Search me, O God, and know my heart

What’s in my pants                 a root or a branch

You’re wearing a cloak or a gown or a crown

I woke up this morning–:       the blues were all round my brain

You put the rope around my neck      what’s on my head

A hood or a hat           my baby left me

She left me with a bag of shit               once I smoked it all

I had a fit         baby wanted me to get high

She wanted me to have a fit     my baby left me

From Wadjet to Nekhbet comes the God on His craft

May He be whole and in good health worshipping worshipping

Hair extensions excluded        henna excluded

“What we care about is culturally constructed”

For Frenchmen to feel justified          for justice to be loved

The need to meditate on eternity        to avoid conflicts

Song about Minnie the Moocher        jung gifter und blick

With more focused tone and less vibrato in sustained lines

And what was Handel doing in England anyway anyway?

Cracked and bleeding fingertips         waiting for Monday morning

Waiting for the time when no one needs the registers cleared

When bar codes aren’t obliterated      fingertips’ many nerve endings

Dropping things because it hurts to hold them or anticipate the pain

When coins drop on the sidewalk                   or anticipate the pain

Through grates into storm pipes                      or anticipate the pain

Left me with some reefer, mama         once I smoked it all

I had a trauma                        she wanted me to take her stash

So she could leave me in the trash      my baby left me

Draining through the sewers               rain coursing around dimes

Paralysis of my right hand’s fingers                pennies

Radiated down my right arm              ailment actually affects

Mud puddle pothole   hear the pothole worshipping worshipping

To love the daffodil    to eat the chrysanthemum

Indeterminateness lives in the ten thousand things

She left me with a hole in my head      cause I smoked it all up

She left me for dead                 baby wanted me to get high

She wanted me to have a fit                 my baby left me

Waiting for the corridors to empty                 waiting for the streets

To fill              for the parties to start worshipping worshipping

The tables with hash pipes and lava lamps taken down

The umbrella sellers shelter under awnings

Into the arcades where sprouts press water beneath gutters

Beneath the staircase  Mayan blue so deep

Pigment stains my soul                       nineteenth dynasty gold

So strange it colors the mane the crocodile the hippo the paws

Woven cotton checks on a creamy white background

In one beast     Hathor from the twenty-first dynasty

No-fuss pull-string design with a foamed cotton-blend lining

Hathor from the twenty-first dynasty                        Her udders

Left my ass high and dry         once I smoked it all

She kissed my ass goodbye                  she knew I’d take her stash

So she could leave me to crash           don’t let yours leave you

Lying down next to the cattails          Her udders sore from feeding

The cobras                   WEIGHING THE HEART

Waiting for the heart to be weighed worshipping worshipping

Worshipping the taxi in Cairo             hare rama

Worshipping the taxi in London         hare rama

Worshipping the taxi in Berlin            hare rama

Waiting for the meter to stop              “you sure this feta isn’t off?”

Waiting for Anubis to stop the meter             “this feta isn’t off?”

Waiting for Anubis                                                     “feta?”

Mayan blue so deep the cenotes glisten like lapis lazuli

Coal around the eyelids with brows brushed with henna

Cenotes are the GOD’s eyes   w a t c h i n g   u s!

Twelve secret signs He’s into you      Osiris gleaming arcs of his khaibit

Eight little things that mess up your skin        “this feta isn’t off?”

Swirling and curling vines and leaves embroidered over gauze

Osiris gleaming arcs of His khaibit     stretching toward Jung

Stretching to Jesus      stretching to canals on Mars

Cattails along the water red red red against the Mayan blue

Like red aertery against blue vaein or vice versa

Twelve secret signs She’s into you

Eight little things that mess up your skin worshipping worshipping

Woven cotton checks on a creamy white background

Woodland inspired Jacobean floral worshipping worshipping

There is no god but God         twelve secret signs He’s into you

Subjected to a particularly frightening series of symptoms

Waiting for the time to come              waiting for Friday night

Hand washing, slicing onions, kneading bread, holding a hot cup of tea

From Wadjet to Nekhbet comes the God on Her craft

Don’t be juking all Her trash              once you smoke it all

She’ll leave with all Her cash or She’ll leave with all Her cash

“Once the whole is divided, the parts need names”

