Good Morning, Poetry

Sitting at at table writing a poem beside

one of my favorite poets while there are birds

and birds and birds making birdy noises and

pidgins on the fire escape and, further into the

distance of the window, there is rain falling

and cars driving and more fire escapes and

more pidgins, (I imagine, though I don't see

more pidgins I'm not afraid to speculate). Besides,

who cares if I'm right or wrong or lying or telling

something that is sort of like a truth? It doesn't

matter. In all of New York City there are only

one or two people, and both of us are here. The

rest of the people who aren't real are out there

and they are living their lives or dying or getting

extra attention from a loved one or getting no

attention at all from a loved one or specially

ordering food, asking that the restaurant not use

this or that sauce, or to add such and such cheese,

or to remove a certain vegetable which is unwanted

or produces halitosis. But my favorite poet friend

is also typing but I'm not sure it's a poem. I'm not

sure this is a poem. I just don't know a thing about

poetry, except that it happens, and then, when it's

over with, we either feel more relaxed or more

uptight, or like a colorful bird trying to find it's

way around the corner and back into the bedroom.

A Political Poem

Now that I've made my super arrangements,

it seems obvious that I need a change of direction. I would

hate to find myself over a canyon, moaning like a disco, wanting

something very holdy on to me, like an elephant-sized suspender

hanging from a cloud. Lord of mercy, these words are out

to kill me. Good grief! Is there no relief in effort?

Either way, I'm only whining because I have the time to.

If I were struggling in some revolution somewhere, chanting

my little neck into a clogged sausage, I'd probably be

more die-y than whiny. It's awful what the human heart can

accomplish. It can take years to decide what's best, but it

only takes a few moments to let your kids into the basement, where

you might be trying to say something with one of those

fancy suspicions, and meanwhile, triggers are clicking and

people with meat hanging from their knees are trying to stand up.

The Boxed

The stuff I've said could be stored in a jar and

jar after jar could line the pantry and each jar could

be stuffed full, with word after word. And the words

I haven't said could be stuffed in cans and canned

and frozen and put in the bottom of deep-freeze

refrigerators, or boxed in cardboard boxes and boxed

into a closet or left underneath some basement stairs.

The point is how impossible it is to say anything

worth listening to and how easy it is to try.

Many times, when I was a kid, I felt as if I couldn't

be heard and was rolled into a dough of silence.

My little robot ears heard failure in every sink of

drained water, in every jingle of the car keys,

in every dresser drawer opened. My, my ears were

alert! They were really jumpy! And now, all adultish

and brutal, I still hear my childhood in my whispers

to my children. I hear them walking about the house

and I feel lucky. I also feel stupid because I haven't made

sense of anything and here I am thinking.

8:51 in The Evening

I should work. I mean I need to get some work done. There's work

I need to do. Like, I should do that work that I've been meaning

to do. There's all that stuff that I haven't done, that I need to do, so

I should do that shit and get it over with. I need to work on

stuff that is related to my job. My job is always requiring me to

work. I mean, seriously, it's always saying

"Dude, get your shit together. Do your work. Get

it done." And I say stuff like, "Yea, I know. I know. I know." I don't

know what to say to work. I mean, I look at it. I think about it.

I know it has to get done and it does it get mostly done, but, then, sometimes

I guess it doesn't. I mean, I know I should do it, but it's hard. Why? is

what I wonder. Why is working on work so hard? I mean, it's

only work. Why should work be a big deal? It shouldn't be. And yet,

every year my annual report is due to my department I think,

my god, you are simply work that is unworkable. I can not deal

with your inconvenient necessity. I sit here thinking about

the work. Thinking about the work. Thinking, what is work?

What is work? Thinking I've got to do work. I mean, I've just got to do it.

New Stuff

Nice reviews of Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! at Amazon

At Ekleksographia two songs from ATTILA!

Nice thing here from Alyssa Morhardt-Goldstein

Thing on me done by Ball State Students on Indiana Artists

Shout out from Booklist Online

from Bradley Sands, at Big Other

At Strangely Beautiful Things

Just barely made the list of No Tell Motel's Bestest poetry Books of 2010

Made Bruce Covey's list

Oded Carmeli is translating Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! in Hebrew. Yedioth Ahronoth is the press.

Very Funny

My daughter talking with her dolls

down the hall

and my son bouncing around making whooshing

and blasting sounds from, like, laser guns or some

sort of weapon noise. And then the Pokemon cards

not to mention the road of doom outside

with all the ice frozen on ice and, then, there's Friday. And that's

a day when something can happen. Often

tragedies become necessary to avoid certain aliments

or certain futures which aren't ever real

but are possible. And what bothers me in this particular

scenario is the great deal of time it takes animators

to complete certain animation cartoon movies. I mean

you most likely have no idea what that's like. That's

like a bunch of time to animate a fucking movie.

And now the weird feeling comes when you

feel outside of your body but not perfectly out of your body.

It's like a dislocated shoulder, it feels very funny.

Living the Life

It's possible for a dartboard to quiver

in the fashion of a fish, quivering in the fashion

of fish quivering. This isn't exactly something

you want to try and make a living at. Good god!

Even if you try to adjust your collar

so as to make yourself more understandable

to the neighbor lady (or something like that) you

don't get better at anything by practicing the

piano. I mean if you waste all your time with

that shit, you won't get anywhere. You should make

room in your heart for people who live elsewhere

and, if possible, you should allow perfect

strangers to sleep in your cabinets and all throughout

the house. This idea of protecting your family

is nuts! Seriously, by the time I begin to wrap

my head around the thing, it's already unwrapping

and there I go, perfectly off into nothing.

Crazy

When it snows, the snowflakes just fall

out of the sky and every single one is identical.

That's the thing about snowflakes, no variation.

And the snow accumulating, like baked bread.

I've never understood why God hates yeast so much.

He's always, like, "make that bread unleavened, goddamnit!"

He just fucking hates the yeast. He likes

his bread flat and his meat burned. He likes the

pleasing aroma of a barbeque. There's so much I

don't understand. Like why it snows at all or why

there are seasons or why Gary Coleman had to die.

This stuff is never explained. Instead, we're expected

to just accept it, bury our heads in the identical

snowflakes and come home all frozey-headed. And

there are countries all around the world! And there

are people who are actors and people who are manual

laborers and other people who are other things!

It's fucking crazy! Meanwhile, a saturday afternoon

happens and the snow just falls and falls and finally

lands, on earth, like everything else and just sits

there looking blank and all stupid.