Entries From the Farmhouse

The Center Outside the Center

2012-02-10T07:52:00.000-08:00

My attitudetoward the object

even thesun

is like the musiclost behind

secrecy

The smackof kissing

Wheelsperfectly imitating themselves

tryingdesertion at least once in their lives

Even thoughyour eyes

are thelast to lose

thelighthouse's reflection on the water

And are happy to bemissing

Like a boy listening to the telephone talk.

In the snowy nakedness making the most of his skin

I've stopfumbling for the light switch

I stackedthese in a pile and came in.

Everything Else Can Wait

2012-01-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

North

surprise of being
pebbles one day
the center of the dream
distance
Shadows
Silence
the way back
the scramble of pink time
the deduction
the clearing
the gradation of flowers
the difference
a layer of trees
the only word to describe you
the regions of rain
lovers unwilling to avoid
the last minute firecracker
a patterned comfort
the wind through nice hair
amazement
a puzzling vanishing
a morning with friends
a disappearance

South

Nothing has happened in the last two seconds
that can explain the glancing blue lilacs
not the centuries where no one has lived
not the poetry that Neruda wrote
not the freshly bathing dawn
the pleated rain whose communication is reflection
the reappearing of reds and yellows desperate
like a harpoon its glass edge

Tonight

2011-12-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

And I think if the world may end
where the moon light falls like snow
Let it end tonight so
so that I do not have to live through

where the moon light falls like snow
and end even in our souls
so that I do not have to live through
and live through and be through

And end even in our souls
At the end after the blue
and live through and be through
out in the snow we come into

At the end after the blue
that lives through our bodies
out into the snow we come into
where there is only you

that lives through our bodies
And I think if the world may end
Let it end tonight so
where it is only you

To My Son

2011-12-02T08:36:00.001-08:00

When mom and I divorced

you stopped holding my hand

you stopped running into my arms

you stopped

Not because you were getting older

Not because you didn't love me

out of the coy corners of you eyes

or out of the little beginnings of a wry smile of hope

or happiness, or love.

but because suddenly at eight the world had

suddenly become a sad place

that at eight the energy coming off your fingers

coming off your eyelids

coming off the electrified tips of hair

had been snuffed out

had been closed like a house

on a street, in a city you

would never return to.

We try but end up doing nothing

but waiting for our lives to be over

Do you know I wrote two wonderful poems

filled with your brothers and was

waiting..waiting..waiting

not to write this poem to you.

To Cause to Glitter or Shine

2011-11-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

Of the adventure we were mum

Of the sky we heard singing and checked in

Of the Japanese text we carried a handkerchief

Of morning we found something delicate

Of the months we resorted to amazement

Of the music we called for more fuzz

Of the others and the vagrants we were valleys and distance

Of the dandelions we were feeling haunted

The houses and the apartments lacked focus

On the skin travel sounded nice
Of the boys and girl circling in the atmosphere
like love swaying in all directions
we cleaned in-between the tip-toes
The rain fell and fell and fell
until the rain fell again and again some more
Of the kissing we kissed some more
Of the tiny messages there were volumes
On the lovemaking the rest of all poems are dedicated

New Letter

2011-11-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

When they greet you

in the foreground
in the suburban

burnt out mornings
that only a dog skeleton

can absorb.
And they call you
by face and say,
"You are done
with 'you' poems!"

"With comical metaphors!"
"With lightness!"
Agree with them.
Tell them that
I am no longer sad.
I will write from metal
Of a hurrah
before charging
of all the things that fill
of all the things that I know
of the only thing I know.

Tomato

2011-09-10T06:57:00.000-07:00

She is sick
She holds the tomato
that I have given her
from the garden.
She brings it to her nose
and smells it.
She rubs the brown
flecks of dust dirt
off until it shines
and hands it back to me

This Is Vaguely Somehow About the Poem

2011-07-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

But we in our motes

(may I offer you some?)

paint the foreground

with pointed perfection

of the few glimpses

he had in Giverney

with autumn within shot

to tell us that this novel nothing

pleases the sawdust sunlight

amid the carnal comments

With Your Coffee

2011-07-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Do you prefer

the anticipation

of a snowball

A room with

or without a

fish tank

An Eden-like porch

with wicker

and Adirondacks

A long sleep

with the feeling of being

awake or a short one

after a day in a hot tent

in a sweatshirt

or the right book

forgetfulness

clever understandings

ice out in the universe

eavesdropping realizations

praying mantis entertainment

the dead with a suitcase of mist

or whatever you call it

three creams and two sugars

with your coffee.

