Heir Apparent

IN THE OLD DAYS the bears were

sweets cheaters

fuego rocked in house fires

fell out the back doors

why how did we how come move the sweet confidant campfire

into the sweeter nested into the sweeter rests of the dead

and dig a cave there

and roast the cruel the missteppers there

pretty pretty beautiful in their fuego throes

gifted feathers answer dark

hair attention bolt gold

roots of fire foretell the flower

garden gonzo with not meant

surprised that’s not mint? rune o’ wild onion

the woods in winter is a silent fire fair distance lives there

i think a fire dances well is in goodly communion

beautiful in its undulating freaks and rags

i think a cheater plays with fire

i think a fired cheater is tyro via oxygen

i think life is a quick at the great big something nothing all

eat shit that’s a fiery thing to say

oxygen myth that’s weirder emergence

oxymoron digit ducat shut me off boys

if anything i will go against the heart

as a drowned ear as a third dais to

venerate caw caw if anything the heart

is a campfire it takes a skill to tending everything

is about how this and that lean

you can’t just throw it all on there

why not that broken shovel handle too

no a fire requires maximum coaxing right

titled tilting learn the bird lean nest logic

a Y a V a fallin in love

with a stranger’s shadow ides

nudging the unreality of yr shoulder again

now that no one will ever know

because words are birds of snow not clay

and the silence of strangers an envelope lit on fire

wit da business end of a smutty cigar

what is a poet but i stuff this in here for a season

what makes a cheater tick

you’d like to say fartin lizard rides a fucker shark but it ain’t that easy

fuckin family of fartin liars

but if there be boxy love preachin contain

then why are all the thriftstores filled with framed

pictures of children hitting softballs out of the infield

for the three hundredth infidel time turn and grin carbuncular tarpaulin

mmm martyr to a sneaky heart in THE

most unnatural death dance

on the yard there

in his second body of flame

as THO he were of paper

and on the paper the worst

things we cannot stop keeping reading

scrunch it but then we open it

but then we ball it but then we paw palm palmetto it flat again

like so and so the fires of the lusty one consumed

as tho to fart in church like soooooo and sooooo

and i can tell you the kindly damping dews diddly do

S the sounds of the fire loves plastic love

because all things combustion tithe

bless the hands some cooled

while handsome ham-it-up-at-dawn birds dare not

meddle with the tender equilibriums of

caloric intake versus singing

so keep shut in the south on a sunday

did the sun fall outta asia? and lion pants’ing across the yard

wild fire heedless of all

go up to go out

revenges the cheater his lady in quotes with her

sad eyes like soup bones standin by

fooler helper the dew is

giving a fish eye to someone dying of thirst the dew is and the dog

with the racist name circles runs

and mrs soup bone eyes? throws wet dresses

on him there being a lack of buckets

and a lack of beauty in this poem

tap water wetted dresses one two ten

dirty tree of smoke a man is

talking sun worshippin by the teflon factory

in a yearn thread temperamental wind

‘scatters’ is there nothing ‘substantial’?

is love ten dresses’ hisses?

