The best sort of writer’s block

Poets are a funny tribe — scaling heights by plumbing depths;

my pages lay fallow my pen wadi dry

I’ve written through my saltwatered time &

my concepts are crystals cutpolished for clarity and shine &

Gee Dubbya isn’t president &

I’ve been too busy fucking to write a poem

Oh sure the world still injustices and needs a poet’s utter

& sure some ideas may need a spit & shine &

lovescars can crack again like bones brittled by breaks & bruises;

life can offer kernels poetic from places unseen &

no doubt it will

but today today today

I’ve been too busy fucking to write a poem

& yes Erato you can be the ficklest bitch

amused to be wooed

with sacrifices of salt & blood

but today today today

I’ve been too busy fucking to write a poem

& it looks like it’s gonna be

that way

tomorrow

conception: love

horrific & terrific

once meant the same thing

Jazz Diamanté

cool

assured aloof

muted flowing easy

trumpet saxophone blueness blaze

fingering flying enflamed

intricate furious

hot

A September Sonnet-6 months later

ok - now it is not 6 months, but 8 years later.....



A September Sonnet-6 months later


I’ll try to tell you everything I know.

I find I cry at stupid things these days,
wiping surreptitious tears away at
the end of every television show.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
My love, the future, has arrived at last.
Crazy time is spinning honey fast,
that is, unless it’s dripping acid slow.
21st century started this way:
Supreme Court declared democracy’s death.
Some motherfuckers blew some buildings up.
They tell me silence is the best thing to say,
but great lungfuls of music can’t be corrupt -
each day is a poem, created by breath.


March 11 2002

Clumsy

You dropped a poem & stood there — looking lost.

You dropped a poem & stood there — looking lost.
The audience sat in silent sympathy.

You dropped a poem — dropped a poem in the woods. yeah
Mmm — You dropped a poem, dropped it— in the woods.
You dropped a poem poem right in the woods — hmmm.
Since that time, girl, it ain’t been no good. no no
been no good. 

You dropped a poem like a DJ; dropped it
like a bauhaus breakbeat BITD
in a Brooklyn warehouse where sweat & ecstasy suspensions mist
the air the way clouds whisk by windows landing
at LaGuardia on a rain-soaked afternoon.

You dropped a poem in the woods. Did it
make a music?

You dropped a poem & you dropped
again & then again
hanselgretling your way through;
Did you honestly think those crumbs
could lead anywhere but the oven?

You dropped a poem when you dropped us.

You dropped a poem in your sleep
& it fluttered by
like a butterfly on gossamer wings
O! the beauty

You dropped a poem just because it didn’t phone
you on your birthday.



You dropped a poem & the concrete
cracked, the chasm chunking
open with an icebreaker crunch
& the collapse can continue
until civilization ceases to matter.

You dropped a poem — dropped a poem in the woods. yeah
Mmm — You dropped a poem, dropped it— in the woods.
You dropped a poem poem right in the woods — hmmm.
Since that time, girl, it ain’t been no good. no no
been no good. 

You dropped a poem — I picked it up.
Anything can happen.

The opposite of gravity

I was sure on that day a generation ago

we bought our first color tv
to watch the grey-on-grey grains
the screen & the surface
& the very first footstep

I’d raise my family in space
or Tranquility Base
& life would float lightly
with many marvelous things

one of the first things I still can remember
was my ABC book
I think it was called
Space Alphabet
b was for booster
v – Van Allen belt

& the world took the shape of its vessel: hope
that echoed the hope of an eight-year-old boy
(that’s eight-and-a-half & moving to space)
implicitly promised space-age adventures

Gus Grissom’s death was the first one I cried at

& now family is coming & I still live on Earth
& I have to admit while watching tv &
some sci-fi comes on & someone
flies off across space
I might feel the small hollow where that historical future would have snug fit
In the pit of my stomach
but then I remember that we rocket along

67,000 miles every hour


& that helps me float lightly
& seek marvelous things
(tranquility base)
& I wasn’t far off

June 20 2004

35th anniversary of Apollo 11

The Montana of My Mind

{i started a new notebook, but there are always a few bits that never quite became anything else, in the old book; I think of them as orphans. the title of this poem was going to be "orphans from a notebook", but then i came across one that I thought was a much better title}



The Montana of My Mind
(Orphans from a Notebook: ‘08-‘09)





•••••

Transparency is good
for governments, windows, &
water

Not so much
for Granny Panties

•••••

Agnostics are ontological pussies

•••••

Slowetry

•••••

What if Prez
had worn a
porcupine hat?