Insert Idea

2011-07-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

Glimspes of boarders

advance like suggestions

living like the lights of cars.

Now that one doesn't always remember

that something emerges for a moment

and breathes into the atmosphere

and that we

as we sit on these bleachers

begin like an undoing

the weather of a last novel

rocking on and on

half brushed by mud

half impossible like rain touching

the dome of twilight.

Is this old hat?

Insert idea.

Drinking from Dew

2011-07-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

The truth towards the end of morning
could ask us of anything
if it asks like the trees ask
a heavy swaying
offering to renew the scent
of tomatoes
as if the sweetness was passing.

Flowers perhaps we could ask
would still gather us up some meaning
before the people begin handing them
out on every street corner of every city.

The Stone

2011-04-18T03:01:00.000-07:00

From my balcony

each letter in the word "complexity"

drops like fine china

and in its pieces

is a new undiscovered landscape.

In book stores

under the cover of night

tiny men ready their tiny erasers

but come to find

when they open up those dictionaries

the word already dissolving.

From the tops of mountains

it lingers only briefly.

On the river swollen with spring

the word has never existed.

In other places it has turned

simply chocolate.

And in the front of houses

the word has been replaced by single stone

that only a few can lift, even fewer can carry

and only two can love.

Dancing at Five

2011-02-19T11:17:00.000-08:00

Your kiss is the taste

of a broken heart

and sleeping beside you

your thick blood

pools in the wine

cellars of your legs

in the dreaming

of your bitter mouth

I do not want life to be bread

but a long trail of wooden bars

in the afternoon of spring

after a shower where the wood

smells fresh and wet

the people are new and the slow

twilight is indefinable like oil.

III

The husk of the butterfly

stayed watching us and gradually

the moist loneliness wounded you.

My love, I cannot write anything beautiful

about the sea. Since you are not in it.

And no roof, or birth, or moon rises,

no fruit turns pink, because you have

not tasted it.

It is the skin around the eyes

the sleepy hinge to the eternal

rubbed soft with the premonition

of music and soaking peaches

that scents the rain,

that flours at the touch of pestle.

Poem of Beginnings

2010-10-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

This is the first line of this poem

It had greater intension than this line

but really never lives up to it

Very few live up to their intentions

And this poem is already drying up

That is why this poem is going to begin again

here and be written on fine Chinese paper

to enhance its imagery of someone

who has found it crinkled and stuffed

into a hole in the attic. But that is not

better than the imagination of someone

who wonders about how it got there

being written by a robed monk

and stuffed into the shirt sleeve of his lover

as he was sailing to America

fleeing a revolution in the red hot night sky

and sailing across the expanse of a dark green ocean

This is where the poem is lost

and then hidden for no one ever to see

in a hole of a dry hot attic

until someone like you finds it

and begins to read and

seeing the stars in a clear blue night

thinks that this is a good place to start.

Jobless

2010-10-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

She said, "We have no home."

So I said, "Let's go."

And we left to go our separate ways.

Things were getting darker

because night was coming on

or lingering in its darkness

started to come out in the open.

I was getting tired

because it was getting late,

because I had walked most of the way

and still had no home.

As I passed, the prairie was mispelled

like lagoonal or lacunal.

I crossed half the country and

stopped in a town

that looked similarly like my home town

only that it was twenty years later

and there were hints of revitalization projects

scattered willy-nilly throughout

I was already sort of feeling settled

so I settled down

in a home that looked similarly like my own

only it was lighter and had a new roof.

I spent my days reading the paper and going online

Watched my mother die

When I finally got an interview

for a job I prepared all night but still

did not know what to expect

I decided I would act like Ghandi

but the job was for people who

hit the ground running

and the world didn't need another

leader, you know, we

all want to be leaders.

So, I wondered why I believed

in Ghandi, so, I bought a gun.

And bought another

because the first one I didn't

want to use.

There were a few televisions

like in the old days

in the window

of a electronic shop.

There were several

people clearing their throats

so I walked in.

A lot of things were happening

If only I had some money

I could be happening

right along side of them

but I sort of felt good

even though I wasn't being

included. I took out my gun

the one that I wasn't going to use

and raised it in the air

like in the old days

or in my remembrance

of the old days on TV

where the cowboys

in their exuberance

would raise up their guns

and shoot up the place

all in good fun.

