voice

plastering

Leaves for the lake

I moved my mattress

I was twenty-seven

I was twenty-seven in the sunlight, seventeen in the shade
and I'll be seventy years older when the creditors are paid.
I spent two years behind a front-wheel drive
behind a semi, the northbound I-35.
And four licking a magazine page,
which turned and wrinkled.

your coat sleeves, your

keep me in your coat sleeves, your warm bedroom.
palm your sides for the rush of hot cider.
and breathe steam over your chin,
ready but not for the frost.

what to expect

hot chop sticks

hot chop sticks.
burnt lips, red tongue
under thai curry, neon tubes.
new night outside, a late blue again.
earth streaks on a square plate.

I chased two limousines

Stay dry out

Thank you? Gratitude.

Warm, warm, warm

hugh, whitfield: thanks

When Papa's looking out for you

Aesthetic goes first

If you won't drive

First, second, third cold

schwinn

 

 

Corn Soup

Left, west at the cemetery

Through the eyes of my aunt,

 

Through the first floor

At the screenplay's end

On the eastern, railroad side

Philanthropy

This hell's as smokey

I don't mean over coffee

To you who want a cause

On the telephone, I know

So I leave my windows down

Come inhabit this room

I can stand growing old

So you've found out

Play it all back

awake

what.
awake.
raucous R.E.M.
"it's been a bad day
please don't take a picture."

before 6 are
15 milky minutes
where a girl I once knew,
acts as a caricature.

and oh nudity!
like painted carnival booths...
muscles and skin of delacroix
or el greco!

one more canister
of clicking slides--
noah's ark behind a cardboard city,
a curious and falling pilot,
and a perpetual staircase of escape--
time's up.

Ventura

On the bleached Ventura coast of California
salt and sunscreen combine and run
into the corners of my eyes.
Those eyes upon the pier's end: the meeting
of drunk fishermen and barefoot women.

Above fourteen thousand feet
of golden-hot atmosphere, sweat rolls,
singeing and blurring my vision.

What West Coast freedoms are sold for altitude!
For those sunned statuettes, those eager children,
the seagulls, the fishermen, and their prey
never visit my third dimension, my cockpit.

And yet, I find a second ocean,
more measureless than the first.
A new abandon of yellows, whites, and blues.