an act of mutation

some photos taken for granted

some lies cooling in the sun

some remnants of your past catching up

          reading the last line before
          the subway pulls up; rushed;
          forgetting the last 40 minutes
          that you read; being an angel
          thinking about heaven;
          how it looks; what it is

some thoughts written down

some one laughing behind the door

some place that feels like the future

          remembering that you'd been
          driving; stopped at a red light;
          panicking; thinking about how
          you'd made those turns; the 
          bodies that could have been
          left; in your path; could it
          be diverted; was it possible
          to jerk the wheel

some memories are entirely true

some shoes in a garbage can

some where you'll never know

          deleting the words as you go;
          starting over; reading a poem 
          from long ago; adding a word
          a thought; that appears a few
          lines below; deja vu; a feeling
          of familiarity; predictable 
          choices; same old stanzas;
          flat lines 

writing in rain

there, across the keys
bobbing up and down

on waves

monosyllabic, mute       saints
knuckles cracking, bones snapping
strung along about the endless white

a long march of nothing

thoughts about death

but I will not die today, in the rain
as it tumbles down yet          unseen

I'm ready to let dry

clothes, fingers, the day     the night

where goes the wind in mountains unseen

and the rain distorts the screen
floods the page.

to remain unfinished

in 100 years there'll be pilgrimage to Junction City Kansas
all these hyper kids on I-70 walls between them and the sea
head against the windowpane watching for that famous gray exit
there'll be a line of junk and hope straight down route 1 half-moon to L-A
visions on the shore of Carpinteria, California like Key West or Desolation peak
this will all be done via virtual reality if we're still here if necessary
when the beach as black as oil and the plains are toxic waste dumps
and I'll be long ago buried in an anonymous plastic tomb outside Camp Hill, P-A

Saturday

Poems to write down

but
life, like it
does
gets in the
way

eight hours
at the
mechanic
no pen or
paper

reading Bukowski,
Hollywood,
life gets
in his
way, too

thinly
veiled
auto-
bio-
graphy,

I found David Lynch
hiding in the
pages,

finished the
novel in
one sitting,
cursed myself
for not bringing
something else

chewed on
some
mono-
sodium
glutamate
sprinkled on
pretzels,

bought it without
seeing the
nutrition info
on back,

patched tire,
new rotors
brakes
battery
added up,

from there to
airport
felicia waiting
in rain,
from there to
eat

storms,
half hour drive,
zero
visibility,

drive back,
park,
unload luggage
in rain,
unpack, shower,

deep breath,
lights out
and promise
to remember
this poem
for later

sleep.

Typewriter heroes

a thing the typewriter had going for it
was that it was probably harder,
tho not impossible, for a cat
to sit on it while you were writing.

Kid + Marya

chip chatter pulled to the end of line
too much of me to make much of
anything outta this whole gasping nothing

these kids above the bowl
stinking of wine, grease,
glint of blade and brilliance
carved jagged letter before that jump

all fingers on handles
whisper cautiously someones
at the baying door and we're the opposite sex

to drown to drown to drown
left a name left a spinning nowhere mystery

two bodies sleeping soulless
chatter on the walls drifting throughout time

I read it sometime in my future
before the walls decayed, before
their names, painted over.

why the Agents never called

because you had frightened them
with suicide letters, fingers on the button,
on the bomb, strange musing cat-like noises
in the alleyways of thought between the lines,
weighted down by hello how are you good, good,
pressure, those fairy tale facilities, buried like
corded veins in the soft prosaic grounds,
preconditioned bits of regurgitated information
twisting like useless narrative going back over,
afterwards, in-between, telling the same old
same old tv serial scene, not knowing how to
lie, how to hide your sadness, deafness,
frown, because you cried for what was lost
and gave innocently, naively of yourself.

We'll never make it

flat letters on
a page to be
admired

words should scream and die

carve constellations
slowly fading
like stars
into

obscurity

in a thousand years
from a thousand poets

anonymity

honesty

things-that-should-not-be-printed

lasting.