then how the restless hell

how restless the pursuit of sweetness then

and now

spinster in a drape marmoset dowry cow angle

houses are men

ax ion

and act shun

no man if no handle on how hammer house true

this woods has no name this wind no apple in it neither

house is man is a

buttress against a nobody it’s a barnacle baby if you buy

we are so

so sweetly driftin thru the dark

ever been to the old smithy place? smithy made that when he was 20

day after his birthday with a double vision hangover

man each sweat pearl pulled out of him like an oven ham or boil

she said you go swim the river before come to me for

i heart the scent of

sweetly driftin thru the dark

and he did precisely

not a wrinkle to it

what she said

for the children which were yet to come

each as heavy and squaredealin as a tree inside a tree

a stone inside a stone a hill inside

a bird inside a bird a cow inside a

meat with a thicket of bone in it

these days it’s all underpaid crews

or drunks or druggists who won’t call you back

men died in the 20th century

men sleep in the whale arses of the internet

men were big threat treat thick boards gleaming

nails slurped up in them

nails are money never to be seen again

it would be a damn dream fame if we could in our lives

tra-ject like a nail

if duty and dream would bind and that kind gorge snugness could sail

now men are true and blind

now women are windows

the blood in women is painful

she poured herself a bath of windows

while all the wild birds saluted going blind with

a hoo doo dee doo doo

but some men see with their fingers man

better watch it that one is after yr lady

he has noses in the ends of his hands

and they ain’t no meek ass yard hare nose no

in the new year i am going to shave my head harness

a big gold pirate’s earring off my hearin and

hit on everyone all of the time

the sound of a finger going up a sleeve is kindness is the realization

that the eleventh dress can’t help is useless

deep so deeep in the woods i a little shaver then

on all fours where the valley was

so the snow was super deeper there

surprise the fire of the snow as it went as it turned on

up my sleeves willy thrilly i thought would conjure bears

because i only went walking for bear peeping

before i knew they died nearly in winter

it was a beautiful logic

you get fat if you eat icecream

the world is icecream

because the house was a silence and secrets like stones with mouths stoned shit

and i plunged my hands elbow deep in the ice paper fire snow

cuz i thought a bear would come on then

because of the melty glass teeth encamped in my sleeves

i thought they’d bring their dark to me

i thought the bear would hug me maybe

i thought i would fumble in the dark of the bear

i thought of the difference of cover and cove

there were crows of course

they said nothing new so beautifully

they were clotted blood on the trees which were generally pines naturally

so sometimes they were just their caws

just as you will never hold me but here we are anyway my cheek kiss words

they called to me the crows they said they were bears exploded

it seems all i can do is say the same old beautiful thing cheek kiss words

i like the way you walk i like the way you walk yr jeans

i like your old time dress with a hole in it i like you not caring about the hole

i like your gentle consternation always falls over into love

i like that when you wrinkle yr foreheard that there’s a dirty bird sky washed in there

i like that the ground under you is casual about how you oh so casually pound

i like that the birds above see you in blur because there’s not

much animal digested vegetable fat in you that is charm warm dreamy

i like that yr jeans are blueberry teeth talkin to a stream are dogs need some walking

i like to think of the miles and meals on yr jeans

you walk like you are about to jump a laugh

i like the thought of you jumping

i like to be yr invisible bike

i like how bike is bicycle

i think of you in an armoire

i think of the traffic of cuffs and belts and laces

it’s a mighty nice war thinking of you yes

the hats i love are soot puffs from yr canon shots oh oh

or where do cheaters get off? never get love

does any of us dust the mantel where sleeps the petrified baby poop? using roofing stuff in a floor

can say moon all day but yr never going

words are going there

no foot wig like a word

moment when fig comes finger

some folks just love sneak

live their lives slow motion accident

avoid chess player mud moo

subtle in breath out breath subtle

i have to drive to where it’s raining

so no one will smell you hoo

hoo how cold game pieces get in the closet

because time marches

the kids stop growing

would that we never stopped

would that we could neck a cloud

cheat on charged sky

mmm delicious monotonies of the banana armies time time

it’s time time droll troll papa predicts a pepper rain

he worked for the place specialized in converting attics

into fun

rumpus grampus bun

he had to learn the wasted space speech

her man was on the road a lot

her man was kind of a dick

he ate as tho he’d been asked to convert

every word in the average language to stone

there was an inveterate heaviness you are reading into this

he breathed a lot while he chewed his food his word

everything answered to wetted by salt and by brine and by time as in tock not nit tick

and it was like his tongue a wore out mop that smells finally

only of missteps only squirmed around in there to answer no

stub toe noah

she

she was the woman left katherine for kate for kay

i mean a lightness deepened in her until her eyes were glass drowned in water

held up from the heat of life like the teeth in waiting in sharks

how cold must they be until a blood mess borns they gain by take by shuddering tug

