From Durham

Bull city cool

Means a nightclub

With bocce in the back. 

Durm has the illicit

Breath of an unshowered

Husband

DURM equals

The strength of a smokers

Hack divided by its

Patio beer garten appeal

Durham has a blue soul

That shines in dusk

And cares for your quality time

Duke makes a great 

Tie clip and ballpoint pen. 

Seventy year old alums

 and undergrads 

With apeish grins

Patrolling the storied

Oaks and columns and

Courthouses and brothels

Frat essence is the

Weighty gazes of ironic

Nicety impinging on

Barbarous crimson lust

Nervy carboro goons

That flex insouciant

And careen their dirges

Through your bull town

Long enough that they have

Erected a model home

Secret cruel and false

Ghosts

Still linger inside the 

Hollowed out tobacco factories

And slave fields and 

Mind the ancient country homes

 stained from deposed economies

Basketball is not a religion

But if it were this is Antioch

Addis Adaba 

Bedlam

and Zion all rolled into one. 

Durham denies

Involvement but I cannot figure

The source of sour pickled

Deep fried chicken on

A sourdough waffle

Otherwise. 

We make rattling sounds

As air is sucked out of lungs

By the massive implosive of 

Blue devil athletes

Imbibing their own

Flatus. 

Delicate greens souced 

In bloodless remediation

And served aside a light

Patê of indigents' bone

Digital corpulence 

Geer st stud shakes his

Halo on the corner like

A dervish under the

Lightless new moon

Corporate street 

Feels downright slumy

Next to the sleek marble

Inside every durm-era

Lovers' heart. 

Local cotton 

Isn't something you'll ever

Find (or desire)

In Michigan, but the Carolinian

Considers cotton A Matter Suitable 

and as soon as they forget 

It's no longer picked by hand

It will be artisanal too

Waiting at the Free Throw Line

I am the shallow God pausing heaven

To check a message online.

I am the divorced magnate that

cannot stop earning to be served.

I am the balding talent scout

whose envy guides his pen's stroke.

All lettuce should be green or tan.

I am a mortal rubber band

stretched around infinity.

I am tired of the lying eyes

of nightclerks and valets.

I am an auto wreck of dismissal

overturned eighteen wheeler

buried in a drift.

We don't float on:

no toll, no passage.

The corner inverts itself

to put out your eye

if you gaze too long.

Habeas corpus; show me how

to find where my body ends.

I am trying to redirect the flows 

that are too natural for broadcast.

I am the declawed cat batting

at a flimsy mouse of yarn.

I am the damp-pitted night manager

whose footsteps ring out dread.

I am a battery

soon to freeze to the lakebed muck.

This is all to say:

Anyone can make a scene,

anyone with talent can make a song,

but all time left on the clock won't come off to see you win it.

WE RESPECT THE THOUGHT LEADER

The thought leader stops

mid-sentence to order his thoughts

And the bridge of his armless lenses,

then calls to the communicants

"We've got to reconfigure status quo

non-synergistic adversarial business

relations and time-bounded multi-variabilty 

concurrent exposure analyses"

Each sweatsocked Communicant

wrested tight against the typing 

device cradled immaculately in

tremulous fingerless gloves

and   absorbing 

 shining

infinitudes of algorithmic joy 

The banner above his head reads

WE RESPECT THE THOUGHT LEADER

ABOVE ALL. 

The glass wand is tippled 

to the glass of his lenses and the

Statistical Feedback Projection

is aired above the communicants 

while they work, fastidious little

tinkles at their devices growling

and steam around their ruby ears

as the thought leader repairs

to the bottom of the projection

examining flashing screens like

a nun to invalid limbs 

And he screams in a singeing lurid breath:

