As/Is







12.30.2004


.-. . -- --- .-. ... . / ---..





.-. . -- --- .-. ... . / ---..



-.-- . - / - .... . / .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. /

.- .-.. .-- .- -.-- ...



... .. --. -. .- .-.. .-.. . -.. / .. - / .... .- -.. /

-. --- - .... .. -. --. / -... ..- -




.. - ... / - .... .. -. / ...- . -. . . .-. / -. --- .--








12.29.2004


Anything

I'm now

bound by


invisible strings

to entire


constellations of

staggering zombies.


Anything that

occurs yields


a potential

zombie (anything).

-------------------
Note: This is likely the last piece (21st keeper)in my Little Book of Zombies. They can go on forever, but I can't.

Thank you, all, for your forbearance. Arrrrrrrrrr!








12.28.2004


The Zombies and I

The zombies

and I


are part

of an


intermittent semiautoerotic

feedback loop


(a loop

of broken


lines through

which these


humble poems

come trickling).


I shudder.

All zombie


encounters are

little deaths.









Zombie Communication

Zombies typically

"speak" telepathically.


I hear them

in my head.


They are

given to


imperative tones

of voice


but are

often romantic.





You Never Know

Sometimes zombies

are chalkboards.


Sometimes zombies

are erasers.








12.27.2004


Eros and Necrosis

If zombies

make love

they begin

to fall

apart. Eros

and necrosis

are fearsome

mates. Making

love with

zombies can

never be

without consequence.

If you

give suck

to zombie

tongue it

will become

ashes in

your mouth.





Zombie Eyes

Zombie eyes

mesmerize you


as they

memorize you


and then they

make a copy


or two

to walk


around town

like dogs.








12.26.2004


Zombie Couture

The zombies

I know


wear "Love

Kills" tees


and squirrel

fur thongs.





Zombie Psycho-physiology

Zombies have

no Inside.


They are

our projections


melded with

their reflections.





Zombie Reproduction

Zombies can clone

themselves by


looking in mirrors.

If a zombie


looks at you

from a mirror


you've become

a zombie too.





Insomniac Zombies

stare through

me, unblinking.

They are

my Outside.








12.25.2004


'ickty'ak



cracked plastic lookalike glass
"it's one, one more time, it's one more"
time despite the moving street by cars "on, on"
splashed out wreck less ly
staged danced and now gone


"bye, bye you" negative where so
lid meet bare feet "meet me, out holding"
my blanket's wet appearing 'lief tense (sions)
undone (ing) leading paths
moments "bye, you" by one you






Zombie Facts

Zombies are

always horny.


Zombies eat

cold pizza.


Zombies drink

warm beer.


Zombies hum

trance music.


Zombies smell

disturbingly sweet.





Zombie Weather

Zombies

"live"

within

their

own

micro-

climates

circulating

beneath

menacing

clouds

of

dead

skin.









12.24.2004


Zombie Sex Scene

Zombie holds

my face

pressed tight

to its

crotch. Zombie

cum tastes

like moths.

I swallow

every crumb.





Never

Never

have

phone

sex

with

zombies.

There.

I

warned

you.





Hello?!

When a zombie

calls you

on your telephone


you must answer

it with

a question as


if you're appearing

on a famous

quiz show.





Zombies aren't

Zombies aren't

usually affiliated

with organized

religions. They're

visibly uncomfortable

in church,

synagogue, temple

or mosque.

Zombies don't

read scripture.

Zombies don't

read poetry.

Zombies don't

read pornography.

Zombies read

telephone directories.





Zombies are

Zombies are

alibied structures--


self-evident, exterior.


Zombies eschew

irony. Zombies


enter me


and sing

like ventriloquists.