that and he never laughed it was like a cough when he laughed

it was like asking a table to be an eel or mist off

a river when he laughed

you bet it was natural mr attic fabulous would romp with her

for life is blest inside another body on white sheets at noon

4 3 juices two shoes

they all went to the same church

scratch that truck stop he would see her sing in the choir

i mean napkin to the ketchup lip

he would study her sturdy mouth

he would try to balance the song of her chewin chicken fried steak

with the red word taste of a memory

juices two shoes

vinegar sugar blues baby

the hips are not dead fish

the hottest back in such and such county when arches golden better than a cruise

golf ball in the gut of shark is a little ridiculously sad jesus

i am trying to write about how what sharks we are

jot sex is pulling on a water pump lever until until

i am trying to tittle about really giving it to her

i am trying to ride around a round that issue on a colicky mare

the slam and slide and how neither of us were really there

am guessing she screwed a kingdom of cowboys those few times

as there is no silence like the silence between the heart beats

in a winter sleeping bear gets us off

the cheater’s sheets

probably why there’s a tv in there to save us

from the silence pleated by the odd close mouth

whinny of the beer fridge in the friggin den

those bear hearts are old peoples hands then when they were

thinking their way thru patting the bread

the bread is a piglet at that time

a sleepy piglet at that time

the best way not to explode into orgasm is to think of old farts hands

this affair can totally go on until i have old fart hands

there is no hell but there are bears under us sleeping

under us sleeping and their slow slow hearts are? old farts hands

listen here piglet

hang build a house in the silence between each heart beat beating

it’s like trying to swallow when you are swimmin in the river

it’s the slow slow towel twist of that seasoned exhausted meat

it’s like saying it’s like before everything

ask the person who died then popped back what they saw

bears nit breast a light a light

then i am trying to order 32 hundred dark pizzas then sleep for a year

i think john berryman said that

his vodka gums his scotchy teeth

we don’t change we only convert

you can subtract 2 from 4 but it’s still a 4 at heart only

only lonely 2 turned into bear claw for tree

and rake the ground for ant

you can sit very still but your mind is foot

best you can ask yr mind is leave to leave off with claw claw

go ask that 2 for the time of night

go kill and cut in lo the heart is a hard hear

a fartin anteater a 4

a poem is toes how we were more aware of ‘em as kids

we humans smell ‘em anything farts too til we can’t

therefore doomed to leech wander i don’t believe in

wanderers tho the bears are in reality

again anything black is the result of fire

the softest places in order the eyes and around the eyes and the pads of the feet of a sleeping baby bear

again the claws on the bear are the bends in the roads

where the fogged cars fulla cheatin trysters

pull on bodies like sad people pullin kleenex amen

again that bend on the claw is how bird song boomerangs droves on closer

closer another door with only my fingerlike nose to get me in

again that claw bends back around until it almost accuses itself of somethin

again a bear wrist hinges as our wrist hinges

think i’ll just slip out the back door and on to the narrow chute

where the tracks lead back to town and are silent

as the breath of the dead ha ha

that’s just like flossing my teeth with your cropped golden lock haw haw

again the softness under foot the pad of the paw

is a baby breathing on a baby waa waa

we don’t change we only convert

those backdoor sliders report to honey and berries

what is a bear but the ash offa diabetic fire

what is a fired loin but a bear in waiting

what is a house but a secret

what is earth but a secret

what is a secret revealed but a cave

what is a cave but a hand done by bears

there are two kinds of people caves and trees

are you a cave full of mayans pullin thorned ropes thru their gentialia for visions?

or are you that vision place high where a tree gets pliant

a tree at that tender place being a nation whose i.d.’s are of paper

you better hope it don’t rain on that nation in the morning by the factory

for the farm water ain’t nice about yr daddy’s daddy’s grain grinder neigh name

what are we when we hunt ‘em with dogs? dogs

behold the vest wishes it had sleeves

mirroring peer guys

trees get littler as you go on up ‘em

littler more tender newer more tender hopeful

the only reason we think sometimes more deeply than bears

is flyswatters

up a bear with a tree i mint that posit

up a tree with a bear

to contest with the hive for a sweetness

a sweetness is a cheatin of wings

then overcome with berry sweetness

bears will flop over and roll in the blackberry bushes

because honey is her hair in wind

because berry is her eyes cut at you as you cut out the light

your geography baby is the only place i’ve ever been up for mapless in

or their teeth startin to ring in a too bright sweetness

their bellies a-bulge hogs-leg of berry tightness and yes lord they do

mush much of what’s left for ecstasy of breathing

i was thinking of beautiful waste rain makes no sound

unless we made of the buildings

i was thinking of the hush of a rain in the woods

i was thinking of how a tree takes rain without promised response

or if a leaf saying anything hit it’s cousin

i was thinking of how there’s nothing forsaken about that at all

i was thinking the k is in rake and i’d like to neap it there

she left ol slumper for attic jazzy

the left guy his teeth got soft as rain

to the point when he got the security job

he smiled mouth closed for the photo i.d.

