How to Lose One's Identity

I no longer have the strength to believe.

The absence of belief is my one belief,

Like a hole in my private ozone.

These spectacular flames, these oblique rays,

There is no speculation I might have

That has not already occurred.

It has been handled by everyone and you

By the time I finally take it up.

Wisdom would have to be something

Felt by all from all eternity,

Something fallen nearly into neglect,

Shined up, and placed, exactly, here.

One loses confidence in one’s touch.

I drank the broken gate before it closed

To me forever.  Some sightless man looks back

Now from a respectful distance.

I wish I could move forward or go back.

I, the statement of fresh water

El Desdichado

I am the Inconsolable,—the Widowed,—the Dark Sire,

The Prince of Aquitaine of the demolished Fort:

My one Star is dead,—and my constellated lyre

To the Black Sun of Melancholia pays court.

In the night of the Tomb, You who did console,

Give back Mount Pausilippe and the sea of Italy,

The flower that so pleased my desolated soul,

And the trellis with Vine and Rose in filigree.

Am I Lusignan or Biron?...  Eros or Phoebus?

My face is still red from the kiss of the Queen;

I’ve dreamed in the Grotto where the Siren swims...

And twice I’ve crossed Acheron singing hymns,

Voicing, by turns, on the strings of Orpheus,

The Fairy’s cries and the Saintly Woman’s spleen.

Gérard de Nerval (1853)

Welcome to My Magazine

Another summer left us rich in bikinis
And rich in friendship. My friends
Let us toast the acres of air that separate us,
The forests of people who come between.

Indeed, we share many of the same habits:
Staring intently, listening closely,
Hiding behind curtains, even on Sunday.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

But I can! It's surprising how close
Long-range photography can bring us. I know
Your begonias are growing nicely,
And we're on opposite sides of the park!

Some day, I want to be inside the radius
Of the perfumes you apply so liberally.
Some day, we'll think of the whales,
Probably almost at the same time.

You could say we're inching closer
To intimacy. The slow creep where
Neither of us occupy the moment,
Yet the moment, like here, wants to be there.

The Boat, Drunk (in progress)

As I traveled down impassible Rivers,

I no longer felt the pull of the guides:

Loud Redskins had emptied their quivers,

And nailed to dyed posts their bare hides.

As I went down impassible Rivers,
I no more felt the pull of the guides:
Howling Braves had emptied their quivers,
And then nailed to bright posts their bare hides.

Frack This

When I pooped Detroit, I was only kidding.

The quagmires of capital have soaked the galoshes

Of future gardeners (rat poison!), I mean goddesses

Splattered with snatch-burning honey.  AOI

The furnaces in your eyes remind you of yourself—

How saintly—before you were born, raging in vitro

Like violent oyster sewage as delicious

As turnips in a musical.  Ovarian meat-grinder!

I won’t harvest you, fat morass, without a note

From your physician.  Please inspect the timbers

Of all strings and woodwinds prior to fellatio.

Must you refer to me as “my cabbage”?

Every third line I vomit in the solarium.

These marble stairs warbling since 1066 sag

Like the tits of an old dog, thousands of them

Arranged in a cloistered spiral ascending

To a locus amoeba, all fish in the trees, of course,

Because it’s spring and I’m in love with a shoulder blade.

Thibaut, send one down to the princess of hell.

I did some work there but the fornicators kicked me out.

If Death Came in the Alps

If death came in the Alps I wouldn’t complain

Inter me on the silver road

The parking is free

And from beneath a slab of glass I’ll watch

Snowy atoms of fire descend all day

And every evening the dark ascent of night

There I will dream of quietness

            And I will drift alone into the wilderness

The tyranny of the human face will lift like a fog

No more listening to sloppy talk

And what must still be done will never come

When I leave it all behind

Like a bird flying straight into the sun

The lunatics were asking about you
            They wished you were still here

                        The silence of infinite space was my reply

Some things are deeper than snow

            Although right now I can’t think of any
The inviolable blue of my hands and face
            Will be for distant stars to contemplate
 And I will coolly gaze on passers-by
                         Marching into the flames of history

Hand Sanitizer

Since when was stupidity an impediment?

We’re all equal:  one asshole, one vote.

If I sharpen my speech, will you come home?

Or did you want me to cozen you with purple?

There is nothing to say

And we like it that way

The most anticipated poem of the year

The most constipated novel of the year

Keep out of the reach of children

They are infectious and virulent zombies

Water

You are a very serious baby.  They didn’t think you had the guts to wear the monocle before the House.  The chaos of your mind solved the problem.  Tank-lined streets.  The earth shifts her chthonic slumber.  Harvest comes in like stooks.  (What the fuck is a stook?)  More barbarous than beauty.  Unchained at the lip.  The buildings are next to the park and the park is next to you and all of us are inverted in space.  I don’t want you to sit there.  Change my diaper.  After I slaughter this ethnic minority.  Notes pocketed.  The smallish senator from Kentucky an intelligent fanatic would like to offer a platitude.  Eat me.  Prometheus to the vulture.  Cacophony sometimes dips into a splay of order.  The still-moving substance of everything that is.  Infinite.  White.  As a wave pushing back the edges of nothing.  Why is this a zero sum game?  Thales was right about you.

