They All Love My Baby

On those crutches you’re about a beauty.
About a circle, in a circle of crucifixes.

Gazes flexing at joints, at books of skin, sampling.
Abnormalities and deformities, a sylph smiles

from the Reichstag’s elaborate iron balcony.
The procedure wasn’t expected to be so lengthy.

An endless twilight crossing, wet joints, skin,
arthritic, huddled, cards in a heaving sampan.

She smiled is all that made the montage.
They thought they ought to have killed her then.

Might’ve done so, but the weapons were too soft.
And the fact that she had no money.

Some information was spilled, tour guides
know the spots, or bend them to vendors’ benefits.

Money, after all, has changed its perspective.
Forget that we had a kingdom, this man is not the king.

Several of the nobles still visit her body.
The caretaker’s buy-off varies by their horses.

Her crutch moves more freely now, forms
more inventive, elaborate shapes.

Like the outline of a drowning faun,
or the smiles of fever victims.

Cave if the Painting Suggests It

The great bank of fog on the wall
Turrets were where we first did it
Watching the cars directly below
And you buckled until the sun

Sgt. Presto was known worldwide
At the Paris Exhibition he danced
For the upper striations of geese
What’s good is not for you to speak to

Go sing to the nightingale on your thigh
Shall I drop the needle? We're shorthanded
Keep opening to the flinch lock, star spurts
And I will steal you away in cork raiment

It’s the same thickness you remember
Sparks still surround its reluctant launch
Swell of the straw, the gentlest wreck
When you recorded your mouth in context

A shell in the archive, annals of petal discourse
the hall, was it ever this narrow, as dark?
I think of the time she looked along the length
and found her way lit into the bluer passage.

The Footprints Against Your Plaster

Aline fell against the door jamb wistfully.
No. Dreamily. “You shall bend my name
Against this until it vanishes with me.”

The Sycamore fell so sweetly, so confidently.
Disease had not dulled its annoying beauty.
From the roof of your house you can see
The places neighbors hide their drug money.

This land ate Woody, and it will eat you.
Whose slave was it that said, “I’m pregnant
Master, what shall I put on the headstone?”

I see the same people at the Laundromat.
I must remember to ask them about their welfare.
There are things we all have in common, fear.
The new record by that French Canadian.

Once the question has been drafted, the ambulance
Channeled away with its bomb, time for a pick-me-up.
We will pose the question and strangle in decorative crepe.

You’ve known me for as long as it takes to drive
to the burger joint. I will be waiting for time to rethink
its take on this space I use for spare skins, replacement chins.

Is there an us I missed in the shuffle? The mad dash to close
Before closing time? Time for one more short set, one more round.
This one is dedicated to all the brave soldiers defending our way
Of life in the wine cellar. It’s called “Unreachable by Sonance”

My son is a germ in a pocket math capsule. He merges,
Fabricates shapes, makes shoes for the poor, eats gluons.
A son is a wonderful thing for a man to emulate. Compact.

I find that lately I am able to reverse my epidermal order.
And often the effect is striking. I hope for my children’s sake
That I die with the secret intact. There is little more
comical than a sudden deathbed objection.

The sun seemed sudden at first, remember?
I saw it from a small hill bent against my only word.
But she happened to be the girl the grass demanded.

You Have No New Messages and They Are All Marked Urgent

After the Pentecostal basement riots

a certain asthmatic might find himself

Who has the power he asks in this red vault hole

to hold fast an unnatural parchment climax?