shot a guy for his looks got twenty years

enjoys lifts weights wrote a note to a moviestar

asking her to sign a picture in black permanent ink

won’t run from rubbin lord lord dee

of course the attic guy was a basement of course he kept on

slippin around of course people are milk frozen to a window

of course the wastes of calcium of course she ended up alone

of course genuine solitaire not on a screen of course the sound of

her inhaling generic cigarette smoke was like a leg pulled through something a little more comfortable casual of course casualty and casual collide in the sounds of

her inhaling gas station cigarette smokes

of course the rare newt slipped down a crack like a mercury

of course the cracklin foundation reported to the drywall in

the ceiling of course the lightning whiteness across the ceiling

of course the crying drywall toxic chalk in our hair

of course our choices sometimes age us of course

the ag review is mostly about chemicals of course he

danced on her like there were rocks under the water

but that’s been a long time ago now

people need to be controlled if you need me now i am outside my childhood window

polishing my antenna such a bunch of sandwich meat squeezed

a little in your hand

honey haint ant and

walk where walls are summers

where weathers won’t wound

walla walla my friends is no place

to get chippy with the bus driver after dark

i am going to buy a used tent tent smell

that way the zipper mimics fire those flies of ash

that zipper sound which is liquid which is silver

which is the sound of a real fly trying to love a fly of ash

and i am going to be between every slowed heart beat beating

and i am going to be known to sleep on pine needles by that cliff

and i am going to be the sound of the ocean or lake or acacia below that cliff

and i am going to be beating at beating at the lie of hardness foe foamed by all three

