Nonsense

We are a sculpture
or an open
book? We accumulate
no detail in time.
We reside in our tent
of fire. Remember when
we froze too big to think.
Hushed little creatures
under the sea of
some raptor-named
fantasy world.
Smoke waves
against the sky's lost page
we no longer stand.

This Morning

Water boiling for Vaughn's oatmeal
in the kitchen behind me.
Chorus of “surf's up, surf's up,
ho daddy, ho daddy,” coming from
the living room where Vaughn and Dash
are kneeling on the hardwood floor.
Harsh hush of cars rushing by outside.
Sharma's claws tug at her ottoman
tucked under the desk
in the dining room. I stir
the oatmeal and bring it to my daughter
not because she asked politely
but because we must be going soon.

Proverbial Sonnet (55)

A movie's a fine bulwark against time
but nothing outlives a powerful rhyme
like an insect of radiation-resistant airs.
I should have been a cluster of spiky hairs
stretching out and vibrating my wings
intuitively as I play my courtship songs.
My hate is a purple hydrangea that stings:
a yellowjacket tucked under mophead poms
with hard-shelled face and long black-seed eyes
and well-developed primitive mouthparts
for capturing and chewing what I should
have been. My hate is a minor pollinator,
a sweet-toothed scavenger disrupting picnics
and, nest-back, passing it on in trophallaxis.

Yesterday Morning

Tumbles of low fog
over Lake Lillinonah;
an empty parking lot
of dandelion seed heads.

This Morning

Cold morning
Gas pains

I was trying to think
Of something that
Was there

What time is
Dew

Some attack
Is coming

Long Coat Variations

I know that long coat.
I know that gray
striding through
the lost grass
of the golden brown
plains. I know
because I was there
watching through
the hole in the sky
just over the horizon
through which that long
coat man
was being shot,
framed by silence
like any old word
exactly placed,
and moving that way, too.

*

I remember turning
to my invisible sheriff
and sneering, “See you
in hell,” then pulling
the trigger and watching
him fall
back into the trough.
My teeth, like saloon doors
stopped mid-swing,
flashed as I smiled
at the splash and the blood
rivering through the white-
shirt valleys, out of
his chest and into the water.
I turned back, I suppose,
to the big black steed
my eight-year-old self
could never really mount.

*

It's been a long time.
It's a long time
coat. The buttons
on the coat
are entrances
to the cave
in which I am buried.
Let me show you.

*

In love, one
is Jesse James,
and the other,
Meramec Caverns.

*

The long coat
hanging like
a shadow from
the lowest limb
of the bare-
branched years.
Someone was
inside?

*

I will show you
the cave later.
I used to go there
often. A wild
cat would take me.
It's been a long
branching out
in the opposite
direction. I
don't remember
exactly what
it was that used
to rip me up
and take my bones
for firewood
that I might visit
with the sky—
an animal
or spirit man
from the forest
of dark long coats?

18 x 2

and I still
walk around
with holes
in my jeans,

scarecrow
flannel, and
The Misfits
in my head.

This Morning

Time is
someone's at
the door.

A Sheltering Sky

Aurora borealis, born to dance . . .

Sidereal glaciers, love's invisible spiders.
Home is wherever I'm squatting with
Elvis houseflies in my hair.
Looking at the fjords of night between
The blue punk rock clouds, I recline and
Evaporate like juice in a pan. We sleep on
Rooftops whenever we dream, secretly
Inviting the leopards and cobras of
Night to stride and slither to our sides as we
Grind our teeth and sharpen our minds.

Solar winds, track changes, due north.
Karmic evolution, born to boot . . .
Yellow teeth of the sun tease my arm.

