Hallmark Card in honour of Paul Muldoon

If your work is ever rejected by the New Yorker
     just look up the editor's poetry.

I promise     You'll feel a lot better.

Says More Than it Intends (Found Poetry)

Combat zones to boardrooms.

Early morning drills to PTA meetings.

Transitioning back into civilian life isn't easy.

The USO Transition 360 Alliance recognizes this, offering career and family
resources to answer, "What's Next?"

the best poem written on the back inside cover of a bukowski chapbook

lite a match
use that single flame to lite the pack
suck in the sulfur exhaust
let it burn off

Arlington Bop

Rock music
from cemetery stoop--
white domino rows of the sacrificial lamb--
odd feedback
guitar strings,
tour bus buzz
announcer drawl mix
vibrations off the back wall--
turf renovation in progress--
selling the national memorial of death
     to the old
     to the current
     to the new
generations.

Cemetery Sentences

Red hydrant on the ridge     what sets you apart from death?

***

Candy corn barricades stacked on roadside     wait for another day

***

Wind blows toward the one true God     Washington, DC

***

on the hill     line of trees     in the sky metal streaks     blue angels

***

lying flat in the swamp     freedom's five-sided tombstone

***

No photos please     the military industrial complex is now in session

If you got the time

     Foxcroft Heights
neighborhood est. 1938
     commuter mass relocation
16G 16J 16H 16X express
     homes along the pike
Highway horizon I-395
     on Saturdays
a skeleton frame
     no money to make
no money to spend
     US-244 West
Arlington Alexandria
     around the bend
Annandale up next.

Telephone Poll C1017 HJ6

Berries grow but won't
                    be eaten

Grass grows but can't
                    be cut

10:17 am
                    the time I was born.

Janus

I
one day ahead of myself
     I'm one day advanced in age
one day beyond in thought
     I'm one day behind in dream

II
Funny little jingles hold complicated lies
     you watch them but you can skip after five seconds

five seconds is too long
     they're on television too if you're old enough to own one

III
one day
     half looks forward
     half looking back

IV
never the right moment to get what you want

Rubinstein's Best of American Poetry

For Will

now the Encyclopedia Britannica is dead
Rubinstein wants to replace it with the American poem.

my MFA, lost in his citation page
which masquerades as poetics,
is my entry fee,
on a train to nowhere
where I ride with other carefree poets
printed letters on our minds,

no one asking,
can poets be carefree?
should they be?

For what it's worth,
I just want a seat at the table,
however meager the pickings,
I've nothing of importance to say,

I know the original titles,
I can recite them.
they're in other languages,
meant to be typed in italics,

let me help lessen the breadth of the pome,
I promise to keep it in those outmoded halls,
new yorker, harpers, nation, balls balls balls

what's in a- what's in a- name?
it's a publisher's game.

the best we have to offer is our brevity,
so take it, our metaphor too, sacrifice it,
for this new contemporary age, best of 2015,

Don't feel what you write, don't write what you feel,
and for god's sake if you do spell it out with too many damn words

Internet video violence v. comments

why everyone so violent?
     you see violence
want more
     I would punch that guy
in his face
     if i saw that
he should have more respect

I'll teach him to hold my values
my righteous inclination to violent
reaction of violent action

when worldview is my view
it is worldview forever pure

only violence can inform violence
(central conceit)
(methodological design)

response time is in fists
knives bullets blunt objects

only proof is the short history of man

guilty or innocent
right or wrong
payback

4 telework haiku

what would a poem
by WB read like?
a Naked Lunch I think.

a bottle of america

on corner of my desk,

sand settles down 

watching my cat sleep

listen to traffic crawl

reading next email

world out my window

further away today,

working from home

Papal Vacation

dressed in white
my naked pink whiteness
typing from home
from my prison across river
listening to kaddish
allen ginsberg voice
strange nudity
accumulation of data files
telework cables
draped over me
nothing
cloak of immortality
cock
sweat
autumn
keys
work mad
god on earth
for a day
for a year
for eternity

why are all my heroes killers?

there's been bleach on my breath for over a week.

Why are all my heroes killers?
why do they shuffle off and muster for the military industrial complex?

where is this taste coming from,
thick white mucous on my gums,
bangs against my chest,
invades my lungs,

why with all this faceless, remorseless death?
why now those black marching boots? I don't get it.

who is poisoning who?
I do live in washington dc. I know.
I listen to the radio taps at night. I sleep with the window open.
the bells and the highway and the graves sneak in.

why can't I know what's going on?
why is money human but human isn't the same?

there's been bleach on my breath in an effort to hide the blood.

Your Phone

standing with your phone to keep you safe
     with your phone by the window at night, rest it by your sleeping head,
standing with your phone to fend off the awkwardness of life,
     strangers and situations, with your phone on yelp
     what's the best mexican place around here, can't anyone digital help?
standing with your phone in silence, swiping
     with your blue phone in the blue twilight soothing, how you spell gluten?
standing with your phone feeding on information
     with your phone and each hyperlink baby, vine video virtual reality,
     life in six second segments to further regiment the day,
standing with your phone, man, snapping photos
     of the lost, lonely, haggard, privacy deprived fools around you
     with your phone and its hashtags and its thin, cold, warmth,
standing with your phone against the bleak will of life,
     with your phone and its sleek body, its perfect self,
standing with your phone as physical communication becomes the past,
     with your phone and the data that keeps you tethered to scrolling text
     what happens in china, germany, malawi, the united states?
     with your phone and its selected streams, creative apps,
standing with your phone against the paradoxical world map
     moving on with the current, with your phone setting the trail,
standing with your phone to by another phone and another phone
     waiting in line for the next available generation,
standing with your phone as it's boxed and recycled, returned to the cloud,
     marking your life in .1 upgrades,
standing with your phone and clicking send in that bill
standing with your phone and standing alone,
     with your phone as your eyes, as your brain, as your fingers, as your mouth
     as your nose.

Sage

conversation of 8 thousand miles
from down the hall,

jack reads whalen Interglacial on
toilet bowl 40 years ago,

I read on the same stinking toilet bowl of time,
shit toilet bowl of the fractured mind,

saturday morning like saturday morning,
bodies like body,
sag. age;

and it's all a tightening circle,
slowly sinking, flushed down.