and i am going to be the rhythm of the hair of the jogger

and i am going to be the acacia when the wind neuters shame

and i am going to win but with factory engineered scuffs on my loafers

to secure your rustbelt confidence via probably i lose

heavycarry house-ash children to the ocean ash children to the

final democratic bucket unsettling

cheat says the bird on the wing

eat says the fork for the foot

dirt says the foot where i been

forget says the water

colder and meant

IN THE OLD DAYS turtles were philandering

traveling salesman’s briefcases

and he ain’t coming back cuz he’s gone

to phoenix for a conference on ocean metaphor

blow a fat stitch far than god tear day one

the following to be inside voiced and

filed under parenthetical fish gut blue

say in a pay-by-hour weatherman’s robotic mornin

tucson sun up and snoring

on the blue ribbon ribs barely inside

these beach ‘babes’ on the so called mooring TV

and as tho this underwhelming exclamation

of a tie is killing me old dud Houdini

Say sag sayin hit me in the gut tie

Be a comma of a day all day tie

Days are commas true a life tie

She paid the guitar with a feather tie

No sound get it tie

Gideon tie

Soups ain’t hills of beans from outer space tie

Hi hi

hi hi hi Hello on

how May way way up north ain’t fun sunny jello with carats grated in

where shit trucks and baldy cars

pull off in a bad shade of shitty trees and teary leary pines then

skeletons sit in their britches

like a bird bone in an ice cream cone and

slough bite eye meth and

palm slap turd surge pot back back

back ford heavy chevy forty 9-ty

it’s all same dandelion pee down a shin when

mars shiv planet rusts busy up a rat acid floods weight gain

nnn it’s they’re tradin up on shovels for backhoes

mmm bidin bullets for toothpicks don’t ya know

in a world exploding with grab ass honey all stuck on hurt

ah honey let us not nod needle nose eyes off the turtles drawn up

and out by some seasonal moon’s amethyst tugs

it is the rain boring individually

into the soft and softly tinning waters

the smell of a cold human neck warming opens new

cars on the wind as each bough above gives

older water newer to each leaf and needle under

never forget the dragon on that alligator snapper

talkin tail flipped V like skeleton key garage sale

try each decapitated diamond errand headin

backward through the years just another heart moist cave bear

cut down in her slumber in her mother prime

not the last or the first time we didn’t hay fair

one almost writes forever’s

unquenched small fires hatching

trapezoidally in the loose ropes of their bloods to lay

egg eggs day they they grey mornin

the sky loose with what it has

clamber call all cohere to their centers

robot sputter out of

any little damp pock mushed yams down a baby’s chin

some them so huge they’ll snap your breath off

if ya screw eyes right

mmm mail pail of wing

uh hyperventilate postage stamp

ssss bathtub quay hippo stomp outs

where water’s high heels’ing it on down ondine the leg where

water’s unsure as a kid in an airport ondine da legs

of these atavistic yawner suit-

cases

he is The joke a mile salesman start again at the toddy factory

he’s as the weedy old tire tired pond

as the aspirated days of our lives

stingy drip from shelled mother’s

micro dinosaur legs

think about that pond water that pond

think about sittin around

since a glacier and a cloud

liar you if kid tale rides eyes bout turtle slow

truth any fat in ‘em that’s rice jaw mercury

my fastest fingers 2 no can’t snap wit they slip a log

and have done for a million billion or 4

turtle is greasy mercury 4 shore

and i am this balloon like bad fruit

like a kickball on the moon

thirteen days after the party

and i am this drifting around

this fruitfly crawling up a bum’s nose

after he barfs

the pourer vetchy vines

and has passed he passed out he did not die

ever see poor people dine

on something inside something outside

are we talkin like a snap pea? yes

that that’s how the pond falls from mother

feather what a......