Today they consider this a crime.

But I was thinking of Ghandi

and how he didn't mean that

much to me anymore.

I was thinking that they

were going to call me.

To tell me that I had gotten the job.

That we were going our separate ways

our separate ways

leading us home.

Stop When We Do

2010-10-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Here vapor, may your faded dungarees

suffer as I have done in my amputations

roll up the absent pantaloon

and feel for the sun-cloud river basin

in the dark morning ghost color.

The discs of the apple fall into the light

like the first conscious streak of Chinese yellow

through which I have made my visitations.

Boat in the Rain

2010-09-02T07:24:00.001-07:00

Like the estuaries of sleep

Yawning to the warm moon

the seal of confession's wax

like the shining, the praise, the deep

the mutual transpiring

the ammoniac water veins

the hyacinth's leash

Like being sought for pain

Like the sand of subtle Junes

like flame

Like a sea of dunes

an afternoon drown

Like the arms that know no wings

the losing track, the consoling days

the whispering noon

the love soon

Like the blue tangents resume

the bays brown

Like wet immortality

the threads of names

Like the coming and going

the looking through the frames

a boat in the rain.

The Pond

2010-07-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

So what now

And for quite a long time

So what now

I was listening to music

being held up by the air

and then thinking farther out

where there might have been an end

to the place where forms share

And still I could not change or send

not even a ripple

that would not eventually flare

And I grew tired and simple

from taking life out of the world

and its mysterious unrepeated

loss

until my own face

scattered out into the trees

and lifted out up into the mountain

And then I turned

as if there was somewhere I had to go

and walked away from the reflection.

Rubble

2010-06-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

Rattling in the peace less almost/afternoon

spangle the bodies and their engines

card/boarding patches blind

the intricacies of promise/downward causing

a stalled control/abstraction unsaid collapse

journey shocks\ paraded invisible

rubble surfaces \and at last forever

welcomes the beached atmosphere

Turn Here

2010-03-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

First, I had forgotten

I was shouting over

the sun shower. Forgotten

that all the while I had

donated my heat to

an impregnable argument.

The stripper loved the way

I peeled an orange.

I’m sure that upset some.

But the downpour went unnoticed over the mimosas.

A relatively exotic weather pattern.

Soon, we knew, life would return

to its pre-shoplifting days.

And we would return to work

astray, and knee-capped in torrentials.

Words play out like catnip from a damp mouse.

A telephone rings and someone says the soggiest

goodbye. There is a dictionary and a word

in that dictionary, but the speaker

postpones its tintinnabulations.

Simply refuses to make a sound.

Another ampersand and observers

Like buoys on the shore, after paddling,

dry like canoes tipped toward the hot sun.

Magnificent droplets bead

everywhere in the background

of an argument being quietly

lightly repaired.

I Never Wanted To

2010-03-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

As I divvied up the stars

ripening in the landscape

it hurt. And that’s why I

started writing down my

dreams or any thought

I might have on dreaming.

What I thought was a moth

clinging to your ankle was

really a clover. You were

showing me around even

though you we dead

and still I called you

something I regretted.

When I found out I was

flying someone sat me

down by my arms.

I replaced every reply

I ever made with a bowl

of tulips. To freshen them

up a bit. O lonely

breakfast star! I lack

what smoke lacks—

How horribly brittle

the paint on the swing

set is. This evening

is an overlooked cupola.

And figures fish with their

toes for a stone at the

bottom of a stream

amid the ruins of a

bilingual tomorrow

manana I mean.

It’s very simple.

At last we grow into

another person. Someone

completely foreign

to ourselves. I have this

thought every time I

revise the rhymes out

of my poems. Somehow

it is here you mysteriously

fade. You turn into

something runny.

And I awake with less

of an ability to love you.

The Light Changes Just Like That

2010-03-02T00:32:00.000-08:00

A background without stars, without kinescope,

Without trappings, like a parade with lots of confetti

Parachuting into an argument that blows up

Into what we really hate about each other.

With my good hand I trail off a solitary letter.

It’s nothing phonetically, not even a whole bicycle.

Just a monsoon of leaflets I asthmatically perfected

Over a cup of grapes.

I write, “Go far away and be beautiful.”

