Today on RR/archive.is: Chicago, 7-11, Family
Apps 12.10.13
#2018
The frost Neko carries, as she
strides into snow, pins her eyes
open, as points of balance
disappear, between us and for
the tiny light she carries, soul-
orphan given brief shelter to
kindle sparks when she opens
her mouth, raises her head-voice
and sings; no needle touches
down where I can feel it, as too
much of her decamps, no mortgage
on her insides (whoever moves in,
moves in) through blank whiteness—
#2021
America has its own pathetic fallacy—
not that the moon loves the clouds,
but that someone who knows us
really loves us, is watching from
above, tying together loose ends,
reducing boundaries, corralling the
populace into a virtual arena where
we watch ourselves defeat all foes
eternally. Just as mountains kiss the
sky, all things happen for a reason,
things right themselves in the end.
Now, we’re pale for weariness,
wandering companionless, and if
we’re climbing heaven, we feel hellish.
#2027
On a snowy morning, she’s primed to
drink before noon, and while the buzz
lasts the snow and the gin dissolve her
into graceful movement. But the after-
noon drags, and by two she’s ready to
nap, degraded as usual by her own
abiding uselessness and a past which
not only makes no sense, it’s a tattoo
needle which keeps tinting her flesh
the wrong way, so that she feels
repulsive in her own skin. I watch,
and shrug— my skin, uncolored,
covers me against the cold. I won’t
drink ‘til the sun sets orange-red at five.
Apps for Saturday: 12.7.13
#2007
What does it mean, for blood to work?
If my blood works with your blood, are
we merely bloody? It can’t be that we’re
the same person twice, or that the same
foundation inheres in/for us— it must
be a matter of temperature, we demonstrate
sameness by degrees— and by manifesting
identical aptitudes to be pierced, bring
fluid to the surface, heave towards horrors
and ecstasies. I walk down Butler Pike,
astounded by the sky’s whiteness against
us, and am vertiginous with the dizziness
of deep dirt dredged from depths of us,
stung raw by toil, streets crossed as we are.
#1913
You watch, as in slow motion glass-
hewn objects crash to the ground, as
streams back and forth confirm, once
again, you’ve cracked into a slug-pile
of heartless psychopaths— I stand
aside, jaundiced, wearing my own
glasses, knowing blown glass to be
how human interstices are knit, words
to be an absolute sky of glass, and here
I am, speaking to you in transparencies—
#1243
She projects herself into
my room, asks my hand
in intercourse, of course—
I say yes, we’re in bed, I
take her as she asks, but
horizons of expectation
constrain us into drinks,
so that we’re half-there,
(she’s not here at all, in
fact I don’t know where
she is, or if she is), eyes
tell stories years, maybe
eons old, meteorites in
charge push us further—
I eat out the astral plane.
#1901
Conshohocken power lines in the rain—
edges of buildings cut through whitened
sky, as rising light topples privacy for
squat-dwellers on the Schuylkill— I see
power defining itself in lines, acrobatic,
space-consonant, but always working
within suburban, subaltern parameters—
eternity decoyed from a rusty beneath.
New Apparition Poems: December 2013
#1597
Is it pure rapacity,
that part of me I
set aside to dance
when the scene is
a dance scene? It’s
not pure anything,
she said, it’s dirty
(we have matching
guilts for our beds),
if you handle me I’ll
make sure you pay a
price. I looked into
her eyes, hands in
hers, alright, she said,
I’ve got your moves.
#1652
You could ask, is love just
one level among levels, and
I would say this: you put me
on a level where the streams
that cross between us are all
I have, and I accept, Julia.
And when I tell you, bent
back like something stiff as
it becomes malleable (branches,
flowers) that I adore you, I mean
to say that I use your name here,
use an “I” that is an I, and its
naïve, it is, but also OK.
#1623
There is a metaphysical aspect to
signs on hills: as if the letters are
ascending to heaven on backs of
smooth terrain. This terrain, also,
is smooth, chiffon, lace, lots of
things designed efficaciously for
bodies of women who deserve it.
Those letters spell out what, who
you are (I am) expected to “do,”
where you (not I) am concerned,
I want you to know it is a pleasure
to do you, right on top of letters
you forced me to trash in exchange
for these brilliant, scintillating ones.
#1564
What kind of intoxication
is the “best of life”? Nature
keeps changing on me; all
those spliffs I smoked, all
the little trips, jokes, those
drunken almost-orgies, all
the blokes I left behind, all
that’s left is what I can do
right here (spirits promise
what’s to come, is it naïve
to believe spirits?), all this,
whatever this is, in any case
it’s a cloudy day in Philly—
I trace shadows on the sky’s face.
#1547
this is what
words amount to—
festivals of ash,
collapsed into urns,
held up by timid
folk for the bold
to scatter.
Poems
- Today on RR/archive.is: Chicago, 7-11, Family
- From Conshy: From Yumpu
- Apps 12.10.13
- New Apps: Full-Text Convenience
- From Conshy...
- From Conshy: New Apparition Poems Part 1
- Another easy way to read GR...
- Manuscript: The Great Recession: December 2013
- Today's Apps
- Apps for Saturday: 12.7.13
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