R in C

the Republicans in Congress
the Republicans' incompentence

7/20/06

sit down / outside

Architecture
of the cloudy day
blows painted
in blue, white,

grassy tree-green,
and fills spaces,
joins and girders,
pronouncing time

in physicality
across the broad
volume of rest.

5/22/05

stop seeing consequence, start seeing conscience

I’m looking for my
wave of conscience,
my blast to shift
the naked invisible
cartwheels of atoms
and regret. no contact.
it doesn’t come with
the pearly sun, it
doesn’t make any
appearances today
while there are
shadows touching
asphalt. spectrograms
can’t pick up conscience,
can’t see belief
on a radar screen, can’t
plot on a table
the effect of perception
on a seeing-eye dog
when the light turns
red. only his paws
are hot on the sidewalk.
no regretting now, no
consciences. days
thin out again in
surprising ways,
and easy enough
to forget yesterday
or last night or where
you came from an
hour ago.

6/30/06

2 hypnagogia verses

we took it to the other house.
better not to leave the bull there.
better keep coming around to feed it
until someone takes it away.

--

to make the books legitimate,
he had the pages bound with
cream-colored paper and
facsimile impressions of human skin.

7/17

the horizon's my own

oh, the horizon’s my own,
the painted trees and stars.
home again with light fading,
home again with the wasps angry.
a stake and concrete circle
serve as protection from nature,
while the roof stays firm
and seasonal harmony sustains
us through simplicity, blank stare.

9/11/05

stand still

1

collapse of the
imperfect tense—

break

2

Chichen Itza,
hurting history.
Chichen Itza, there's          no more
moving stones

3

canto terra cotta.           build
with concrete.

arches make a level base.

4

have broke the           speech
the hunger standing.           now indeed
have stand still

                       bottom of this
linguistic cliff.

7/12/06

Chechnya, you are free now we

7/10/06

random sounds a lot like planned sounds

what if Schoenberg
couldn’t count to 12?
then we would’ve
had two John Cages.
and a bird between
two cages is free.

7/7/06

geographical denial

what if I
simply refused
to accept
your claim
that there's really
a place called Boone, Iowa?

7/7/06

after the poetry meeting

Volume? Context?

They were selling enjambments by the jar
down on Hennepin,
villanelles & sonnets at a discount.

“You see, we’ve got
structure going for us here,
it can be panacea,
poetically at least.”

Sour grapes for the fox?
Indeed!
“This lane ends.”
And dumps us in Eau Claire,
11:00 pm Saturday—
you can bet nothing’s going on in town.

... struggling to keep
my mind on the road.

May 21, 1999

part of a Superstitious People

But to have the thing and hear prophecy’s river,
did we want or didn’t we: Babylon visited us
late at night. The city said it bends its feet.
Here’s trees. Bare philosophy without a stop.

“Is it truth?” Snakes are come,
not scared by a demiurge, by a sacrifice.
This is how the people jumped off
no cliff at all, and we found things that fell.

We can see the brown riderless body
when nothing moves outside the cave
along the cliffs — we are from there,
are they from you? I am one of them.

Among them in a wagon is the holy container.
Through it, we enter the forbidden place
that is from another place but is not an end.

But there the like of all these fortunes
appears to us, as forward motion. This image
of us curses the goddess, down are the thoughts
they told you, my sockets. She is superstitious,
a feeling swells down to the created chamber.

She will always lie with us. Because, out of
this cave, what is it to us, as Men see the eye
in the end, in the mud — not what turns to the people.
I is the philosophy, was it our confession?

7/3/06