H1N1

I figured this was a good enough place to be sick
or to start a family, made them out of bronze Mohave dust,
waiting room Jeep commercials I was waiting for a crime to be solved.

My cousin played a victim on one of these
with made-up stab wounds from after she had been raped.
Boys zipped her body up you could tell there wasn’t coffee in those cups,

just somewhere for detective lips to rest in between kisses.
it’s a good thing she was an actress, otherwise she might have been a wife,
and she just doesn’t have the hips for that.

Real easy to play dead when it’s so sunny out that window.
My eyes don’t care to be open and watch purple forms
drift against each other and I get my flu vaccine.

Vowels

(after Rimbaud, who got it wrong)


His mother’s too-red lipstick
against the green, green grass middle school lawn,
and I could faintly hear “purple mountains majesty,”
orange snack mix dust on his lips
around a borrowed tenor sax. He plays the blues.

Wall Street Observation Notebook

Today he has everything,
but
(poor guy)
tomorrow he will lose it all.

Tomorrow he will lose it all,
(poor guy)
but
today he has everything.

Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance)

9:26 am on a mid-October Saturday and I’m thinking
about the last time I woke up before noon and woke up
in New Jersey and because there was no free bed I’d been
sleeping on the floor of their apartment, wedged between
a guitar case and a coffee table. I’ve been trying to get pins
and needles out of my left arm, which I slept on again but it
is starting to seem hopeless.

Montclair is busy in the morning
and I walk two blocks to find a bagel place with an ATM. The
woman behind the counter smiles like she is celebrating a holiday
I don’t know about and I pray to her: “sesame toasted vegetable cream
cheese.” Chris sees me from his car and we sit in traffic for a while
listening to our old band on the speakers that still work with the
windows down, taking in sun and wind.

I’m not sure how I remembered
it being but the way it is is long stretches of boarded up windows on
the way to Quik Check, fever moving into my lungs and unwashed
hair. Whole place smells like cheap beer and gasoline, but I forget
that everything in New Jersey smells like gasoline, and we watch
Ghostbusters on my parents’ old couch trying to think of the word
for being home and feeling still gone.

New York Times Crossword July 8, 2009 (Across)

O, Yankees hero
Shakespeare, (what a closer!)
in a world of best seller multi-act payer cable shows,
perhaps lost his mind,
perhaps chews on a jag,
(compassionate, so satisfying sounds)
casts off,
acts the shrew.
Steal from Louis XIV, Louis XVI, et al.
organization dues.
Go on, beat it, I’ve thine eyes.
Roll on, boorish world.

Sisters-to-be flock, chorus line-style
With a yam truck
(or taro)
to the bard’s pale remains,
felling deep Bacardi concoction
with front fright, just learning
about half-dead Henry
of arable Penh, Cambodia
maybe 1978? 1981?
Bucky divides a mule
or a cat alternative front-vertical
a symbol to Hindu cow-god variation.

Up here Channel 101
Is archaically off (off?),
make an ants song about a fish song
Perhaps about, of, for ohm’s spell.

Winter Pastoral

My fingers were stuck in her hair again.
We had been crying over a bad movie,
and the guy was still working on the furnace.
Every blanket in the house was around us.

We had been crying over a bad movie
and laughing at ourselves crying.
Every blanket in the house was around us,
but we were looking at our breath

and laughing at ourselves crying.
I had something to say, I remember,
but we were looking at our breath
so it wasn’t important just then.

I had something to say, I remember,
probably just something about the cold,
so it wasn’t important just then.
It was important that it wasn’t.

Probably just something about the cold,
but the television wasn’t working right.
It was important that it wasn’t.
The people looked older, but happier.

But the television wasn’t working right.
Everything was in black and white,
the people looked older, but happier,
color coming back in rushes, indiscriminately.

Everything was in black and white,
Her cheeks went red while speaking:
color coming back in rushes, indiscriminately
and leaving just as soon.

Her cheeks went red while speaking,
while entering warm rooms
and leaving just as soon.
She had usually forgotten something.

While entering warm rooms
my ears rang and teeth ached.
She had usually forgotten something,
and it was always nothing really.

My ears rang and teeth ached,
my fingers were stuck in her hair again
and it was always nothing really,
and the guy was still working on the furnace.