Burbia

The Idea of Order at Bolivar Peninsula

Oh human push for blessing, all you fishermen are praying
as if there were a god above the ocean and not just
the god of words and the god of bait.
That is all, and better maps to buy.
Why, after the exit hymn, do beachfolk turn their backs
to face the cheaper lights of men: Budweiser,
Fresh Oysters, Vacancy?
The lights of oil rigs out past forever,
a woman on the shore rocks her baby neatly down to nap.
As if all this would roll under the waves
she's busy chewing on her thumbnail.
The night comes down to watch a certain bar fight.
Night is master, out here where the highway's washed out:
earning, owing, masterful night. Only the hollow throats of poets,
wizards, and billboard salesmen keep the beach awake.
Nothing in the ocean is as accurate as language.
There is no time to tell, there is in fact no sea,
no tides, no last call crushing cigarettes in beer cups.
There is no real world for beachpeople,
none besides the world hummed up by wizards.
They are the builders and stockers of fish,
the poets, ever-sweatered, dripping wet
with adjectives for water. They are the shapers and fillers of clouds,
the hurricane-smugglers whose homes are built
of sunken, empty pens; of Bics clinging to an older life on land,
a life of difficulty with words: busy, busy words.
Tourists drive miles to see the poets weeping language,
but there is more than words to see.
A sea-wall, built to keep God's bathtub out.
The ocean cannot fully cover bones,
the thrusting water, the screaming kids. But in the end,
may words outlive the brain of coral.
Water cannot mimic mime or voice.
Like a sweater shrunk too small
and left for clearance sale out from of Adler's grocery,
the beachpeople's sleeves are empty and yet seem full
and wave you over constantly
as if you were an dear, dear friend.

Good Fences (revision)

"Twenty years of schooling / and they put you on the day shift."
Bob Dylan

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
I'm picking up my neighbor's trash
and even though I've only seen him once,
the tip of a foot, the flat and croaking sandals
I feel as though I know him
and his preference for cheap garbage bags
is spilling me now across the hall we share.

Between our apartments has grown
some kind of jungle, an overgrowth.
Of dust, of unwalked carpet
though I would consider us, casually,
to be friends. Mostly we are friends
because I buy him beer
and he inspires me to write long-winded ballads,
and sometimes he'll give me a dirty magazine
for some reason.

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
I've never talked to him, only in smell
and his exotic trash that spills
contintentally across the hall
as if to solve some world crisis.
Once an entire bag of empties,
some Asian beer, an import.
They met and made a single solid D --
I sang along and dragged the bag downstairs.

Between our apartments has grown
some kind of jungle, an overgrowth.
This must be a dream. I'm trudging through
to find your bags of trash --
I'm lost inside a swamp. I'm breathing water,
I'm breathing syrup, what a way --
I'm awake. Between our apartments has grown
some kind of jungle of trash. I'll pick i up.

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
The man, and his ever-smoking wife
have constant arguments in some delicious language,
it is as if two animals have been unleashed.
The tongue is such a quick weapon.
Some nights I wonder if I've got it wrong --
maybe they're insisting, pleading for their lives,
bagging up their garbage,
"I love, I need, I want."

Poor Fences

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
I'm picking up my neighbor's trash
and even though I've only seen him once,
the tip of a foot, the flat, croaking sandals --
I feel as though I know him
and his preference for cheap garbage bags
is spilling now across the hall.

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
I've never talked to him, only in smell
and his exotic trash that spills
contintentally across the hall
as if to solve some world crisis.
Once an entire bag of empties,
some Asian beer, an import.
They met and made a single solid D --
I sang along and dragged the bag downstairs.

A mostly-empty box of Arm & Hammer
has left behind a cloud of settling dust.
The man, and his ever-smoking wife
have constant arguments in some delicious language,
it is as if two animals have been unleashed.
The tongue is such a quick weapon.
Some nights I wonder if I've got it wrong --
maybe they're insisting, pleading for their lives,
bagging up their garbage,
"I love, I need, I want."