The ability to look at the craft unsympathetically

To see the elements of the craft          to classify the elements

To introspect the craft in terms of these classifications

To judge one’s own emotional response to the craft

In terms of these classifications          to use the terms

When introspecting oneself    to use oneself as craft

The ability to look at oneself              unsympathetically

See the social outcry               my baby my baby my baby

Mud puddle pothole               hear the pothole

Know the bus doors as they spurt open then grasp

Their hand-holds                     the need for France to be brave

Don’t stray from the path       my baby my baby my baby

Indeterminateness lives in the ten thousand things

The nameless lives at once and never             why god

The nameless lives forever      in Calais lies a jungle

Young man goes to see the master of the jungle

Don’t stray from the path       my baby my baby my baby

How does the sin-eater sustain himself with chunks

Of bread unless plenty of souls are striving                why god

When there are plenty of saints to worship                why god

When the king has a thought to worship the ship of state

Must the people be rampant in ash     my baby my baby my baby

The people stream forward into the smoke or crawl from the mist

The people sail through the fog                                  why god

J Keats s/d       “I hate the world:  it batters too much the wings

Of my self-will”          my baby my baby my baby

“Don’t let my husband catch us here”                        white terror

The need for France to be brave         “What was Handel doing?”

Fermentation was the miracle preceding refrigeration

“I ain’t got nobody for to feel my pain”                      why god

Caves in the sea’s cliffs lit by candles                        white terror

Pines wavering            Mary and Semele and Martha

Depression is the life-force preceding rationalism or rationalism

Even Chaucer had gas–even Venus had gas–und der Budda?

Sliced off his eyelids to be awake then lids became sinensis sinensis

Or maybe something like that crazy tree in The Fountain?

