The man from Vermont

“We all have excuses”
he says and lights my cigarette

not for me,
but one I gave to him
when favor turned for him
in this game of chess he plays with my friend

“Uh oh, they’ve dimmed the lights”
he says, and I ask,
“What does that mean?”

“It means we cant see!”
and a chuckle rounds the board

“How ya like that?”
he asks, and so I write

-----

“See that knight?
The one next to the white pawn?
Why don’t you just- take- him?”
she asks from beside her other,
who hasn’t said a thing
(the pawn takes diagonally)

They came to sit in the only seats
left in the darkened place, with us,
two women slightly drunk and edging
in past middle age. Its the time of his life
tonight, on top of his game, with an audience
against my friend who says he hadn’t played in years

“Eeeaelay!” he yells,
at the wrong point in the song,
illustrating his elevation,
and the slightly less attractive woman leans and laughs along

“How is everything going over here?”
the pretty waitress asks
“We’re in dire need of Alcohol!”
Haha
“Bring me a water!”
and the waitress walks away

Its the remake

There is a frightened calm
settled through my veins and single thinking

Stripes of red and white

And I cant think to write


Horror on the TV

When gore is something to laugh at but then it rots

You dont say

This city thing
maybe
is the subway

1) Another reason to
live just like yourself

or

2)
Just to let you get that
much more fucked up

Like where streets are full
of oppurtunistic faces,
and do they smile when vauge
fascinations float to the top
of what i think and where i thought
I might like to be one day?

In three seconds

There was a woman standing
Tall and hard for the bus

A railroad spike in sidewalk
She held her black sleeve arm limp
Left along her waste to grip her wrist

Origami craned her neck
Like a tongue could trace her folds
And lines that traced her face

Down Whitney
Long for her ride to work
She stood strong as the rising sun

Her elegance to blind

margarine's lament

living life like butter
would be so divine
to be turned and churned
over and over again
and spread on a muffin
melting making mouths water
without a care in the world

The below

The poems below were reaped from my notebook this morning. Some I like, all are still works in progress. The top two are the oldest, back a year or so, from UVM. There were more, but they were either shiyt or require more than a whims worth of work.

Apprehension

Tension grips the young men
Tight, where any noise overwhelms
The space between friends

Fooling into fighting night
Fools hating day
Bitter towards the sunrise

Stomach in the Grass

Green tongues licking
Lapping at the wind
Wrenching hard on stubborn roots, holding back the sky

Breeze declaring its charm
Rattling
Leaves
Dives
Swallows

My eyes along the stubble green

Clearly

Dark eyes from the gap between a Yalie and the wall

Dark hair that curls and waves her handkerchief train

Dark skin that sticks and roofs my mouth molasses

Irrelevance equal to her name

A far corner out of sight

A couple words to remember

Free Three Musketeers

To walk away from the audience gathered here for make believe
I can pretend as well that I am walking along some promenade
Somewhere in the whole of France
Or some such European nonsense

The cement sculpture
Fountain basin and orb ornaments
Adorning these suggestive railings

Shape this park
Long ago
Somewhere in the whole of France

Isnt that somin

The meter of the spoken word is broken on the page
And pain is flat like numbness

Shapes of things are cold suggestion

The sound of bound and gagged

Callous
A case of self-serve cadence
to write this cantor down
Stuck
Inside my head

Picture the Beach

One hour to get to State Street
And I’m thinking of post cordial bullshit
The kind of hellos that feel like have to’s
and bi-annual acquaintances

It’s a question of intimacy and an answer in gin
Ideally she and I would sip it quietly and dark
About old times and giggle over cheese like grown ups

But she’s gone west now
and, anyway, I think she quite dislikes me
I’ve Got 30 left to get to State
and I'm Not sure how I’ll make it

Sailing to Sleep

The starry procession of the albatross
And how it hangs in orbit

Is it not peculiar?
When he flies
And how he’s put in books

sense of it

Shapeless men and callous women
Have become the dominant figures
Among the skyline. Fountainheads
Wet my collar in cold oil spittle,
Fashioned by the palette of a faceless
Grin. Faith – a simple reduction of
Each image. Hope – a pillow, blanket
And the coming day. The factories
Dead, landmarks smokestack paper
And Joan of Arc can be found outside
The museum selling flowers –
Selling her fake accent as freely as
The prostitute.