Take a Lesson from Tolstoy

what's the harm
in dashing off
short novels
when images
spike,

titles stir
and spiral
stair to cloudy
heavens
turn,

I glance at
sky
expecting rain,

sun alone,
pulsing,
day after day,
and soon
another week,
another month,
gone,

I need to find the lock
and pound out
the keys,

why can't I
get this pen going
when I've got
the damn line?--

Painting on my floor

I wish this could be a
picture,

in many ways
it is,

in the most important ones,
it isn't,

I am left with words and
nothing else,

stinging meaningless
flat words,

no subtext, no gentle strokes,
no shaded marks,

just lines and letters lined up
one after the other,

a string of thoughts, at best,
a rough outline,

causing pain and misunderstanding,
and you know,

just looking plain awful for the
most part,

times new roman lettering, lazy,
I just hit the keys,

I just type whatever the hell
I want,

because I tell myself this is me,
what I am thinking,

this isn't planned, I don't have an
artist's table,

I don't have an artist's
touch,

I have a desk, it's dusty and sits
by the window,

sometimes it sits there, alone,
all day,

I don't even look at it
sitting there,

I just go on dying and it goes on
waiting,

covering itself up in dust, looking all sad,
eventhough it's not alive,

it's like atlas, shouldering
my typewriter,

then when I have something to say, some ugly,
useless thing,

I type it out, and we both wait
for me to fail,

which happens from time to
time,

there are more crumpled papers,
than clean ones.

I-S-B-EN

I abandoned you,
without ever finding out
your name
or brand
or barcode,
without even opening you
u.p.

Lock me in my room before I do something crazy

Put a safety on those
staples now, so the kids
won't be able to collect their
papers now, hang the loose
leaf lessons on the roof
in favor of them glowing screens,
they'll erase easier we hear,
work faster we hear, burn
brighter I see, warp those
little hungry minds with
flashing advertisements and
pretty apples a bit sooner,
so we're clear,
get rid of the pens and ink
that scrape and snarl on mashed
trees and go green with
heat sensors and budding rays,
put a safety on all those pencil
sharpeners please, think of the
all the fingers and the kids and me

Publishers Unanimous

Quick before our mistake's apparent
foster a forgone age of time,
I haven't written you in a while
the cosmic dreadnought reality--here,
a winding poem, an effortless poem,
a liars poem, gently, nauseatingly
furious, with it
I bend worlds of light and
magnets, of magic and music
lashed over your haunting voice,

to misunderstand is
paramount to truth--

and
if you don't
get it
you probably
write
edit
teach
and read,
holding some grand
position from
which you decide what shit
gets printed next
to shit in our ears
and brains
in hopes of making us forget
that there
were writers
before JK Rowling
and
Dan Brown

Pickett's

In view of the copse of trees
I study your poetry and make my mind
to charge and scream and yell and die
on the field
out off my glittery big tired
american eyes, tired legs
and arms seated in grave
chariot rolling across the golden
wheat fields that aren't wheat anymore
but some demon creature conjured in our
dreams that is hard to digest and only
two feet tall, what the fuck?
I want a poetry collection with my name on it
and nothing else, no color just black inky
nothing nothing nothing
nothing
nothing

okay?

mhmm.

for all I'm sure of is that literature is in the wrong hands

Don't be surprised when you're
kicked in the face, the acceptance letters
are as torturous to read as the rejections,
the stamped letters or the replies
are as much junk as the shit I sent to
them four months ago,

who'd wanna read

anything

written by anyone?

I drink a glass of water
wishing it was milk, alone in
the dark, with the shutters down
it could be morning

a violent anachronism

Har har crippled ark
me Blakian love like
craggy rock teetering rock
starve us to the bitter seas
call doves shit rain melds
gravity,

I'm incoherent
abstract painting (frenchie)
thick waves of oil paint
and smell of turpentine

Quick!

I brush your slender hips,

O they're gusts o' wind
in purple streaking hell
made altered reality
on canvas,
breathing-
a vision-

and it's worthless to write this poem (while I write it)
with maggots fill my mouth (in brown ground dirt)
and paintings will rot and rust (in warehouse art museums),
and I'll age and wrinkle and forget and die
leaving disembodied words to be forgiven by
clean servers seeking new spaces deleting unreadable text;

Like Fractured Happiness

And like fractured knife impurity

It ever widens, ceaseless sky

Rotated upside down, so I’m

Holding my breath or vomit,

Pretty fairy lithely drowns us believers,

Though we’re the only ones

Massed and twirling at dawn

Inside twisted city ruins, walls

Show brick cracked and red brown

Under plaster that takes cue from rough seas,

And beware the rip-tide at night,

Undertow doing that silly harmless

Dance, harmless until skies grow blue eternity

Sparkle imageless and die,

Like where are the stars that guide us?

A childlike question I’m prone to ask

But with illimitable vast consequences

That I mean to mean but

Meaning much more than my words can gather,

Old owl in tree miles away spotting prey, inland—

Ignore my foamy hand and tight brow, my tattered hair

And fading youth—