retiring the futon on valentines day
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we got our bed from the dumpster
where used furniture is placed
the other dumpster is a trash compactor
both are situated near our front door
so we can see when there's room
for our trash as well as the cast off possessions
of our itenerant community. the painters next
door, illegal mexicans hauled from the tejas border
in a rolling ship over the hurricaned gulf last fall
faces torn like too many numbers
having finished the job here at the homestead
have gone. the pods unit which stored latex,
ladders, canvas drop cloths, rolls of transparent
plastic, bushes, stools, spray cannisters, compressors
and other painterly paraphenalia hauled off one weekday
while everyone was working or at school. now there
are only ladders and broken chests
of drawers, televisions praying
for a technician's screwdriver and beds
smelling of cat piss beds full of fucked and fuck you
maybe crabs and broken heads, broken marriages
he says we dn't want to sleep on someone
else's bad luck. it makes me pause. smell the corner
of the queen mattress hauled inside
from the dark, examine it for rips. haul it back
outside with its shiney suit aroma. a pink and blue
mattress, has the scent of talcum.
it's not very stiff. it waves oak branch in a storm
as we muscle it inside. queen size. fits the box
spring already here. boxsprings are not as intimate.
we keep the mismatched pair.
strong as dopamine
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we learn in reverse
review recursive tide
a shill to bide. the oil runs
quick as blood thru our engines
pumpishly. what will will you
take with you refugee ?
better to let them shoot you
in your streets. let's have
a study break, one where we watch
termite bellies splice onto bacteria
and distill ethanol from straw. let's
drink it in big hummer gulps, pretending
the short term lack of orangedog butterflies
won't lead to a price increase in our
morning juice. let us ruse, from a 450 feet
away, and put our brethren behind
the last bars we'll ever need-
the ones etched in our eyes.
indiana, what blue skies hovered
over you above the wavering gasohol
lines wrapped like mirages across the desert
and when can we lie in you again?
this is written somewhen in the early
part of a decline of an empire. lead
poisoning, too late to stop the euclid smoke.
eresis, the will of entropy and ebony
gleaming in a milky way. i'd like to die
in new zealand, watching those skies.
ii
the martin strings are shrill
but resonant. i understand the incoherence
which makes this unreadable. but it
behooves me to write this way,due to the influx
of sinister atoms across this vector.
this is code for tomorrow.
argentian football stars dress in the shroud
of turin and parade on olympia. no one
notices. the sheer incoherent apocalypse
each prophecy fulfilling itself, prophetically
the powerful playing their roles, and we bit
actors dying on the beach of saving private ryan.
gimmee all your filthy lucre.
marketing for pop u lar i i i ty
where in all this
is the face of god?
look around you they show me
it's on everything green.
III
the song is off key tonite
but the timings almost alrite
no it's a reggea and it's not sposed to be
***
take 5.
sometime it was they set up camp
late in the afternoon. lyre would take the pot
off the back of the wagon, samuel
would gather wood. she'd place a gram
of fresh water, sweet from the high mountains
were the benzene had either filtered out
or had never landed in the snow. himalayas
she remebered the sound of it, the towering
ice,the heavy waterskins, the quietness
of the gieger counter, the clear test strips.
their fortune lay in the slow descent, melting
just enough to fuel them . if the sun stays
lyre thinks. if our arrays hold out.
they set the panels up toward the west to catch
the last of the sun. rootstalk and potato.
carrot and apple. steamed. nuts rounded the meal.
samuel uplinked to their contacts in beijing
the stars were close
there few lights below them anymore.
****
what would you take? these drooping petals
effluvian traps, the sixteen years of school pictures,
a poem your first dead girlfriend gave you what
would be in your box as you move along the high
road, between the river and the ocean, northward
and out of the sea? the tides will take it all.
let me just take a rest here on this banyan stump
i remember when
i remember i
remember.
hunting soda pop
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in the middle are strafed hands,
a tiger. she cocks her stick figure
head sideways,looks down. yes, a belly
of cat, stripe, wink.
she wanted to write so she sent him
away. now he snores on the mendicant rail.
labours with concupescence. nicknames himself
cupid. she offers him bow, arrow, target.
he takes them into the laughing subway
where couples drift idly, dandelion damsels
sycamore gents. the trees are all in pine.
he stretches his claws, cut at the knuckle.
he grabs the headlines, puts his face thru.
senselessly the arrow flies, aimed into the next
fifteen minutes. hiss snigger snort snot
he's on the bus again, beggin bux. she won't
forget him now. she can't.
she never knew him.
border journey
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in the morning the microscope
becomes a refuge. inspect the welds.
safety first. recurse into the small universe of surface.
at this moment the place is quiet
polite phone bleeps, spilling plastic
counted and bagged. but wait,
here come the people.
useye test for ueer update:
add tolerance for the reflector test.
remember the blind spots.
later it's lunch. i found an intermittent cause.
the veins got crossed, influx of multiplex
from bus a to bus c. the brain couldn't figure it out.
now we ride along behind the deisel hog
luis in an orange vest holds his hand
against the traffic. we stop. the mini bobcat
creeps along, slowly. it's feeble claw
hangs like a carnival game in front,
some freakish carrot for a metal donkey.
what of rafael, driving? he's lost in the morning's
dream of fields of strawberries, stretching along
the dirt road from one pavement to the next.
there's a layer of ice over each plant which he
must thaw with nothing but a butane blowdryer.
and he has to pick 20 flats today to make enough
for beans and tortillas tonite. forget sending beatris
and pili enough for new school dresses. he stops
abruptly at the ditch's edge. he does not know
how he got here, inside this open cab, pushing a grasshopper
leg into reverse, the metal jaw clawing at reeds, lifting
them above his head like that scene from alien
when the creature bursts out of the science officer's
chest the very first time. he remembers pili got dysenterry
though, last year. frost on the berries outside
the trailer he shared with 14 others. he looks over at luis.
luis is waiting for him to move the machine again.
luis likes his orange vest, likes standing in the middle
of the road, holding his hand out to traffic, his hand
bare, head turned away from the oncoming cars.
rafael asks luis in cafe guadalaja at lunch why don't
you wear the orange gloves when you do that?
luis just shakes his head, runs his finger down the edge
of the picture of pili that rafael gave him last year
thinks of the birds they released on the day of the dead.
