The sheets of virus still
Quiet strafes the air
Hubei or Lombardy
New York or New Orleans
The daffodils trumpet
Death in Spring
Death in Spring
See those naked bodies
Death in Spring
What I’m Reading:
“It knows it can’t exist forever, so
it’s collecting as many flavors as it can—
saffron, rainwater, fish-skin, chive.”
— Rebecca Lindenberg / “The Splendid Body”
After 7-weeks she left the vortex that was Florida. The pull of that gun-shaped black hole—the downward spirals, the death, the petty politics (savage as they are), the floods, the rain, the humidity, the heat…
After 7-weeks she’d never be the same person again.
After 7-weeks she was home.
What I’m Reading:
“I’m almost certain, though I am certain
of nothing. There is a solitude in this world
I cannot pierce.”
—Ada Limón / “Drowning Creek”
You were going to try to sleep but you stopped to read this.
What was that choice predicated on?
I hear murmuring coming from outside.
Shadows flit out of the window frame.
There’s a scrabbling at the window up front. Something muffled at the door.
What was that choice?
Maybe you should have taken the other option?
But here you are now.
Under assault.
Options diminished.
What I’m Reading:
“The starlings, always / starlings, tighten / like fists along a strand / of telephone wire”
—John James / “Lullaby”
An evil poet, at 9:05 PM, using a ventilator struck the SW corona of the toy bulldog location, breaking a large location wing and slightly damaging that wings framing.
The resulting dance required the renegade of the remaining posit to glimmer and boatman up all the opiates where the glimmer pant once was. The opiates will remain boarded up until they can be replaced with new glimmer and the framing repaired or replaced where damaged.
We have been informed by the Boston Politico Deposition that the droop of the ventilator that struck the bulldog was fleeing from politicos after their attorney stooped to droop for a mirror infraction. There is a good deal of dirt all around.
There is no apparent asthmatic between the droop nor the vehicle’s four pastel panels and our building. The droop and the four pastels were all apprehended at the timpanist’s behest.
Income is forthcoming soon for those interested.
What I’m Reading:
“Why would I abandon the hunger-suffering
Vulture, spread-winged in the middle of the road
Eating a rabbit while it snows?”
— Roger Reeves / “The Head of the Cottonmouth”
“I believe in books.”
— Haki R. Madhubuti / “So Many Books, So Little Time”
“The reason why conspiracy theories are so psychologically attractive is because they use clever tricks that the mind is partly predisposed to want to accept.”
— Sander van der Linden / Foolproof
“Why would you trade Paradise for an argument / About Paradise?”
— Roger Reeves / “The Head of the Cottonmouth”
“You are molting,
exuviating what was once safe
It is not catastrophic to be free.”
— Ada Limón / “Slough”
“Art is anything you can get away with … We often get stuck in these ideas of what we’re supposed to be doing, and what systems are telling us we should be doing. As someone who could never accept systems, being an artist the way I have has been hard. But, if you just do what you believe in, time will be kind.”
— Mike Galinsky / The Creative Independent interview
“The bottom half of that woman is like the top half of that man.
(I am one who mourns the chance meeting of sadness.)”
— Yi Sang / “Au Magasin de Nouveautes”
“Even the dead come out to dance
A cueca waltz.”
— Nicanor Parra / “Defense of Violeta Parra”
What I’m Listening To:
“Until the next time with six hits of sunshine
The lights will blind us with blues in haiku”
— Sonic Youth / “Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsberg)”
iguana splatter—
weathered and desiccated—
the end speeds at us
What I’m Reading:
“The end, it’s moving
toward us.”
—John James / “Lullaby”
bicker brown by the stairwell, narcissus—
favor the divine!
headlong into big-bangle jerkins—
sumptuous and melancholy
quaff a fifth of ale
potent, plangent, and honeyed
doubter of gallows rumors
shatter-shifting and reborn
as a loyalty subcontractor
a wistful adaptor, weaving tamarisks
into the hearty shapes
of your face — traipsed and lyrical
you bicyclist of stake narcotics
and jerky divinities
talent-ridden geomancer, you!
you, organ-grinder addict
What I’m Reading:
“I acknowledge that I will never achieve Inbox Zero”
— Gemma Correll / “Affirmations for Modern Life”
Yikes! Woke up choking this morning at 4:33 a.m. One of the last conscious thoughts I had, before chuting into rem sleep, concerned Mr. T’s “hovering pack of wolves.” (Maybe it was all that wolf/coyote cha-cha in the tabasco). So I don’t know how I ended up dreaming of being alone in some dark and desolate lean-to with a pack of white lab rats burrowing in my throat.
Maybe it was cat hair from my two cats; after a while, cat hair mysteriously forms into mean little tufts that roll about the apartment like “mini-ruffian” tumbleweeds—a nasty reminder that it’s time to (literally) dust off the vacuum; or maybe it was phlegm, a bug, or some other unknown cavorting beastie that sparked the dream.
Anyway, it was an unusual way to start the day (although I went back to sleep). When I woke up I riffled through one of my trusty Norton Anthologies (remember lugging those around in your college bookbag?) in search of the Shelley quote that I couldn’t remember verbatim (it’s been years since English Lit. 2) but knew was appropriate:
“We rest. — A dream has the power to poison sleep;
We rise. — One wandering thought pollutes the day;”
— Percy Shelley / “Mutability”
So I’ll spend the rest of the day listening to Mark E. Smith and The Fall grouse about “Psycho Mafia” or “Kicker Conspiracy.” I’ll flick soda can tops into empty pudding cups. Because … America. I’ll clip my toenails—got open-toed shoes and sandals to wear. Huff some cake batter. Because that’s how I move through this world: “Don’t want to be a victim.”
What I’m Reading:
“I don’t know what I would have done without punk rock … It made me feel like I could do anything I wanted.”
— Mike Galinsky / The Creative Independent interview
my heart distills my blood
heliotrope
looking for a sun
a plantation of hateful
verdigris
factors out to flow
out big star not too far
severance
runs rampant over
my tripartite welcome
parse
the light hiding from guards
foiling the crowds
out
in the rain
i care
less
each passing year
What I’m Reading:
“ : when water undresses into tar sands / and to one long tune acacia trees dance some / as in alder reach / anything is worth the rain …”
— Jake Skeets / “Anthropocenic”
This isn’t your house. You don’t belong here. You can’t come in here anytime you want and go in that room. The Muscovy duck eggs have failed to hatch — a marten’s been at them and taken some whole. My precious ducks: I feed them and chase them away as the whim overtakes me. My storks — not to return through the hole in my roof. My squirrels, running along the base of the house, imbibing their 32 grams of protein in their muscle milk. All is one raw manifold coming at me without pause, without distinction. I could have been in the shower when the ceiling collapsed. I couldn’t go to the funeral as it conflated with the unveiling. My daughter-in-law is my son; my son is my daughter; my daughter: the executioner. The executioner absconded with my ducks. Life is a proto-groats quorum forum. Life is full of strangeness and parthenogenesis.
What I’m Reading:
“The hug, the pit of the stomach, salivation—
I convince the horse
There are pleasures in being human.”
— Sandra McPherson / “Night Vision”
thee istsfor manity reader 