William Carlos Williams to Robert Creeley, March 3, 1950

Bad art is then that which does not serve in the continual service of cleansing the language of all fixations upon dead, stinking dead, usages of the past. Sanitation and hygiene or sanitation that we may have hygienic writing.

This is the second collaborative poem I've done with Joseph Massey.

first new draft in nearly a month

Stop signs circum-
navigate my wife I mean
my life I

mean something was scurrying out
back in the alley last night &

I’m sure it was a raccoon
or a coal miner from another era, a Rural Indiana or something or

A call girl with many numbers, digitized Pi because how else
is it spelled? Thrushes fluffing, danced away

from bushes smoked out
with high school communications on high

said The President & The Prime
Minister indivisible but by one & himself

because we are on the brink of something huge
& largely insignificant:

These are days. Remember a sea
of six-year-olds—

Remember your spoon, your coffee cup,
your curlicue.

Fourteen Lines for Rick Morrow

Indiana, don’t futz with my algorithm—
front porch whiskey covenants:

a scamper then a chorus of blasts, &
oh the things we save.

Date leaps, cliff wasted: ACME still
in business: product activation failed.

*

Sweet long trails: meteor show, august,
(as if to say “sober”) Perseids & all

the rest: a midwestern cull speaks
on irony & a big northwest heart

transported makes another document
& is: harried, black loam, topsoil,

formidable observer, last sturdy
post on the fence.

I was trying to explain to you some things
& then I realized you didn't need explaining

It keeps falling around & there is no light.

POSTCARD

Driving nails through giant hovercrafts of snow
& ice: I see you there beyond

the rushes, past a semi-circle
of varied thrush and Spanish lessons.

*

Circumference makes us fools: shiver on
midwest not making anyone safer:

firm ground is ground yet untilled—
“until the end of time.”

*

Is only a time or another tradition: other
times alight then fly up at smoke

& mothers in houses on edges of lakes
are stirring & glad to be awake.

CASE MARKER / BOUNDARY

I like the orange pylon icon I was caddying
for my brother begone a sameness to each
point apart: equidistant hearts blown up
to better see the insides, the gall, appall of
a thing that should know better

*

Been a long fire & now two-dozen mowed
what else? so long night at one time
a sonnet lived here but a sonnet doesn’t live
here anymore because we have lost our
capacity to be astonished

*

When this began a wicker broom was enough
or enough to matter to somebody
tinsel & crusting over like a snow bank or eye
reddened to a maddening gone mercury
long road blurred to diminishing saviors

*


Sever fine lengthenings forward to holiday
sanctioned by an animal holding postcards
at arm’s length at American expense no
account here or waiting for you flowers disturb
you flower found in a vacant space

*

It’s a fiction this new world you speak of an ex-
hilirating bluster of laughter mingled with bigger
roomier corners of shame & this is what I love
about you, brother, sister, ex-wife, this my daughter
my unmaking you my making

WITHER

Sifted winter across blank fields, found
wheat stalks in piles against the floor, the small Ruths
& the small Boazes
& a draught

of something nourishing.

*

Not far from here’s a town.

Antler.

Population: unforgiven.

*

Multiplication tables cornered
in a Pee-Chee folder holding over
middle-aged debris—

transcript in Sanskrit of a tiny hand,
a spring day, a broken wheel.

DESTINATION

Some fog in all this dense is part of parts
of a believable world—

human coloring flaking off
under lamps: green lamps: two comets
collide us up super.


*


Kept falling up on the page of mud, my lips
combed felt & children smiling
all over the walls

were your perfection, your forgetting.



*


Build a lean-to
for instance for gravitational heft,
a place with a tree & a home a stupid word

inside all real lives beginning
with the letter.


*


A sad place held up.


*


Turning a fairway into a causeway
where a freeway runs through it—

Mayan Face

Some years ago, I don't know, a half-dozen or so, on the eve of the eve of my leave-taking of my apartment of six or so years, a man and a woman I'd never met knocked on my door and when I bid them enter, entered bearing beers.

I don't remember their names but the woman lived directly below me and told me she was teaching a geography class that my friend was taking. She was drunk and began to tell me that she knew the schedule I kept, my comings and goings. She knew when I woke in the morning, when I left the building, when I came home, and she knew when I had sex: the building was turn of the last century and the walls were thin. But she told me this. You don't tell strangers this unless you are sure you'll never see them again. Not knowing what to say, I said, strangely, "I guess I've had a good year."