I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man–       come not down

The lanes or in our meadows and for thy peace I pawn my own soul

the terrible fact as freyr understands it is that nobody loves sloane as much as sloane loves sloane and that makes him a perfect candidate for time travel that and the fact that he’s guilty of mound robbery at winterville in mississippi and that the state has sentenced him to death for the murder of a highway patrolman in pocahontas so if sloane dies or disappears it won’t rub anyone the wrong way or as he likes to say he’s imperfect but so is our system of ground transportation where 40000 die every year and so is our system of trade where one third of the world starves dies of exposure or just freaking evaporates drowns et cetera and so is our system of justice imperfect because sloane believes himself innocent and maintains that the gambler from nanih waiya committed all the crimes with which sloane is accused but freyr has prepared to ship sloane off no matter what and that involves time travel yes time travel which will be accomplished by injecting a liquified sloane into TV LAND which is the epoch freyr has chosen for sloane to time travel chronaut victor on the other hand will be the control for this experiment and will remain on the couch watching TV LAND for the most part unless he has to have a potty break sloane’s only objection is that minnie driver doesn’t appear on TV LAND and he wishes that freyr had chosen a different epoch like BRAVO for example and again he likes to make the point that our capitalist system will in no way benefit from this experiment and that he will do everything in his power while in TV LAND to promote a new system called the gift economy while freyr is in basic agreement with this plan as he is the god of plenty freyr does expect that sloane will still need to be delivered to the experiment platform by armed soldiers no one loves sloane but no one trusts him either after hearing about a friend’s death victor has a terrible compulsion to eat as much as possible and drink all the liquor in his flat first he has two brownies and a piece of banana bread then he has a cuban sandwich then three brownies and another piece of banana bread he finishes all his bushmills whisky then has a bowl of bush’s boston beans with two knockwurst and a shot of bourbon his dead friend weighed 330 when he died of a heart attack and victor feels he must maybe match his friend’s weight to prove the obesity itself couldn’t have been the cause of his death the ghost floats above victor in his flat and says only 140 more pounds to go keep eating so victor leaves his flat afraid of the ghost and motors for the fens where a figure of a man a shadow against the boston skyline a nightmare standing against the background lit by a street lamp poised as if to chase victor and victor believed his dead friend when he told victor about astral walks near cassadega could be true so victor sneaks into trinity and drinks the communion wine from the sacristy and feels better except that another car has parked in his space when he drives back to his flat so he lets the air out of the interloper’s tires and breaks its windshield with his lawn chair now victor’s face shines and there are holes coming in and out of himself and his feet seem not portable and data begins spilling out of him as sparks just light flashing and he realizes it’s traffic lights changing to yellow red splashes at midnight and he drives off looking for a parking spot taking his lawn chair with him around the blocks to newbury street then closer to mfa and still no space so he pulls into trinity’s lot and parks and pukes freyr asks why do people who make horror movies think god and the devil speak latin freyr asks will my health insurance cover me overseas freyr asks am i correct in my perceptions but incorrect in my judgements sloane asks why is my file called a rapsheet or jacket why am i called a jumper or a skip if i violate parole why is a cop also called a dick or the heat victor says our god is an advertisement for our self sloane says we are an advertisement built on psychographic data that doesn’t describe the product so much as it describes the personality and the character of the prospective consumer victor says we are an ad campaign that almost ignores the product so that it can flatter you for having the good taste to want us victor sees rich deposits of magnesium and silicon in a pair of colliding galaxies known as the antennae sloane says deposits are located in vast clouds of hot gas and when the clouds cool a great number of stars and planets should form victor says these results may foreshadow the fate of our own milky way and its future collision with the andromeda galaxy sloane says indices cuckoo dwarves irresolute pfennig pharaoh accusatory become extraordinary helpful rhodium lusaka aborning parrot decatur dissonant ammonia adobe codfish compost flown slur howell like victor says new smart watches can download and display tiny bits of text information from the web sloane says ditto victor says with a digital player a user can now download an audiobook for less than it would cost to buy a book or audiocassette sloane says happy birthday elvis as gods go freyr wasn’t a complete nutball he always maintained a steady address in pottstown and a vacation home in coral gables but for meetings that crossed many universes he chose universitat d zoom zoom because of its huge cannabis laboratory many plants grew to fifteen feet and higher some buds were as large as his fist and the lab techs always allowed him to test lethality on the