III

I remember reading about this years ago, when nothing
was like it is

now.

We are like rain
eroding the face of

a statue.

some other thing

Writing

on parchment

went out of style
forever ago

II

You wanted to become
a woman.

Standing outside
for hours, hurling baseballs at

other people’s windows.

He was speared through the face
by a telephone pole.

All these years, and still,
I never learned

how to break pieces off meteors.

Taking dietary supplements
is for the weak.

You were an orator, a demagogue:
you are the reason the samurai

impaled so many children
on their swords.

It’s been a long time since I spent
a whole night thinking about

zombies.

Walking the streets
reminds me of

long nights
in distant

countries, where every day
the sky transforms itself.

Learning to debate is nearly impossible.

thoughts

I've finally decided on the structure for my chapbook. It's going to be 3 thematic sequences of poems, with intermissions between, all featuring variations of the same voice, so that the poems comment on each other and transform as they go on, with special emphasis on a consistent "I" voice that might be the narrator.

The first two are already done--"A String of Mutilations" and "Ice Sculptures and a World of Glass." Most of the poems for them are already on here, but rearranged thematically for coherence.

I ended up dropping the idea of the narrative poem, but I think these are going to be set up in terms of a whole, so that the poems stand best together.

long poem (draft), first part of sequence 3

They were playing a game: sun, moon, thoughts.

Sprinkling dust;
to feed the trees.

I am no good at climbing mountains.

Pinwheels. Heliocentrism.

Radiator problems.

The bishop is dead and his robes are webbed with
bits of discarded spiders.

The trains were found abandoned.

So: ungainliness.
She thought.

Stuffed animals floating
through space—

terms

from a medical dictionary.

You spent years raising animals
until you found out

nothing was worth it anymore.

Hit me in the face with
a leather belt;

I would have paid
for you to teach me karate.

Designing machines whose interiors are
blueprints of cities.

(Exhalation.)

Where will you be later
when ice crystals begin forming on the inside of our eyes?

I know that for years you’ve been dreaming
of gouging out your own face,

but never quite had the
nerve.

Imagine this image of an old car
suspended on strong cables above a gigantic mouth,

both of them about to fall.

It was fortunate.

I left part of myself in a jungle in Somalia
and spent months burning trees.

A Scandinavian prostitute.

He pierced the head of his dick
with a machine gun

and stabbed himself in the face
with a fishing hook.

Later we all posted videos on the internet.

I have this hobby of attending funerals
ritually, and without meaning to.

Every day I keep taking walks in the jungle.

I am a
conjurer

of fire.

They covered the body in leaves and

fed it to the god.

Alligators fucked the ground and worlds
were destroyed.

fragment #5

Yesterday we were

eaten

by rats.

I am

no good at

climbing mountains.

You and I

look like

broken branches

drifting along the side

of a Bosian

river.

fragment 4 1/2

the murder of a goat is very delicate and
should always be premeditated

meta brainstorm thing

i'm thinking about writing a 24 page narrative poem
about a family of incestuous demigods tossing up leaves

and fucking with the alignment of the moon

before i begin, i will sacrifice a foal
for inspiration

i've been trying to write poetry made up of clean sentences
that are also somehow broken

using a style i came up with about 6 months ago
which mixes clean/plain sentences that are not at all

poetic

originally i thought of William Carlos Williams but
William Carlos Williams is dead

it's too late in the season to go walking in the woods

i came up with the idea for this piece sometime last year
but originally i was thinking of making it a novella

i have this image of people with glowing skin sitting on a hill
using their fingers to carve patterns in the light

except eventually the light will start to die

the other idea was a thing about "the ocean of life" inspired by a conversation
i had with a professor years ago about a novel joyce never wrote

a few minutes ago i did another fragments that talked about bosnia and being eaten by rats

but i don't think i'm going to post it quite yet

fragment 4

When I die, I will become a tree.
Eating grass.

She died
and gave birth to a storm.

I believe

in the progress of civilization

because everyone I know has stopped
collecting stamps.

There is an art when it comes to worshipping frogs.

We stripped all the bark from the tree and afterwards
no one knew what to do

with the remains.

First Line from "Lady Lazarus"

I have done it again.
I am not the pieces of a crushed moment

spread
all across the windowsill.

I became that, temporarily,
but staying in one place

has never been easy

for me.

You were eaten
by wolves

——delicately, and with

pleasure.

I thought about wolves
in the evening, making a

sandwich.

There are bits of lettuce stuck between
their teeth.

A fragment.

Transformations

We were put in cages

Across the room, a buffalo
was hit in the face

with a steal hammer

I had a dream about zombies—

zombies were swarming all around me, smelling of musty bones and unbrushed teeth, in a night so dark you could only feel their bodies, and hear them

I woke up from the dream
and I was being haunted

by the spirit of the buffalo

Someone had erected an altar to it on the other side of the room

The angle of the light
is never right

It’s been so long, I can hardly even say
anymore

The Scene of a Murder

I came upon the scene
of a murder:

there is this persistent motif
of killing buffalo

The buffalo were attacked
and overtaken by seagulls

the seagulls have been resorting to robbery

long beaks eating faces

People throw their children beneath
the docks

the waves will carry them
to the mountains

no mountaineer

ever
heard of

Blues Poem

I murdered the first draft
of this poem

because it reminded me too much of
bad music

A buffalo was hit in the face
with a mallet

(we were
nothing but wind
in empty houses)—

I sat on the porch this morning thinking about
zombies

watching the fog creep
across the

ground

The night was very old
and it spoke to us then

for the first time in
many many

years

Snapshot@Midnight

A zombie was
singing
karaoke

except he missed all the notes,
as expected

The sound of passing trains
reminds me
of

dust settling
in vacant shopping-malls

Last week,
I saw a strongman

kill a bull
with his bare hands

—It was an environmental
catastrophe