"REDIRECTED THERAPY-ORIENTED POLYPRINCIPLED ROUTINE STAFF

EVALUATORY EXPLORATIONS ARE SCHEDULED IN ORDER 

TO MOST EFFICACIOUSLY CONTRIBUTE TO A GLOBALLY PRO-SOCIAL 

AND RELIABLY DISRUPTIVE LOCAL BEING REPLICATION ENTERPRISE

FUNDAMENTAL MOTIVATIONAL RIGORS DEFINED THROUGH PUNATIVE EMANCIPATORY-RESISTANT INTERLINKING AFFILIATIONS 

ARE ESSENTIAL TO MEDIATED INTRAPERSONAL MORALE AUGENTATION 

AND EMOTIVE SPECTRUM REFOCUSING

ACCORDING TO UNITED PEACE DICTUM 82G.4.6 THE UTILIZATION

OF RAPIDHELPER REROUTER ASSISTANTS COMPORTS WITH

PRIMARY DIRECTIVE ALPHA THROUGH YARIS"

and wire-wrapped chains shining like mercury

stream from the Teleportholes at the feet 

of the Communicants adorned with

sensors and blinking diodes like crown jewels

and crawl up the backs of the legs of the 

Communicants and come out their sleeves

shooting woven metal tendrils over their

fingertips and coursing shocks of light while

Communicants record the thoughts 

of the Thought Leader

to the pitch and cadence and 

restructure his 

Thought Matrices for relevance

and cross-referenced dictum consistency to

be pulsed out into Ear Vessels,

Mugaphons and Listening Jackets 

and to all the Rice Leaders and 

Spooly Feces Leaders and Tractor

Leaders and Xanthan Nougat 

Production Leaders and to

all of the Valiant workers

In the land who labor

justly under the paragonal 

Moment-changers of the

Thought Leader at his helm.

Life On The Third Coast

In the Summers we are Greek,
always tan bodied and often shirts left
We forget where now

And it's swimming and drinking

Of wine and sitting by a fire

On the beach.

And in the Winters we are Norse, 

wrapped in woolen everything

And eating cream sauce and pickled

Things and drinking warm meads

And we curl up by

The fires in our hearth. 

In between--

The heart clicks its heels and

Says good night before twelve,

Beating the groundhog

And the maple leaves to bed. 

Belle Isle and After

I showed how I put whiskey

into water to drink it without chasing.

Then they got it, to them the

Amber evening water took like moose to a bog.

The lichen was a pillow just as

the first winded fawn took to laying,

and so this is how I become a man--

once I'm needed, I'm made so.

. . .

Last night we finished off our whiskey

and pan-seared two lakers and a coho.

A hearty fish meal, so wisely all of

the whiskey drank on empty stomachs first.

We stood on the rock and moss outcropping

with arching down and away to the Lake

on all our sides but forward where we took

pictures and heavy fog settled among the other islands.

. . .

Came into the docks of Rock Harbor on a long

raining and chilled August day to set

across the channel to the big Island, rain

and whitecaps coming across steady as oak root.

For dress that rain-soaked, hard-paddling day:

polypropylene sock liners, costco woolies,

standard briefs and gray disintegrating jeans,

chaco belt, white long-sleeve top, rain jacket,

plastic bags and garbage bags and my keen water shoes

and I stayed driest and settled just for that.

Fortune/Fortuna I

Fortune/Fortuna

The peddler holds his eyes over the handle

bars and focuses on the street's cracks as far

down the way he can possibly manage

Tricks are the snap in his ear--

the very tricky leaves breaking beneath him

and his two smooth tires as the road

leads him far away from his home

Firepits he smelled last night still

pour out the odor of burned wood,

charred tree's flesh and charcoal and ash

like the mind of an alchemist unbent

Categories rip by his ears like street signs

and parked cars: admissible evidence;

Americanized cuisines; variations in

maple teeth; disrupted comedy routines.

Poultry; Vices; amateur athletics;

the list could go on as long as his

legs churn the pedals. The road has

begun to pitch down, quite slightly,

quietly and with a slightness all its own.

Anything

When I step outside my head will tilt back
and I wonder why
until I remember I must scan the dark sky
for some trace of the moon

full, half, sliver.

Anything
to remind me it's still the night's Sun
and the things under it
remain possible.