So something beautiful will be far away.

A Wave

2010-01-23T00:35:00.000-08:00

Nylon thoughts firmly prosper

no words fettle for answers

over the sea in some waded shadow

everything jagged, shadowed, leaded

one remarks like a timid first lover

confused, a memory at its corners

like many colored snow falls

your tongue between the gulf

of reflection and suffering

the quality of a country

called the land of petals

not the vain weather

nor that the compost queen

called to the beautiful preordained

impassible ruffian

"Thou hast managed

a wave."

Lines Written in Snow

2010-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

You begin beginning

flowers and mountains

land, lakes, and streams

shoulders shrugging

off the loss of understanding

I punctuate the coming

just in case

the details that one may pick up

sounds like kissing wax paper

Wheels perfectly imitating,

even the sun the light house reflections

The singer singing the words

You begin beginning.

Little Photo

2010-01-06T22:03:00.001-08:00

All life is like this afternoon

on your young sandy face

the weight of the stars

the body tasting like snow

the slipcover of communication

fleeting through the geography

of twilight paintings

firecracker mysteries

calm hurricane

sandwiches

and the intricacies of the days

before you knew they

even existed.

I know more wrote than read that book which is the self I am

2009-12-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

When I had my vision

like the dark structures

of communication

turning somewhat lucid

I thought these

borrowed breaths

could picnic

for a century

and that distance

could allow the windmills

to stall and dry

into an afternoon's landscape.

And my dear child

will you ever know

how I saw the great

ohio ember

the rain move

like a hand with its palms

raised

the admission of the strange

the fuzz

that one sees

looking across the impermanent shore.

This is the mystery

that I am doing to myself.

2009-12-09T17:58:00.000-08:00

And sometimes we hear

the tree run, the water erode

the stone grow

Leaving Home

2009-12-09T16:45:00.000-08:00

Some of
us,

remember leaving

home in the morning,

exploring

the bayous,
fishing with bread,

catching hermit crabs

catching a fly

to put into

venus-flytraps

growing wild

in the meadow

eating sour weed.

2009-11-15T21:10:00.001-08:00

How careless one must become

To know the pleasant promise

And solitary expedition

Of a tiny boy thinking.

:ove :oem

2009-11-14T20:38:00.001-08:00

I'm late

I understand that

And I'm not interested

in the unusual ways

bugs mate

I don't think

that necessarily

makes good

poetry

But I do think

if I could touch

your hand right

now that would be

good enough

You see

I am very far away

from you

I don't

fully understand

that you could hear me

I am as a

lonely house

without windows

without floors

still

I am missing

I don't know why

our birth dates

are on everything

I touch

I think you

were trying to be

funny by giving me

a hard time

I got that later

I do love

you much

Targets Hit by Accident

2009-10-25T13:20:00.001-07:00

And are we not just fragments

Sappho on the street corner

with a girl from Las Vegas

an empty room freshly painted

a mirror in the reflection of a lake

the dream of history reversing

out onto a funereal landscape

the water drop constellations

but I am not going to imagine you anymore

than I have to. One goes back to old sources

the ebb and flow of different species

of trees, the green moons of sleep

the endless fragrance of darkness

Are we not risking the next chapter

the abandoned lap, the fine result

that had easily come to us

O my dear nothing

your voice turned out to be

the same phantom

a tidal pool of words within earshot

It doesn't matter we've forgotten

the submerging months among

the fleeting absorptions

the loose daylight texture

the happy secrecy

the lucid cheerful insight

showing how much you know

etched into a cloud bank

against the ordinary eternity

The explanation will be better than the poem itself

2009-10-18T07:55:00.001-07:00

The difficulty has been extended

out from what it needs to be.

And there has been no special

isolation. There has been no

quite walks out in the autumn.

No trying to get at it

as if with the absence of life

brings one closer to it, and then

to what has gone on further

down the road because of a sound

you thought you were being beckoned by.

But we find we are only trying

to keep as a surprise for ourselves,

the buzzing uneaten colors

of fall, the water necklace, and fish streams

a couple of page turning episodes

that is probably a good lesson

for artists of all kind. A peripheral

text draining out of an accordion

like glint off the bay. The possibility

of illuminating the witness

as though everything in her has been left out.

(sic)

2009-10-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

Believe me bunny

I never meant to use the soap

and the toothpaste...yes

but only once.