shells the edibles killed from

may i wine and dine wind almost row

roasting the goats

of hesitation then

call it flutter down

hector speckles loosened road the

edging where she digs it when she

kicks it

legs a hole

has taste of

french dip sandwiches

egg hole meager deeper lee

pointin skyward from halfway outer she

all slow far enough down it’s s’more a smear gear

the philosophies of a one year old

lee dropsy this

poem is getting up puffy eye and born

eight dove two egg

through those vast white hands

of his on the dry drivin wheel no you can’t take the farm

out of a pair of hands but you can take the sun out

a prepped loaf waitin like a playdough bone

on the fleshing heats of creation then

or say a skinned animal

all shock white a-dangle

from a backhoe and twists in wind

and on fire with roaring cone then sheets of flies

lion tongue crosshatched with zoo keeper eyelash flies

nascar in a skinny thimble flies

everything good’s in it

guard and broke go

but not quite yet

and no not in these times

oh with all the tensioners currying shoats

watch it honey Wait is famous

for garbing Forever’s diabetic oedipus in Soon’s

breathable fleeces Wait that’s dear ol Soon playin Titan

on an empty road probably that’s about a mile from here

where Soon’s pawin at the earth like a bored skunk no stallion

and in the carpetbagger clothes

of soonish and whistling a reddleman’s ware caw

and gifted with a marathoner’s closing speed

see gap’s a tender delicious to iron thighs

‘specially up hill at the end what with

the crowd all chantin your number

you win just this one more and next month you’ll have a mob nadir

eye prom mist 4 shore

tell you what poems are about cannibalize other poems

poems are flies on carcasses of the best things i ever did say

bust buzz sure there’s that more best buzz in there though that’s just me

sings sand towers

sings shy sand dollars made chatty by a ten month

talk program for just 3 installments of 79.99

rule one weather talk about tit

sings over with the radio

pushes the pop song around

he’s good natured

he’s sly though

he’s doe by the windows he’s buck by the walls

you can’t heal broke tape with tape don’t ya know

that radio a-goin like a log callin all trees

pushes the song out of the way with his butt

he boxes it out like he set a pick in highschool

they told you you pretty much think oak ass

just go ahead and get in the way

shade em out shade em out

u rah range

use your body while it’s yours

how i know

why you should trust me

my eyes are mouths

doctored by glass

the butterflies unidentified spun

of grass and fright there

the yearn factory bidet dat’s me

she’s solid ground swimmin

kiss it’s kindergarten for birds

that stoking stroke

to swim is to fly so

harangued townes v z in a tumbleweed

of his own drugged blood sort of

and the dirt egg layin turtle she gets down now to

goes by the scaled paw softer than ghosts sexing

corn silks damp ants all cry

for the hills out

in voices the size of

the beef steak stuck tween teeth rain

vices a tin topped shack

and you under that

spittin blood? parently you never

been in the country never

been having a heart attack

while sneakin dip from your pa’s

dip can tuna cans crown you

fishy fishy yeah yeah but country people got no nose

with a thirty thirty of lightning yelling rash rash rash on thy filthy sky

is not required

to dowse what all this is

somehow by fall daunt no

undented her eggs cloth soft

ad for fabric softener shows towel lettuce lip boy

buoyant ‘lastic new kid tendons those fallen nestled

fumble thumb bilk pray again the cloying hands of bored boys eggs

ever blow a gum bubble against a shower curtain you? included

for those invested in touching one then

many clown’s noses not yet handpainted red eggs

three neat packed

the good wife doctor of make it all stay

under

in her warm dish hand interfolding fell they rough radio of cotton and wool

against the intercom heavy breathing that’d be

fine for a movie butt seat he goes

door to door

baby swan sandwich 3 3

some women with bread this one

under

and pressing re-life a toast forest

a russian phrase i stole from alabama’s finest

poet nathan parker somewhere

the sweet toothed wanderer can’t be too far

that ringing in my careful ear swear her steel shoes fair

she got on a hind hard path for a second this is that

that where the wheeled loaders used to tow pulp through

see he’s due when he’s due and that’s hours

and hours are days crazy stretchy fabric for fat and for fun

for marble ditches clear their sand bag gout throats

wait wait what’s the capitol of rain ohh these oh those

arizona patriotic touristic hole seconds too fat

to jog the fun run too human to ride in on in a parade so sit on their

faces and breathe the glass dim

all poems are the translations

of animal exhalations on ass glass amen

it’s the incidentals are monumental

buried or you’re on the mountain

the slug-horn seconds from your lips

we go in search of residual heat

see there smear sweet finger on a gloss hair of breathing

of gross breed how fruit? i’ll tell you what i just

itched my peeper ready ear inn some summer and

and so i am sure the palm slat bland radio plays through her spacious days

like a plastic bag the wind that aeolian midget wrestler

throws again against a metal anorexic fence pole

the radio stretches her

by that old time gill

soft fleshes inside her

cheek pierce and pull

personal impersonal fingerling gains oh

radio life’s so immoderate some afternoons

won’t even drink the water from the tap too strong

of the will of some machine she says

she only fetches from the well she’s a gifted walker

she has her power

don’t let the doves in the elms carrying on

like harmed almonds

the wind of a human mouth blown over a tonic top

don’t let the doves jingle a caper

into your martian eye

she’s a 3 olive woman

sturdy as the tree the boy thought he might be

in the game use

your body while it’s yours

yes

it’s that always rising

anywhere a hole is

that insistence of cool effulgence

under she tree

drilled chill seat nose hers warm seven perfume

on pant his

and shirt his it’s at that divin zipper perfumes

on them plunged buttons too where

several sever and almost

almost sing

skeletons that rut the wet May road edge with spare tire wheels

it’s a race between rat and baldin sales guy tryin a lie egg

over easy on the comb corn towards

youth he ain’t

life’s in inches till you are 30 year old

then it’s miles and miles of potato chip bags

making out with plastic grocery bags in your knees

as ya damp cold carpet foam

to-go-bag those shrimp

in your knees down narrowing stairs

this tonic for eye pain look less at sun

right at nice lit ground

this blanket fanned

that bird in the tree a fan

of yours i see what they call that call? a catbird?

there was a time when everyone was soft like us with love

as a rained on phonebook

getting rolled by yard wind

mmm 2 stones at the headwaters your eyes

wouldn’t count on a bird to be anything more than the sublime

wolf wood knuckle tick fandango

shake a tree a honey hat my my

kind cone can’t take it to town

honey what’s a yard willow anyway

but a bunch of branches the snow and moon poets

of asia hanged themselves by for love

she’s bad hair day she cuts let’s risk her there’s

only the dust on the road like a sleep of the dead after chores

and junk machinery in the distance can’t help it

the weed beard’s still workin towards total eclipse

of a former farmer name can’t help it shines

fricker was smooth as a skull so old it’s sorta stone

with all he said to use his hands on ‘em i am surprised

he didn’t have to mail order new mouths and clap a different one on

depending on the weather and wind

sicko sneak bee garden see some plangent fools see they just kind of take care

of themselves

cost her no cry lye soap from her justice dishrag thing

for lime ward limb wore from storm

baby there’s a little gassed glass a-crackling

he took in too many sample tonics to proof

her and her and her and her how not no ma’m

too strong ah he hit a tree he died his head was half an inch from cut off crows

pecked french dip from between his teeth

it was an instance of a hunger’s foolishness

he was buried in a car gas fire

also one food fool crow she married again the nice insurance man never said a thing