Her man friend handed me a beer and studied my bookcases. He stared at me for longer than is appropriate to stare at anyone you're not planning on beating up or making love to or scolding. He took a swig of his beer and said, reaching out, almost but not touching me--"You have a Mayan face."

They left as suddenly as they had arrived. Outside it was snowing.

Doxology

There is no God & so
god settles down around like so

some more goes.

*

Foraging for rocks & food
has dried up.

Late season, late fire.

*

God is “no”& the small
part splaying out sophistries:

four more months’ cant.

A RULE OF THREES

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman, a red Gap hoodie.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

*

You're right but you'll forget that by the time you're seven.

Once upon a time, I lived on a diet of baked goods, ice cream, strong coffee, and popsicles. I was thin then, too. And happy in the way a man living with someone who no longer loved him could be. The small human taking up our space helped us forget that until trying to forget was more difficult than simply severing ties. When I moved the couch as I was evacuating that old house on Orchard St.--a December day much like this one except that it was 20 degrees F. and wild turkeys pranced about the front lawn--I found a pile of popsicle sticks, dozens of them.

Details matter. The smallest the most.

Rule of Threes

A mean wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public.
He suggests she pick some flowers.

*

The theme also appears in the story of the life of St. Margaret,
in which the saint emerges unharmed from the belly of a dragon.

*

A grandmother, a huntsman.

*

Very common in the European folk tale is the rule of threes.

*

"Daddy, I think the wolf that wants to eat the girl and the wolf that wants to eat the three pigs is the same mean wolf."

LAKE EFFECT

It is a calm lake & lake

falls ... the ... field

*

A paper hay mewing a heard

against that which is milled

*

//


A deed we flounder toward--

this bus unassembled into the lungs

of twice-fired, last week's arrows

*

To be a noun in this Wide American West.

I am, she says, the 51st state.

Some comeuppance chemical: some fog.

//


Look @ the horse who

writes a fucking horse

*

Stop.

Signs muddle perceptions: quick

-brain tactics

askanced into mortal combat.

*

From this point fwd, I'll simply

scan the pages of this mess

directly into the .doc

as imgs. I'm reading a lot lately

from a station not supposedly

to understate: this causes frictional.

*

Notation on self. Christmas trees.

Lines on St. Lucy's Day

The bicycle has ridden itself away

into a storm cloud

just off the horizon line

*

The new ways adopt the old style

to appear stylish

crushed felt. daisy. black modest skirt. white blouse.

*

Camphor dulls the effects of the ether.

*

Chalk dust & a surplus

of unused digits; in my country

we say "friend" but mean "accountant."

*

She asked about white balance

but what could I tell her.

*

So much coffee in these veins

the vessels

crack, fatigue.

*

She has a whiff of 2004 about her.

*

Summer's incandescent glow was something

less than expected. Insouciant gloss, reverie.

*

"Do you miss me & want me to come to Oregon & hug you."

A few thoughts on my birthday, written last month on my birthday.

I woke early on the morning of my 18th birthday and went for a ten-mile run, down the street past the old school, out of town, up the road that lead to the airport, and back again. I hadn’t run in the months since graduating from high school the previous June. I’m not really sure what prompted me out the door that morning but maybe it was because I was 18. I was now and adult, and I wanted to mark the occasion somehow. And it worked, I suppose, because I still remember it 22 years later. Other things I remember about that day: my mother took me out for dinner at the Chinese restaurant ( I don’t remember the actual name of the restaurant—it was the only Chinese restaurant in town, and hence, “The Chinese Restaurant.”), and my mother bought me a six-pack of beer: Bud Light. I hadn’t asked for the beer and if I had, I probably wouldn’t have requested Bud Light. But there it was. So that evening I sat on the couch, inches from where I sit now, drinking my birthday gift, my mother on the other couch, my younger brother either on the floor watching television or in his bedroom playing computer games.

My father wasn’t here for a reason I don’t remember. He has, over the years, proved himself very able at not being around during certain life events. And maybe this is simply the way my brain has processed the past. Maybe it has something to do with his leaving our home when I was in 4th grade, moving an hour away to take over an A&W Family Restaurant. If there is one event that marks the transition, in my memory, from him being an active father to him being the guy I called “Dad,” that’s it. He wasn’t at my college graduation (golf tournament), and I don’t remember him at my high school graduation. The morning after my daughter was born I was surprised that he made the hour drive to my then-home to see his first-born grandchild. He didn’t say much. I just remember him saying, “Son, she may be cute now, but just wait about 12 or 13 years.” She’s been away for me now for 16 months. I am the absent father, and she not even four years old.

