Titular Head of the Bread Basket

the otter cannot see the other otter approaching under the ice

at night or the eel

against the eel colored blind spot on the spine of the culvert

destined in a fable

to reappear as a non-threatening penguin with airs of entitlement

and bleeding knee

an oink meant as a presentiment to the commission of the criminal

act of guffawing

at the visible boiling point in his education, buffed out by a gear in

a murder addition sign

and too well shaved for an emissary of the razors hailing on D.C.

take five shaved men

on a bandstand playing celebration to the chief, flying stormbound

against the comic rage

of Sarah McLaughriot in a perfectly white awning, winter pigeon

mannequins blown out

from their winter coats, twanged at by ice mosquitoes in toques



"There and then you'll be able to trial run your elephant fart routine

see if to do the unrated cut is acceptable

or you might get your share of ornaments removed from your senate seat

by swift downward pressure on the truth

the price an elected official can expect to pay off this national daisy chain.”



"Come, come, my fire engine, my end of the Chinese drill, no raccoons now.

What was the devil?

You wouldn't have sat in the real devil’s lap at the mall on end of sale days.”



"I had no eels with which to ram back your otter attack.” Tebald Greengill

Alcoa researcher had occasion to remark

”You are the only proof of your serpent charming license.”

See what your having friends has done?

“No donuts but you applied for a proving ground permit. By their thirst methods."

He was as thirsty as the day he was meant to have been born.



To be a paisley sacrifice, sister this and love thy that, all atheist biblical prating

and a tobacco pony reined to it.

The holders of the PO Box keys wherein the bombs were maintained at room temp

had made three milkshakes before noon of the day.

the mitigating circumstances drank too much sake in the sushi bar the night before

offending the none too goat friendly Panda keeper.

Would a pen full of lonely Panda and otter suspend convention?

You might if you had seen her.

The sight of her azure eyeshadow now brought it all back to him -

how he had coveted her catalog duds

and treasured the time she let him stroke her automatic elephant blunderbuss



whenever in the pen he thinks of his maximum penalty

he becomes sentimental

that shining moment he took the stage to present her to her party

and found the public attentive to her gun rack

regards it still as a present from the powers that fly in first that he himself was given

this singular honor, after he’d found the otters

had had another engagement and canceled with only a couple hours notice

She was wearing a dated dress he removed

with the crowd’s eyes as he entered her ahead of them.



"If," said Mr. De Volyooshun to a Gnome, "the deed to this hammered lid

was in fact the infamous overlook

it was only infamous in the sense that what is famous is fleeting

and what fleets fleets from a half steeped brain.

Its infamy is not in the Dillinger concealed in the wonder bra

but in how that fellow Marceau

was hardly a hymen.” The music of the death of pain got through.

And she looked surprisingly like an otter

in foam rubber runner up suit. An Oversight judges everywhere

will one day pay for.

The Sleep of the Just (Barely)

Now all the martyrs have been vanquished
who can we trust to translate a safe lunch
from the Mandarin? Is it a crazy ass chicken
scratch menu? Or an exquisite chronicle
of an ancient heartbreak? Is that even real
Amerikan Chinese? Where are all the funny
fuck ups that make the fire containable?

No one killed for justice in days. And yet
there is a school, the blackout windows
watch you waiting for a bus each morning.
Nature’s wondrous dance of watcher and bus
passenger freezing at the stop. The lateness
of conveyance again, value added continuity.
Muy Bueno. The lunge of the universe sings.

He gave himself an Oscar for his penultimate
orgasm but his speech exceeded the time limit.
The looming danger of too many essential people
to thank. Befriended by the very friendly deities
all acting together like a battery life. O, black
and uncharted errata, how convenient that you
can’t get anywhere from here.

The lurch forward of the stopping threw
the bodies back like a motorcade headshot.
Loud was the noise that was heard and aimed
the gazes of observers focusing on a pigeon
fight visible beyond the light-up destination
sign. These were among the inconsistencies
that made it a good day, but not in court.

Through the cyclone he lost none of his fat,
having studied the resiliency of the shithead.
He practiced imitating contracting stars, without
the concomitant fairytale emissions. Nothing of her
influence survived his scoliosis of the funnies.
That once self-described glib tongue already grafted
to a bone in the blistering end of the garden.


So how, again, was a martyr constructed?
It had to be according to some Chinese puzzle
where you line up the borrowed warheads. Not
without some help from the Self Inflicted Auto Dealers
Group. They use their children to annihilate your soul.
So says the broken cross to the shattered crucible
of Milwaukee’s Best, ignoring the irony.