premises before taking any home to his faculty apartment since of course freyr taught at the universitat as well as smoked there usually his students were from denmark and finland with a few swedes and norwegians thrown in for good measure however several students hailed from east l.a. and he loved to have them attend class with their ipods bellowing midniters and malo international relations and consumables was his meat and potatoes course and gift economies a rare special topics course both sloane and victor had been students when freyr first taught at universitat d zoom zoom neither liked the god much at the time because as gods go freyr was more condescending than others such as loki who never failed to flatter his students and had a funny way of pronouncing ragnorak anorak fart attack the selection committee that identified victor and sloane as possible chronauts concerned itself mainly with their states of mind since ordinary time is really an illusion the committee sought players who had real difficulty with the concept of past and future already both victor and sloane had smoked pot since they were old enough to strike a match and therefore had no sense of ordinary time at all for example the last trip to the grocery store would always seem like the first to sloane and victor never bothered to shop because his taste for sushi was so acute he needed it three times a day religious authorities had already condemned the time experiment so the fact that the two chronauts dabbled in gluttony and drug abuse only added to the priests’ dismay what’s more theologians at their universitat had put a fatwa on the laboratory that was running the time experiment the building was surrounded by placard wielding protesters night and day polizei with digital cameras photographed the crowd and surveillance cameras photographed the polizei photographing the crowd which for the most part was nonviolent except for the one time paint remover hit the principal investigator’s land rover and he cried big tears boo hoo in order to stop victor and sloane’s upcoming journey because of popular fears about their universe’s resulting implosion federal courts outlawed time experiments in all jurisdictions while some underground fundamentalist organizations plotted attacks at all universitats to forestall impending time travel by victor and sloane and others like them none of the universitats’ leaders had actually given permission for experiments but neither had any forbade them freyr of course rose above the universitat administrative bodies due to his god status still federal marshalls stationed themselves at science buildings and laboratories anticipating an armed struggle sloane left the following message for all his lovers vitrify informatica lomb thick sainthood similitude nepal emancipate inharmonious blanchard eulerian angel podium altitude cactus screechy sanctuary delouse chimeric cover and equally dismayed by the upcoming fight with federal authorities victor emailed this to his ex-wife alcmena estuary capricious coca starlight chelate cohere isomorph aristotle crosscut condiment solon heady slide cockcrow simple tuesday anticipatory polarography kirk turpitude hence footstep iniquity synapse bundy excellently prepared for their departure by a squadron of virgins sloane and victor then made tiny space costumes for themselves to hide what might to other creatures seem preposterous although freyr had once told them their anatomies honored the all father’s penchant for bird buddies huginn and muninn sloane shoved victor into the tube and injected him into the epoch without screaming without remonstrance having set their wristwatches to tick off seconds as though each were in different rooms in different universes as the epoch was another universe unmapped by scholars at universitat d zoom zoom and freyr watched watches spin on both who had dressed in serapes before undertaking their experiment and note please that their watches rang loudly gong gong at the initiation and climax of events so that any passing would hear and help if necessary knowing that not only victor but also sloane would be dipped in terror by who knows what sights could be seen at either end of the epoch already there were those who predicted that freyr would take his horn of plenty to another galaxy in their universe if this experiment failed he would saddle up and cowboy off to m1123 as that was the nearest and dearest to his heart next to the horsehead nebula where sloane and victor mostly lived as wooden men who were concerned mainly with their manliness and tied knots as frequently as possible with many wives at either end of the epoch freyr to say the least was pretty sore at sloane for switching places with victor so freyr held sloane in a headlock while they watched TV LAND for a few hours victor made a few appearances in commercials for ivory snow and shake and bake then he crashed a party for aunt bee and was shot four times in the chest by gomer pyle at which point freyr shoved sloane into the tube and injected him into the epoch without screaming without remonstrance having set sloane’s wristwatch to tick off seconds as though each were in different rooms in different universes as the epoch was another universe unmapped by scholars at universitat d zoom zoom and freyr watched watches spin on extremely short time intervals and distance scales where as brian greene at columbia notes quantum fluctuations so mangle space and time that the conventional ideas of left/right backward/forward up/down before/after become meaningless so sloane made a left/right into BRAVO and gave minnie driver a big up/down

