Dreaming in Satellite

The new humane way to harness your dog

2011-11-17T20:51:00.002-07:00

But howling I become an ever more un-

heard person.

                                 -- Heather McHugh

In the old book, a thousand-mile passage ticket for the Atchison,

Topeka, and Santa Fe railway. Little bone-line punches ignite the storms behind.

Are you any nearer than you were in 1901, digging through

the soggy-bottomed boxes of what the linesmen dropped behind?

Maybe hints of grease buried themselves in the fabric and belts--

the old mutts seemed to tighten their notches then, tucking tails behind.

One-hundred ten years whistled by, and there you are, not on a farm at all,

but sniffing out the Gila River, leaving Globe behind.

(Daily Spam 11.17.11)

Be Thankful For…

2011-11-16T20:45:00.002-07:00

The late-night electronic resources
burn in your mind their generous graphics,
give you options for anaphylaxis
and probable cause in your divorces.

What mind resists downloadable forces,
or breaks life down in avoidable taxes,
swells red in the eyes and then relaxes
to memories of mythical horses?

The flat-screen moon beeps its high, sharp noise
anticipating a newer ice age.
The brain, awash in blue premonition,

plots its descent, hires its neural decoys.

All you have left are dimming white pages,
velocity of a gone tradition.

(Daily Spam 11.16.11)

Someone must be searching for you

2011-11-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

with a quiver fashioned from

a paper towel tube, my son advances

on the straw bale. Five arrows

into the neighbor’s yard,

he suspects gravity is an abandoned god

pushing his prayers into dirt.

Oh, ancient one

(Daily Spam 11.15.11)

Re:

2011-11-14T19:48:00.001-07:00

It’s me, Madison, with the caterpillar lips.

It’s me hovering over candles. I’ll be

swooping into town with only a dollar

and Rumors on vinyl.

It’s me in seaweed. When I get there,

I’ll need a bath and a riot act.

I’ll need a bar crawl safari. Get me

stoned and then a drink. Move

when I howl at the throaty moon: You can

go your own way!

It’s me and my kitty named BOO.

It’s me. Oh, I’m a super horny girl too.

It’s me, the bomb.

It’s me on wheels.

It’s me to share.

After all these years,

it’s me in all my indebtedness.

(Daily Spam 11.14.11)

Choosing infection control products

2011-11-13T16:00:00.003-07:00

this is kinetic, son, maybe

a lightweight song of a Tuesday morning

can catch you in moments

when you’re on the table

shaking out the quiet operation

and when you wake, a dead man’s

ligament will pull your knee

in place, a new body memory

may waltz you between steps, go

along, be stable, textured, not afraid

of new cotton spirits floating

in your heavy metal, baroque

medallions swinging in your dub

step, keep it loud, and listen

for breaths where you might hear

a ghost blow a lonesome whistle

through your muscles

(Daily Spam 11.13.11)

Do yourself ä favor. Tŗy this.

2011-11-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

This mom wasn’t prepared for the black

box of the past year. All the input

spewed unforeseeable outputs, or so she thought

in retrospect. Half a semester at the university

didn’t prepare her for simple

vehicle maintenance. Experientially,

she knew the pigeonhole principle: if

there were two spaces for three people,

one would always be left out because

she would be goddammed

if she was going to share and put up with that.

Facing the wounded sneer of a broken

minivan, she returned

inside to decipher the ogham

of dog shit laid down

on the kitchen rug.

(Daily Spam 11.12.11)

An alternative to the traditional facelift

2011-11-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

Most often the answer to a question like

"you don't have a headache do you" will

result in an answer of "Yes", which means

"Yes, I do not have a headache".

- Cross Culture Medicine

Lifestyle is, yes, petrified of crows

camped around a bed. And my mind

becomes war in the aftermath

pictures of hook-necked birds yearning

for skeletal horses. Fingernails

pull at shrapnel, tap their prayers

for an intervention of inexplicable ointments

smeared ceremoniously on aching sons.

Women in those wrinkled photos

always seem the saddest, whether holding

a pail of atomized liquid or wringing

a random piece of cloth of all its grief.

Even the desperate eyes of the young women

betray their faith in tobacco iron. Kneeling

between the walls, yes. She is Sophia,

she knows plain writing is yes.

Her hands crystallize between stray bricks, and yes.

A pain curls her hand as she lifts, and yes.

In every language she asks her baby: is you yes,

is yes. Clouds

at any distance beyond the camera’s frame

pour down their yeses on her lifted face.