Would he sex his sax
more carefully?

•••••

The most redundant book
ever:
The Bible for Dummies

•••••

The distant thunder sounds lonely
or is that me?
I always get us confused

•••••

radiation rover (a malignant sonnet)

(in memory of charlie rush)



hollowed out by explosive growth
sadder than a fado song
walking his dog that’s lived too long
boneshadow shared by both

shufflewalk snuffle
each aged in dog years
each looking dog-eared
under the scuffle

radiation bake; will it kill or cure?
golden brown & remissious?
cellular stalker, quite vicious
the host or the cancer? unsure.

you have to take a breath sometimes
when you choose between life and death

Outside Ottamanelli’s

there was a second there
even though I had forgotten my black and white scarf and the April wind
blew the New York wet and cold that can only be blown in New York
when it isn’t winter and it isn’t spring and the sun hasn’t shined since you got back into town
and there was this still second when I knew spring was coming under
my fur in an animal way like that red sense of food just off awareness
maybe fleet running prey or yellow papaya
but I knew something else some sidewalk satori
all motion ended and focus was tight
and everything CLICKED and I loved New York and I loved
all these people and the deep chocolate taste of grimsweet reality
and felt the spring that I smelt on that absence of breeze
in the middle of the block right there on York Avenue wasn’t a matter
of orbits and daylight and axial tilt but rotations and revolvings
of a more metaphorical sort and
rebirth never needs dying
and then I turned into the butcher’s and thought about dinner (duck I believe)
without even realizing what had just happened and just what it was that I’d just forgotten.

Acting the Asshole for all the Right Reasons

… didn’t want my skin
to make a promise
my meat and lightning
couldn’t keep

Skin can be treacherous
a snake sheds
skin for absolution

You turn
silence into song
doubt into depth
unaware how love’s
engendered

Skin on skin
is a common goal
sparks fire fine as far
as that goes
but silence and depth
deserve lightning

Fundamentalist Orthodoxy

Not a platonic cock
Not Jesus’ cross nor
Washington’s spire
Not Shiva’s linga
nor any potent metaphor
Not a doodle doo cock
Not an abstract cock
Not your cock
My cock
soft @ rest or hard to rock
I worship my cock
like a phallic Taliban

phallah hu akbar

(middle)East Side

Yofi Yofi
Let me buy you a coffee
or kiss you – even better
cause it makes me feel b’seder
like a varsity letter
on a blue and white sweater
from Hebrew university

When you fress my banana
it’s just like Rosh Hashanah
Yeah- the head of the year
like primo red-Leb gear
of kif from Morocco
psycherotic sirocco
blowin’ down my spine
and blowin’ my mind

Good thing I’m circumcised
cause you know I’m super-sized
and I don’t need no trayf cheese
Hebrew national to my knees
you know this kosher meal
going to make you moan and squeal
like a hazzer in a sty
So don’t be toyin’
with undersized goyim
who don’t know what to do
like Snoop Jewy Jew

Sound Poem

The predawn still is broken by the warbling of the muezzin, intoning the song to prayer. You stir by my side in the silverblue of not quite light as the cry streams in from each Marrakesh minaret offset in time. Even to an infidel this; this sound shared; this moment of divine aware shared, by everyone in the Adhan’s range, is beautiful, in its morning musical wakefulness. More so by your skin in alabaster against mine. Another voice and another and another and another join the chorus and the sound eddies out out across Arabia.



125 BPM of tribal drums and saucer sounds pounds our skin in a sonic fingered massage. A night of dancing under a Goan moon fades under the Indian sun. Bodies writhe in rhythm around us; No need to talk, pointless, only a shout could be heard. We fuck, standing up under a tree, behind branches overhung and held to stay upright, unseen by DJ satoris and swirling techo-sufis. Blanketed and buffeted by sound. Music. Sound. Beat. Sound. Alone. Surrounded. Sounds.



Beyond our building, the bedframe bang, the bedspring squeal, the liferhythm of belonging inside, wails through the walls.



Screaming fights and recriminations; seething frustrations; guttural expectorations pregnant with fear and fire and ire and loss. Neighbor waking exhortations, midnight palpitations, self-righteous orations, unmet expectations.