Tinnitus is the joy of oversound frequencies leaving the inner

Ear forever and the deaf do not suffer sound and the blind do

Not suffer sights and the dumb do not suffer aloud

God’s pledge of non-allegiance His iphone become itouch

Out of touch with the touchwas and from joy Churchill blessed

Gin and from joy Paine’s freewill and from joy Herr Hesse’s

Watchtower and from joy Tamerlane’s falconry and kite fighting

Whale hunting and from joy Mary knelt at the cross and from joy

Abraham’s knife and from joy the mystery at the depth of the heart

Why canst thou not remember thy brother’s suffering thy sister’s

Draught                                    Thinkst thou not upon thy future wreck

And callst thou upon God as Moses called to halve the sea and God

Responded nigh to him His beloved then gave all a way through shell

And fin where none before had gone through that mystery why do we

Not remember God’s love outside the tomb noli me tangere for He is

Risen but not yet sanctified His grace might overpower our suffering

Let us not live in it but rather look back in nostalgia as love denies

Faith and faith denies love useless love exists at the pole useless

Reading renders us awash in faith for gods exist as long as our minds

Exist in the mystery of substance wrinkled and grey chemicals firing

And current sparking makes what was rational perplexing what was

Empirical puzzling for suffering is not punishment suffering is not

A test and suffering is not redemption for joy comes in the morning

Dawn brings surcease at least for a moment joy shines forth and love

Exceeds faith and intercession faults fools Satan remits our debts

Apophis will swallow us          torture ala Sino

Forget ‘bout suffering              who has time for it anyway

Mix a drink and drink it           pretend you’re the god of martinis

Put the Stoli in the freezer        priority ala Rus

Forget ‘bout suffering              have a shot or two with the homeless

Only the ones with blogs         not in real life of course

Apophis will swallow us          tactics ala Pruss

They have a space                   who needs a house when you have a blog

Heaven has no memory           of suffering

Dean and Dino Jr. have no memory and Sammy and Frank have no memory

They make me feel young       fly me to the moon

Let a little love into Ur-life      open another bottle of Tanqueray, baby!

Green ones from the Raj          memories of empire

The wreck of nations               forget ‘bout suffering

Remember the good times       we’ll meet again

Some enchanted evening         put a nickel in the jukebox

Set ‘em up Joe                         make it one for my baby

Forget ‘bout suffering              angels don’t read the Times

They don’t listen to the radio   Melissa Block can weep all she wants

Dead children don’t shake a stick and live parents don’t shake a stick

Forget ‘bout suffering              angels can’t read : won’t read

Angels are illiterate                  I think

Jesus was illiterate                   I think

Moses was illiterate                  I’m sure

Forget ‘bout suffering              do you believe an ounce of your tears?

Do you even have a measuring cup scribed in ounces?

OZ is the abbrev for ounce      ounce kinda rhymes with dunce

Looks a little like it, too           facile and facade both guard

The same things                       two words two indulgences

Send in the popes                    there have to be popes

If something is unspeakable well then how do you pronounce it?

Abu Ghraib, anyway?              Medyedev, for that matter?

Disco Explosion can cause suffering but abates in the face of joy

Absolves us of afterlife absolves Pierce’s left knee ice or heat : heat or ice

How does sacrifice work anyway how does gene therapy work?

