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.

Tom Fischer and the I Ching

take his body parts,
times 64,
remove the clogged arteries,
the writers block
in a cycle every 2,000 years,

cleaning schedule
is synced into his
bathroom break time
8x2 is 16x2 is 32
divided by 2 is
16 round trips
in an 8 hour day,

speaking in the
3rd person gets you
nowhere with a girl
and like that
the polestar rotates
in eliptical orbits
of generational
change,

he wonders at times,
reading the solar squares
on the calender sky,
what it's like to
live in the true North,

not very much different
the divinations say--

'look to 6 dashes of
morse code, he has a
penchant to say morris
code, number of days in the
lunar year of 13 months
doesn't impact the
necessity of daylight
savings: the interest
is back up to 384.1%;

sift his thought process
down to the 6th degree,
free dimensional state
where nothing is
vibrationally attentive
to the demands of the state
and clockwork is an
absurdity dream device'

--white bones fall on
hexagonal frames, whte chalk
marks on ancient wood, right
meter of begone time,
rite thought in the wrong
name, understood.

Need help for short panis here!

Erect a star antenna

fit the lens of the reflection
of retribution of the
salvation of the earth
to the membrane filament of
the singing skull

all late century human
history has been building to this

Jupiter is our mirror
is the mechanism of escape
the outer inner-cosmos
of mind reflected in
hyper-space time
holding the key to our
species fate,

prepare the human corpse
for jettison,
man is an artifact
meant for space travel

now is the time of the
coming of the end of the
world is nigh

close your eye to the past
there is nothing left
that is to be done,

only that you relinquish
your hold to the control
belief, only that you
prepare to begin anew.

Villain

this bus on the corner, rarely, if ever, looks to stop;
you have to wave it down or step forward before it rides past.

she was wearing sunglasses that day,
it was sunny and hot and bright, so
she was wearing them to shield her eyes
from the bright and hot sun.

when the bus with its compressed air braking system
stopped with a puff and huff and gradually lowered itself to the curb,
and the doors opened with a jerk and inward swing,
she balked and gave no intention of walking on.

as this bus, as previously asserted, had a penchant and reputation
among the boarders at this particular corner
not to stop on most occasions, the other potential riders,
who were edging nervously behind the sunglassed girl,
wasted no time for opportunity to board,
moving around her and jumping on, scanning cards
and taking a desired seat.

I was one of those riders, though I determined to stand.

After the bustle, you could hear the driver's audible and
inwardly directed, "sorry about that, ma'am,"
and her equally audible and inwardly directed, "that's okay,"
return, as she stepped on.

Letters read on the john

read your letters on the toilet,
came in the mail sixty years too late,

they were sad and one-sided,
yellowed and dirt-specked,

there were several notes extra
wrapped in stiff rubber bands,
couldn't make out those few handwritten words,
so you'll never get the cash you're owned,

left my own postscript:

rusty paperclips leave marks and
staples will ruin the page;

I couldn't save you from an early grave--