The world is yes. Snow falling up

answers in negation, returns a hard yes.

(Daily Spam 11.11.11)

Invitation to Canterbury Who's Who

2011-11-10T06:26:00.002-07:00

In this sense they are in league with each

other, and we see this in several ways.

When I tell my tale, I am at the Fillmore East

on Sept. 23 1970, punching a cigarette

through my hand. There is no feeling

like the radio inside dialing into the signal

of a revival in full-blown tongue. Stray beads

flung from the busted lung growling

my revelation, and I believed I saw paper lanterns

illume the couch-loafing alchemist

in pinpoint gaze, not feeling the greasy arms draped

around him, too long in trance, already wasted

he knows he’ll walk away in darkness, maybe not

be seen for years, yet to be played out in

prescient rage against the cats and syndicators. Relics

of what I lost in the ensuing days of meat and mortgage.

Until, unsuspecting, Goldbarth’s dizzy-fisted poem,

500-years too young, knocked me back in calendar black-and-white

ripped off and tossed as if to show passing time in old movies

to that moment of God’s plenty where I punched

a cigarette through my hand and the sweaty

stigmata of revelation blew through my inside radio

and I’m caught one more time.

(Daily Spam 11.10.11)

Hey there, do you wanna have fun with me

2011-11-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

One more recipient,

you receive more.

You hide. I detail

the details, number the legs

wrapped around legs, trace

fingers around the spaces

where loneliness takes it

the hardest. An unattended basket

of folded clothes falls in the spillway

of your unattended heart. One more

loveseat tipped over and silent.

Lonely lips mouth our body of

chances. Hey there.

Body me down below

the broken table. Chalk

the spaces where we can

fall and reload. Body me

full. Wreck me.

Let our elephants desire

a trek through the folded skin

of Hannibal’s escape. March

me through your passes. Let’s fuck

this up and leave crushed

velvet trumpets in our retreat.

(Daily Spam 11.9.11)

Online Pharmacy

2011-11-08T16:43:00.002-07:00

At times God would speak

in thunder, like a cracking whip

screaming into a flesh-flapped back.

It was simple to hear

through the hundreds of opened

ears weeping blood. A miracle

optioned out to the weakest minds.

All one had to do was stand there,

arch and dance

with wrists lashed

to a salt pillar, all for the sin

of saying goodbye.

(Daily Spam 11.8.11)

Backstage Pass

2011-11-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

It is the first snow. Scores

of graying juniper berries dip

under the weight of a cotillion

of so many icy maidens

huddling on the rotunda.

These ladies bring nothing

but a myth of symmetry. Maybe

midweek, enough sun will

bring them to tears, drop them

all among the gravel. A thaw

will wrestle them into gin.

They’ll carve a poem

in the slope

of my face.

(Daily Spam 11.7.11)

The Time is Now

2011-11-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

On this typical

day, I am a voyeur

of laziness, getting off

on nothing. I can’t

imagine how old people

imagine Italy

before the war.

I can’t close my eyes

to peep into my own mind’s

eye and see an old man

counting out his week’s

medication. A butter knife

scoots the chalky pucks

into the daily squares. On Wednesday,

the thud of a western tanager

against the kitchen window

startles him. He drops

the box. An angel

peeled from a

fresco, colored in richest

Italy… where was I?

(Daily Spam 11.6.11)

Please Read

2011-11-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

Revised statutes languish

inside corners of libraries. No organization

celebrates their dry festivals of whereas,

hear unto [sic], aforementioned.

The dizzy spin full

of footnotes signifying

nothing. The total sum

of such transactions

is an execution

of communication.

Therefore, 36 degrees outside,

the wind at 8 miles an hour. Now

apple-butter burnt toast,

boil tea, and let’s

proceed

with an obscurity of Pound.

(Daily Spam 11.5.11)

Your Credit Score May have Changed

2011-11-04T16:45:00.001-07:00

Hairshirt proto-human

folded pelts, pillow born. Sleep

transcended that evening’s fear

of thorns, a jumped boulder

opening down into a void, where

yesterday, ashen pink

spilled warmth. White

splintered and stone

dripped. Between handprints

a span of dimensions, length

of leg, kangaroo tail, sky.

Pre-language,

morning’s indentation indicated

zero like a scream. Fingers

interlocked meant reunion, and hope

of that, just desperate lines

scratched on

cave wall.

(Daily Spam 11.4.11)

Why Are You Still Shaving?

