A Playground in Belize
Independence is for
the anonymous
Cops rolling backwards
on the shoulder
to the aid
of some troubled surfers
Waving my hoe
at the passing
red-wings?
Cat comes shaking
its head for
meatloaf
I feel so
unaware of the
telephone
I'm dialing
it's the wrong
time-of-day
to call
out in my sleep
Have nothing to say
is nothing to do
Every put-away thing
stays so criss-crossed
Red bird goes by
a narrow window
This bright clear red
goes into my body
It's like time stole your watch
Mockingbirds are
gray and white with
no mockings
And all the books say
Delay delay delay
Yeah, No
In a director's chair
waiting for a movie crew
The sentence is just
as afraid of you
Where you come from
insects survey the grass
I wouldn't variegate
the blessings
with a hymn to Quetzlcoatl
if I didn't dream
in surround sound
Too stoned to wrestle Big Bird
Master Gu
would lay out dozens
of pieces of silk on the floor...
when he had become a bit tipsy
he would run around the silk
several dozen times
finally taking the ink
and spilling it all over.
Next he would sprinkle on the colors
The places where they spilled
he would cover with a large cloth
and have someone sit on it
while he himself grasped
[the cloth]
by one corner and pulled it around
Help! I need a car
but my credit is terrible!
I know the car accident
was not technically your fault
Taxation without misrepresentation
The dump is capped
with pipe vents on a grid
the radio on in the next room
no kind of camouflage
or do I make myself
a Gila monster
when I sidle to the left
the signal breaking up
into harmony
He thinks everybody is his house
whereas I think Beethoven tic tac toe diamonds
to rely
on the debris
of what you see
and remember
sleep through the early afternoon
sun hard on the wavy roof
and the coyote in his bunker
Wifeboy! Yeah-no
Off in the wilderness
wrestling wild roses
context monsters
in the future bees in the stove
Tasks of nobody home
cry like seagulls
and I am pouring
bailed-out basement
down stone steps
Take me to your massive mermaid
give me of your holy scene
Mention this ad for a free instinct
let go of the spangled
know-nothings, let them
sit in their living rooms
the mind is
what the brain does
random copying errors
echolocate
the chocolate
Karaoke of Myself
In the parlor
Education bargains a stet
Out of the rules
And it is stet haunting the campaign
Stetted lulls and loops
Gaffes in the name
O that you would meet me
With stet in your heart
A forlorn hit
The hit which can be talked out of its bunker
Only with the bless you of stet
Travertine
Yesterday, when we were on the hot rock
Watching the clouds burn off
A movie theater-crowded compassion
Remembering to be completely where I am
Took away the mother-of-pearl
Believe it
Was a pale command
The paragraph came out with its hands up
The money
Came from a fear
I whispered
In the same fear
Suffering has been shown
To grow
The resolve to victory
And to enlarge the breadth
Of the love people feel
For the ones around them
(A compressed mass
undergoes a change of state?)
What, do you want me to come over there
And make art of you?
All ice-cream scooped
There along the travertine
I checked my shoes for chewing-gum
And softly stroked the power locks
I turned down the music
And answered the phone
Davis, Jordan
The Present
To correct the magnificat
I give her my face
And light the slow fuse
Looking over her essay on horses
I feel more fragile than doowop
May I have a phosphate, please
When we go on an errand
We go through the woods
The scene where nothing
Makes up its mind
I'm looking into the gravel
Sitting in the shade
Waiting for words
I have a cup of soda
Somebody says a living hell
Somebody else speaks German
In this eldrich
The dreaming industry
Reaches into a bowl of anthropomorphisms
And is rewarded with tall buildings on high ground
Sunlight picks through the energy
She stands hands against the wall
Feet apart and turning
Back to smile --
The greener the red
The greener the green
A Chocolate Orange
Whack and unwrap did the pen my father ran over
Grinding gravel dents into the side fall out of my pocket
When the seven dimes fell five in one place two astray
Just past 23rd this morning on the A? For lunch Hero and
Leander the grape lights are new this year, they shine
In the center with dark purple and green edges but like
The good cold-light strings they plug in from the box
To put a fading styrofoam mandala like a safe house sign
Every other shop on Fourteenth Street and so unlike
The rest of this season they're better in the package
Marlowe makes me feel lazy and spoiled as goretex sweats
Make their summerlawn sound in the hallway, it's not
Brisk enough to make this chocolate phrase pantoum
The dizziest physiological response to bloodsugar spiking
With the twin winter cravings of skin and chlorophyll
Actually just some cash to buy tiny kites and chocolates
To put in the homemade bags everybody's getting
And a hammer drill and skil saw some insulation
And then what and then what the people and things
Go by but from this window it's buildings like mountains
The viewy heat waves on forestry lights saying
The thing I want time waves in Eel Pond isn't only
Attention to the rickrack or shoulder light inspector kit
Barking at the mayor for a twenty-one banjo serenade
That consignment drifts in the near future with chains on
For now just give me the right comma like seltzer
And I'll be the paraphrase you guessed almost, but with
This difference: the entertainment is secretly bothering
Itself into making something to take when serious
Not as a release from the grip on the arm of all day's
Tedium but the good goofing fanfare, really fanfare
For the quick and quiet fight to push this orange over