Clementine Asshole*
I want what I can’t see
Can’t flip a switch & not be cold
sipping on a clementine asshole
These hardcore nights are killing me
Coming home makes me feel old
I haunt when I can’t see
This joint could use more filigree
I need the Earth more than the gold
mixing up a clementine asshole
Chances still cost a user fee
One side coward – one side bold
slippery as a clementine asshole
Today all martyrs turn thirty-three
Their official likeness profitably sold
I write when I can’t be
drinking deep from a clementine asshole
*1.5 oz gin
0.5 oz clementine juice
1 oz simple syrup
0.25 bar spoon citric acid
egg white
dry shake
add ice
shake again
pour into Nick & Nora
let foam settle
garnish with anus of clementine
light on fire
_________________________________
How you parse your mother tongue
is what poetry has become
while we buried ourselves
with moon work & outrageous food
That’s not what I was told
but I see it in action
All the busted locks cops guard
here where the rocket left the pad
I get sentimental about swamps
where the animals have been blasted
to make a point about silence:
it belongs to who can pay
The rest are caught in reverie
A perfectly shaped mouth noise
spelling out what everyone feels
until it’s understood molecularly
Then it’s back to work
Back to where rubber meets road
though we’re tired of rubber
burning where the Earth went cold
Where mothers never grow old
is a place silence cannot teach
an imbecile self-care:
It’s forgotten beatdowns by Dad
everyone learns to silence
if you want to succeed in this world
All the others are available
but good luck telling your tale
best wishes from a governor
waiting patiently for a chance to speak
formulating headlines in advance
& testing them against empty city walls
Is this where culture lives or dies?
Someone must pay for this
while others are just saving the world
Me – I’m still stuck learning how to read
_________________________________
Intensely Standoffish Yet Brilliantly Portrayed
I break down us to elements
find myself
playing
arresting tones
happy
to avoid submission
to physics as usual
I love your uneven face
your block and tackle lips
another dawn inside on our sides
more clowns can fit
more cubes than circles may
be stretched
like you
dear
I draw a single line
you squiggle into view
the music of your moves
All eyes
unravel what is true
apart from what is new
simultaneously adhering to
no theory }
not a school } single
or view }
all coalesce
as do you
_________________________________
Kurt Russell
left the crew
horrifying protean ordinary
knowing what we do
the movie ends
substitute scene
no one waiting
sometimes touches age
a prolongation
that ahead looks instead
that draws me
that I hold so
vanish like the days
the nights rehearse
secret of my life
in devastation
that leads to a single end
the sky soars North
an anonymity
a kind of world
oblivious to a poem
a moment fast
what is to feel
around me
no lives harboring ambitions
and regrets humbler stuff
disappointments
pre-sense the houses
in the light a vast
answers air
I think this end
is to wait not wait
but what lies happens
_________________________________
See Our Tea
America is resilience
to ancient formulas
the audience beginning:
Let a tale never again
There more died
A good tradition of love
The war in eyes
& bones the dead eats
until nothing else
Do you know what that means?
a broken original
trying to connect