I left the room

and the young their milk.

The fire pleases infinitesimally

and the ruddy nomadic geese

of course are a great instrument

and the dandilions poking

up their yup-yups

through the flagstones

help to measure the symmetry

I think I will eventually break

your heart like apple blossoms.

But now that you

are here in the flesh,

let me touch you.

Rain

2009-09-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

When I had my visionlike the dark structures of communicationturning somewhat lucid I thought these borrowed breaths could picnicfor a century and that distancewould allow the windmillsto stall and dryinto an afternoon landscape and my dear childwill you ever knowhow I saw the greatohio emberrain movelike a hand with its palmsraisedthe admission of the strangethe rainfloating acrossthe impermanent shore another

sunwhere darknessdecays

Mother with Daughter

2009-09-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

There is an interruption being built within the poememptying my bookto drown the addictionthe clean

daypacked a lunchkeeps more of the work in the presentcontinuious presentround mouthneither

the color of wine or waterorators, lovers, and funeralsrain in a dreamhands love youautotelic
The child is a little youyou holding her legs raisedcoupled under your armsroundedoutside of youher

headnestledunder your chinlong locks of hairone backcurvedback
and you will become someone completely foreign to your self

Echoing

2009-09-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

Last century

when the stars cried out their addresses

you slipped off your dresses

the two flowered ones

when the stars cried out their addresses

you were wearing and thus

the two flowered ones

the lights dimmed close

you were wearing and thus

to the earth and whole arms

the lights dimmed close

were back logging their questions

to the earth and whole arms

of the few like dramas

were back logging their questions

and exaggerated loves

of a few like dramas

blue from the curtains

and exaggerated loves

closing and covered in shadows

blue from the curtains

last century

closing and covered in shadows

you slipped off your dresses

I am in a Tremendous Dog Fight

2009-09-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

It shines

suffices to say

and is done well

like the soon

to be cut lawns

the terrible gravity

of how we place

our ornaments

drifting seeds

without the mailman's

communicable ginseng

with out the men

who fancied my mother

who said this can happen

from the burning streets

and coffee poured cities

and the sense to picnic

like crumbs about your feet

the famous drop cloth

with the occasional factory bell

ringing against a spiraling background.

New Poem for People Who like New Poems

2009-09-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

The boat sails

in a sea of grass

under the May

air eve ocean.
And Clouds

a single wake of

further

after mooring noons.
Midnight. Cleansing

the cheerful dream

of the constant love

dropping the dissipated

anchor becoming atmosphere

of our fortunes.

Searching for Traces

2009-09-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

No posts

No signs

No sonnets

No ocean

No gloom

No turning

No meaning

No story

No land

No loom

No present

No sleep

No secret

No business

No order

No breeze

No standing

No knowing

No dreaming

No sequel

No echo

No moon

Compositional History

2009-08-18T23:19:00.000-07:00

Today we find ourselves in a very novelistic world.

As in foot note (1)

What do you have to think the poem is

indicates the source

anything beyond that

you find there is a lot better poetry

decourous certainly

double removed

it is in the letters these figures

write to each other.

1. No one is left behind on earth

Notes From Naragansett

2009-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

The painter worked into evening

and ended up creating night.

"You see the moon is shinning on the ocean,

and a woman is carrying in the laundry

over her tumbled arms."

It began to rain on the ocean.

I said, I see nothing

but nothing I said

said to him there

was no ocean, no woman, no laundry, no moon.

World as Voyeur

2009-08-16T13:24:00.001-07:00

waves slapping like jello

vanished noises

swinging our naked arms

like the dead

laid down on their pillars

living at the back of the orchard

and called and sent home

and bled

a cadence behind the eyes

voices like bombed out homes

reading the train schedules

reading the hotel menu

reading Ulysses for the first time

at 36. Life happens

in a few fine years

and nothing but doing it all

over again will suffice.

I'm wondering when the river

its course, is a bad thing

when it changes

and the fish all die out

or a good reason.

I practice being still.

I practice

and practice.

I think the poem has changed.

Even though I didn't want to show you that.

Poem Without Revisions

2009-08-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

He issued the definition

like a hand coming out of the sunlight,

like the universe was suppose to fill up.

He said, "There is more importance

leaving the white carnations of our world."

There was a parade turning down our street.

There were trucks and very shiny automobiles.

There were people throwing candy.

