wut if

a totally drug free financier
met an on the verge of falling apart poet
and they broke into sweat dumped by a dolphin?

could she learn to ski this late in life
would he learn to sing radiohead without the loops?
maybe beck. anyway, wut if there was a big red arrow
that pointed toward yes and now, a like o meter
that measured your body's hormonal response
and displayed it for your date to see? i mean
that would be the ulitate truth telling body machine.

i'd have to take my brain out ever mrning
and put it back . volunteers are waiting for you call now.
for just a moment, let's go into the body
of the woman by the window, she's smiling
nd white haired. nscant ness and cling
comprise her

tricket for an aeroplane

I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together --

voice of the empire in prauge

we argue over the ways to progress
and i'm rather piqued at your waffling on prosecution
of torturers and what constitutes criminal activity
when no one's
above the law a
hem.

but you're making eyes
at the nuclear, excuse
moi, nukular industry and maybe i can rationalize
a bit of gladhanding, a touch of love ya man
but we still don't know what to do with the poisons
besides make more weaponry or maybe
send it to china to be recycled into flatware for the empire.
to compromise on some things is to make a man
three quarters of a man. now maybe i'm
being harsh, believing sound bits
and gossiping foxes, i know this job
is tough but come on mr smith
the only thing you got is your principles
and if those are compromised
swine flu might be the only
thing to save your legacy,
just go ask that bush that's burning
way down in texas.

but i guess that's not fair
since the weaponry's there
someone must watch the armory
and the amory's guards. so
that thorny problem is intricately indicated
in the blastoma of frission. we can't
just put it down like
well
um


when have we ever put something down?




i am often surprised when reality
interferes with my idealism. it's a sort of falling
thru cumulonimbus onto a hot air ballon
then riding that in for a soft landing
to the bottom of the grand canyon where
sunset is chiseled in stone
all beauty and representational
and i have to deal with the real facts of ants
in the peanut butter and jelly, spoiled milk
and a giant picnic basket to lug
up the trail in the morning on the backs
of the asses we can rent
from that tent over there.



but wouldn't it be nice
to just kind of leave the peanut butter
and jelly to the ants, keep the OFF!tm
away from your skin, maybe back
on the shelf in the sporting goods store just deal
with some primitivism, just agree
look, a few ant bites, a couple of mosquito bites
some deaths from malaria and the whole damn
metaphor begins to fall apart i mean i'd
use OFF!tm to keep those malaria carrying mutherfuckers
from biting me, and i want my amdro in the spring
and fall cuz fire ants can hurt your ass i bet
you ever walk onto a hidden mound
you'd know whut i'm talkin bout
so you know, some times the things that save ya
are toxic, i mean there's good and bad
in everything and if i'm gonna be all
my way or hiway i may as well
join up with falwell and the gang
dontcha think? so wtf

are we gonna do about all that poison
from the nuclear power plants
that's all i want to know. cure that problem
and i got no beefs with the industry.



well, almost none.














well, ok.
i prolly still find something
to bitch about
wouldn't i,
sir?

exhaling brown needles

you may as well know from the start
that i live inside your head. or ummm
my head. there are many personas that people
the walk thru of my day, i have them for guides
and bruise reminders. i have been directed
beyond the boundaries of last night's dinner plate--
blade of communion grass, side of minaret.
wash it all down with a vivid reminder, say a late
summer vintage, peak of ripeness.

intuitively i know the mix to send you
on your way. on your way, you remember
how it was, why you were on the road
in the first place. i do not know
why i am this way now, full of spurs
and bearing histamines, confessional
dumping ground of the hear and gone.
i feel priestly, even. maybe it's the poetry

coming out of my breath, a bonsai rooted
in my lungs, recycling the co2 before it leaves
my body, forming the right words
in an unwilling photosynthesis. the gods

take revenge on my willful no, give me ever
tastier parts to audition for, and lose
at the critical moment, after a bright green burst
like hope just climbed into the limo
smelling of lime. just one last
blast before the pine beetles
eat the hardwood to the core.

definition

lust can't wait
love can

excuses

they don't let you move
around like you used to
so you're purty much stuck
where ever yr at.

and i understand that it seems
that way, but honestly if yr trying
to do it the same way jack did
then of course that's fifty years out of date.