Car-bomb burst

Always open avalanche
land a lunch in Lucy's lap
snowksi up the iron trap;
don't look down you pay attention.

Never mind the narrative
I switch up the temperature,
medium to green pasture
and pass on the hilarious.

Something that a car-bomb did --
tore the face off statues
or came in from out of darkness.
Something about where a car-bomb hid.

burst

A rush of dust from the push broom.
Something rotten rising in the oven,
biscuit dough, no -- something else.

His Professor Assigns Him Gregory Orr to Read

as if she knew he'd always admired
a certain photograph taken of Greg
who was on his way somewhere important.
Behind Mr. Orr is a forest --
inside the forest are many animals,
only some of whom were watching for the flash.

* * *

as if the assignment would prompt him
towards some novelty spinning just beyond his reach,
a whale perhaps, a whale inside a dream he'd had,
one for which he'd wet the bed.

* * *

as if a mockingbird could sing
anything but what it had already heard,
and wasn't this a sort of hell? to repeat forever
the scab language of the others?

* * *

as if as if as if as if as if.
That's one line of perfect iambic pentameter.
Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye, hello.
That one starts but has no end,
there's no one says "goodbye" to his dear friend
who is, after all, in the middle of catching
a very thrifty taxi, and wearing argyle socks.

* * *

as if in revolution words would rise
like bubbles at the bottom of the batter.
They passed the moon, reminding her to set.

* * *

as if a myth plowed the field too many times.
The poet turned the poet inside out
and found inside, alive, a pair of mice
who were willing their way back in.
Outside was much too bright.

* * *

as if reading were enough to set paper ablaze,
nearing a yawn under an itchy sleeve,
leftenant in the drowsy army --
the one that stands just outside
his bedroom window throwing knives.

Reading a Perfect Poem by Deborah Ager

which is "Morning", by the way,
I stop to spit in my own coffee
and just a little longer to open a window.
I can smell a garden growing somewhere,
and burned toast -- someone's scraping by the sink.
Across the street, over an open grate
still mouth-wet from the night's rain
some tired men are working on the earth.
Every time I read a perfect poem
I ruin a good cup of coffee.

Dear Archeologists, (first draft)

As for Lot, that pretty spender?
Could have at least packed me in,
dragged me, pressed me in
with all our daughters in the caravan.
I'd have been a picture in the hall,
a statue in the kitchen,
much use to his next big victim.
The Lord was merciful to him --
I dropped the sundried flower kept
from our wedding banquet, only
stopped to pick it up and saw
in a drop of his sweat
that which turned me quick to salt --
our home and friends being ripped apart.

Some men came after Yhwh calmed.
I'd hoped the sulfur would have caught my toe
and melted me right there, I mean
who wants to be an ice sculpture?
They took a saw, and waved it first
of course, and took the hair off.
Mmm, one said, and there I was
all seasoned up, and no one to dance with.

They put me in their soups and such.
Better than a stick of wood, my arm is used
to soften foods, to preserve meat,
I have a final Duty. Don't look for me,
I'm ground up good, but look for where I stood.
My shoes are there.

Looking at a Photograph of Some Ancient Relative

I think her name was Sasha.
I'm making this all up, don't be alarmed.
She had her eyes set only on the Liberty Bell,
as in to steal it, making her own noise,
riding that thing in the basement,
waking up the neighbor.
She was ex-communicated from the Catholic church.
I don't even think she was Catholic.
Her eyes have the stiff look of old marshmallows.
I am leaving my prints on her face.
They circle her eyes, as if to land there.
Maybe she would wiggle in her grave.

Kill Claudio

An actress shrieking shells and things
lives down the hall and leaves her phone
to ring; I've never heard it swallow.
Across the street, a bank has faced itself
with pictures of some buffalo
so men and boys will have a target
other than the tip of a mirrored shoe.
Up on the roof, the maintenance
men in circles all around a chimney
so the exhaust makes them look filmy,
behind a screen or caught on tape.
I've walked the carpet thinner than a nail.
I'll never be able to open my front door.