Javier was a Naugahyde.
Lily was a silk.
Montel was a thistledown.
Billy skinned an elk.

Pedro made a custom knit.
Tessa was a throw.
Sarah walked the other way.
And you: you never go.

Macie was a terraplane.
Horace was a jet.
Marcy was a submarine.
Jim was getting wet.

Stuart raced a hovercraft.
Tim was on the ground.
And tell me, in that hot balloon,
You ever coming down?

Sylvia was a nuthatch.
Mickey was a jay.
Lonnie was a mockingbird.
Cole had flown away.

Henry bit a swallow's beak.
Tom was in his nest.
Henry lost the chance to hatch.
Where did you stash the rest?

The heart. The heart is a hole
in the body when the body dies.

The heart is a heart. The heart is not
full of stickers. Neither butterthorns.

The heart is full of blood. The blood is it.
That's what it does. It does the blood.

It's a heart. It's *the* heart. The heart.
The heart. The heart. The heart.

The heart. The heart.

DEATH FOR THE POOR
after Baudelaire


        death is the soothe and the
        drive of it) ends with the hope that can
                ride us and blunt us and give us the
                        heart to trudge on through the night and the

                        storm and the slush and the weediness.
                floodlights that buzz in the lot of our
        dimming motel with the all-you-can-
        eat and a bible. they turn down your

                bed and this angel will make you feel
        drowsy. she gives you wet dreams then she
                washes the sheets. in the name of the-

        odicy goddesses: wages of
                sin and the mortgages paid by the
        lives of the poor (and the doorways

                are hinging for more

(from the archives, circa 2002)

My slit is heathen sailing on
        the list of blasted roots, state
                of horror turning in the merchant of
                        my throat, thorax acid sizzle
                                through the rings, drip down sweat and

                                sing out motor for the puzzle metal
                        huddle to the pedal of his threat up
                braided nettles in the heat of seeking
        salmon crushing current with the jelly
fibers, diver with the hive ripped out

                              (from the archives, circa 2003)

Parable of the Egg

Asked for a single egg but
had already taken two. I felt

shame. Under a red-barked
tree, peeled one egg and
pushed it through my teeth.

The egg was hard. At a fence
tried to scatter the shell.
Someone saw. So I picked up

a rock. Held it in my fist.
And said: egg.

Buster Keaton, Cops (1922)

Home after supper
with no feet.

Drunk when he
picked me up.

So broke he
threw me out.

Bought a cart
for five bucks.

Cart stopped I
pulled the horse.

Pushed the cart:
the horse stopped.

Lit my cigar
from the fuse.

Necktie moustache.
Ate the keys: You lose.

[see film]

Grandma came back from the dead to tell me: You can always put in more salt but you can't take it out.
Ask for what they don't have. Watch your mouth. If you need the feeling then take it. I told grandma:

I'll be right over. She said: Surprise me. Keep your visor on. Let your business unwind in the casual way.
Wash your ankles like a gentleman. Don't let them push you around. And keep your anger to your children.

I said: Grandma I've been stuck in a misunderstanding. I've been on the verge of losing you and I don't know how.
I need a bag of pebbles if I'm going to feed a rhinoceros. Grandma told me: Some weeks are hard on the shoulders.

Ask your mother. Ask your son. There might not be a hot pan of chicken on the stove but the kitchen is yours.

The night after I was born, before I learned to be cold, my mother gave me a blanket. It was blue
and white and cotton. It was the size of a good-sized flag. I called it blanket. I kept it with me.

Later when they had to leave, and had to take me with them, my mother turned to me and said
I will cut your blanket in half. One half will be your blanket. The other half will be your traveling

blanket. I called it my traveling blanket. I kept it with me and it worked. Later when I had to meet a girl
because the girl had asked me whether or not I wanted to meet a girl, the girl turned to me and said:

I will cut your traveling blanket in half. One half will be your new traveling blanket. The other half
will be our dating blanket. So she ripped out a seam and cut along the edge to make a new blanket,

blue and white and cotton, a scrap of a blanket no bigger than a folding napkin. I called it my dating
blanket. It was the size of a washcloth. I kept it with me and I think it must have worked. Later when we

knew we were on the wrong path she turned to me, as if I spoke through her, and said: I will cut your loving
blanket in half. One half will be our fighting blanket. The other half will be your aging blanket. I called it

my aging blanket. It was the size of a stamp. It was blue and white and cotton. And then I must have lost it.

Help is on the way, I told myself, while standing in a metal box falling toward the pavement at a speed approaching the speed of a falling man.

We are listening for signals from above, I was told, even as the signals I was sending were bouncing back with some sort of crackling noise.

Me and you could last forever, the man had said to the woman, right before he ripped off one sleeve of her gown and took it with him up the stairwell.

Tell me more about how that makes you feel, someone is saying to someone else right now, even as my scalp stretches out to the size of a buffalo hide.

If you ask the world then it will be yours, I lied to him slowly, just before stepping out into the corridor that ends in a turnstile.

I can't take my mind off you, I said to myself. As long as by mind you mean hands, I went on, and by you you mean me.

Late at night, after everyone is finished being themselves, I start taking things very literally.
First the housework: I build the house, clean it, sell it, then burn it down. That was a little too easy.

By the middle of the afternoon, I have become woozy on the spirit juices again. So I walk
through my house into the middle of the street outside my house, which is also someone else's street.

Early in the morning, when everything that's going to happen has already begun to happen, I give up.
It doesn't take that long but it has to be done with a degree of caution. Otherwise the roof gives in.

Around evening, the men start lining up on my porch for a handout. For every man that knocks,
I lead two around the back and give them something hard and bullet-shaped to consider. In their heads.

This tiny thing that we do, I told her slowly, it is so tiny and so slow that we don't always know it's done until after it's done.
Yes, she said, and her head moved as she looked at me as if to say: No, don't look me in the eye, not until we're done.

And I said: This thing, this tiny thing, this tiny thing that we do, this thing is so tiny, and so retardedly slow, and so hard
for us to even think about, much less do anything to change, that we don't even try to think about it at all.

No, she said. No you don't know that, she said. This thing we do, she said, it isn't one thing, it's three. Thing one is you.
Thing two is me. And the thing itself, the thing we're doing right now, or what we were doing up until we slowed down,

That was thing three. If you say so, I said. I think you might be right. Oh yes, I think you are. Now don't stop, I said. Now don't stop now.

Praise is owed to the supreme pundit for his retarded sense of humor,
for his insolence and fright, for the petty wilderness inside his ribcage,
for the tree trunk and all the deliciousness therein. Praise is owed to the man

in the bear suit for the stubble on his jaw, for the clash of symptoms
on the day we first met, and for this shitty teleconference from star to star.
Praised be the monk inside the donkey, praised be the wear and tear

that gave way to such a slow depreciation, praised be the symmetry
around the folds of our skin, the sweet and easy betrayal
in the moments of our bulking, those huddled back and forths, the sway

between what you think you want and what you want to want. All praise to
the cock and balls that got us into this, I said, and to the one that will get us out.

Here are the leafcutter ants in their air conditioned nests growing a custom blend of fungus deep into the night.

Here is a swarm of finches sweeping into the continent with their real wings made of someone's cinnamon.

Here are the thin reptiles sneaking their way across the lawn for a free meal before the time comes for the nightly news.

Here are the hot and enthusiastic bull mammoths searching for the great gray vulva of the rare elephant sow.

And here, at last, is the the grimy ape, rooting through his stash for a chance at supper, the tiny relic of his age.