Iberian sounds surround us; sibilant Spanish and the round sounds of Portuguese play atop the bass and drum rhythm section rumble of train over track train over track train over track train over track. The endpoint cities lay so far ahead and behind that the only light whispers from our windows. The full train feels empty, you fill every nerve, no other sensation gets through. The music of your sighs between Madrid and Lisboa is a fado song, of incomparable tone; we fly across the peninsula; the peninsula flies by our window, almost unseen, against the moonless night, lit only by the sparks from your skin striking mine.



The BoopBoop susurrus counterpoints a baby’s cry. And another. Gurney wheels stalk the hallways morning noon and night. Coos and cries and newborn fears are the symphony of joy and doubt and irrevocable change. The dripdrip of fatherhood sweat. Every mother a martyr an angel a frightened delight. Another baby cries. This one nearby. This one shatters all possible peace. This one is ours.




Louder than those is the silence following the final footpad click of the closing door.

Sizzonet

(with apologies to petrarch & snoop doggy dog)


I’m lyrical empirical
nearer to a criminal
than poet in a hymnal
or Norton Anthology
Fear my psychology
my guerilla ontology
offers no apology
when your cerebrum gets frantic
from how I drop my iambic
a verbal alembic
distilling thoughts leaden to auric
ideas so phat they’re caloric
ignore it
if your mind can’t do meteoric

8 things I should be writing a poem instead of doing

1. Contemplating intricate incursions through folded space/time to finely re-finish every flirtation and conversation in the manner my memory demands.


2. Feeding P. Pan at the expense of the man.


3. O Maw! O Stomach! Y/our insatiable need for supplication and adoration is an aberration – suggestions of ingestion won’t answer questions indigestible throughout the night - besides we ate 2 hours ago - turkey on rye


4. Failing at trying not to masturbate.


5. Riding the Cathode Carousel for a 3rd time around – just in case - this time- I find the gold ring.


6. Blinking my lids must take –like- 38 minutes and the clock keeps on lurching in great fits and starts 1:37, then 2:08, soon a quarter to four and I still haven’t reached the end of the line on this great tangent train to the town of Minutia by way of whistle-stop websites hitherto unenvisioned and points further west.


7. Nothing.


8. Anything.

Is it still writer’s block when you just don’t give a shit?

A million words and nothing’s changed

A million tries and it still seems strange

A million lines and a million breaks

& nothing feels like it’s going to take



A million letters make a million poems

A million smiles and still no home

A million steps and I’m still here

& nothing new to hope or fear



A million years since I crossed the sea

A million tears dried inside salt-free

A million reasons not to deposit ink

& nothing fresh to say or think

inauguration day ditty

goodbye bush hello obama
the past has a period the future a comma
let’s start the healing from yesterday’s trauma
goodbye bush hello obama

Buccinalia (for Robert Gibbons)

In a shaded cove
a flower grows
vivid
wishing he is steel

Buccinal petals
trumpet flowerness
“flower” “flower” “flower”
Forging steel

Turn soil & struggle
shit & sun
into bright burnished petals & peals of flower
& steel

Trumpets rarely flower
Flowers rarely trumpet
Edge your petals in sharpened steel
Root your roots in hidden steel

& blow & blossom
& blossom & blow

where eagles turn to ice

Where eagles turn to ice
& pines whisper rhymes to snow
I will pitch my tent & gather
wood & wait until the thaw
cocooned until the thaw

The mountain flows until it’s sand
& snow piles mountain high
Lost in white on white on white
sightfrozen ‘til the thaw
igloo’d until the thaw

My clothes will smell of smoke
& dust; my ears a shout
in air and amber-trapped
until the thaw
And amber never thaws

3 Sijo

I


It’s all playground politics and chimpanzee relationships
Only one universal law: how you treat the other
Karma/dharma are just metaphors but flowers bloom each spring



II


Pleasure is often underrated; need is a poor principle
A Spartan life may suit some people but it’s not robustly
satisfying. Wake up! Wake up! Joy is the payoff




III


As the shoot springs from the soil, as water shoots from the spring
As the blossom becomes the fruit and as the fruit wombs the tree
As hope floats at sunrise, so mind, self, and soul, bubble from brain



(the Sijo is a Korean syllabic form. from wiki: "Sijo may be narrative or thematic and introduces a situation in line 1, development in line 2, and twist and conclusion in line 3. The first half of the final line employs a “twist”: a surprise of meaning, sound, or other device.")