My 18th birthday came and went. So did 21 birthdays after. In between these two days, 22 years apart, I joined the Navy. I went to college. I quit college to work in a furniture mill. I quit working in a mill to work for two booksellers. I went back to college and began writing poetry, began studying religion, began reading for the first time in a disciplined way. I had an incredible manic episode in there—it lasted nearly a month and I had no idea that it was anything medical. I simply thought I was undergoing a religious transformation. I don’t tell this story to anyone because those who know me now will just take it as confirmation that not only am I crazy, but that I’ve always been crazy. Where were we? I graduated college with honors. I applied to and was accepted to an MFA program. I was kicked out of the program for the crime of having a “cavalier attitude.” I was accepted into an MA program. I began teaching. I received my MA and went on to pursue a PhD. I grew bored with PhD studies. I got a teaching job that I loved and I stalled on my dissertation. I quit my dissertation altogether. I met a woman and became involved in a very unhealthy relationship. I lost my job. I had a child. Now I’m 40 years old with no job, no income at all, ruined credit, and a daughter 2000 miles away.

It’s been a long 22 years. And it’s gone very quickly. If I’m to be completely truthful about my resume these past two decades, I should mention that I drank a lot too. In the early years I did my share of illegal drugs. I had sex with a few strangers. I was reckless with credit cards and loans. I made a ton of bad decisions. My wit and luck, though, always pulled me through. Or, at least most of the time they did. The depression and the mania came and went. I drank to self-medicate and was aware of what I was doing but desperately didn’t want to admit that I might have a mental disorder. I had no problem admitting that I might have a drinking problem—but that was far preferable to having to deal with the notion that I might be crazy. Of course, I imagined I probably was. But only for brief intervals. I drank. I immersed myself in the “poetry world.” Sometimes I got caught up in frantic exercise—running again. Running, maybe, to regain some bit of control.

These last three years, things have just fallen apart. I lost my job due to budget cuts (which I knew were coming and should have been planning for), my partner and I grew apart, though by that point we were probably only trying to stay together for our child. Before long I was living in a tiny apartment, but my kid and my ex lived just down the road and I saw them almost daily. But I still wasn’t working. The freelance jobs I had been working dried up. The savings accounts dried up. Paying bills was a challenge.

At this point in my story I want to stop because I can hear a voice—maybe a voice out there in the internet wilds, maybe a voice that sounds a lot like my mother, telling me “So what! Pick yourself up. Move on! Walk it off.” This, my friends, is perhaps what scares me most—that I am simply not capable of holding it together much longer. But something happened a few months ago. I won’t go into details but it was a change in medications. A very simple change. Almost overnight I began to feel stronger, no longer overcome by fatigue, indifference, non-specific anxiety and inexplicable fear. I don’t what this means for me or my future. I miss my kid. I miss having an adult life.

5-Minute Poem for Gregory Crosby

MATERIAL COMPONENTS

He is a “man
of substance”
they say but what
substance:
ichor, sluice,
& bitumen,
Trammeled, pilloried
slicks of …

*

Reflect
something un
toward, master
of no art,

holder, to some
degree, a handy
bit o’ something
human. Sounds
so dirty.

We have an inter
section, a vow I’ll meet
you at the second
staple, buried head-
down in the fold.

from The Burnside Review

Another Five-Minute Poem

Here's another Five-Minute Poem, written for my friend, Jess H. I met Jess about 15 years ago. We were fast friends for several months. Then we had a falling out of sorts, a falling out that neither of us really remembers. Details are foggy and undetailed. No matter. We've recently reconnected. She's a single mom living in Memphis, and she sent me some Memphis coffee beans. I sent her this poem.


The South (ern California girl) Remembers

You are not a memory
but the realization

of a lapse some century
in the making, a bottle-
red explosion,

like a Chinese finger
trap, my song-filled trial
& error come back to haunt.

Some field makes a BBQ pit
you standing next & over
a page behind the stand-still.

Your child is crawling inside
the television not to escape
but to find a place to sit.

The world sings a fine motion
without words, smoke rings
making haloes around

the people over there, everyday
messengers who dress like us.

Collaborative Poem

This is a poem Joe Massey and I wrote. I've known Joe since 2005 or so, and he's become my best friend in poetry. Not the poetry world, not po-biz, not academia, but just my best friend in poetry. Anyway, up until last night, we'd never collaborated on anything before. So now we have. It's here.