12.23.2004


Pity Party on the Misery Train

Loss has its circuit, its regular travels
here it comes now chugging by
warm white smoke coming out of its stack
just in time it is chugging back
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
its got awful news for you
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
lament and sorrow right on track
there is the whistle of the 8:13
just how miserable have you been?
not enough torture and do not know why?
train can promise a fair supply
buy your ticket, find your seat
tap your foot to the hellish beat
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
tons of bad news just for you
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
get your whole life on the rack
warm white smoke coming out its stack
listen up it is coming back
whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo
jump right on you will feel so blue
clickety-clack, clickety-clack
if lament and sorrow is what you lack










12.22.2004


'adial'tension







radical extension

under bridges
free summersaults
toxic birdcages
automobiles headed for birmingham
cites of inevitable release








12.20.2004


Tea

Shield do I pour thread across
Counting from right to left new life

Crayons melt over the stones in sunlight
Only a fraction preheats water why

Do we stop here in or near an episode
The small slumbering orifice affords new fever

Belief is subdivided pulse and
In like manner wafers a magnetic lore

Removed shoes the impending evening
One relinquishes a centered and uncentered daylight








12.19.2004






.-. . -- --- .-. ... . / ..---



.-.. . - / ..- ... / -. --- - / -- .. ... ... / -... . .- - ...



- .- -.- . / . .- -.-. .... / -- --- -- . -. - / .- ... / .. - / -.-. --- ..- -. - ...


... .. --. .... ... / -- .- - - . .-. / --- .-. / -. --- -








Not Made to Hold

Zombie hands

aren't hard


to draw.

They look


like paddles

or mitts.


Zombie sex

is unambiguous.








12.18.2004


'pre'ekket 'd









12.16.2004


'requisite'procity'oyalty's









12.15.2004


a whispered celebration on the birthday of my first love

the everything you were to me
has ceased to linger

but the numbers hold in mind
apart from their accompanying qualitative data

so here you are young in that piecemeal frame
I fail to polish but regard before moving ahead

to remember that the law of averages
can be splintered into templates

one can worship until fatigue sets in when words
my father said come back to fit with mindset

I've absorbed from him advising me
that loyalty's prerequisite to reciprocity









'ferv or









12.14.2004



_____spot

hatred is not doperminergic
tears stockaded by the hard heart's gall

knees not bend but sham fatidic
convex chest, rites feigned, re-fused jaw

rights refused gyri to long lone dry
tare-ravines: blood is a one-off flood

valent stuff like semen/husherbye/
pigeon-coo/the underlined withstood

yet we could make foundation wall
prise softly (     )'s sulci'd Blind Eye

us concatenated all
joined against hope's idolatry

lies abound that death drowns once
autonomic fear's monstrance





cramp't









12.13.2004


They say

They say Van Gogh cut off
his ear to improve his vision,

but when I lopped off
my own left hand, I starved

for sex.








12.12.2004


Not Yet

The desert of time between each poem, each insight, each plateau of understanding.

The steps towards the poem feel like small epiphanies,
but are not yet the poem; brief shimmers of hope the
poem may still come, while the weary shadowy downpour of doubts continue to dog my path.

Silence encourages me; no discontinuance, no refusal, no
critique, no patronizing, no flattery, no false hope.

The failure to conceive the line captivates me; its remoteness, its beckoning closeness reveals a seductive
movement that stirs me, awakens me, stimulates me;
trapped, frozen, eluded on the verge of something endless, I am wholly alert; ready to pounce.

Is it that the possible, even the improbable but still conceivable, at the moment of composition, offers possibilities so much more appealing than the immediate data of experience- the sensible material for the poem? Is this the appeal of the poetry of place, for example, or the poetry of time:
-I wanted to say it is ok
the dark sky is the way
it is anyway. Night
keeps its own counsel,
muttering to itself in the form
of shapes and shadows.-

Is this the attraction of the poetry of thought; i.e.
-the struggle for the poem is the poetry-or
-it is enchanting to have the time to think-?

Oh, how I miss the idea of pure poetry, I miss it
but I do not want it back; the same way I miss
the poetry of pure words, the poetry of pure
thought, the poetry of pure detail,
the poetry of pure meditation, the poetry of pure revolution,
the poetry of pure nonsense; will I never learn to
miss (let go of) the poetry of poetry, the
poetry of the thought of poetry,
that still continues to beckon, almost
like the surprisingly shocking, patient weave of dawn?









12.11.2004


Excerpt from "The Great Game"

Some said it was the price of Gold.
Others, the bubble
of the Tank market back in '03.

One analyst, ever the self-described
contrarian, even predicted again
that this was "the End of the World."

It caused quite a panic
in Purgatory, Mississippi,
just outside of Crawford, Texas.