Rainy Day at Echo Lake

In deep of eyes shut as
scene gypsy gravel and opalescent owl 
bridgestone bridegroom blues 
and a hawk beating by like a helicopter.

The sun’s not out yet but brother blue sky 
is peeling back the grey and free 
blueberries grow around the vessels
colored bows.

I Swaying sidesaddle between a jack pine 
and his cousin white 
feeling chatter from other actioneers 
or low ground squirrels and some fish jumping by.

Feel serenely trumps while

tomorrow winds away. 

Trying Interior Lighting

How do you break off

something that is only real insofar

as you recognize it?

The clue from logicians points towards

forgetting.

But the act of forgetting is impossible

insofar as it is a non-act—a function of non-ness.

The reason we recall the things we'd like to forget

is the same reason we cannot get that fucking song

out of our heads.

To release a mind-thing is as difficult as is to create one.

Falling between cracks is your best bet:

get a new job, follow local sports teams,

bet on said sports teams and feel devastated when

you lose. Find hobbies that need nothing but

seamless concentration and follow through.

Go to conventions.

Do not get into bed to fall asleep

unless you're absolutely exhausted.

Day dream only of sex and money and ridiculous things

like dirigible world tours and escape artists that drown

in the shark tank and never see the air hose to their left.

Follow the news. Become engulfed in the news.

Become a news guru who is deep down dying

from the phonetic idiocy of the twenty-four hour cycle.

Regret everything, so long as you don't think,

because thinking means remembering,

and it is not what you want.

Don't think about what you want.

Deny even wanting anything and insist (both to yourself and others)

that you're floating placidly, even keeled,

rolling with the waves, relaxing in the doldrums.

Don't acknowledge boredom or fear,

these are things for the weak and those who remember.

Drink when you're in a social gathering and it's

socially acceptable and when you're in a social gathering

where a flask of scotch won't be noticed and

especially when alone and not busy.
Don't be “not busy”.

Funnel funds from fenced goods into an offshore account.

Take up squash.

Don't think too much about it.

Find a crevice to crawl into when hung over.

Make this crevice comfortable.

Decorate your crevice and never let anyone see it.

Think only when necessary, and when

the paths of your thoughts are fully predictable.

Never picture her face.

Never look at a picture of her face.

Forget every identifying characteristic of her face:

the tiny pink vee of gums that you see

under her upper lip when she smiles as wide as she can

and her lips curls up a bit:

dimples in rose:

eyes that recede from a stare; positively glimmer at a glance:

dream-like lashes and edges of incisors somehow mythic:

corners of the lips that curl in a frown or smile, just

how you imagine that Athena might makes faces—

never remember these things.

Grind down your teeth while you're sleeping

because the stress of forgetting is intense.

Borrow a massage pillow to help with the anxiety

of forgetting and remembering only shallow things

that let you sleep or watch TV without twitching

and trying not to remember.

Obsess over recycling.

Obsess over the intricacies of local conservation efforts

or the Dow or tennis form or trying to cry during old movies

or fingering the last corn nut without turning the bag upside down.

Obsess about your petty obsessions.

Change everything about how you eat.

Sleep without a pillow.

Get your hair Styled and Colored by a Professional

and when you're dissatisfied 3 days later go back and demand a refund.

Feign outrage. Don't consider.

Don't look at old pictures because

old pictures (even if she is not in them or even related)

will summon old memories of when you were less old

than you are now and this is merely a path of remembrance:

And remember: to forget is to live without this thing

you're trying to break off, and since it won't exist

if you don't acknowledge it

(truly) isn't this just it? Isn't this winning? Aren't you

a bare white dish of bone laid out for the feast

and never thinking

of the ox's hip and leg and body

you once belonged to?

A Twelve Thousand Year Love Affair

Agriculture gave us acne,
The Plague, and tooth decay. 

We gave her

Transgenic soybeans, algal blooms

And the dying of Winter. 

We have never 

been happier. 

