POEM A DAY 2020

trying a walk

Body abstracted
"the" body, non-
activated body
moving through
a body that is
taught how to move.
Do you know dance?
Not how to or about,
not that. No. Just
do you? I cried
when I saw a body
that knew what
another body would do
if it was younger or
born with grace.
I cried as I do
at sound, at noise
I cried as I do
at fame. I love
to see "the" body
abstracted, "the" body
activated but best of all
a body in another's suit.

July

nothing good will ever happen again.
On the hood of the car, summer parking lot.
mountains or hills, in the northeast we don't know
the difference.
Waiting for fireworks aware of class maybe, maybe not.
When a Wal-Mart was a Jamesway or an Ames,
nostalgia for older iterations of shit is so
my brand. nothing good will ever happen again.
Summer like graffiti on the New Jersey Turnpike
like the cross between Long Island and the deep, deep woods.
Everyone up here with a vague accent,
Everyone up here has always been here.
Nothing good will ever happen again. Hood of the car,
summer parking lot. In the Northeast hills, New Jersey
turnpike vibes, deep deep woods. We're far away,
up here, with Long Island accents, in the hills,
when a Wal-Mart was a Jamesway or an Ames,
shit, these fireworks will never happen again. nostalgia
for a class that never was. Summer like graffiti on the
New Jersey Turnpike. Mountains or hills, we don't know.
Long Island accent or the deep deep woods? It's vague up here.
Nothing good will ever happen again. My brand
On the hood of the car, waiting for fireworks,
parking lot of Jamesway or an Ames. New Jersey
or the deep, deep hills.

American Education

Looking at a map in fluorescent evening

milestone

myself as older
coming into focus.
Each year now going forward
closer to a memory of
my mother until one day
*snap* it's clear! She and I have
had the same day, 35 years apart.
Aging is not linear, it's circular.
Or maybe U-shaped.
Or a C? There is a gap. God willing,
A stop. A poet can't be good till
45, I've heard, so no need to worry yet.
I might live longer than my mother.
I might not. This is also
part of your lives. Your lives
are part of my lives. You can
be both tragic and a toon, say
something so uninteresting
it threatens all our very lives,
and yet it is a joy to hear it.

New Thought

Mentalist, mesmerist, clockmaker,
scientist, doctor, lawyer, priest.
My mind can make a well America.
My mind makes me well and tells
your mind what to do which is
to make yourself well and so on
and we're American aren't we
so that's how it works.
Blacksmith's sons, sick children
all sick child mystics all,
I am living in the legacy of
sick child mystics aren't I?
Are you? There is no we. There is
the mind.
Maine, New Hampshire,
West New York.
Father healer rock dealer
Ursula who and Mary too.
Or has my mind just made me sick?
Where is the starting point who
is the neutral which lobe does what
do both do all?
Sickness, Health, and In-between.
Living in a well America,
1880, 1980, two thousand twenty (too).

Dull

neutral weeks
long meadow
of the mind
slight breezes
in the evening
an eon of
empty days
soft rippling
grass behind
my eyes
peaceful, empty
skull

prophecy

Awoke in a mud-flat of the mind
with children watching, a boy
with coke-bottle glasses verges on vanishing
and I have to find the way back now.
I've lost a friend's baby which is
too bad to be real. Some things, thank god,
are too bad to be real. And maybe always will be?
But maybe just for me, charmed me.
So I rose above a changed metropolis.
Watercolored grey and like the whole
world was the underpass at dusk.
The Wonder Wheel fell into the sea,
and the voice that warned my mother
of her fertilized egg spoke for the first time
to me. "You are old," it said,
"you wish to die." But hold on
(I paraphrase) but hold on please,
"you'll see."

Preacher

Need a leader, please
a mentor maybe just
an older woman with
an interesting voice?
Today I watched
the light go down
from bed, felt
the nearness of
the rail yards which
I only do when deep
in thought. The planes
and the trains, right?
Become invisible until
you (or I) creep towards
an edge, a boundary,
boundaries are what
this woman will
offer and boundlessness,
and consolidation, from
apocalypse to new faith,
a truck plastered with good
news on the way
from one town to another
to the new church of
what's next.

2-10

What is there to want to be?

Dormant

how late is it what time is it how are these hours burning?
How much of life is lost to empty hours or how much
is gained?

I am a lizard or a bear or a plant but a plant that bursts
with rage from time to time like a gale wind from the roots
and not the sea.

But otherwise is still. Is still and waits and folds and stares.
No goals no visions fears or any thoughts or even words
exactly.

But then explodes I hope can last for hours in the sun
Can walk for miles. Can walk for miles. Can walk for miles.
And pause

And let the streets contract into a fist around me

And with a monstrous shriek each finger of the city
opens wide and for the first time in my life I can actually
run

Unproblematic

lascivious leering director
delivers a girl to me.
I thank him, forever,
with no anger, as that's
about right. That's what it
was like, for me! Slavering
ghouls and endless accidental
nipples. That's just
the uterine fantasia of
one's thirteenth year, or
I'll speak for me, of mine.
So look, linger, we
were made from being
looked at, cast like psychic
holograms from some
old lecher's gaze and
I wish to see all becoming
as such or else feel quite
alone.

Angel in the Home

Domestic sphere?

A little meal at home

Woman alone with cauliflower.

Woman with two heads of cauliflower in her raised left hand.

Wry woman, posed, nutrient-rich companion, crisped.

Woman with fragrant florets, swelled by gaseous delight.

(I have no one to watch me eat two heads of cauliflower tonight).

in your sleep

Part of the day is older faster
the time that gets lost gets lost right now
I am no bon vivant nor particularly
useful neither but a wizard of time
at least, I am.

Late afternoon how many
more as slow as this yet not alone.
And warm, of course,
pleasure/horror like desire
for a banker or some other
dubious dude.

No more to say today, how strange
to know that one will wake and
yet not speak for hours yet to come.
I will see snow again, and yet

Arrogance

who was the last one
to want you
when you were young
and doesn't it feel
so nasty to indulge, mmm
like a man! Oooh, now
my face grows coarse and
only those who saw it then
could see it as it was then now
but they're all not real
they never were so who
for you was one?
Is he now with another?
Is she a feather? If
another wants it,
what of it, who wants
a one who does not
see one's youth who
only sees one's self
how awful, how uncouth

Regression

Fantasy January fandom friends!

Almost Forgot!

the power-down day
is only evening there is
no day when days are only
for wasting. How long
has it been this way? I
do not know what work is.
I do not know much about
what most ancestors knew
what work was, as the working
ones don't say.
I guess my work is worse monk's work
in that it has no God but better monk's work
in that it doesn't matter

HIST 1000

Opus optics optus what's up
most epic opus here before us
50,000 couplets and forget it,
I could remember more but it
was 1,000 Anno Domini I'm sorry
I don't remember David or Gilgamesh
either or
I don't remember anything but one day
when my eyes would just not
focus after fish and some blond
boy said "what's up?" What
indeed, is up. 990 chapters
and the summer of your life
must end.

Letter of Resignation

continuity

may this time blend back