But all agreed on one formula -- God
was in short supply --
and investors of all
stripes and checkered pasts,
even Hedge Fund managers at Nature
and Love
, rushed to their brokers
to cover their butts
and buy back their shares.

The brokerage houses were soon overun.
The Catholic Church, Baptists,
Hebrews and Muslims, Latter-Day-Saints,
alike, had been selling short
for years to a mysterious plunger.

rumored the reincarnation of J.
Livermore, himself. But
nobody could say for sure.
It was all done electronically,

these days, even the big orders --
War, Drought, Pestilence, Prosperity,
Freedom, Science, Humility, Common
Sense, Pain, Separation of
Heads of State, you name it. IT
controlled everything.

Then a Mexican-American-North
American named
Gautama rocked the Religious Derivatives
markets one day with a bonafide
apparition of the evangelist pat robertson
etched on the surface of a sacred
grilled cheese sandwich evidently
holding his, er, um,

wallet in the left hand
of Justice Antonin Scalia. The next
day, the Religious Derivatives market
recovered without anyone saying the word
that takes one of the lord's names in vain.

But God was still in short supply.
All the King men and all the King whores
couldn't put their deities to work anymore.

Some of the most responsible citizens
in society started to downsize
their families.

Finally, everything seemed
on the verge of Chaos. Which
some felt reassuring. Which
others calculated they could take
advantage of. Which was true,
also.

A small accountant about
the size of the late John Denver
appeared, as if by miracle.
She was a virgin, too,
or so she claimed on her taxes
at the IRS.





Excerpt from "The Great Game"

Was he true or just
a clever shill?

Some interpolate "cha-ching,
cha-ching, cha-ching" as
music. And some music,
"cha-ching." For others,
it's all one big Chinese
ideogram, and Marx
was a brute and a slob,
whereas Smith was humble,
not intoxicated.

Nonetheless, one aspires to supply
something someday
in demand.

I'll take a Morgan or
a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt
or a Soros over
Murdoch, Pickens, and Sinclair
anyday.








12.10.2004



utterance

he puts his finger in the toaster
and it burns

some god screams on the highway
as though history is a corner
replayed over and over with bats and bars

we come to purity through desire

she contemplates the final call as the building collapses








12.09.2004


While Standing at Attention He Stands to Pay Attention

logic, inherently pale,
is balding, half worth its weight,
thus misses the marquee
logic oprima numero dos
while logic waits for me
first person tingles
logic hinges tissue
impinges on each issue
logic is a norm logic entails
conforms to logic as
conforming loan and koan
logic loaned resembles
logic actual if seasoned
is there logic to the riddle
parable is there a waking
grace is logic peer-reviewed
what time do you have





9 December Priors

[1]
"Rhyme with me" she asked.
"Interpret who I am."

[2]
An early scent retains the mood of afternoon in foremind:
light cast across visible sea astride the tachometric readings of expended energy

[3]
Sew fibers into cloth to wear.


[4]
"All I ask is that you pave me with your youth,
that you indulge yourself in indices of faith
to offer shares of mercy when the time comes to be separate,
when the wind elides to change pronunciation."

[5]
The noticed various dissembles.

[6]
Treatment clouds the judgment in a rush and hurts in tune with fill dirt
that would amplify uneven bedrock.

[7]
Oils no longer capture what is felt.

[8]
Oversight includes unwelcome neglect and the authority
to watch progress first-hand, immerse cohabiting life forms
in these forms of interaction.

[9]
This finished plant is evidence.





trblet't'a









12.08.2004


coat' d









12.07.2004



If not with
convection

then at least
with conviction.








12.06.2004


Excerpt from "The Great Game"

The metal itself, not what it's worth.

Or wanting the cold, hard cash
to pay a premium but how then
spend the hourly fluctuations.

As buyers and sellers line up to outkid
each other, chomping at the Ask and
the Bid.

But what's the pps (price for sharing)
at the Close, or even at midday,
if not paraphrase.

When the mm's are out to lunch
and the specialists won't pay for it.
Besides, they're on another exchange.
And not in the game.

No currency in that. Something taken
to the bank or withdrawn from same.

Which is not about any particular
commodity, just the risk and the
reward trading them.

The highs and the lows
off the charts.

On an altar of candlesticks all
burning at both ends.






