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.

I Found In My Bed This Morning A Body Waking Up

I found at my door this morning a woman with lines under her eyes
who, for many years, had driven past my home on her way to the doctor’s office.
Who had a rare blood disease,
which made her terribly pale.
Who had a mole on the side of her neck
which made her very nervous.
Who dyed her hair a tasteful blonde,
which made her less like her mother.

I found in a drawer this morning photographs of my sister with brown eyes
who, until just recently, had taught English to Chinese girls
who never cried as a child
which made her terribly well-liked.
Who sang the national anthem at the top of her lungs
which made the Olympics very interesting.
Who wore her hair the way she woke up
which made her just like our mother.

I found in the yard this morning an entire collection of dandelions
finding purchase in the spot between the swing set and the shed
I found in my mouth just now more spit than I knew what to do with
which, in my swallowing, I must have forgotten.

A Short History Of The Way You Pronounce The Word Evening

You pronounce it like this: "even
-ing."

Endtimes Prayer

Help us not to kill ourselves
with great underwater explosions, collapsing shopping malls, destruction of capital cities and important monuments, melting faces of world leaders, with screams of the innocent, nuclear missiles, automatic weapons, dirt smeared all over our faces, our children asleep and afraid in our arms, with sweethearts making love wherever they can, with the rails overflowing with trains to New Jersey, children going home, with gnashing of teeth, with the Bible held above us like a bomb, the bottle, half-full and in our trembling hand, an appropriate soundtrack, with riots and looting, standing on the roofs of our condominiums and yelling for saving, the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen, with no time for mourning, unknown attackers, crying newscasters, stammering presidents and prime ministers, with rambling prayers from the bottom of our gut, with the knowledge that this will come anyway.
Amen.

How Does My Neighbor Live?

In the first days of autumn, commercial jets completing flight patterns above your house in the suburbs of Philadelphia,
you wait there for the Phillies to win the pennant and comb your hair, serene on the front porch, your father burning leaves out back.

Ladies, 1918-1928

When I left that old French sunlight,
bored in the buried color of the people
who sang for a man who had his own mystery,
alive, destructive, disguised—
I mean, drunken with his Muse, their angel,
shedding its grace on half-marble columns—
lukewarm blood and searches for God,
and we may have to wait for the delicate body

at dawn: impossible soft voice,
the arrival of five senses
trembling, perfected, inadequate, authentic,
with wings where, naturally, they made terrible saints
and, of our own sharp kissing, strange at the dawn
of garden processions and all the world,
in trying to love, was imprisoned by the dance
and the bullfight. The body, begging for a drive

home, makes us forget the great highways
where, motionless, she painted wind and saliva.

Seventy-Eight Words For Jules

Who was it that said: “So this is
the voice of god, out from
the man with grit in his face, out from
the bed, rose late as shit with grey eyes

to match the day. Our forms
spit smoke and brown rinds in streets

named for trees. And I’ve been lost
in my skull, woke up mad, scared,
new, born on the first floor
of a wood stove, its smell is still on me,” who was that?

Holy, Holy

We made our house into a church and lay on deep carpets admiring the gods in the ceiling cracks
and lit candles in the kitchen, singing loudly for salvation over the phone to gone friends and dying mothers.
We made murals with old paint, getting sick off the fumes, got classic rock radio coming in static over a secondhand boombox
and prayed feverishly to the bugs in our sugar, the leak in our roof, the infection in our gums.
We baptized ourselves in the bathtub, yelling over the thunder about the danger we were in,
yelling new commandments into a tape recorder until the batteries died
and fed each other snack food with our eyes closed, opening gas station wine bottles with the key to your Chevy Lumina, shit chardonnay staining our teeth.
We stared deeply into the oven for a sign until our heads were heavy with gas, dumb with visions of sex and saviors
and broke every window on the second floor for lack of stained glass, letting theleaves pile up, burning them for boredom.
We punched ourselves awake to observe the equinox, great stretches of bitter October night on the roof watching traffic,
watching the sky for new light
and weighed ourselves next to the television, thinking about the anchorwoman naked, counting our ribs.
We ran hands over each other in ritual, keeping warm under eaten afghan covers, sweat sticking to our sides
and urinated off of the fire escape as a gesture of our own holy, making a fuss over the trajectory of piss in relation to the changes in wind.
We went on pilgrimages to the corner store for sleeping pills and Reese’s cups, smiling high and tired at the woman buying five types of lottery tickets,
smiling for the way our feet were swollen inside our sneakers, stomped out too many ceremonies around the whistling furnace
and grew a beautiful beard just then, our faces sore from cheap razors and hailstorms on the way to the library, cutting out naked statue pictures from history books to put next to our sleeping heads
We spent a day in Manhattan looking for images of the messiah in Coca-Cola billboards, making eye contact with beautiful strangers in tracksuits,
making out in the back of taxis, taking pictures of each other next to monuments,
and reaching enlightenment.