Genetically modified Mary in order for Joseph’s lineage to David

To matter birnam wood born of woman yet suffering is a lesson

In itself and causes us not only to remember but to not forget

What has caused our pain hence can be nonsensical because when we

Associate the pain we remember the afflicter as well as the affliction

Hence revenge hence the furies hence blood guilt and the bonfire

Fear of pain brings hate brings violence brings fury argumentum

Ad bacculum convinces the weak that the strong are strong

Supernova destroys both star and light the weak will inherit the earth

Because they are many and the strong are few the poor will vanquish

The rich because the rich are few forget ‘bout suffering and heaven

Will forget you forget ‘bout suffering and god will not erase your tears

Forget ‘bout suffering and forget ‘bout free will in heaven know

The mind and know your own will for now we see through a glass

Then all will be revealed for now we live as fools but then we

Will endure as wizened heaven moved so let me and the rest of us

Old farts drive out disaster for we have been silent for too long ‘bout

How to conjugate irregular French verbs like suffering sufferers

Forget ‘bout suffering              American drones don’t have pilots

Imams drone like American pilots and Egypt has drones in jail

Sudan has crones in mass gardens and the Pope says mass in garden

Teach the children well            to wipe our asses in the retirement homes

The future is written                decrepitude then death

Bobby the K                            with that halo

Bobby the S                             with those feeding tubes

Forget ‘bout suffering              there’s no interest in it

No APY and no APR and no CDOs and no subprimo

Supremo like Dante                 flaccid over Beatrice

Larks return like Noah’s ark like Horace’s canary and Catullus

And the old man riverboat       toilet training is suffering

Birth is suffering                      I’m sure

Contemplation is suffering      I think

Conception is suffering           to a degree

Blaming gods is suffering        to a degree

Idiocy is suffering                   I’m sure

Theodicy is suffering               I think

He has one rough hand and has given the other and for that is

Honoured by the heroes          his neck white was as the lily

There too he strong was as a champion and knew the taverns

Well in every town and every innkeeper and barmaid better

Than a leper or a beggestere    the king of fairies came

With his company came to hunt him all about with din

Cry and with blowing and hounds also with him barking

The hurt was whole that he had had in his neck and bright

Green belt on his body he bore oblique like a baldric bound

At his side below his left shoulder laced in a knot

He bare him up                        he bare him down

He bare him into an orchard    brown

He lay as a thane should          near his lord

He knew the more surely that his life’s end had come

The full number of his days    sorrow is made new

As memory of kinsmen moves through his mind

He greets them with glad words eagerly looks on them

A company of warriors            The future is written

Decrepitude then death            Bobby the K with that halo

Bobby the S with those feeding tubes green ones from the Raj

Apophis will swallow us          and say, “Chi sei?”

“Io son quell’Ezzelino che no crede’ che il mondo fu creato

Da un ebreo.”                          Woe to them that conquer

With armies and whose only right is their power

As a storyteller, Ruhl marches to Ovid’s drum rather than Aristotle’s. ‘Aristotle has held sway for many centuries, but I feel our culture is hungry for Ovid’s way of telling stories,’ she said, describing Ovid’s narrative strategy as ‘one thing transforming into another.’ She went on, ‘His is not the neat Aristotelian arc but, instead, small transformations that are delightful and tragic.’ And she added, ‘The Aristotelian model—a person wants something, comes close to getting it but is smashed down, then finally gets it, or not, then learns something from the experience—I don’t find helpful. It’s a strange way to look at experience.’ —Sarah Ruhl, as profiled by John Lahr in The New Yorker, March 17, 2008

1
Within the world of perfection birds sing to one another
the roof does not leak
birds sing to one another and the doors do not rot

windows pour pure sunshine
walls hug the frame as if bonded and the birds sing
to one and all—

rooms have plenty of fresh, clean air
and twin beds wood carved and full of many colored pillows
and naked Publius Ovidius Naso perhaps

all the way to Maramures
safe with Dacii liberi in their beds
perhaps at Bogdan Voda

no Tartars then no cuirass then no fur no arrows no steeds
where villagers prance in their sweet
little slippers and sip plum brandy

sheep’s milk drips from bird beaks
chop fir oak pine beech
come to death in funny straw hats

transforming into a sombrero
that tops Jose Guadalupe Posada
as he dances with Granny Rose

tiny bones clicking against each other
—come to song like Danny Boy
clicking bones like reels like Sligo

boys like Wren Boys on St. Stephen’s Day
posture of vibrant life
—wait softly for nearly perfect beings

to recline steadfast in their solidity
the birds sing to us, “Come in”
Within the world of perfection

crocus yields precious saffron and cranes fly
cranes fly and hawks pretend the world and the world begets
its aristocrats hidden away on a boat in the Seine

or buried beneath a brownstone in New Amsterdam
eating sprouts on rye smothered in chopped liver
with onions

2
Annie Hall flies mashed yeast flies
Moses rounds the corner and collides with Andy Devine
yada yada yada

wisdom takes a holiday with Tati
Tzara springs Abel Gance from the deep
Tzara springs Andre Gide from the deep

1:1 numbers you can’t measure
surfers were global before global was cool
but # of waves and points don’t cover

the intangibles metrics cause
rebellion magical realism affects
mysticism somewhere in Alaska an old man drops a stone

into the lake and that ripple becomes a swell
that circles the world
hits islands

breaks
reforms
and moves to the next reef

breaks
and Tzara gonna be there to ride that wave
where Wall Street analysts begin to find a way to quantify

intangibles
and build collateralized debt obligations to comfort
themselves

in the wake of socialized financial investments by autonomous
entities otherwise referred to as DICTATORSHIPS
who cut the mustard in Break Bulk

my backyard
jumping squirrels Break Bulk
in my backyard

and chase hawks away from their Crows Nests
[free solar energy] under rain
[free desalinization] aesthetic response

versus knowledge
yahoo versus microsoft
versus

3
Socrates does not lecture
when he takes flight it’s like Powerpoint—see Cave, Myth of
plasticity

of the brain in response to music
“the ocean refuses no river”
docent tapes

mighty iftar/feast of fools
mighty hijabs/black chadors
najess=bad/halah=good

sahari=predawn ramadan meal
sifting through information for new trend=learning
but also discovery

knowing the right=predicting the right outcome
but you can’t introspect the other
—even then could you predict the right action?