For a moment I felt that I might be coming home

to my dear wife.

And I hoped for a long time.

The summer was almost over in the tomatoes.

There was only one window in which the swallows could leave.

We walked to the field where no horse was.

I could not sing.

I could not say anything.

Not Responding to Things Directly

2009-05-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

The few lines of your neck wear you down

like the sodden robe of your last miscarriage.

I am undulant and endeavoring your inner tube delicacies.

On 7th Avenue the cat thinks it must be in heaven

or else why would it be smiling?

Why would it be pawing the suburban subconscious?

And since we are alone, Love,

in our dreams, your contumely umbrella

has hidden you amid the vast oceanic waves.

I’ve flagged you down so we could shake hands.

Like an unhealthy child or a shallow reservoir,

I’ve swam a bit unsteady over the shoals,

squandered my stocking stuffers,

losing a little luster, but also the debris of doubt.

I won’t be much longer in this crawl space.

My landscape, mostly the curve along your chin line

up to your rhododendron eyeliner.

But it is late, it is almost night fall,

and in the sad demure of rain we raise the toasting glass

to speak anecdotally of this young prince.

Saying it so it might happen

2009-02-23T19:59:00.000-08:00

We were told to sit on the pavement,

it was ordinary pavement. As if we needed marmoreal

protection from the loiters and people shopping.

The branches shook above the nasturtiums, which

were shaking their rebuttals at the ice cream

pamphlets. This was some college town

someone shouted. That this would be, "a good novel

some day." And in that way we looked at each

other in disgust. Once making love my mind was thinking

that in a hundred years I would never think

as I do now, nor shift my seat in peradventure.

The structure of the bricks was

a kitchen floating over the roof

tops. We were eating our cotton

sweaters. We were trying to acclimate

to our extremeties. We were having a good time.

This was the way we thought about the world.

In Search of Popsun

2009-02-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

The Alps Go out from here. We dropped our baskets And went out hunting. There was incredulous Love making. We heard things from the hereafter. We commandeered safe passage Out through the rolling Atlantic. We heard of an attractive hand at the firing range that drew in the pack of hyenas, A few of us responded with a Map of the constellations Others began to desire Brilliant foliage And a few bills in their bill fold. We were waiting for it to get cold, For it to snow, to go out looking through the snowy streets of New England, And find that This is not such a crazy place For a famous hat, In Hartford.

Regular Poetry

2009-01-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

The coffee was steaming when Doc took off his wig

we didn’t even know he was wearing.

We found a hat within a hat.

Two years before, Lorca shredded me

with a flower stinking like an overripe melon.

That was for I thought I knew better.

Another hat emerges and someone kicks it.

It hurts, like reading a poem with an understanding,

an oar passing over the water, dripping in an orbit

only a few astronomers can comprehend.

Finally You

2009-01-17T22:25:00.001-08:00

Last night we finally got wind of the new greeting card. It sounded like shrimp head or lunch pail. But those are things of profound sadness and we decided to rename it, like houseboat or inscribed straggle. It now appears under your pillow like air pocket or willful sample of a lonely tooth. We suppose it is like wine wasted on the telephone. But we are similarly misled, and it is like the Indian Ocean. Hint it is written like leaf with a passion or long yellow Septembers. From the window we look out onto the slipperless streets. The mailman uses his telescope as an alias. He carries the mail like a deceased brother at a New Year’s Eve party. We don’t take it personally, but are happy when he’s gone. He is a normal letter carrier. Like shag over the ballpark, or nightgown obviously not stitched, funny simple novel or two smiles playing, nothing is heavier than a nickel but the sweet fronds of thought melting like butter between a sandwich, Japanese blooms in fall or hints not unlike statutes left in the rain. In words a thank you letter finds you amid the postcards, taxidermied pigeons, napkin notes.

Raining All Over The World

2008-12-08T21:50:00.000-08:00

Life Expectancy

2008-11-14T20:41:00.000-08:00

It was expected
That we would be
Channeling however
Unskillfully.
We had a few layers of living
And that was why we
were channeling and not conjuring
Whatever we were
Expecting,
We were expecting
to recover
We were living
on less and less
moderation.
We were walking
out of the movies feeling wronged.
We were listening to music
We were hoping something would
come out of it.
We understood.
We were kissing
In the afternoon.
We were astonished
We had more
To do with it.
We thought casually.
We were across
from each other
We knew more
than we first thought
we knew.
We were living.
We were expected to live.