Close your eyes. Visualize yourself on a beach
attempting to achieve an erection with the help
of only a single oyster cracker. You do not
feel salt in the breeze. You have no sense
but can say the words, “Remote” and “Safety”
into an empty chamber. You need more booyah
from your lack of prowess.

Let the inconsequence, of which that vast expanse
before your stitched lids is largely a familiar mower
path, bathe you gently in scalding tomato soup.
A bus-like military vehicle runs over you hourly.
Try to count backwards from one.
Pretend that a beautiful woman
can see you breathing.

They All Look Like Clerf Glock in the Dark

1.
Enjoy the feeling of the every day
and the doing of the thing
from time to time,
without surrendering
stress for the body and the mind
going haywire,
and a post-mortem look
at how well you achieved some sound
may be the easiest way
to pick up the check without paying
a portion of your heavenly wealth
or damaging your amplitude
as a status.

2.
Is it you or not you? She
wanders in at unhappy hour
lugging a dried up old typescript
of feathers, you, as angry as you
make the birds, forget the money
in so many frantic digits
it had gotten to the degree
where he made less than he owed
to me to tell him what not
to blow in his rent on.
he considered an equivalency
test in skiing. They shouted
and threw him down

the Matterhorn into Cervinia
like a human snowball, with thorns.
Joe Papoose and I agreed that
whatever that meant, say
a symbol for the collapse
of the buffalo nickel
or driving too far to buy
a map, it could actually be
the state of the union
of these two pigs. Respect
the uniform, the rest will
come out, like pox,
against the whispering rocks.

Resist and risk a second season
of Surmiser: Israel.

How to Impress Your Girlfriend's Girlfriend

roll up every foot of sod in her lawn
and replace it with a copy
of a very incriminating self portrait

hang her image in effigy
and tour the installation around the world
in low rent exhibition spaces

pretend to think she was obtained at auction
in the seventeen hundreds
and converted to Wicca by the pious master

when the drone from desire
sounds like a recon probe from deep space
remind her of slaying cattle

make a champion of your spare components
set him adrift with his lances
let the prevailing wind foster a son in her

say she was possessed by evil
spirits, one unresolved, populate her dreams
with huge eyes, dark clouds

throw fragile hearts at her Jacob’s Step-stool
disrupt her sleep with bells
deface her windshield with seagulls

after the great depression
it’s said they built enormous underground bunkers
find one and reinstate prohibition there

A chance is all we’re asking

Returned Unopened For Refund

The man on the square with the tongue in his hand was versed in speech.

He said, “Hear bombers overhead, you sons of panic! Hear dumb noise
as a deafening threat to farming. Hear yourself not caring. Do nothing
but stand and yowl at your shadow until you hear from me!”

The cleaning crew came through and shoveled the crowns and scepters
into receptacles shaped like the testicles of partially paralyzed bowlers.

It was dismally gay and festive.

“Get your coat cleaned and burned, Lojack.” And he did and looked resplendent.
Indeed, the snake that bit him, as an example, ended up swearing off red meat.

a) The son fixed upon a point
b) The wrong body for the job
c) A man named Margaret convinced them
d) The scales were leaned on with intent

That quiz you just took was a joke.
He did not intend you to act in any particular way.
And so you acted in that way.
Having slain the duration of your day.

A mold of a hand is created every time a hand is raised above cruising altitude.
A fancy way of saying your special order vagina just came in.

The Option Before the Final Option

“There is a footnote in my mouth,
it tastes like I imagine a bee might”, said Andy.

Andy who has not appeared in these notes
in several years. He is laughing, knowing he’s won.

There are many names by which Andy is known.
An act that modifies an idea is one.

The spiders, the circuits, the loss of contact.
Andy prefers to be able to scold, and fortunetelling.

The crime of tents or a mass absence of interest,
Andy witnesses, in Minnesota.

The Klan was a state first, the moving trees
The state where Andy was hoping, but failed, to be born.

We’ve seen this before in that no man’s land
which is formed by Andy and his blackface orchestra.

And again, salt reappears until he dances. then the doctors
who cured Lincoln conquer Andy, a variant strain.

Andy destroys the shrine of a great albino lizard, and the tomb
of an unlisted saint. These towers meant nothing, less now.

Lone Comma

The poisoned thorn, that I picked it up
was the cause and beautiful outcome
predestined by the bus accident down the street?