curiosity=what we actually die from
disease or event
setting=learning about a world

Red Ken=Said in central London
with his finger on the trigger
Get Thirty People in a Room and then What?

entertainment as in Prospero is a pirate
in that he causes the Duke’s ship to wreck on Caliban
“Salvaging a ship before it wrecks”

keen idea=Said in Tunis or applied arts versus science
rubric versus law
boot camp is not camp

O course is not A course
narnovitch is a great kid
vivorito is always wonderful

internal error incomplete session
by timeout position 0×3o6366
(3171174) system H6FW/os_hook

line 1639 version SPL 1.43 06-07-2007
when hawks pretend that the world of perfection
begets aristocrats

4
Victoria falls, “And I can’t get up!”
because helium will be gone by 2017
sonoluminescence

Black Keys Danger Mouse Gnarls Barkley
hafnium-infused development paradigms
David Cone, “Get out of my dugout!”

The Book of Pythia: The Cycle of Time
hive-minded drone-bot ass-kicking
wind-driven portable charger

When Kalatozov pretends that cranes fly
When Renoir pretends that planes fly
When Stonehenge digs digs

nothing worse
than getting
distracted
while boiling
rice enya
effect where
rice burns
because orinoco
flow makes
sleep sleep
eyes close
while water
bubbles away
sail away
water burn
it up
food effect
where other
stuff on stove
disguises smell
landlady effect
where you fall
asleep and she
wakes you
because she smells
apartment burning
like ricecakes

use and disuse
not love
not hate
the spring
of apathy
coiled then flung
as Jesus
toiled then strung
high on spikes
and spar
manual e
come o
come till
love gets glee
gets gumption
shun hate
shine eve
shun love
un un natural
as spines
from fish
fins too
loving them
as you do
why the dead
sea’s dead
the red sea’s
red love
gets gone
when salt’s
too strong
limpid not calm
not oyster
not mussel
stock not bisque

wehrmacht effect
club cult
soon to die
made to form
as well as
slink back
holy food
good will
affiliation
autonomy
intangible is not
the same as
unknowable
noli me tangere
materialism as
a critique
of dark matter
what fills barrel
when barrel
is empty
circumscribed
attention
to dark energy
the perfect wave
solar plus palm
gravity waves
queen waves back
see me
hear me
touch me
free me

soprano effect
who says there’s
no exit
fade to black
no food
in this bar
except cheddar
crackers at one
buck a crack
from vendomatic
so set her up
Joe cheesy
martini olives
taste like battery
juice twin fin
torpedo das ist
nicht such
a big damn deal
there might be
something wrong
with my head
with my water
meter cause
the reader
left a card
to fill
in the grid
my head has
a hole or two
all stopped up
raisin is a lot
like reason
cause it’s
wrinkled like
a brain
though brown
not grey
pickled lots
of red when ripe
see it running
down the walks
in Palermo

elf king effect
why do liar
and lyre rhyme
whose bed milky
sits empty
crown on pillow
staff laid
crossways
against the stead
drowning in pansies
depth charged
by zinnias
submerged by daisies
back floating
through lilacs
dive bombing
hyacinths
davy jones
in day lilies
a snake
in the garden
glittering
dandelions lean
to it watch
out the dell
is expanding
the adder has
eaten the dandy
lines
and she is
drunk and yellow
and fat

man, these baby saurs in godzilla
nearly rip off matthew’s face while reno
steel dicks out double doors

but lip service must be licked—
“these feckers in hollywood need to stop remaking
foreign films” made once that’s enough, capisce?