________
In memory of Jim Carroll
August 1, 1949 – September 11, 2009

And partly in response to Politely Homicidal's call for acrostic poems having to do with the sky

Proverbial Sonnet (54)

We topped our Boboli with garlic and anchovies
and kissed so much we burnt the crust. We took
our halves into our first own living room
and sat down with a quilt on the worn blue rug
in front of the TV because we still didn't have
any furniture yet. I Shot Andy Warhol
was originally planned as a documentary
but the filmmakers found almost no footage
of Solanas or anyone to talk about her.
We fell in love with Lili Taylor for a little while,
and after, we wrapped around each other
like a metaphor. Puzzle pieces across
the floor, we snapped into. You had the hair
of a young Bernadette Mayer that year.*

______
*I was picturing Mayer's photo as I
remembered it from in the back of An
Anthology of New York Poets. I thought
KC looked a bit like the little face
in that photo of Mayer in those days.
I don't have a copy of that anthology
on hand, but I think I still remember
the picture well enough to describe it:
swimming sleep, the waves mail,
December sun, soft April sky,
September notebook, snowy July,
eventual belly, zippered smile:
a lot of action in that captured lack
of motion, entire movements to understand.

A Modest Response

Was
it
all
we
could
bear?

Bear
was
Could
it
be
all?

All
bare,
we
saw
it
could

cloud
all.
It,
bare,
was
wee.

We
would
caw,
pall
bear
it.

It
was
bear.
Could
was
all.

It was all
we could bear.

__________________________________
In memory of Tom Sullivan,
Jul 22, 1938 – Sep 10, 2009

Hum

by Ann Lauterbach

The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.

Complex Social Structure

Boil water
pour it over

the idea of war

rises
through sinuses


            *

Driving through fog
with dog
in the back
of the pickup

“songs of love and songs of death”

open window
songs that bark

at trees

fog lifting
leaves


            *

Hot shower
the hour

friendly fire

wipe tile

crawl
enormity

back to sleep


            *

Afterthought rains
mud brains

“If I get back home . . .”

NOISE BOT

BUSTED TEES

homo sapiens
knees


            *

Roof, roof

regarded

as dependent upon culture


            *

On top of a
twig

twirling between
fingers

the little green
bud

more brown


            *

Bumper sticker
shock and awe

YOUR VOTE COUNTS

What?

like bodies


            *

REAL MEN
WIPE THEIR ASS WITH BARK

FUCK ME IF I'M WRONG
babe


            *

Lift the tea bag
from the mug

the idea of war

pressed
in sunken chest


            *

Turn on Angel

turn out light

watch
and forget

someone else
will write

Proverbial Sonnet (53)

Good morning, kiss. You are awake. Today's back road
have blossomed behind my eyes. Ted Berrigan is alive.
The minute blue night was only pretending
to be awake. Your drive into work, a brown sliver
under the whirling print of an elegant finger, a middle finger
opening slowly in the direction of American Beauty.
American Beauty isn't only a movie. Good morning,
you, opening slowly, today's back roads, a kiss
in the direction of American Beauty. On the car windows,
commas, periods, and question marks of water —
no words wet this movie morning. A minute blue
blossomed drive beyond the wide rows of high brown
slivers. You are awake, on the back roads, which lead me away
from American Beauty, from behind my eyes, from the line,
          “Ted Berrigan is alive.”

________
This is a knock-off. For the real deal, one of the most beautiful American poems, see Ted Berrigan's Sonnet XXXVII.

Another Quick Little School Bus Morning Poem

The bus stops and Vaughn
climbs on, finds her seat
beside two other girls.

No wave goodbye this time.
No looking out at
Ayla,* Dash, and me.

The bus moves on, leaving
its exhaust behind. The days
of the week go by

so many times, one loses
track, like Thomas the Train
rushing to make good time.

_________
* Ayla is the Japanese Maple we planted in our front yard last year, named by Vaughn.

Cultural Moment I Completely Missed: The Book Trailer

Evidently there have been trailers for books for a few years now (so sayeth Wikipedia). It's funny that “book trailer” is a trademarked term. (I guess it doesn't take much.) There are only 35,000 views, though, so I'm not sure how well this new marketing method is working out for publishers. Probably that's a great number for literary fiction, even a crossover novel like this one. But it's Penguin. They had to be hoping for more hits in the first month that that. Maybe they're rookies at viral marketing, or maybe 35,000 really does kick ass under the circumstances and I just don't get it.

As counterpoint to the trailer, Louis Menand's New Yorker review.

Hat tip: Elektra Luxx.