the massive pervasiveness of the next
dead empire makes it impossible
to know the country you wanted to visit.
but i'm not goin on the road with the rainbow
thing. they're like ninety percent drop out
clinger lifestyle.

cry me a river

cuz i don't have enough water left.



maybe i should drink some more.
water.



took your pipe for a kiss
and the remainder of the smirnov ice.


in the hotel of minarets the passageway
is lined with closed windows & slices
of april light defusing bomb scenes.

if i call you in the morning
the phone just rings and rings.
even the answering machine sleeps.

between the marina and the airport
a bay. on the bay boats
at anchor. one small sloop
rides the wind close to the sound
of drums and the rattles of palm.
a flute of moon blesses the sunset--horns
beget honor, your eyes rise up
to greet me but
only in my sixth sense.
i'm pretty sure it's broken
two times third eyes dyslexia.

cannonical scenery as the night
softly, fresh sheeted, scarred
with the sound of packing bongos
and gathering pollen husks
settles into summer sunk treasuries.

three months i've been pushing
three moths onto the board with nanopins
to keep them alive. you , me, potential.
occasionally i see one of them flutter.
are the gods not pleased then
with the offering?

old cards pormise new life

if i could go there
but ican't
so the point is mute.

zij

a capella mutterings lose track
about the fifth iteration. i took
the rosetta stone and applied it
to an indus script, mangling machine
language with mitochondrial dna.
polaris seen thru a slit aligns herself
with arcturas then spleened on
to spika. this is the lesson learned
on the west side of the gandy bridge
where sex offenders can hope to live
in peace, even if sexting
leads to multiple masturbation techniques.

i need to go the store
and this is a payment dependant
time delay. the party is later
and i'm not prepared but who ever is
prepared for partaying like last century.

later there'll be guides to the stars
notched into rosicrucian world orders
and hollywood mapping systems. but
for now, let the mystery percolate
into libido for lasting granite henges
with all the languages of earth
etched in genetic code. on the other
side, our future.

crime statistics

every morning i forget
that we're not together
that's a ponzi memory.

in the happy position of saying
fuck my wants, i encourage
the bloggity biozome. ammonium nitrites
sit in boxcars next to the groves
that feed the world. fuzzy balls
line the shoes of the next text based
tag team. why wouldn't you understand
that passage is just iron moving
along preconfigured pathways? i mean
it seems so obvious to the initiated...






















*(&&&







in the toweling off morning
sun is a straight player
canceling night. those dreams
pass like lives bent on compromise
and tea parties. you tell me something's
clawing to get out. i tell you to
set up a blog. wonder is the next
thing, then looking for motorcycles
on the back of the monster truck metaphore.
there was something about a purple angel
but i've forgotten its first name.
you have four days to reconstruct
the tourette's chemically
then the workweek will come to get you again.

if i could be a pirate i might
meet you on the open sea. i gave my eyepatch
to a pennyroyal so i have to put away
childish things. however
i have they key should someone
care to open the door again.
passwords clamber to be spoken.
genetics tick to ignition.
if you called me i'd be the first to know.






















*)&&&&




have another pipe.
i want to do something wrong today.
break into a seed bank. set fire
to the ocean. eat lime
flavored pop tarts. steal
your name. you can keep the heart
i have my own i've been trying to give away
but it's like belly fat, the redhead step
kid, backstroke of fly in your soup.
always in threes and sixes and nines.
carbon's balmy isotopes. the poet blind
sides the scientist and everyone
gets lost in some new line break
out fad. some small difference
between infection and regeneration
picks the lock on erudition
and dares you to read
the toxic spill from my head
rather than your own.
heh. didn't think so. it's been
too long since the hairs on the back
of my arm stood up in response
to your photonic touch. touche
is the last word you sent
complete with return address and zip
code. zip up your pants woman
he's put it away, yet again. what if
both girls like you at the same
time? what then homey, what thin
pencils can you use to make your list
which lengthens; a sexual response
in a nudist camp. not
at all, bro not at all. the crime
would be putting your clothes back on
like adam told eve wtf put on a shirt.
i'm sure it was adam. chirst,
you know eve took the first bite.
she pays in blood every month
while he just sits in jail
looking at the bars, and all the girls
in the bars, and all the babies
in the girls and all the gods in the babies he's
unemployed again, just like gabriel
suggested with that big flaming sword
so we get on the last gallon of gas
pour into the some mileage east
and let the surf take care of the rest.

we all need that

my mistake the whole time
was treating you as if you were intellectually
and philosophically equal.