The Rendezvous of Parallels

Mnesia, I love you

The stars and stripes of your breasts

Your digitalis at dawn

Why can’t we be distant and happy?

Let me be clear.

After splashing around

With abstract dolphins in canals of light,

I knew we were immortal.

If you are reading this

And feel like you are fading,

You are not alone.

I am that twinkle in the sky.

Assembly Required

The flowering trees have resumed their monopoly.

They get by on their good looks and the rain.

Being full of shit is no handicap in politics.  Apparently.

If you are finished, I will eat the rest of your meatballs.

This thing we are about to do cannot be rushed.

Who “we” are is not your concern.

April is the poetry month, or the Black History month.

All history is black.  (I knew you were going to say that.)

How much longer before the poetry starts?

Of all the days of the year, you had to pick this one.

You can savor every morsel, or shove it all in your mouth.

One is not terribly happy with the results.

The critical voices are circling with their indifference.

The cruelest one can’t even be bothered.

If you have somewhere else to be, this would be the right time.

I am a person only when I am personified by others.

Sorry to keep you waiting.  It won’t be long now.

I love you more than glossolalia.

Everything returns only intensified and wilder.

The authorities are protecting us from others like themselves.

One corporation may hide another.  Thanks, Kenneth.

A slight pressure to cohere is detectable now.

The page is not the surface, the rhythm is.

The intervals of silence between sentences is growing longer now.

This poem is not on any schedule.

There has never been any more consistency than there is now.

A change in rhythm is a change of surfaces.

Cherry tomatoes, white beans, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar.

There are lines in this poem some readers may find stupid.

Beware of your own stupidity, Cocteau said.

A line is written in the air by a jet plane.

We have been floating down the river of the afternoon.

The longer this poem takes, the more unwieldy it becomes.

It is like speaking when no one is listening.

Meanwhile a spy satellite is reading over your shoulder.

Every line is unique and has emotional content.

I’ve spent a long time learning how to construct them.

You've got to break the rules to know them.
The past does not, will not, nor ever did resemble the future.

This poem is greater than the sum of its critics.

If you are still here, kiss me!

Zinc Skies

Molten thoughts disappear under the sidewalk

Where the pressure of progress tamps it all down

Something pulls a hamstring a comet unquenchable

A bundle of cracks like smiles in the ice

Your mouth pent up against the glass

When there is nothing left there is still there

Gazing into itself whence the fold or the crack

With the thumb of dawn poking out

And everything returns only intensified and wilder

If that is conceivable to lovers

Amazed by the stupid things that replace you
Somewhere beyond the last filling station

In the province of disappear

The withering honey of reality
The bride of the city one hand around your throat

Canton

Who fixes the machines

when they are buried in the deep

dark ground? The night, the train

is endless another unbroken

line that can never stop long enough

to read the faces in the windows

like fingers smoothing down the folds

of a coat feeling the weft

and wanting to go deeper,

or a drop of water, alone,

at the top of a tower of glass.

Let’s not name the ways

our hands have touched the dirt today.

I’d rather focus on the grass,

the Chinese tea and not the past.

Theory of Travel

I am the angel of speed !

My instruments—jets, wheels, and walking sticks !

The boy with the bright blue jacket soaks his shoes in the surf

The woods were already cut when he got there

Beyond them the domes of the capital rise against the evening sun

He follows the red highway to arrive at a closed hotel

As a piano established in the Himalayas

Hollows out the canyon of its presence,

A train curving along the mountain’s edge

Climbs up above the cloud-habitats of men.

She had left herself and all of him behind

For where she was not likely to be found:

“If I could demolish the rules and keep the tradition,”

She said, “romantic and melancholic and austere,

Pieces that would be handed down, like a shawl,

To escape the repetitions of afternoon,

Mechanical thought, the habitudes of house

And home.”  The widow floating on the lake

Viewed the orchards and terraces of Ko.

My angel, my soul, my hypocrite

Imagine the luxury and languor of travelling first-class

In leather seats that recline into a chaise longue

Espresso exported from Peru to Venice

The latest financial news printed on pink paper

White burgundy black velvet blankets

Sleepy cigarettes, white chocolates that burn the throat

When privacy is optimal

You embrace me like a viola da gamba

Glancing around the cabin as we break the sound barrier

Here everything is decadence and pleasure

Repose, extravagance, and leisure

We notice on the ferry bound for Naxos

The color of the sea, when one looks straight down

And not from a distance across its beveled planes

It is as the poet says, not green, not blue

I pluck you like a sheep

From habits where you sleep,

Of body and of soul,

(The last, more powerful)

To keep you clean and clear

Of useless care and fear.

I might send you on the road

To lighten up your load—

Or plop you down a chair

So you may travel there.

There Is No Recipe

The poetry of this life is the clarity of this life

The elevation and the elegance of it

The clear seeing into it—which is also transport

It is beyond the truth, not tricked

Reduced, as a sauce is, intensified

One can construct it out of anything

Cancer as bright as conception, all assembled

In freedom, jinxed, and clear