One-Line Manifestos

        Just posted these as a comment to a great little article by Robert Archambeau over at the Poetry Foundation.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Don't pay anyone to read your work.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Don't play their game; make your own.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Shut the door so you can leave.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Dress like a pig and hiss like a snake.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Your poems may be food, but not to the homeless.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Seal each of your poems in an envelope and mail them to random names in the phonebook.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

I am a walking manifesto.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Short of breath is an urgent manifesto.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Poetry is a door; there is no outside.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Everything counts: syllables, words, caesuras, feet, none of the above, etc.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

A poetics of place is neat, but the poetics of silence is real.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Poetry is its opposite.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

An apple twice its size.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Nothing is relative, too.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Soldier on: you're not at war (but if you are, I'm sorry).


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Freak.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Touch.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Sing.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Belch in public and be a peach behind the scenes.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Hold hands and be proud, but don't hold them high.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Don't be proud: You're not the name attached to your poems.


ONE-LINE MANIFESTO:

Your poetry is the garden you will enter when you die.
 

GREAT! or Some Blogs of Note

The other day I was searching to see if anyone in the Wide World had posted Ted Berrigan's Sonnet XVII and found Robert Frost's Banjo. I've since been enjoying John Hayes's Banjo very much. It has great bloggy fare like today's Moose Tales, but what hooked me first was the Weekly Poem series, a great selection of poetry by many of favorite poets (Berrigan, Kenneth Patchen, Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara, Tom Clark).

Speaking of Tom Clark, he's been posting a lot of great work—poems old, poems new, some original translations—over at his Beyond The Pale blog. If anyone is a master of the lyric, it's him. Here's one of my all-time favorite poems by anybody from anyplace writing at anytime.

Even though I have submitted relatively little work to literary magazines since 1999 (a handful per year at most, excepting 2001 and, I think, 2003 which were a bit heavier than that) and had taken to posting blogbooks of old poems (mostly old, Sappho Does Hay(na)ku had been new[er] work), I hadn't taken the next step of foregoing magazine publication altogether (or virtually altogether, we'll see) and using Nobody here as as a place to post new poems as I write them. Two blogs in particular helped lead me to this leap, both regularly feature great poems by poets who are the real deal, whose works often enough make me envious, you know in a kind of calm resigned way, of their abilities: W.B. Keckler's Joe Brainard's Pyjamas and Todd Colby's Glee Farm.

Last but not least, Sephyrus by Rachel Andrews (it does sound like a sophisticated perfume or designer clothing line doesn't it?) has been a hotbed of words and images, with the same great art that's been there from the start and poetry painted with a minimalist style all her own.

Labor Day, 2009

Where am I at 9:58 on the morning in question,
unable to concentrate, unable to reach
the words I feel I need, knowing nobody really does.
The air outside is cool, but one thing's for sure:
I'm not out there. I'm inside somewhere
with heavy eyelids and sciatica, back to the kitchen
with its ticking clock. So I'm in the yellow room
with the computer and a bookcase of poetry.
Ted Berrigan is by my side. The sidewalks
of 6th and Bowery have been waiting for him,
but he's here in New Milford. He helped jump start
my car this morning so I could drive to Stop
& Shop and buy some stamps so I could mail
my letter to Tom Clark, and while I was there
I thought What the hell and bought a Powerball
quick pick for the first time in a couple of years
and if I win I have no idea what I'll do but I know
I'll quit my job and maybe become a publisher again
or move to New York, I don't know, maybe I would veg
and be a useless lazy rag on the sofa all day.
What was it I used to say? Why play the lottery?
If I won, I'd lose my edge. And edge is the most
important thing to a poet, more dear than life itself,
or at least that's how it seems. For some it was true,
for others, well, things change when you're handcuffed,
hooded, and have a pistol pressed against your skull,
so who's to say. The clock in the kitchen is really
there, ticking, ticking, ticking, shaking up
my nerves, driving me mad, but I don't want it
to stop. I dive into the pool of words inside me,
a kind of magic, fast and furious and almost free.

Remembering What Happened

          1

I wasn't walking
or even moving
the leaves were
maybe rustling
but certainly not
falling as I saw
one on my lap.


          2

So I guess I was sitting
under the maple
in the back yard
while my son chased
my daughter around
the peeling white garage
and my car on fire.


          3

I could hear them
laughing and pretending
one was a werewolf
and the other a tree
nymph or dryad I guess
while my burning car
was Aslan in his glory.