2011-11-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

No man ever steps in the same river twice,

for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Suds-bearded father

sang “Barroom Champagne” before

a cigarette and Bible study. Every morning

routine, in days before

the straight razor’s guillotine snap

gave way to two, four, six-blade

skin softening strips. Aloe

was a bitch, but no match

for a sharp spade and a Phoenix

Saturday morning. Beautiful,

my own dad shaving granddad only days

from his passing. Sometimes, I shave

to clean, to not be who I am, and at times

to practice stepping

in that same river.

(Daily Spam 11.3.11)

Sparrow

2011-11-02T20:44:00.002-07:00

A secret pollen sifts midnight

through Main Street.

The fired up lung trio of rampaging fate

agitates the asthmatic

evening dust; everyone is a dog

with their old ambitions

stuffed in their socks.

The familiars are fed, the needles

thread through deflated veins. Once again,

those sisters mew

on the smoldering heath,

their cauldrons cooling

as they roll their dice

in the tarry night. Unobserved,

a song

becomes bird.

Invocation

2011-11-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

In the words

of Cripple Creek, in the spirit

of Hand-Feeding Deer, wash me like revival.

Knock five kicks in the face of Ra.

Sing in mustard seed. My Goodnight

Fortuna, prophesy

a joyride down

Starlight Pond with both eyes shut.

Manifest a barge where Chinese lanterns

surf ethereal on a golden trumpet. Park

baby grand, before me. My wind chime

in springtime, skip over

Fossil Creek with jugs of wine, rip

wings from gold-backed demons on sax, and flare

cinnamon with fingers possessed.

Mountains, move!

Mahalia Jackson

coming through.

Clarity

2011-10-08T20:03:00.003-07:00

You were there. The court applauded.

The ring of sickness gleamed through the dress,

the knitted roses, your mother’s hair.

The middle class luxuries of granite and hatchets

cornered me, a damaged plastic man

begging the question: How do we transform

a dance of right angles

into the common screw?

A Brilliant Age

2011-10-08T19:58:00.004-07:00

In the path behind the university, I spoke

to an old friend, no longer the Santa of Invention,

though broad-shouldered. He listened

and said nothing. I explained my shoes

had a synthetic sole, and was lost

explaining synthetic. They were suede

with contrast stitching. I moved

from records to iPods, and was lost

on touch screen. America gave me this Midas

to redeem lightning for data, and I

was failing him. Too much is fixed

in the span between the black pulp

of the inkwell and the pixel. But, he was kind.

My frustration spoke to his hands. I couldn’t

identify the rock he held, but knew the empty

Colt 45 bottle ten paces from where we stood.

Without much of a windup, he shattered it.

Stocky, even after the decaying years,

I saw the athlete and his smile. Baseball: the bat,

the ball, the hitter, the pitcher, three bases and three tries.

Computers cooled in the lab, visible

through the window, but he looked

at the early moon teetering on the pines.

Yes, I said, we were there.

“It was a brilliant age–and Franklin was a little closer to it at first hand than if he had been in Boston or Philadelphia.”

- Carl VanDoren

Catacomb

2011-09-17T07:33:00.003-07:00

Enveloped in a screamed echo, the Thing

hungered for strawberries, for that melody

seeded in the layers of its stone-polished dermis. Centuries

of its braided red hair attracted hummingbirds

and afternoon bees. The honey thief dipped

into the bruja’s hive and became crosswise, weathering

her radiated chains for so long. But still it dined

unrepentant. That Hard Lady

suspended it in a cloudburst

over El Tovar, a macabre relic flashing the natives

who saw their Quetzal and dove

into the river bed. Modernity caught up

with his schoolyard sarcophagus, gawked at it,

mouthfuls of McNuggets and commemorative spoons.

One twitch away from springing back, it could reverse

the hoodoo, love and hoard batteries. Connecticut

in its heart, to know fresh tobacco, and be done

with this roadside attraction.

Oh, to live.

Only the Torso

2011-09-16T21:33:00.003-07:00

“The head of Dagon and both the palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold; only the torso of Dagon was left of it.” 1 Samuel 5:4

Addition was born

from absence. There was none,

then one walleye. Mother

slid her nails through the gills

and tore. A thought squirmed

of two incarnate. Geometry

is just a line

with tricks, a fault line

gasping for air, a vein

folded in a leaf, the arc

of a womb doubling into

a third heart. It

emerged, quietly navigating

the amnion where the gods

of fish and math collide.