maybe he was maybe he wasn’t

never said boo

eggs say turtle eyes legs shells soon as they can

fact shit shady trucks pass over them

the spirit of sketchy going in waken startling

that’s like trying to sew a gas station midnight on a theoretical baby

only at night she could confuse the two

the dead one and the living

but she’ll catch herself at that loose change till fulla card fart

of emotion wish you is tissue from with blood

and pull a little on the hairs of her left hand

why the left i guess is the entertainments of god

mind that’s how she knows what the sky feels in a lightning

that’s somewhere near a thirtieth of the swayback powerlines in her

no such thing as a heat lightning

forgive the poem that that’s thrown in

and the fox and the skunk and possum and

the snake and the coon and fox and the skunk

and the possum and the snake their visitings

where turtles put a softness in a go way

how do you call how the turtles muss the roads

when you’ve been trying to for years

when the wind is bargain basement about vowels

when the wind is a monkey bars all full of vowels

turtles yes reach aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah the roads

life oh you are nothing but a numbers game

is sad but terrible sterile enough to be forgotten

and i am for mess heat at the shut down

catch and say no he never snored

and rub this one’s broad back until he stops sounds

like he’s chewing at his breath a little

and then again more straight breathing

she’s thinking industrial strength dishwasher

back when they had to help clean up at the highschool

after prom

she’s thinking of the satisfaction of a job complete

how she’d probably have liked to work as janitor

also how cold this room so folds into

him awesome

warm rumble dream where ya

train turtles to pick a bean

stiff backs be gone gone

talk in laughs everybody

on down to that flea bait dog

stretched out on yond wet dust

haw? ha! for a day or three or more

basically until we are all rubber tire tired of sunburnt mirth

hittin us over the head like that cold

first step it’s delicious isn’t it

into any heaven? brighter grocery store

IN THE OLD DAYS the cicadas were as dead as they are now

stub little lintel lentil lint linty peashell pills ooooh lil clawy erasers down under there doin nothin give you a coupon for appearance money dark spark in the dark dark thing

i guess little fuses wooin nothing guess

ol mush mouth zero with soup breath

suckin on the neck of a brittle baby of a baby of a baby of a crouton

tommy jefferson thunk indians were buried standin up

thusly the tumuli conjectured tommy tom tom

in the 90s the tom tom klub remember ‘em? open’d for my personal savior mr

chris whitley once in madison in the 90s the fresh lakes

were stinkin a little and the fresh cut grass smell

was a childhood memory victory for everyone at that time

hoo is yr personal savior by this i mean when you say whaat

when you are relatively young but you say what whoo did you

headphones bedphones bedlamphones ahh decibel crucible you wave offered the sound

you wavey waved curtains drapes you sea of gar gargle sea of curtains drapes

if you will breathed on and breaathed on by your personal savior

aka the elegant seahorses in yr ear hoo did you

turn those to overboiled shrimp by for bifurcate inner wishbone in stereo for hoooo

child the veins or the arteries hoo do you think i am? the wistful apothecary in training keats? of chris whitley’s arms stood up