Onyx Egg

I bought an egg of onyx
and a skull made from balsa wood
in the airy marketplace of Otavalo.

The plaza de ponchos a labyrinth
of cascading tapestries and pure
Alpaca knits and walls of sweaters

Felt hats and straw hats hechas a mano
and chintzy wooden trinkets and
a trunk of crumbling catechism books.

The sizzle of porks and skins and
Corn frying and a batter of cornmeal
touching the ears of everyone alike, even the

Wine creased face folded on the sidewalk
mumbling for sueltos and garnering no gazes,
his green felt hat dirigible and grimed

And the filthy tiny mutt dog lying beside
with scruffed sores and bent ears,
their plot and plight ignored as Chinese silks

by all but certainly by the man selling coca treats
and maté teas and leaves to chew for three dollars
but we haggle down to three for five

And flying about drunk munching hojas de coca
through bustle and rigor and pale, thrifty Germans
with thick wollen jackets abounding

and patterns of alpaca prancing through their zippers
all vanilla faced gringos like we are,
snatching up the droppings of the Andes

and leaving greenbacks for farmers and their
wives.

Learning Still

Slept out in a refuge,
A wooden platform with roof, the night,
Lauding open air and openness 
And alarm of cheery birds
And blankets of jackets
And sheets of tent fibers
And noble clouds growing
For our breakfast. 

Time again to rise and march
Down the mountainside
Between steep farms and 
Fences groaning trunks
Weaved with barbed wire
To valley, and city, and people. 

Still,
The exalted quiet of desert forest
Was my teacher for a night. 

Cosmic Drama - Tat Tat Tat. . .

I've always known 
the games you play,
You hide in eight part harmony 

In every one 
and thing and time
From salmon, Georgia, and the blind

You lie your lie
You think is true, beguiling stars
And mortal woe. 

You're hid so well 
we've plum forgot 
It's Turtle-turtle, bottom-up.

From wisdom 
Sheltered, knowledge, void,
The matter is we're all annoyed.

From me right now, 
you're hiding too--
You're all that is and I am too. 



Tat Tvam Asi

Light Pollution

Do you hear that?

It's the whispering of stars

To their neighbors. 

Do you see that?

It's a thousand suns being born

In the blink of your eye.

Do you feel that?

It's the full moon swelling

In it's womb. 

Let us not forget distant

Glimmers of hope

While our world devours itself. 

The Road to Puyo

The scent of the hog hanging by it's snout from a thatched tienda 
we zip by on rented beat-up mountain bikes and the jungle road to Puyo
all filling up with a longing for something holy and foreign. 

Eighteen wheeled rumble and honk, leaving little spaces 
For tires and legs and raw feelings of spraying rain 
And the tilt of my head and frame to avoid 
the rooster tail whipping up into my eyes. 

A tunnel approaches on la izquierda 
we keep a la derecha onto la ciclovia of octagonal tiles striped lengthwise 
with sopping cobblestone and sometimes gravel 
and sometimes mud and sometimes puddles and sometimes a stream 
that comes a third up the wheel and peppers you everywhere with agua sucia. 

Maple - Fall - Stream (draft 2)

Several hypotheses occurred without evidence:
Openings in choral forests drown in the sun's
utter light, the omission of umbrage, foliage.

A leaf that was holy in its fingerling etchings.
This was no mistake of voracious feeding,
of a scaled pinching insect.

Circuit grazing empties skin
with the sureness of itself as canvas--
carbon detaching itself to find a mate,
a something that combines.

A little bit of every something in the shape
of this leaf, the flowering river waves
dense with shadow, steeped in silt.

The twitching (stained glass workshops)
of the scaled pinching insect manifest
the mouth of God Inside.

The little bit left in-between
comprising strokes.

The left behind composes more
than the glimmer on the stream.

Sunless Morning v2

The morning of the 26th of September

all of the frost was in my teeth and hair.

I had it out the night before with a witch

who claimed to turn hawk's tails

into animal souls and sodden cardboard into their bodies.