I was not in the poem subsequently published
it was a sporting event, good for the racists it decried
the noise of the sobbing distracted the driver

pinned by metal inside, she tries to think
of pale blue sand beaches, a man with woman’s features
regrets never having sex with a geode, or hardly

Sgt. Condo who served in the War of the Moment
the man of her dreams, an invalid with pay
a tree opaque, the emergency door held shut by kids

I have still not entered the performance, I am reticent
retired without severance, bitter about the 401K
no more cameos, I record the movements, I record the movements

of dust, airborne skin, on wet paint
what can you say about death in yellow, slowly folding in
the inevitable decline of third season sitcom writing

to be is not the question to be concerned with, ameliorate
it’ll do you no good in the long run, arms flailing
a matted montage of you and your only remaining horse

and she was invalided by a scale
certain numbers have no purpose, i.e. 249, 263, etc.
the interest of scarabs in reducing themselves to talismans

we’re thinking of naming the girl Sahara
the other girl Gobi
and the boy a very foolish thought

the one with the powers could not be divined
she tried to paint the sunlight yellow
butter with bread as excess baggage

Gaarbo Sensed in a Lead Vessel

the printed work is a statement, we’re leaving for the country.

the printed work is staring at you, we’re leaving you for the country.

the printed work staring at the yellow wall, left in a country of stations.


princess of the static moment.

her entombment, reminiscent of the freezing cloak, skirt afire, armor placard.


the wolf and the coyote might work together to confuse you.

the world and the coin might devour each other and split the profit.

the wolf might use the coin to alter his features, the coyote suspects.

a world of nothing but existence is a lousy nightclub concept.

the internet has changed the wolf forever.


the incessant howling of the moon at something in costume.


the printed work is a fated task, fated never to be printed.

work is its own declining orbit, being made as an offering to a toolbox.

the agonized mothers looking up at their children arriving with arms and allergies.


the word is printed upon the life.

the brilliancy of the city demands a replacement world.

the wolf is a doorway into a showroom of bargain wolves.

All On a Broach

The pig has its own symbolic right to display a grammar.
That was his argument, a pinch on the ass, common sex replicas.
The critters that cooked up a speech then couldn’t deliver the goods.
In every argument down here someone comes away a socket lighter.
Glue down more kids, the wings are out of balance.

There's no point in my considering this sentence, no fragment in a green
enameled bomb purse. I have a question of great unimportance, my life
is living in a rented room in Astoria. At last, the idea of marriage.
A Texaco horse from the enemy, circa one million CG.
Your argument for extinction; flashy, cruel, succinct. Hands?

The move to the new headquarters was wise. That winged thing
would have found a way in. And there goes your ballgame.
And there it goes again. Busy, ballgames, aren’t they?
Why is the one headed this way packing an RPG?
I will attempt to engage it in casual banter. “Excuse me, Red…!”

And there is where the story chose to end.

He has been a bullet with similar characteristics.
Speaking of the cavalry charging up Calvary, kindly escort these ladies
to the clinic until the lovelier ones arrive.
We have some elbow grease to spend.
And that’s how the whole darn love thing got started!
There along the mighty, muddy love barrel, barely of age yet
consumptive and raped with promise.
The song goes just like this.

I am a delicious dying crustacean.
I can fly into walls at ground level.
It takes a crew this big to clean the world or double your cancer back.
Think he could tell that he wouldn’t see Cuba again?
To hear him tell it there is no magical bull.
And still he insists on mowing from the underside.
Says things are never the same as you make them.

In this light, the magic hour I’ve mentioned in my epitaph, you can see
but only for flashes, and only into the nearer of the futures.
A full sized, conscious doll with great legs.
New paint for the Statue of Literally.
Baseball with guns.

Tell that fucker, Wiggins, if he don’t stop making that clacking
all goddamn night he gonna get his punk ass kicked good.

Unless Rueluas L’Aventure shows up with the pigs, look for me
on the center cross. It’s my beast to be, now, he fell off and left.
I think he went thisaway, looking for something. A hat, maybe.

I awoke in a room in front of a picture window.
The window was this screen.
I forgot to tell you I’m writing this on this screen.
Are you reading it on anything?
The light of the forest when insomnia reigns?
The dark when everything closes its eyes?

The story appeared to have finished some time ago.

The day, however, looked full of promise.

Brought Up In a Curse the Glass Goes White To

whatever doesn’t make you stronger kills your desire for change from strangers.
which is the way to arrive at your destination without having to leave the tub?
you will keep longer if you don’t age, or age in the presence of ice sculpture.
images of cats in desperate peril work best.

land is also improved by age. some said the real picture was of her hand.
arrangements of disparate bodies that others with empty sheds might buy.
the word chalcedony is painted over each numeral of my watch.
a lover remaining at the window as the police arrive.

it seems unfair to charge twice as much when you only give half the volume.
but then, three prices for everything. the parrot is watching M.
a hand set free will do everything it can to return home with bacon.
he can, for you, be, perhaps, not much, too late, we’re closed.

a penny for your pretty good guess. less for the common plinth.
he seemed perfect until he spoke.
he appeared to accept us on our own imagined terms.
the animals, though, were very nervous.