030509
030310
alley/gully/gutter/shaft
We want more from each other
we can’t stand to not have what the other one has
we can’t stand what the other one has
we can’t stand the other one
I see that when we are scared we
could reach through that
shaft/let touch the tips/
our finger and flank
instead sacrifice/live things
down/through the shaft throw
hard into the alley below
our prayer valley/paper valley
He could be me so
rapidly/sacrifice/another
They are small/they are bugs
Doesn’t let me/get away/but
teaches me sleep/snore
bully in one big arm/
around/all around.
to bully, to be nothing more than
one strong arm
in my head
it’s not that I wouldn’t be his girlfriend
I’d want assurances first.
________
021024
roof/shaft/sidewalk
Scream untied//
Sock in mouth/
The neighbor, he and his wife drink and
smoke. Their white and fluffy cat
runs out the screen door onto their porch when he rages. Today there is a sign, the cat gone
missing. The terrifying sign,
spastic big letters of adolescent grief, in the new mother.
As in the time of the war the sky is clear
but for the billows of black coal incineration smoke from the chimney across
the street.
In still the time of war but people are
confused. What should the
passengers do with the bag the poor Chinese lady left on the train. A reused plastic bag with a gift
inside. Lady come get your
bag. Too late she never looked
back. A passenger is rapping his
lyrics and another seems to be doing the same but wait, she’s muttering, a
message, throw it out the train door, throw it out the train door at the next
station, don’t touch it, throw it out the door, and a little louder finally so
the good Samaritan gets confused the confusion the strange discomfort on her
permanent smile.
At five in the morning the neighbor screaming
again this time something about not caring about the screams heard earlier in
the stairwell. I guess he has
removed the sock from her mouth.
Not that I can hear her but I can tell he is responding to what she says
he doesn’t give a rat’s ass. What
is heard there.
I have a dream about her. She brings me a product that makes
things red. But I’m in the middle
of a poo. So it’s embarrassing. I mean I am embarrassed. We are at the city pool. She has one family member after another
one coming to get her. In this way
it is hard to get the red on, it is hard to get anything done.
I dream about my cat, who is a wild dog. Whose behavior is unpredictable.
Another time he screamed at me from across
the street, and last night he looked out the window at me and my friend as we
were talking loudly, as if to say, you’re talking loudly.
________
021222
My phobia around flags
began with the neighbor whose collection
made me see that
all flags are the nazi
flag hung in the basement
where laundry sometimes done
sex illicitly had
Not meaning to harm me or my fellows but meaning what.
I let him in late one night I mean to tell you I know this is a
confession.
Of the truth of how many chocolates or dangerous sexual partners.
The incest, with my neighbor.
The drugs, the high cholesterol.
My embarrassed gender.
That I want this to be a novel.
Everything having to do with the water.
But the emphasis on the glass.
Crumble/insanity/container.
Desire activity/ that rots.
No container.
Water.
________
030509.11
bed
On the nightly news they interview us about
the neighbor. We say we never
expected he’d do a thing like that, he seemed like a nice guy, was quiet and
good to his moms, and went to shul on Friday. Generally kept to himself but always gave the mendicant a
dime.
The mendicant says something different, says
he always knew. There was something off about that guy. The guy never ‘went’ crazy, was the
same the whole time. I knew him.
Which is why I never called him a second time.
Not psychic but with a good intuition//called his
friend/instead//
to invite him/over.
Not explaining that voice.
________
031208
floor/creaking floor
I’m tired, the neighbors are too quiet.
I’m lucky for the life on the street.
The baby hasn’t yet arrived.
The sweat was pouring out of him.
Sometimes lovemaking is gross.
And sometimes not.
Each day, the sky manifests multiplicity.
Therefore so much happens everyday.
Soon I will walk out the door.
This may take four hours.
What is gotten from the details.
The rug under my feet/ass.
The one in the hall must be a speckled maroon.
Yes. He is tattered at his edges.
Though he is tattered at his edges and has a facial feature that
pushes at the boundaries of taste, he is irresistible to women. The other one sweating reminds me of a
once popular cartoon. The baby has
now arrived.