When Wednesday Walks Home

2008-10-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

I know I’m a loner
with a fine bottle cap collection.
And I know you call me honey
and trespass anytime you like.
But when Wednesday walks home
tousled like a young pilgrim
I could do her laundry.
Bake pies just to keep the heavy
scent of pastry in the room.
She has as good to me as an extra sandwich,
a Chilean stamp with fountains
and look, Neruda in the distance.

Circling

2008-10-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

The narrator knowing the spinning
of the world appeared to know that we’d been lacking
a boyfriend on the rebound, a chance to memorialize
or address the issues in a rather open
imagining than between a rotating
of dampened sun screened principalities.
The interpretation circles back to an
unexpected monsoon. Slowly a repetition builds.
A monsoon kisses the little homes of children.
This is the point when someone turns off the projector
and that’ll stop the circling. But it rains repeatedly
in torrents over the roofs and leaves, over
the children’s homes and turning
the fish who breath periodically
above the stream’s smooth boulders.

There is a moment while the character in the circle circles.

Just Below the Adirondacks

2008-08-14T23:48:00.001-07:00

You prefer the visions of the gardens with the venders in sight
The Adirondack chairs that are still for sale outside the barn
with a few early stars opening to a New England down town
If we weren’t at war I’d think that this poem had permission
to have a few oranges strung about it. Out of our navels
Come the blue organs. Come the nice book stores that you might
find this poem in. The floor boards creaking a little as the
many shoes step and pass, a girl who should be the next Carrie St.
George Comer stops by. And through the pie and coffee
and sometimes tea words sparkle like the dotted lights
in the harbor. One by one the rowers row their fragile blades
downward into a sea in hopes to sully something more generous
like tiny white twigs, or elusive shoals of wolves until something smaller
caves in. We are all reading and reading nothing pasted. Not even a noteboard
with things happening, happening, have happened or ending soon.

Plea in Autumn

2008-08-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

Lover, common scrap of paper,
I didn’t mean to throw the interception

The crossing pattern never came together
Not even being reflective in a private

Reservoir with trickles of melancholy
Photographs helped. Time was the snow

Battered the afternoon and little
By little the whole field got all wound up

We didn’t even have to be clever or
give a cent to the drunks apocrypha.

Culture would occupy the clover and that
would be as fine as an old movie on girl’s night out.

Besides, the good luck committee is selling garland
Someone fetch a ladder.

Like someone knowing the price
Of a relic, I can’t wait until the next

Scrimmage. We can carry our cleats
Down to the goal post

And should
we pause at the beginning of this

long pilgrimage we could jot down a
beautiful childhood.

Tiny Seed Notebook

2008-08-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

Tiny seed ideas:
at the Beach

Christmas Morning
a movie

At School

Snow
Library
Christmas Eve

Tag

Spain

2008-07-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

And it is because of you that the universe just might go on forever

Or that just the kiss fetches a climate of formed companions
with a mouth full of moths

We were walking outside of the apartment store,
That was when we lived in apartments
And thought less of the young men
On the streets and more of

Yes, my dear nitrate
This seems like we are near the end.
But someone will come to save us.
So it won’t seem like
Such a disaster.
Just like my son leaving on the light of

That kiss
will be the only motion of what one may want
even shadowy against the canopies
even in Spain.

Tea

2008-07-12T07:17:00.000-07:00

My fear is that this will turn out to be another poem.
with its limited and sheer range of brilliant human temperatures.
It sweeps in the droning silence out in the exploding
Escarpment. May begins with its striped shirts
and people look by at its becoming loss
in the false points of space and someone typing
the fateful “s” helplessly featureless like a good
meal really, like one looking at things
through someone else’s words or something.

Not that that is my fear
It is the fear of the one-eyed animal that sits beside me in the cage
And how it just looks at me expecting something
Both thinking. Come up with
something beautiful
Come like one that is well read or has expressive intonations
Like every syllable counted
and almost has a story but then reverts
To imagery before the truth can be told.

This ice feels good in any tea.

Image

2008-04-13T08:19:00.001-07:00

I have been very happy in my desert.
More than you know.
You walk to the end of the street
The earth is a little rounder for an hour.
The faces pilot under the power lines.
The snow has been killing for a week

Ceremoniously the janitor’s clothes
have just tried to waltz.
There’re avoiding what happens when they get older
or something better comes along
We put on our costumes of poems
the stage after the sickness if over
rolls to a stop,
meanwhile you’ve jiggled all these messages

summomed down by the creek
accepted back
The air still has plenty of heat.