(not my) true story

so i'm on my way to work
and i see this wasp inside my car
near my window. it's stinging
the metal, i mean it's pissed at this
invisible force field keeping it from
advancing. at the red light i roll down
the window try to get it to leave
that's when i notice its leg is caught so i
roll it down further and finally
it takes off. i get
to work, my assistant's
running from door to door dodging
a wasp she says she's
allergic and i begin
wonder if it's the same one,start telling her
about the one in the car, saying
it might have followed me
all the way here trying to wreak revenge.
but just as i say "wasp" she looks over
my shoulder and screams cuz there's
one dive bombing us and i don't know
who was where but
i'm the first one out of my office
leaving her in there screaming
and me perplexed
at the way things seem
to cross all boundaries to deliver their message.

four eighteen

you sent a wish granter
and i wished a wish
but didn't send it on
so the opposite happens.
which is what i really wanted anyway.

i'm sneaky that way. irony
is the gods' favorite dish.

beginning the day in a way
familiar. ritualistic even.
day job strangulation, involuted
volunteerzation. i got your rent
but forgot to pay the high speed
internet access. forgot. but i'm
still here. i'm still talking.


that one always floored me.
as if you were the injured party.
still talking? so i went walking.

just so i don't get all fight clubby
let me say here and now
i know who blew up what, the chemicals
used, the timer's mechanism.
team efforts are not prosecutable
under the bama decrees. put away
the subpoenas, i'll make my own ruling.


trident missiles on the gummy
waterboarding got all chummy
false walls for false statements anything
to stop the hassle.

i need to write but my brain
is handcuffed to my editor.
i can't find the code
to release the lock
in the time
i have
left

you are hiss and crinkle

messing with heads
silliness on slideshow degree
duh is not a scientific term
but we're going to use it anyway.
one dimension increases actuality
of the glass ceiling for attractiveness
and takeovers, stastistically
intelligent and distrubution of leeches
along the skewed lines of ass kissing.
a distinction makes the company line
toe the theory of peter, panning for obedience,
making the creak by the crack of dawn.
the economy demands it. blindly. fit and fiddle
for understanding the snowball's refusal
to undergo the avalanche . a respective
money stuffed flounder of decision, pilled
into your credit defaulted mouth
and shat out as tragically hip crunched numbers
on the doorstep of your defaulted disasters.

cube psyched

there's rain where you are
hiss and crinkle on the pavement
the celophane movement
of shiny covers, sharkskin pants.
i wasn't going to talk to you today-
too many dashed hopes in the soup
makes the ones you-flavored steam
from the spoon. going for a rebound
was the best way to cool that off
but that's not really the ball that gave me
the black eye. it's how you call
when i need you to. now. rather than when
we were in court.

faux sky

droughting again
the sky teases me into
belief and i want to go there
badly. sit on the porch
with a cup of coffee and listen
to the wound of rain
coming down on the aluminum roof.
not quite sure if i want you to be
there or not. there's so many
threads unravelled on this loom
the pattern's trying to move
into a self designed tune.
i will say this. i don't write
in rhyme too much these days.
that infection lasted for a season
of ram & rom overload. however i do
miss music. and in your eyes
i hear nothing. bleached blond scatteracts
tesselating on the square. no signs
to point the way back home. i guess
i do have to live like a refugee,
cuz that's where all is fair.

things

the actual pounding
sinus, worker on the roof, bang
concrete and vibration.

monday complete with stained
cellos and lack of translations.

it's a holiday. the old haunts
merge out of the woodwork. sure there's
cards but there's also ignorance.
you're good at that. the talk in the mirror
still didn't convince you. get a clue.
have another one, the smoke convinces you
your lungs are full. have another one
the touch convinces you
you are a fool.

just bitchin

i'm not answering no matter
how many times you call. that area code
is off limits. the easter bunny left
an egg that's hatched into goodbye
so that's a word you should learn to swallow.