if everything exists as both particle and ray
then we are always alternating between little fireballs
and large muffins thermal pairs

crispus crispus crispus what’s
a father to do? you’re in a state
of denial: what’s hot? getting $100

off a dress: get dressed! urban
eye pope on a rope damage control
worn down by years of fighting over ireland

we’ll keep it short and sweet so you can
too phil spector seal inspector mrs. dallas
said i was exotic for an eleven-year-old

quarks pions waves of radiation
bubbles of plasma mesons baryons
noodles springs strings bands

the concession table has just enough for extras
talent doesn’t need to scarf up the balance
close-ups of burps chewing gum focus tape

you’re smarter than i think?
aren’t you in this movie?
who won’t praise famous men?

people too callas not nin faint fonteyn
beaton glitter gala giggle faster better
gallura guts gander grown gape

greatly stranded in sardinia
stuck in a foreign country deep
in the pitch bedeviled back again

donadio sd/ “how can anyone predict the future
when it’s so hard to predict the past?” looky
is + that + all + you’ll + eat? christ!

trees are for climbing, and books are
for throwing—rabbits have christ!
linger not lightly loose yet freighted

with lead like frati godenti capons
of christ rule the demise of uberti
tread lightly on caiaphas and annas

who lie like their father who lies
lost generation like the last one
genx from what ypres torn

once upon a time we watched bowie
slink across the wall at dc space
search for a clear glass of still

water and let his mind wander
back to that barren sandscape
that might have been mars or mojave

whichever he’s just escaped or abandoned
as the first trans trans hermaphro
spacedude allowed to splash himself

onto 35mm without priors or bona
fides to represent his talent as strictly
celeb no vita attached nor no resume

backing a headshot presented to warners
et fils instead spread out pistol forth
and glass backward waiting to be

filled at some trough deep in the desert
like another alien in “petrified forest”
leslie howard he returns love for lead

if i could name a fruit for you
t doesn’t stand for me
it’s the cover of the nyt

style mag “ahead of the curve”
spring 2007 with a tiny “vinyl”
blue cutie hair pulled back—looky

like thom yorke’s girl daiane
but set in sao paulo copan blue
patent leather at $2475 by ghesquiere

then blue on page 3 a pure mope
dude in invisible pool bummed
by his visa bill, i guess, then page 5

calvin’s two kids browned off
on page 6 the guy leaning on a suitcase
is really really a werewolf preparing

to rip the guts out of pertwee in scotland
and my mom thought i was an exciting tour
de force but i liked best to dig holes

in the yard cutting edge symmetry o of o
down where the trolls might go
particle zoo bottles of yoohoo

supersmell quarky dumbified mrs. dallas
thought i’d make a great jockey
cause i was diminutive and she had

horses for harry potter to ride kittens
to cuddle and neutrinos to melt cause atoms
aren’t invisible just small like tiny billiard

balls on god’s snooker table plus i was pisces
with webbed hands and scales from psoriasis
swum deep deep deep floated positive

buoyant as flowers or laurel or lilies or pads
or hyacinth or cattails or grease or the faroes
no, the czech workers utopia no, the mash-up

whether an act of love or greed
to grant all earthly power
through breath and bone

crispus’ da removed to greece
evil began when jealousy unquenched
read reports of foreign entanglements

unknotted and nodded to executioners dispatched
such without theory have all fallen
when polymorphous present succumbs

in the throat of eternity
should we have pinned constantine—
and would that have saved his son his wife mother

not a frigg’n song to sing about crispus
worse crispus sunk to limbo
while his da rose to martian prominence

when wheel rolls downward for you to stop
when bone turns deep in the mountain’s door
when breath blows hard in your face

fairway in dubai no bohemian beijing
no rotterdam no umbrellas up the wolfie’s butt
leaning just so teeth sheathed

tennis and no socks shirt untucked just so
global gambling pod hotels street threads
maxwell’s silver hammer father ado

in the yard SUSY o of o
down where the trolls might go
particle zoo bottles of yoohoo