_______
The babies are in their apartments. Their parents are there too.
Some of the parents are married and others not.
Some of the parents are single and some of the parents are gay.
These
things/seen/become less interesting/
to the non-celebrity actors/ performing them.
030515
bedroom/border/memory
The I of I hasn’t got a plan. She, like a famous glass wall on a
beach in California, maintains a precarious hold, no longer on her insanity.
Not to last very long.
Life should be interesting. She thinks. The friends come through.
The friends maintain. The drugs,
alcohol, cigarettes maintain and threaten trouble. The gas fed heat in the house poses a question. The good
writing is beautiful. The flesh is judged. If there is meaning. If there is
offense. There is television and we do not always judge. There is much we think
(which) we no longer say. There are archives and codes. There are supplies that run out. There
are places to buy more. There are lines and plenty of bodies to them. There is
abstract love.
There is a limit to presence. A limit to what is said. A limit to
taking offense. There is a solitary woman. There are many solitary. There is
magic through that door. There is
tension. There’s rejection to tension. Why go for tension.There’s a brother,
like a neighbor. They are born into the situation. There is culture or not.
There’s a question. There are many.
There’s Renee (therefore patience, and drool), Melissa (patience
and Renee), Rose (impatience and humor).
There’s Bill, Bob, Mike, Bob, Tom.
There is sweat (discharge) and the organs (of discharge). There are the tall and the robost, the
old who go their way. There is every detail that someone knows. We know our
details and dream them or work them for our paycheck. The chicken and the egg.
The list of lovers. The one who cannot love. The one with money keeps it to
himself.
There is she who thinks of countries. She who enters cultures,
some languages. Sometimes language. In the languages there are many languages
and details. She reserves her language, keeps her details. So there’s a town without a map.
There’s a culture its procreating system. A county that doesn’t
procreate. There’s a guy or two who say it will not last.
There’s a reason for the writing. There’s a reason to be loud.
The feeling desired. The feeling not achieved. The achievement of
guilt. Wool pulled over eyes.
Almost everyone realizing they must pull wool over eyes.
There is Rosmarie, Lyn and Leslie. Bob, Tom and Charles. And Bruce.
Screams, at times unscreamed. The line that keeps us. In or dry.The line foward
that fades and disappears. A plane that doesn’t fly. A computer or another
technology that is not so cheap or easy.
There are men and women in their conspiracy. There is fear and
more there. There’s fear of death or loss. Desire for death to avoid loss. There are Peter, Sue and
Tracy.
There is solitary travel and discovery.
There are women.
They have babies. The had sex. Travel, unravel.
There is boredom. There is John. Elaine, Julianna, Lisa. Elton.
A life that is long. Renewal and the question. A mother and father. Rites or stages
without rites. Make believe.
Pyrotechnic entertainment.
A question. A very long poem.
Fragments and chance. Thinking or ideal. Gertrude and her papers.
There are Germans.
Alice as executioner. Jen, Jena, Jeni, Erica.
Israel and Pharoah.
Khahani who is dead. Thank allah.
Peace. Abstraction. Commerce. Explosives. The young. Sex.
Perverts. Sex perverts and
pedophiles.
Leaving then coming.
Women. They have babies.
There are babies. They have limbs. They have lips. Some are thin.
There are black.
There is touch without sex.
Drugs in the bathroom. Where a broken toilet.
Lists. In the head.
There are people I don’t love.
There is Jennifer, there is Maggie, and Rose, Elizabeth. There
was Judy, there was Scott.
There is white, in borrowed countries. There is land and air and water.
There are rites, yearly or once in a while.
Obligation and boredom.
The chosen, the ignored. The one who needs my money. My money that is
needed. My boredom since I’m high
and fat.
Spelling.
Heat in the middle of May. Birds and meat.
Artists proliferate. Money and a crises round cash. Systems to
ignore.
There is high at 8:00. Wandering in the night.
Nervous for the wandering. Break and down.
031124
As a United Statesian I do not think that
neighbors in other nations treat each other better, or with more care but I
would rather my roommate be from another country.