The Nile from a curb

Crack fault tributaries
Sandy delta flats
Old paint corrosion
Bisecting the fractal relativity of it

A black tar ocean
pouring up an inch

Backwards relief
geography painted unconsciously
by some city Worker/cartographer

The splitting road evidence
He forgot to fill the Nile

how to keep it mad real, a step by step guide

die just a little on the inside,
before they catch you,
or it starts to hurt.

then you think about it all the time.

tell your friends and laugh about it.

call your dad and play it cool,
he will never know.

write it down on paper
to help you figure it all out
in your head.

type it up for the digital friends
that you met at college
a while back,
and swore to stay in touch with.

drink until you're happy.

smoke until you're sane.

if that still doesn't work,
don't lose hope
or forget to call your mom on sunday,
she's always so happy to hear from you,
even when you don't know why.

learn to play your new pink guitar
electrical white stripes and cover bands,
or another song you still like enough
for your roommate to play on the radio at night
when no one is awake to listen
because you're too cool and too old too.

take a year off
say you're just looking into it,
so they never really know for sure

or not to keep the last two lines, to keep the last two lines

the clouds are big top sombreros
buttering my lips and slick highway
eyes locked broad and breadth and in
and out a transfix cross hatch
bend that cafe bus stop where i sat when fall came all at once

my book and I imagining to topple summer through inference on the wind

chilling gusts
chilling gusts run back
that swept as changing clouds above the changing,
present air unsheathed (unbridled
(multiplying
(mountain air?

and desert bones
and oceans
to arms
a pike
a whorish parasol pressing its edge against a rim of glass
to lift itself, in suspense of wind, a moment possessed by rising

and sun pushed clearly
The umbrella
looking down from wings like dandelion imprints
ate wind like breath to fuel a burning bush

Shatter, table ice came down my boot cuff
and vigor swept clear as sky above

my red morning juice spilled in shards of patio glass
like blood from a bad day that wasnt

the new black

oh dip, here I go again
this time spinning and laughing
thinking out loud with my keyboard
glued to my melting mind
which can't complain about
everything it still can't forget

i wonder what these days
is as real as i
think

i guess i don't let it surprise me
when i wake up still sleepy
checking calendars for the year
month and season

it's always fun when
i try to let it surprise me
and how it does

i sleep like marmalade
bitter and dripping on toast
and looking for a rug
like its my job
to fuck up your floors
when i fall upside down

tonight i'll dream that i can sleep for a year
or two or three
no one has ever died from sleeping too much
and if they did
doctors would still blame unknown causes
so i digress
but i refuse to admit defeat on this claim
but who cares
you could sleep a whole lifetime and still find yourself
waking up
so tired and smelling like shit that it would stop your
heart

i hate my poems
but at least they don't rhyme
or make any sense
even to me
and i still write them
sometimes.

Canned under the authority of the Monster beverage company

Vitamin b and roboflavors
blech every bit
of my cheek tongue grimace
and a-yeck like medicine

g'morning

thats 12 minutes
left for home
work for you

gRadiation Poisoning

I have three shades of blues
I do nothing at all these days
I live on a couch
That is three states away
I always ramble on and on
I have nothing much to say
I drive a fast car in circles
Still I can't drive these blues away.

dont have a title yet

Long morning peepshow

Gnat glow

Crossing of the monarch

Glutting up cold vibrations

Between headphone mediums and big wheel ramblings

-you mope

Smoke

Top cob

Web bit tonguing

Toothache convolutions

And a monarch in the city bus window

Like

To say

Something

About oh

How crisp these structures

Skyline impossibility

Definitions of elastic limping ladies

And gentlemanly faces puffed and twisted

For this walk

Up off the ledge

Old man

Swinging those suited arms so far

To strides of Beck in perfect time

As the angle of his ancient hat

And the blowing wind

To part this place

Here where each successive ledge becomes less suitable by rising

Some stupid piece of art

And a federal building

And Orange

East west rock whatever behind

And cars like fronds

Empty welcome mats lining this street

Orange in literal indecipherable

Orange municipal graffiti

To be seen only from above and covered by asphalt

And a sabered advertisement rattling Uncle Sam’s hummer

And a sore thumb trolley for a city that paved its tracks

And a bike bumming sidecar carriage hooked and crooked like Hong Kong markets

And a fashionable kind of passing

And all the kids earbuds

And three dollar energy

And book bag pharmacy

And a plane cracked page

And odd gut pain

And just when I thought to look again

The sight of the monarch sharing roadside lilacs with a working bumblebee

Sept 20

Swore off sleep last night

solely- for suspension
______for -my friend
shit warmed over, I'm sure
This morning-
three items of note