Realism Cookies

You’re a nice enough guy, but so is everyone else.

The next person you meet won’t remember your name.

One man’s newspaper is another man’s cum-rag.

People wouldn’t miss you as much as you think.

Talk more about your unfortunate childhood. It’s charming.

You will never be famous or even particularly well-liked.


(apologies to Frank O'Hara)

Song From The House On West Nelson Street

The children holding themselves around the ribcage
and giving a some-toothed smile, running
until they fell,
and we were caught very much unawares,
holding the flower they gave us,
realizing age.

The only something I regret is not jumping
more into the arms of my mother,
looking through her cut glass earrings
at the passing cars.
And my grandfather would eat peanuts
with the shells and bottles around him

and a baseball game on the television.
Formerly a would-be war hero,
in the telling at least.
We ran back and forth from the kitchen
to get him another Budweiser,
slipping on the crooked floors.

To have something like this:
Little scars take parts of my face
from brother-fights. A way to see
how happy I was in a backyard,
next to the regional high school
where we could light piles of leaves on fire,

scale the brick monoliths and holler
with our power. I spent a whole day
in my closet, counting the times
I had been in love. When the door
swung open everyone was waiting for the emergency,
and I think I half-upset them by being alright.

For maybe one second
that kid heart, dizzy with excitement,
fell back to me, its owner.

Everything About Himself Is Somehow Worse Than The Way He's Imagined It

1. That new Saturday haircut is like readiness and beauty.
2. White shirts make it all look pale and sick under these lights.
3. How do teeth get that yellow?
4. See the eyes closing right in front of the face.
5. A face like that belongs on a military recruitment poster, so it was.
6. Backwards adjusting the stray eyelash out from under the eyes shot with blood.
7. Such a piercing gaze, and she’s done it.
8. The flexing and smiling for one, same as always.
9. Please read on as he evaluates himself.
10. Hear someone relieving himself, isn’t it the same water or whatever?

1. Hear: isn’t it relieving? He read “evaluates” as “please himself on.” So it, --a military face that belongs-- was on a recruitment poster. Front-right of the closing-in face, see the eyes. She’s done such piercing it, and a gaze. Stray, shot, backwards blood adjusting the eyes, the eyelash, with out-from-under. And that new haircut is beauty is like Saturday readiness. Smiling, flexing, always as for one and the same. Get that yellow, “how do?” teeth. These lights look sick, making it all under white shirts and pale.
2. Thank you.

An Image Of The Face Looking Frantically Around Itself While Becoming Defeated

Could we look more disheveled,
getting off the train
in a major American city?
Moving out from under the elevated rails
to watch the rain from
a less comfortable distance
and feel more a part
of whatever way the people that day
are holding themselves,
their crumpled bodies
just barely touching the ground
in a heavy wind. Pushing glasses
up their faces, newsprint ink running
down their arms. Strangled and rushed,
the beating body, and the body being
beaten.

Do human forms
still crash together
with alarming force and frequency, the air
thick with their sweat? On days like
this, when the end seems
nearer than usual? I’ll still kiss you
but—
It is difficult to imagine you naked when you are running late.

Thoughts On Spitting While Speaking

or
The Human Body Growing Less Useful Over Time

Begin finding the moon in the morning
Morning, how the day turns heavy
Heavy how we hang our heads
Heads we recognize from the back
Back when I lived closer to the earth
Earth is something else we named
Named you, seemed alright in the mouth
Mouth was always busy with spit
Spit carefully into the river again, but better
Better that we don’t speak now
Now lift your head and begin

(repeat as necessary)

Twelve Lines For The Crumbs And Yourself

1. I spend a day enjoying my fever.
2. The face appearing from beneath the mine.
3. Chest explodes with some small noise.
4. Her leg resting momentarily on my arm on the chair’s arm.
5. For a time I was the hot bath.
6. The edges are a gutter.
7. Your hair has become stuck in the branches.
8. The mark was left where my mouth had been.
9. I pick bugs off your back and eat them.
10. It blots the moon at the end of my arm.
11. Throwing the body, then standing very still
12. They have a good idea about where the eyes should be.

How To Stay Insane While Completely Going Asleep

And from behind my sleep-gouged eyes
I spoke in nonsense to the invisible woman
Who put a pillow over her face
Coy, disappearing
One shivering, outstretched hand
Stays shivered, stays outstretching
As my teeth grind efficiently against each other
For want of any other thing
I bathed in my own death sweat
Tonight
Like any other night
Was a series of disappointments
Broken by shallow breathing and batting mosquitoes off my body