Might just wash a rope for the kick, the trapdoor

just as well a host piano ridden of its peckers

Protonutcase protected by a corps of generals

singing their favorite shellacs, pantsing the cadets

I will you into a plexiglass castanet, headache hour

the regenerative power is abstruse, obtuse, connubial

Roots of the world, retire to your balloon shorts

On pain of deathless preciousness, side realities

held in external escrow at the edge of a strawberry

Injury, my fellow, my compadre, may you never be

farther than Pluto when I dream of beatings shared

Pluto the reductive dogstar, the thing the emperor

(or was it the furniture king?) swapped his clothes for

Hirohito might have said it better, had this been a movie

of Bogart’s rattle

But I am he of your most ferocious tenting

snapshot, your whipsnake, the wagon latch that dropped

a door on your holy uptake, your penetration west

Cardinal Rivulet spat at the cancer swallows

And that’s how a tinstar melody is born

Or a tarbrush given to the feathered creatures

Expectation is a horrible thing to remove from its dome

That which he most feared was smoke damage to his clothes

He carried destruction in a billfold of human pelts

When they fucked I sang and walls of paper expanded

I shall today send to the bell for confirmation, that car

And how her nipple was worshipped by the hobbits

Where the feet of The Somme still patrol sharpened logs, taunting

And Cambodian keychains present you at Oedipal court

Yudhisthira has left the building, before it was built, burning cold

and left us alone, the countess, my Psyche, myself and la maid

Countless? Turn that hand over to me, we’ll roll it back to ‘73

With the dexterity of a body, a radical free foundling

lost in a muffler slide

Mermaid Sallies

1.

"God bells to you, Al."
He had barely said it
when The Wonder! occurred.

So much sympathy and anger in Saint
Louis. And a tone of mind
control in every comedy.

At least it’s over for the night.
A pin prick during the act.
Is it over for the night?

2.

he made his living collecting the huge
the first was a monolith butterfly
rarer than a tree
larger than a stack of Pontiac retirees

second was a train constructed by ants
of the main roads none are open
for the tales to be true a hat is required
they tell of him and the roundness of his arms.

3.

He remembered, too, how sweltering
it had been in the bedroom during
the secret.
Had smelled the weakness and her
support and the very specific threat
that made him come
for supper. Be eyeful, she lip-synced.
Laid on the wedding-clothes, waiting.
He jotted something
in a pocket dictionary. Pushed back
his feet from the stone enclosure.
The lights cancelled.

4.

"And so you know pain now, my fridge?"

Her face was stapled
and filed to a whisker.

Celinka et Giustino

hav youe rascales tyed hys ympermanence toe yone soure oraynge treye?
ae cartelle ownes thee ryghtes toe thee pureye settyng one youre blendere
ande collectse everye tyme youe mayke ae smoothye. hye ysn’t halfe ase goode
ate sermonyzyng one comedye typped barbes. Buttere ande egges
ande Frenche jokese ande finallye juste shute upe. thanke youe
fore thee use ofe thee trye-cornere hate ande cooeyng ine mye eare.

ande coconute. ande compleyte unexpurgatede calendarse
ofe ympossyblye syllye essentyale shyt. ae showe ofe cosynes
undere thee needyle hedge juste looke lyke ae lotte ofe absurde
numberes. ydyote veneratyones ofe thee bryttle, thee olde.

youre eyese hade eyese onyce, ande cupes enoughe toe appeayse
theme. nowe youe ayre lyttele moyre thane ae cayse ofe thee clappynge.
thee sune shunes youe. ande whene alle yse sayde, Ye ame noe longere
ae lottoe tyckete, ae mane ofe smalle ygnorable actse. Ye ame beycome coyne.
Ye haven'te thee tyme toe complete thyse ryme fore youre blynde schoole.

It’s all so very eighties. Rigged and netted before the books see print.
Played out in France where they don’t care where it comes from so long as it eats
like cheese. But the sovereignty of the puddle is unsullied.

Find a looking glass, look for the parasite, define the lines between ovaries and jackals.
This story is your own. Take it to the beach and show it the sun expanding.
Show it the tide confused by daylight savings.
Give a quarter to someone who doesn’t look needy.
Jump up into low orbit and hold your breath until help arrives.
Find this note and describe the bottle to the police sketch artist.

thyse ys thee houre ofe youre awakenynge, thene youe peryshe beyfore havynge solde thee secrete. Ye shalle halve ae goode laughe ate youre expense, thanke youe.
“yte yse thee felycytye toe shute upe whene one fyre, thee patyence toe wayte fore youre turne toe speake thate wylle ultymatelye showere prayse ande fonde poete morteme vytryole upone youe."

hyse coate wase ae longe blacke webe ofe vowelse. rentede acrosse thee streete frome thee strype clube oute ofe thee backe ofe ae layte modele vane. hys necke revealede the scares ofe ae faylede judgmente. thee clothe ofe thee shyrte collare hade beene torne ase yfe bye laughtere. ande thee rufflese ayte hyse throate.