          4

There was no wind
to speak of still
the leaf on my lap
moved just a bit
when I thought of
the woman I love
who was staring at me.


          5

From up in the tree
her face peering through
her hair like a small
waterfall around her
bare feet on one branch
hands gripping another
and it started to rain.


          6

It rained only from her
hair or maybe her
eyes as my children
continued to run in mock
fear around the garage
and burning car
and I stood up to climb.


          7

There wasn't a branch
low enough for me
to reach I started panting
for air as my love
Rapunzelled her hair
which soon covered
me like rapid water.


          8

And then it was night
with my children inside
and probably asleep
as I reclined on a limb
high up in the tree
with the stars in my hair
my lover's fingertips.


          9

I fell asleep in that tree
in the arms of my love
and when I awoke
I was in the driver's seat
of my car with red
and yellow flames
all shooting around me.


          10

I sat in the burning car
my son chased my daughter
around the white garage
and my wife in the kitchen
was staring out the window
at me plucking a leaf
from the maple in the back.

Proverbial Sonnet (52)

If love ain't the ember in remember
then it's probably hate, or the shadow
of a pain so great it couldn't fade into
the light of day just around the corner
from any time, any place, mano
a mano, chest to chest, just me and you
and the open air, that kind of call to fight
like a rottweiler, to bite the proverbial leg
of the one you love, the one you hate, or the one
you masturbate in the forests of the night
all Tiger, tiger, forgetting the powder keg
of days and our flickering camp-fire brain.
Love, if you love me, think of me when you shower
as your animal soap and pegasus water.

Proverbial Sonnet (51)

Content yourself with rice; reveal yourself
with tea. Be childlike and sandwich bag the seeds
of summer's watermelon compassion.
Souvenir not only any rocks and shells
from the days you staked your ground at the beach
but the paper parking pass as well. Cash in
all but one of your chips from the casino,
or no, shake, rattle, and roll with emptiness,
but emptiness meaning weight divided by
itself, not that ticking, clock-faced zero.
It's not the heat but the resulting sweat.
The pounding sun begets the day's black eye,
not heavy rain or snow, not hurricane winds.
It's the commonplace that exhausts all means and defeats all ends.

Dear Troubled Soul,

I don't know what you mean.
You look great in those jeans.
Stop picking your nose.
I have a problem for you
I know you can solve.
What kind of time are you
looking at? Does it feel
more like a flit or a flutter?
I want to believe you are
telling the truth. When you say
you're emotional do you mean
above or below the waist?
Let's see a show of hands.
See, the audience agrees:
It's time to get off the schnide
and be shaped for a purpose.
Be sharp. Know what I mean?
Not a stone, but a stone.
Forget cut and polished: split
that scene. Be a natural shade
at home in any light.

Proverbial Sonnet (50)

Free will is a mountain. If you are moving
forget it. Turn on your radio and
detune it: the big bang can't be changed. Yet.
The crackle you hear is the echo from
a squirrel breaking an acorn open in
the shadow of a tree you can't not see
if you close your eyes and imagine that
furry irritable reaching after fact
with all of the pathos of climatology
or the arctic circle of a harp seal's birth—
let's go pick some elderberries. There is
no wisdom like elderberry wisdom.
Near wet ditches, dense thickets, or along
stream banks, we purple and break off easily.

There's no losing the sky

There's no losing the sky;
it's a list of things that can't
be separated. I just killed
a gnat but wanted to call it
a fly because it rhymes
with sky and I'm traditional
like that. My blog is like
the rain which can't be separated
from the weather. I'm partly
cloudy myself with a chance
for showers tomorrow morning.
No, the sky's my school and
the sun's my principal and
when he calls me to his office,
which is just stepping outside,
I know my ass is pwned
because it can't be separated
from this haphazard soul.

Die Hard If

Die hard, if you're
right; die soft,
if you're wrong.

If you're wrong and
die hard, to hell
with you. If you're

right and die soft,
thanks anyway:
the world will leave

you fully forgiven.

Dash's Poem / Waiting for the bus to pickup Vaughn

It's sunny and cold outside.
A school bus goes by.
Why's the car wet?
It didn't rain.
I think maybe
we should play catch.

Sorry