Six Exponentials Theorem

2011-08-03T20:13:00.003-07:00

The holy 3, an X,

a couple to writhe

and divide. A soft wind moves the dust

from which they sprang. Moving

is a game of numbers, I have heard

of such games. They begin

with a solitary desire for 2. In theory,

the right hand cannot know the left, which is

the definition of despair. Oddly enough,

the upper and lower lips are too familiar

to care for the other. It is only when they meet

another pair that they truly play. When the numbers

become irrational, the rules disintegrate,

thus allowing d = l = 2, which is the classical

definition of comedy and a glimpse of the divine.

Shakespeare

2011-06-23T21:14:00.004-07:00

Late in the night, he dreamed

of tar and feathers, but his neurology

couldn’t conjure flight. No worry,

he had just tarped the coliseum,

even as the embers smoked

holes in motley shawls.

To feed the village, he swaddled carp

in burlap. The common yard was littered

with parchment and stray hieroglyphs. Terracotta

warriors broke themselves before him.

The women stood in line

to touch him, offering him shards

of themselves. Emily

lifted her skirt to whisper “my watercolor bard”

with her hidden mouth.

He moved closer to her neck and promised

that zygote will be

her only verb, said comedy

will stain her sheets again.

That morning, he read a collection

of poems and wrote, “These poems

will break your heart.” He lied.

Kurt Cobain Answers the Phone for the Last Time

2010-12-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

In that last moment, he didn’t hesitate
to take a call. A call intruding the time of last supper, final
words, the time of spent candles.

And from the other side, a voice, caffeinated and well recited:

May I speak with a Mr. or Mrs. Cobain, or whomever
makes decisions concerning your phone service?

He brushed the cigarette ash from his Levis.
Still rehearsing in his mind his letter of fear, the final
offering of fame -- how it felt to feel one’s self fade.

Answered politely, while the gun, loaded
and sweaty, stood at his side. Admitted to being the mister;
respectable mister rock star, press legend voice
of a disassociated generation reported to no longer stand
to be ridiculed, be about-faced on by car phone parents
fucking their lawyers’ fax/voice/data...

Great. Are you satisfied
with your long distance service?

His breath was slow, ink fresh on the tips
of his fingers, “Sorry, I don’t have time for this.
I’m in the middle of something.”

Click.

The Long O of Home

2010-12-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

One child’s ghost
is another child’s imagination.

On Longfellow Road, the children
run around each other, laughing
like the long O in chosen. But,
the feral-headed boy leans
against our house, eyeing
an empty box. His fingers are a garden
of scars and thorns.

I watch him belly up to the
trampoline. Vulture
in his movement, he waits
for his moment when the
others crisscross the culvert.

Curling up in the cardboard, a trundle bed
stretches under the memory of games
he has seen played. I parachute
a hand-stitched quilt over him,
and he is still,

snoring like the hard C
in carrion.

Sheet Music

2010-12-20T18:36:00.001-07:00

Augusta knows I am not
threatened by the machinists
who worked her three olive eyelids; they still hang
to the idea of her Prince Albert fingertips.
Not me. I settle

into the heavy economy of a Sunday
paper. The graphs of drunken Zs
remind me of her forehead. Her
comedy: a time machine and sparkling lip gloss.

The Great Depression’s men
drop their signs and loaves
to love her. The story is old. Men my age

ladling split pea into their caps, salting
their bacon. Breathless at her alabaster columns,

they button their shirts
to the top.

It is too much for them. I follow
the paper-skinned hands of a piano teacher
trekking the bars of a songbook.

Icarus

2009-05-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

Icarus

In a time of radiation, dream
of tin rockets and eagle-headed explorers
outfitted in silver winged helmets

lift your chin and skim
along the sidewalks, twirl again
when the yellow hum
of your lymph nodes subsides

and you are no longer

strapped to the X, free
from the bone feeders

no longer an outline
but numinous,
out there

Genesis

2009-05-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

Genesis

"If I were going to believe in God,
I would believe in the God of Johnny Cash."

I walk between rusty gates, washed

in a gospel bruise, baptized

into submission. Already,

suffocation etches

my chest, like breath

breaking my teeth. That devil

bite stings like a lullaby: a dust

for a dust, an ash for an ash.

Crawling from the pistolwhip manger, I

play under a plague of promises.

While the death rattle lacerates,

I sing

my song of pestilence, laying it down

in the garden

on fire. What could I

expect, born

with midnight swallowing me

back to my father's gate

where the raging lilacs hang

like bombs at the door.