How fault you

Gorgeous the daily dreams, the auburn
the strawberry blond and the emerald
red relief from these the every-
day mirages
of meaning hourly labor compounds.
Some few which warrant so much
as symbolic realization. Some fewer still
which prove true
at any extraordinarily smashing times
and spaces. Yet where else
must there be the cold hard
splash of deferred sleep and what
of deep necessity honestly should keep
pace. The hours and the days march
on they say. The starched shirt drapes
a wrinkle here three more the week
following. And at night it all retires
or social insecurity retreats and spouses
and companions share defiance
when they're wise.








12.05.2004


a love unrequited

Whatever
happened to
the two Tom

Beckett
hay(na)ku that
were previously between

this
post &
the one below?

Vanishing
texts? Unprotected
points of resemblance?








12.04.2004


a love supreme

what-
ever happened
to Cindy Birdsong?








12.03.2004


{}

{tumbling under the waves}
Inkstone Hand Mirror Chrysanthemum
{handsome forgery of being}
Red Edges Letter of Flying Fish
{sometimes just drifting}
Illustrated Scroll with Gold and Silver Imaginary Animal
{back where the bed is laid}
Mother-of-Pearl Angular-shouldered Water Jar
{now and then a gentle crutch}
Screen of Male and Female Waves
{too much sleeping, not enough}





Pacem

No one hears the snow
accumulate on lawns,
leaving a smooth place

for signature of tracks
open to daylight
melting footprints,

toward night when chill
solidifies small history.

Is there a beginning traceable
to points that turn to line,

a shapely flow in
recollection of the blooms
thin sheet of grassblades,

birds as if by chance
in mind upon a limb?










12.02.2004



Husks & Shall

fill brittle

tradition in with perhaps --

mouth a silk cliche

waiting

above

its twin

halves of lingual roof -- a monster

of peaks

feeling gone immediately

soft

landings as -- is your

kiss

me --

suspended lean as zoo

hyphens

along the buttery hyena

length

of

your only

lux

skin

to soffer with care

or shall

this one ancient

cicada

hollowed

still humming

hallowed

of sycamore bark

be left to its dead

clinging? --

a husk is now

perched

at eye

& rhythms

all mothers

tried

to warn us !

against sounding cool as

drumhead blue

in fine

silk [they say you have sent me

& I see it is true

in your letters,

this exact

blue]

in case of utter loss

or

your terrific Platonic

kind

love






"Why can't I be loved? Why can't I be loved?"

Dubya's chances of being loved by Humanity:

Somewhere between Boone Pickens and Bob Hope.





Eliot Wave 2

Go ahead! Make my day gray and paint it back
and boo with your indivisible talons,
in the traditions that refashion a latest waste
land. Sprinkle it with doo and some French
whine That will still be burning bright in hot
Guyana two millenia from now. Don't
get all potted and bothered by O'Hara's,
those fleshy in the sand occasions only
occuring once in a lunchtime. I repeat,
Stick it to your times with the all time poets'
recurrent song and then you'll belong Right
up there with the rest of the dead societies.





we are different children now

we tender
resig-

[naturally]
sip through

st raws
as tri n gent

muting second movements
from second chair

draw morning
into window

[to form]
break light












I'll put my mind to it - he was in his twenties so his mum can't have been that old.
she wasn't Norman Bates' frail old sweet mother, she didn't smell like lavender and she didn't wear cardigans.
she had no walking stick and she didn't wear tan stockings gone baggy at the ankle.
I've seen mothers like her - they wear tracksuits and their hair is short and sometimes they dye it.
She had him young and she's worked hard and yelled at him in shopping centres, making his name hard and pointed maybe his name was something like
"Jay-sun!" or
"Day-ved!" or
"My-cool!"
there were lines around her eyes and she was starting to roll at the belly and her tits were saggy but that happened years ago when she put them into the mouths of her babies, she put the milk of her body into the mouths of her babies, and her eyes weren't lined then and she might have smiled a little but felt sad, sad, sad while she put the milk of her body into her son's mouth, the mouth of her baby


(part of a much longer, very hastily written, very dark piece. I would really appreciate some feedback on this one, if anyone has time)








12.01.2004



there
are

whole and

gorgeous
birds living

within this
forest with me

we live
inside

the luscious
parts

of
my
own throat I am

hiding I

fly and it's

dazzling





choice't