense reports
stop what will I think years on down if I live to read this again
when people keep killing other people
and I won’t be here of course
I’m no good yuck
let’s dance
born into the glow from within,
the moon looks at us in the shower
while a car washes into the grey evening.
somebody is born at 8:44 or so.
it is night. elaborate messages
are frozen upon each facial expression.
I am not sure how to get in touch
with my roots. which mountain
belongs to me. which lake.
I do remember swimming to the
edge, to the buoyed rope,
wondering how deep it was
and what happened beyond.
I think I find out, eventually,
but in the most unlikely places.
some are dark except for the
single ray angled slantwise.
sometimes swimming is required,
but not always. we are born. we
find our cars. we pack like cigar boxes.
we sit. we think more and more
about events that unfold and we try
to explain them. in our heads. to each other.
until the explanations grow more and more blank
as a fire builds within that either boils us or keeps us
away from any more life.
The flowers are dying.
Lips like sawdust.
Mars is never easy.
Shall I meet you at home?
sunny day to mix it up
give birth on rewritten pages
near the tip of my tongue
here’s a little sore reading last night
our brown California puts out
especially the beloved pantoum
next is Fire + Ice before Sackler
this is a grill in a circle
it’s not so mixed up as all that
tonight I have a date
with the broken cloud
that breaks off like a boxing glove
until my shoulder hurts
like everything hurts
now The Red Room has its Cosmos
the sun shines through Taiwan’s
not so Carl Sagan-esque retirees
and Kosovo is bombing us
they slit the throats of Albanians
ah well listen to this “she’s at NYU but
now she lives near Columbia”
“you wanna say ‘hi’ to my
daughter in
New York?”
and morning.
elevator talk about the
School of Quietude. and then
Outlook tells me to water my
deskplant. “I would push
your mom in front of a train
for a cup of coffee.”
so what
if he gives props to his pre-
decessors. why don’t I
have a kid myself, see how
lingering life can be in
fast-forward?
tell me:
how are we already here?
it’s eleven o’clock
and I have to do
the filing.
here’s spring
& psychosis
Thursday and
Friday wrists
hurt wrist
hurts (right)
also edge of
ball of foot
(left) Cali
fornia eggs &
pages of do
nuts ah Zhu
we love you
+
Jackie Brown
Tom Bonner
& Channel 4
Indian food
a Gong Show
measured in
boys fuck
grad school
2 people at
once in blue
eyes find
the redbutton
w/o worsening
A bird flew up to me this morning.
“Nothing I have to say will be of any use to you.”
Scene four: St. Patty’s day in Boston.
I bought him a monkey in a cup. It’s pretty cute.
Call Site for Sore Eyes, 3:21pm. Make appointment.
Not for myself. Just listen to Nicole
Kidman: “Has anyone had Lasic surgery? Is it any good?
I can’t see. I walk around in a haze.”
I was online 3 hours last night talking to some
winterguard boy in Billerica. Maybe a date
with the pianoman on Friday? Premier Zhu’s address.
Mary Cassatt. Then the symphony with you-know-who.
He’s back from London. Yesterday he points me to the
sickest pigeon he’s ever seen.
Makeshift snow again.
The tulips flash soon.
My heart sags, makes
red carpet groping no fun.
Today’s rainbow burns a
needle-hole into the
southernmost tip of the
island.
There goes my
idea for a career change.
This day has been a coding
smorgasbord, always I’m
either just blank or I’m
blank blank blank blank
anymore. Esp. sifting thru
the conference participants.
Pass me the Xanax. I think
I’d rather be catty than talk
such hokum.
Today I blew
everything by sending
him the mail. He writes
partial sentences, which
in retrospect was of
course a bad omen.
“Truthfulness is crucial.” So I enjoy
Everybody Loves Raymond generously.
So I have spent today $160 at Structure.
Here I am. What have I missed from
giving up Arkansas? Why do my words
not echo, like C.D. Wright’s, that long,
lost country? Honestly, where does
she live? “Outside Providence.”
What largesse! After small poetry,
grieve racism. Then drive. Drive to
Holliston, to Big Sur, into Obsession.
This is the table where I met him. Not
much more than the silly words that
are volleyed back and forth across it.
We still sleep with each other—on
occasion.
Your tall poem is hard
to look at because your eyes are
so beautiful.
