Two Last Apps for 2009

#1491

To wake up in frost,
ineffectual sun up in
blue sky bruised gray,
is to huddle into these
words, burrow down in
them until you hit a spot
of warmth, like memories
stuck like bark to roots,
of this or that, of she or
her, if this trope is over-
worn so be it, I’ve had
enough of pretending
this crux isn’t one, so
I’ll lean into it, again—


#1080

If I had Neko Case
for one night, I’d
dip her red hair in
red wine, suck it
dry, bathe
her in
honey,
dive
into what’s
pink and blue,
roll out the red carpet.

If I had Neko Case
for one night, I’d
part the Red Sea
to make her
come, come
pangs,
needles,
she’s
stiff from
ecstasy, I’m
freckle-fucked.

If I had Neko Case
I would never
leave my bed
again; I’d lay,
awake to
music,
voices,
ether,
never doubt
Heaven exists
on Earth, between

throats, notes, legs.

Essay in The Argotist: "On the Necessity of Bad Reviews"

Jeffrey Side has published a new essay of mine, On the Necessity of Bad Reviews, in The Argotist Online.

Also in The Argotist Online; an interview with me, as editor of P.F.S. Post, on Net publishing.

To Jeffrey, many thanks.

Apps for Winter

#1649

Oh you guys, you guys are tough.
I came here to write about some
thing, but now that I came, I can’t
come to a decision about what I

came for. What? You said I can’t
do this? You said it’s not possible
because it’s a violation and not a
moving one? It’s true, you guys

are tough. You know I have tried,
at different times, to please you in
little ways, but this one time I had
this student that was giving me head

and she stopped in the middle to tell
me that I had good taste and you had
bad taste, and I’ll admit it, I believed
her. She was your student too, maybe

you’ve seen her around. She’s the one
with the scarves and the jewelry and
the jewels and the courtesy to give the
teachers head who deserve it. Do you?


#1603

"Be careful what you handle,"
I told her, "you can get to me
even if you touch another," it
happened in an office shaped
like the foyer of a huge hovel,
built of mud, etchings of bugs
on the wall, perfect perverse
kids scampering among clods.

"You know what I want, and
how I can get it," she replied,
as she took another out, put
me in, but only inside a brain
used amiss to find a level that,
shaped like a foyer, was past
office, into brick, sans mud.


#1341

Secrets whispered behind us
have a cheapness to bind us
to liquors, but may blind us
to possibilities of what deep
secrets are lost in pursuit of
an ultimate drunkenness that
reflects off surfaces like dead
fishes at the bottom of filthy
rivers— what goes up most is
just the imperviousness gained
by walking down streets, tipsy,
which I did as I said this to her,
over the Schuylkill, two fishes.


#1488

liquor store, linoleum
floor, wine she chose
            was always deep red,
            dark, bitter aftertaste,
            unlike her bare torso,
                       which has in it
                       all that ever was
                       of drunkenness—
to miss someone terribly,
to both still be in love, as
she severs things because
            she thinks she must—
            exquisite torture, it's
            a different bare torso,
(my own) that's incarnadine—

Posit: 2 editions

Posit, print chap pdf and e-chap, as a first edition, 2007, from Dusie Press. 

The Posit Trilogy, Argotist Online e-book, 2017, boasts the second edition of Posit. 

Apparition Poem #1335

#1335

terse as this is, it is
given to us in bits
carelessly shorn
from rocky slopes,
of this I can only
say nothing comes
with things built in,
it’s always sharp edges,
crevices, crags, precipice,
abrupt plunges into “wants,”
what subsists between us
happens in canyons lined
in blue waters where this
slides down to a dense
bottom, I can’t retrieve
you twice in the same
way, it must be terse
because real is terse,
tense because it’s so
frail, pine cones held
in a child’s hand, snapped.


P.S. A new interview with me on Goss 183.

.......................................................................................................

Apparition Poem #1571, from Cricket Online Review 6, extends, illuminates this meta-terrain.

New in The Argotist Online

Several of my new Apparition Poems (more added in '17) have just come out in The Argotist Online, the excellent online UK journal edited by Jeffrey Side. Thanks to Jeffrey, who has a new piece in PFS Post.