The nightwinds blew into howls
as she leaned her crooked back against

a big birch and sang to leaves as they fell.

I had my hands around a dead branch that had fallen

as she flicked her gnarled fingers through the air.

I kept saying This is Nature!

this is nature

not your stodgy incantations, frump

she just smiled and continued loosing letters

into the waning light of the moon.

              This a fortune told
              now this is a spell 

              of some substance 


A talisman she held

above her head and thrust into the bark:

orange wire wrapped around the notches of a cross,

the cross with a loop, copper and steel:

the ankh came from her fingers 

and stuck into the tree.

Cross a witch as she gilds a spirit and it will follow you.

The pine marten switches feet as it hops across the dirt,

I've been still, watching from the window a sunless morning,

watching as it hops along, tracing frost through soil

and leaving snow amid its tracks.

Ritual

Happy as a swale he climbed to the sandy peak and cast eyes to the sweetwater sea before him. The sun was setting on Lake Michigan equal in spirit to his eyes as they followed through wave and spray and gas and dust. Sixteen gulls wheeled through his sight before the Sun met its end beyond the horizon and each one had its feet lifted to its body. The zooming gulls caught light on their wings and swore to the moon as it lifted itself up beyond the layers of vapor. Several stars peaked through abating fill of rosepink clouds meager at their edges, more moderate nearer the moon. The first brightest light met the eyes as a vision filled the mind, suddenly, the visage of Mars appearing glow-red. As rosy fingers gave way to blue nigh dark the breeze carried smoldering pine boughs to the mouth and nostrils, pleasing memories. Turning to see deeply above, he fell back to antiquity glinting from the stars gazing down to him and the fire he had made. Stooped over a dry stake prodding fire with his neck crook'd to the sky as before and before and before man had done to see.  The guiding light below his feet cast for fortunes and dreams, the ones above for fate and season.  Perching as he had below the night above the sweetwater sea with fire at his feet, a timeless ritual glowing around and in him

Sunless Morning

The morning of the 26th of September

all of the frost was in my teeth and hair.

I had it out the night before with a witch

who claimed to turn severed tails

into animal souls
and sodden cardboard into their bodies.

The nightwinds blew into howls
as she leaned her crooked back against

a big birch and sang to leaves as they fell.

I had my hands around a dead branch that had fallen

as she flicked her gnarled fingers through the air.

I kept saying This is Nature!

this is nature

not your stodgy incantations, frump

she just smiled and continued loosing letters

into the waning light of the moon.

This a fortune told, now this is a spell 

of some substance, this the talisman she held

above her head and thrust into the peeling bark:

orange wire wrapped around the notches of a cross,

the cross with a loop, copper and steel:

the ankh came from her fingers 

and stuck into the tree.

Cross a witch as she gilds a spirit and it will follow you.

The pine marten switches feet as it hops across the dirt,

I've been still, watching from the window a sunless morning,

watching as it hops along, tracing frost through soil

and leaving snow amid its tracks.

Life's flesh

I feel it everywhere, the bite and suck of life's flesh at my lips as its juices trickle down my front and the sweetness it can hold is wrung all from the fibers. A fiend's rush to his dope is the kiss I suck from each dull hallway waiting library sucker punch reception room drizzle desked office spacing drear. You pushed me out like a dragging soaking dog from the clean carpet tombs and white-blind bedroom spots of earth flung to the flowers all mashed beneath my heels as I glanced up at a beatific moon shining through the window in your eyes and without it I couldn't show you how I rang so truly when you clocked me that night, with your tongue so tight wrapping itself around my cerebellum's cord and thrusting heart that then I leaked all purple light and have not stopped since trying to hurl myself toward the rawness of indiscretion and in seeing you opening like a lotus first budding at the magic of my mouth and the fire oh the fire you sent from your eyes to mine the very halo sunning vibrant gods from crypto-Roman mountain peaks that minute you walked up to me and felt eager to feel me eagerly that minute I surrendered to the rush inside us both.