the son is angry and upset
he walks away. he's good at avoidance.
lesson learned on the heels of listen to yr rent.
who avoids
not much but also tends to get in over her head.

why listen to her? if i break the ritual,
it may never begin again. but i still have
something he needs. today was the v in the water
that the beak of a gull makes as it skims
surface hoping to catch the minnows in the sun
opening a wound which quickly closes
together with sunspots and the thorns of frozen waves.

i don't want to sweat his life, i don't. but someone needs to.
he'd like me to care a little less, like before.
some days i'm fine with mortality, want to feed it dinner.
this might be one of those. find the fluttering exit signal
and rummage in what passes for dumpster fine dining

on the outside of this story. the story i was gonna write
till it stopped abruptly with no point. in good months
i know it's pms, in bad months, the hive mind breaks
into jagged leggo buildings with no roofs and doors
slammed not by angry winds but angry leggo children
who refuse to get back into the original cartons
where they're nothing more than concrete metaphors
for idealism, production and modeling one on one.

fireweed

the accretion
disc kisses its ring
goodbye
spits out a partial
explanation
but more data is needed
before the seed
can be worn
as a dress.

enlightening

the thing you should know about the poem
she says, pointing to the river where pleasure
boats are huge dragonflies skimming or
nearer the banks bass lazily drifting northward
worm and line and hook hearted
and the smokestacks at the hiway
stand in for lighthouses & the sea
is that it will be what it wants to be
you just have to fit yourself into it.

sacrifice

the inroads become outroads
dark mansion on the edge of the bay
gandy to the right, another bridge to the left.
the moon's full and scattering her light
over swift clouds. i want to write a poem
that's as layered as those veils. you know
what i mean. the couple down the beach
dissapear behind the hedges. is it an hour
is it a second? black skin above white,
the tickling grass, a shirt for a blanket.
she slips off her jeans, he lowers his
eyes, the moon is too bright on her face.
behind them a silent house with balcony.
we watch from behind sliding
glass, a play of piston and poison
taste the salt in his mouth
on our fingers. in the trysting light
her arched neck makes a target.
you become the vampire
and i become the teeth settling
into a meal we will never be again.

repair to me

it's quiet in here after the rush to leave, icut
strip, solder, assemble connectors to order,
fingers on the pulse of arthritis. test them twice
cuz maybe i missed one. isn't it a pity
comes unbidden, george's plaintive voice-
an accompaniment to the hiss
of flux as it washes away grime , binds
each individual strand to its brothers, creates
a new metal. i heard on the radio

news of bevy of rampages: dads
with guns, disgruntled exes
with guns, murder suicide pacts gone wild.
spring certainly is a cruel season, hilights
the trouble with being hopeful, how nothing
really changes no matter how many iterations
you go thru or how many times i have to crimp

this collar with the wrong tool leaving it intact
but twisted inside where no one
else has to see it like this morning
a cat's stiff markless body
on the side of the road or tomorrow
morning's desoldered memory of you.

category 2

clothes fall over the plastic basket
pile inside the dryer waiting for hangers
hang outside open drawers hungry for the legs
of hookers and men on the prowl.

stammering out of the corner of the mirror
yesterday's shade pinches the inside of the purple
bra and licks her fingers. it smells like money.

the boy is blowing into a bamboo pipe.
when it's raised to the ceiling, an elephant
walks into the room, no matter how many times
it's been told not to think of itself.

of course the moths are buzzing with harley voices
barely connected to the night with its full moons
its sirens giggling under the bleachers
its worms struggling in the wait of the earth.

under one of the trailers a cat in heat
is getting rid of that noise. she left her babies
with daddy because snarling with her tail
in the air didn't seem to be giving him tricks.

a woman raises a sword in one hand, examines the long
lifeline in the other. she wants a ghazal to slice
it into manageable chunks, not this unwieldy steel and balance.
