off his skin as tho his blood didn’t hardly want him too much

of everything i loved him a little and was scared to

children he humped the general area

bump humped and hanged a sang

way he elvised his hips each lil oh of oxygen

was a thousand mini chris whitleys in each lil woozy rain in a tire swing oh

watched the somewhere nowhere with his stone

cattle eyes how he etched his singing

cigarette basalt and obsidian

hilly word water smoke cone born glassy country

bane bang it’s the hill people the white hill people the poor as dirt

squirrel eatin white assholes from up on the bluffs

came down and really actually added more yellow tooth to the

hell hound with an abscessed woop mississippi always was

chris whitley made himself himself from the music from

that collision of squirrel face breath assholes and the grandchildren

of slaves on the mississippi delta

really truly holland new york singin robert johnson twitched a little faster

talkin sass mouth high water charley patton twitched a little faster

and then the cat like a moon rising over the rim

of the supper table in one great grey blue cat leap

cat wore a coat of 33 thousand bat skins

onto the spinnin johnson or patton record richly crashly

yoyo gizzard lordy wham a hammer make that bell mouth say bing-lee bing-dee

win a pink and purple bear but i probably

would not hug something that smells like it was

made on the same machinery mucus fused

the shower curtains to wrap around an certain secret aphid sea burial

humans are good weird they go around abandoning themselves their things

eraser mine just found it from back from 1983

that serious discussion in the pep rally room gym

the teachers who mostly hated us their men the big

shots in the town exceptly for poor mrs so and so

whose man was a farmer and she was too and you could tell it because the

scent of cow rode her ankles idea that the indians

had a particular kind of wampum you could call it

they’d lace it around their ankles so snakes they couldn’t

stick a juiced tooth into

sachet apparently kids had been erasing their kid skin with erasers for months

and it was time to pinch that activity off directly

another instant haunting for us kids

i feel like the main thing adults do is harm kids out of dreams

i feel like kids are purty coffee tables the strong drinks of coasterless adults

sweat wrong forever moons in

and the principal’s sweater made a fire war totally messed that up

against the microphone and what she was muttering under breath went

erased by her sweater bruschetta-ing the mike and the mike squealed a little

like an eel lasso getting run over by a teak deck

probably she smoothed out her notes children

this is serious there are some among you kids who have been erasing or some would call it itching the skin like this

and she made like to light a theoretical match against her dog barf colored sweatered arm

puke bow wow i said haw haw the girl with her thumb pushed

against the homerun boy with the tulips for ears said

killed into little adults

49 and a half months out of the womb? what were we

winedrunks our bodies sudden crumpled paper driftin on a chainlink wind

liked the pleasure of that pain? what could it mean? the use beyond the one use of the thing being axiomatically creepy? as we ate at our breaths and sleptwalked back to our homerooms

or emerson something about each human a hieroglyphic answer for any question we’d put to the world

or cursive’s trying to dream of lava pasta and swim in a rum vatic vat vat at the same sweet time i wrote that not emerson

and my cursive like the 17 year cicada probably aw so bunched and streaming a leetle haunted good

cicada like a tin god molar or so i say

tell you this true every poem about the south has at least thirty million dental floss silent cicadas in it unnntillll all across the east the southeast the zipper factories go an scratchy sweater rammed in a microphone in thru those microphone holes one wool whale thread at a time or so i charged with fire mime today say

chris erased himself by cigarette smoke when he was just like 45

it was a smokers TB it was by the smoke and gone

it was pretty as dang keats my favorite line from keats is in a letter to his bright star

he was like baby i am so dang tired anybody could sew my nose to the top of my foot and

roll and wheel me around and i would not know it yrs in the dreaaamy scottish hill baa baaa sighed with a vesuvian sneeze mr keats

i am not sure what the kids who were erasing were burrowing in there for

skim milk bags at lunch tasted like white out or elmers

there’s a start if i had a shot to i would write all of lorine niedecker on you r t r

i’ll let you write on my arm if i can write on yr arm i think bob dylan minnesota’d that

somebody in cincy told me 6 years 33 days or so ago that he liked cicadas on pizza crunchy

but that somebody is wealthy so we were always friends in quotes

because i could not relate to his canadian private plane it’s only a super cub he said not soundin like a super 8 at all

that friend smiles at everything everyone says

that friend might be airquotes asinine

but he helped me out of nevada once

and all of us need a little helping out of nevada sometimes

i think i might call him and shout over the cicada motor wrath of Kahn ear wig 17 soon

see if he remembers chris whitley died minutes ago seems like

but that’s nothing because he died 17 times during every song

might correct that asinine friend

no doubt Cheshire cat caesura-ing

all over the sometimes tinny cellphone silences maybe

because canada is wear you go ride a tin skeeter there to erase the self to moose the breath to otter adam’s apple wolf little toe caribou elbow to loon the knee to porcupine thigh thunder to bear the cairn o’ honey and milkweed the head in dream lever action bee to muskellunge lost lake lungs try geese in wonky spirals absorbed triple action by the other knee and elk a twingey rib and flyin squirrel small of back and moose the breath otter adam’s apple to turkey teeth to pheasant and partridge in a bloody high hustle this true screw tongue sling it with me now

heron brow turtle eye-oval all

mm

mmm

mmmmm