In this country, it is not the norm to kill
neighbors because they have a different religion, though group killing is a
form of intimacy we lack.
The poets are not my neighbors and they are
not my friends. We agree that our
religion, if we have one, is inconsequential to our relationship, and to our
poetry, here, in this country. The
poets are responding well to the project I have of thee, my neighbor. They find
it less sentimental, less personal, while more intimate, than the project of
articulating the space between lovers.
They wonder if I am speaking of my actual experience and are titillated
by the possibility that this fucking I’ve spoken of, and drugs, are drugs and
fucking, not writing.
I’ve said, my neighbor has made a public
stand of his sobriety, and his fetish his daughter he keeps infantile—enough to
make anyone squirm.
Tonight I had a plan to do coke, then come
home and write about the neighbor.
I was wondering if it were richer when the
windows open and the summer rage is audible. Today the customer of the food pantry across the street
excoriating the lousy church who feeds her.
Every lapsed born again Christian reports as
the reason for their lapse, the hypocrisy of people. I was hoping for a loss of faith in god. That never happens.
There was a story told tonight about a loud
and bothersome neighbor, who explained to the complaining neighbor of her
predicament, “you’re my neighbor, you have to help me!” We laugh at this story because we know
that isn’t the way we think of things.
In some mornings I wonder if my reluctance to
leave the building is enough of a reason to ask my neighbor for cream for
coffee or an egg to make the pancakes.
Language would be easier if we could remove
the prepositions but then the objects and subjects would be difficult to
discern. Like I said, in my career
as a writer—I know it suspect for poets to speak of career—I find myself more
attractive as an object. If I am
the object then who is the subject?
Unnecessary. Unnecessary is
happy because she is both nothing and everything. She is as light as air—if air be light.
Anyone wants meaning. Anyone calls meaning Necessary. Unnecessary has intercourse with
Anyone. Unnecessary puts herself
into the position where she can’t lose.
Loss regrets her lack of an ‘e’.
Unnecessary therefore misses Lose. Loose feels muscular and achy. No,
loose is on Quaaludes. Loose can’t
explain why Loss gets laid more.
Loose can’t explain the draw of religion.
The grown ones that never believed in god are
assimilated aliens on the street and in the trains. They are the sad ones on the trains whose sadness is read as
intelligence. Intelligence likes
to fuck but gets laid less than Belief.
Librarians appreciate quiet refrigerators. Librarians have fucked both Belief and Intelligence. They fuck poorly but A Lot. A Lot gets mistaken for Belief. A Lot is both Pagan and
Monotheism. Ism is at war with
Unnecessary. Ism means
motherfucker. Ism is the mean
motherfucker that everyone wants to fuck, reading her as Meaning. Meaning delights in Masochism. Ism is the sadist that doesn’t mind the
lovers who call her Meaning while she’s fucking them. Fucking is the sneakiest fuck of all. Fucking convinces Anyone that she’s
Necessary. Unnecessary puts up with Fucking because she understands Fucking to
be without Malice. Even Cold Hearted loves Fucking without Malice. Therefore Fucking is rather inclusive,
and Ism, quite opposite from Fucking.
Meanwhile, despite his occasional excesses with Fucking, Downtrodden
rages.
Without the rage of Downtrodden any
neighborhood becomes Suburb. In
Suburb, any human is a Living Subject to the project/Great Experiment. Catalogued. By Food/Medicine/Style. The project of secular society is no longer an issue because
as United Statesian we don’t kill our neighbors for their religion.
021110
040421
cellar/fence/garbage
bin
He is here at home
that’s how I keep him
where he won’t fuck me
I make him coffee
A wage slave with
an annoying neighbor
our “brotherhood of time” is
too groggy to answer his door
They confused that someone so heavy
is taken like that
taken by the wind
therefore harder to arrest
What does it mean to be hard?
I am not hard
I made the coffee
I aimed to please
But my way is this
way, of grass rather
than path, light dark
competition for the soft
at slant between
this ancient habit to resist
the sun’s behind, devil’s sweat
blue wispy puffy curly
Complaint city, compliant city
horse/car, plane/bomb
sheet rubs ever warm
ever alone the pigeons