*()&*(*&


align oneself with hope


they say it's all in how you look at it.
so you give someone your heart and trust them
not to break it. when they hand it back to you
you might make a mold of the teeth imprinted there
to place in your bedside water cup
as prophylactic against a return. you might
think at least i don't need superglue you
might take the dna
from the saliva
and clone a copy

or you might take the chewed up patient to the vet.
so many possibilities, most of them spur of the moment
and mostly ineffectual. the thing to do is
cauterize. burn it out of you. over and over till
the scar becomes a kitten playing
with string on the verge of weaning.
it needs a home. you decide
to give it one. you don't know where
trust has run off to, probably
mixing genes with hope
to breed yet another tasty morsel
for diana's dinner with cupid.
whatever. you think.
i like balloons.

sight bye sin

red over pond, carmine, cardinal
i disappointed the poet, the singer
the rites of spring. saline prisms
and ricochet moods, rosters burning
into rasters, scraped across the tor.
down turning low and special, i
call the number of the only rabbit hole
worth exploring
at this time. decide to pass. maybe some
fullish moon i'll be there again
but right now endeavors seem
too endeavorish. my lids
fold over, sunken petals rid
of light, practicing spring's flight
in a rustle of dessication and dedication
to a heirophants.bring on the initiates
we have yokes to invoke...till she smashes
her role on the toll booths of jersey
and the five minutes are up.

you tube for artists

Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.


at www.vimeo.com

he's mr hot italiano goin on my dream vacation oo ooo

so you chat me up cuz i look like a professor
you'd like to teach
lessons in the workings
of your tongue. english a sideline
modeling as a kill you young career. it's
all the partaying, conferences, sunday go to meetings and
you're shy with the old, excuse you ,
mature ladies. ahem. another cancer, another water
sign cold blooded insectoid encounter. what's up
with all the cancers i'm attracting? still when i ask you
where you want to go , and i type barcelona but don't send it yet cuz i'm being typically long
winded, you type barcelona
is where you're going next.
month.
may. i have. a passport please?
of course you're not a marketing financial sales lawyer independently
wealthy ex rocket scientist coke addict you are
mr hot young too goddamn young italiano
goin on my dream vacation
oo
oooooo.

so i don't get to go.
sigh.










*(&&&(((







went to the ren fest today. bought a dress
for my daughter. the kind i never bought for me.
son wanted a sword. i told him, when you're eighteen
i'll get you one. or maybe twenty like yr sister. can't
play favorites can't pay for all this
and a drum too. didn't get the drum.
got a diggeridoo or two. on sale.
and a new leatherbound journal with recycled cotton paper
hand crafted, hand bound. whatever you write in there
says the craftsman, will last a thousand years.
oh my gawd. the pressure.
now i 'm afraid to put down anything.
maybe i'll write a song for barcelona.
or the hot italiano
whose papers i'll never get to grade
or maybe i'll write a poem for you.

kickin

i take a li'l taste
on my tongue, spit it
back out. o man
that felt good. taste, spit,
needle in the trash.

i know a couple things now
like higher powers are good for you
but they suck too. like insanity
is the last defense of stupidity.

i watch you from the window
that looks over the alley.
back in the dumpster, scrounging.
dollar bills stick to your hat but
oblivious, typically, you dive
deeper. if you're looking
for that song you threw away
i heard the truck a few blocks back.
better hurry and find it
before you're stuck in those metal jaws
they finish you off so much faster
than the rush thru veins.

what i did today

down a country road
pickin strawberries
kissing cross the rows
we had to carry
two quarts a piece
and the water to rinse them
so we wouldn't die
from methyl bromide

the giving is up six gun style

celophane cephalanic, an excuse
for how addled head space becomes had space--
a pickle in the night sky. face this music boys
the sailor watches the moon with a 400 hz hum
behind his ears. trying to tie one on he
lets her go, all wild circles and punishments for baby.
not again. not again i won't do this go there be that.
giving up seems to be the waning thing to do.

i could invite trouble again, reply to a frozen embryo
that needs a next century's coddle. but i think
i'll live it up now, save the balmy
undertakings for the undertaker.

you don't have to hiss your prayers in whispers
in the streets anymore. give it up for the gods
with a lamb and a new resurrection. private parties
partaying in drum and rainmakers. find a niche
squirm into it. my body was rebelling long before

we were supposed to dance. you probably
shouldn't have called so many times.
the anonymity was bleach for the sheets.
now they're stained with recognition
the color of a scab on your baby's lip.