The difference matters
because we are too worried about conclusions
This just didn’t happen
No, not in this house
It started in the front row
and against a map of luck,
of occasional measures,
taller grass.

On some nights there is talk
like this. Like the night the dead
drove me to the peace gardens
in Manitoba.

The Coast

2008-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

This is the beach where the fiddler crabs first drew the outlines of their slanted homes among the eel grass. The beach where catapults were first used on people. Where the wind would kick up the writer’s papers forcing him to run home to his slippers and cognac. The beach where William the conquer set out to bring Shakespeare a dictionary. The beach where there were a few suicides, and murders and where people got caught in the riptide. Where every day for a few weeks a boy was swept away. It is the beach where the war added casualties. Where Borges added a mythology. Where I added a few stones and you your Dansani as this ever expanding horrible world of seaweed swayed.

As I Do Now

2008-01-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

I once wrote a line in a poem
That read, “I am afraid like I
Am at home in the darkness.”
That was when I was younger
And didn’t fear the darkness
As I do now.
I know it’s kind of dumb
But I fear more criminals
Are lurking around each corner.
They might be in dark clothes
Or something I can’t see.
And recently my eye sight
Has been going
But I haven’t mentioned it
To anyone, because sometimes
I imagine I can see everything
Clearly and am able to
Fool myself for a few days
Thinking that everything is in focus.
Until the next street sign comes along.
Don’t you notice how mostly every
complaint begins with a certain level
of blindness?
Last night someone drove past my house
Stopped in the front of my driveway
And opened the door to his car.
All the while I was looking out my window.

Your Query

2007-12-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

I had left my computer at the office
So I decided I wouldn’t write tonight
I decided I would do something else
Like play with my children who swatted
At a wiffle ball or poked each other in the head
I wanted some of that, I guess
Really they love me and get really excited when I
Step onto the field.
It is the closest thing I have to a major league
Introduction
But I’m used to it.
I still hear that many poets
Tink away on their typewriter keys
Candle flickering, revealing a moonlit
Piano or a shine on the pond.
Geoffrey Nutter told me this.
Not the landscape or pond bit
But the way he writes,
With a typewriter.
I had only met him once and therefore
Had no reason to doubt him.
I never doubt anyone I have met only once.
That is my motto.
I suppose I don’t take my words
As seriously as someone striking
the delicate mechanism, with its
Inversions of darkness,
And smudges it shape like the edges
Of moth dust after I’ve swatted
It against the glass refrigerator
I feel sort of unlucky tonight
Like the sunset is going to be my last one
That I might just foul out.
That I’ve come up with a word
In a poem and nothing fits purely against it.

For A Few

2007-12-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

For A Few

I am not a carpenter
And this is not a religious poem
So just forget your own prejudices
For a few.
As I was saying
I am not a carpenter
But I sure do love putting
Together those kit desks,
Bureaus and computer karts
I stood out side my office
And was speaking this way to
The night janitor,
I wish I could make a living putting
These things together.
Usually there is an extra charge
For it and I figure the majority
Of people would not want to spend there
Days in this sort of labor.
That’s why jigsaw puzzles are
A dying art.
Whereas thirty years ago
There was even a market for magnifying glasses
I think things now are just moving faster
And nobody has time for jigsaw puzzles
Or kits of furniture
But I’m sure there are some
A secret society of people
Their one desire is to work
At the Sauder factory and they do
All of them.
They bring their lunches to work
And there is free juice and condiments in the cafeteria
Their benefits package is the best around
It is even better than the one at Yankee Candle
Who I’ve heard has declined somewhat over recent years
And does so especially around Christmas time when Santa Claus
Takes over the indoor tennis courts.
They spend their breaks working
On jigsaw puzzles, kind of keeps
Their mind working
Through things
Business is kind of
Slow here anyways
In walks the fella whose
Job it is to put extra screws
And dowels in the bags
It makes people real happy
When they have leftovers
Of any kind. And might
Be able to fill a few
Coffee cans full.
I used to collect coffee cans
But nowadays I end up working later
And later
I work right on pass the night
Janitor. He waves at me
Through my window
We have become good friends