Number one- A monarch
Number two- Glass faced
dashflag
girl from Peru

The third?
that kind of faceless ass -we all- could get behind

ctrl+alt+delerium

all i have to offer is my five hundred and something fonts
i have them in all shapes and sizes
someday i'll make my own
someday i'll go digital

for now i'll just keep typing these same shapes in monochrome
tap, tapping away on all these funny little buttons
living on the cutting edge in a wireless sort of way
blinking like a waiting cursor
so i don't lose my place
and have to restart.

The way to the lake and Sleeping Giant

Have you ever seen the way
How trees push up the ground
To make the dirt look growing

On nature walks on foot cut hills
Marked by watchful pastel squares
They angle off the earth beside as hairs
or plumage off some rocky flank, suspiciously

Have you ever seen when green and trees struggle very easily
Up through in laid asphalt and concrete slabbing scabs

Where the road goes on to gone
And the only thing on either side
is green like spider webs or rippled pebble gestures

A nose

Staring out a million windows
From the bottom of a pile
Blanketing
An air conditioned room


Still and feels like summer’s on the shingles
Smells of humid air
Vestigial, like
Déjà vu through my childhood appendix


Sand bars
Heat wave excavations
Ferry
Tall tales from the girl in Santorini

Museum case

Modern life casts the shadow of doubt on insanity

A 30 something man, arms bare, sunglasses looped in his belt,

Stands alone and wild in the Plexiglas museum of a bus stop

He speaks to his reflection

Maybe, to blue teeth

His arms fret and fingers point and press his hands and smudge

And pick his nose

Either he’s one crazy mother fucker

Or he’s on the phone

Voicemail

Time stop ticking
nose still dripping
towers slowly tipping
waiters in my mind

fall away
now
words worth
i'll be taking no calls this evening.

Bald

The bald eagle circles stationary prey

Banking to his right

To swoop among the teepee pines

And feast upon his pickings

Powerful wings hold lightning bolts

Thrown down to scare the easy meats

To scatter others from the carrion

Or talon up some brazen rodent

The bald eagle falling

From the center of the high noon sun

Is indistinguishable from any other pair of wings

With dinner on the mind

Balls

Beleive it or not, I wrote this one while waiting for the bus... go figure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Buses are by no means a science
they are sitting on a curb and constantly staring over your shoulder
drinking petrol fumes and smoking cigarettes
and starting to every sound like deisal

Time is kept in the uneven beatings
of perchance sedans popping the manhole
sometimes its a matter of directions
asked by a tidy looking man for a moment of excitement

It is the tease of its counterpart
whoring down the road from where you want to go
every blunt fat face with two headlights
for a second is your ride
showing themselves down far between a row of trees and two parked cars
just for a second

Staring down the curb like a pellet gun
appears longer than the street
sitting till your balls are sweaty
cause you missed the fucking bus
or cause it came too early

Oh, here it is
seriously

Stone cut man

So below for you today are a couple recent ones, the last being written this morning. Still drying.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He squatted happily with little to think about

And started hammering a tiny little cheek bone out of stone

That still looked to him as nothing more than stone

And to the tool

Nothing but a surface to dull upon

He chipped out the hollows of a chin

And a dip like neck but still just less stone then what was

Until he made the most unhappy realization

That he was no longer just holding stone and breaking it

Form scratched at the inside and claw marks sounded hollow thunder

About the confines of the stone which the primitive man handled

Awe unannounced

as at the sight of a god who did not exist and told him so

Consumed where he squatted the sun and moon were broken

Down as he worked far past into the evening

Scratching away an ancestor rock

With no name and lost eventually to sand

Time and a student on a glorified trip

Who just found a little stone cut man

Speaking of LCDs

Driver side opened

and the man in white stepped out

His left leg lifted and body curled

like the 70s

or a graceful beat

To a black man bored

and looking kind of worn

who sank an apple core for two points

and spun around a circle

gentlemanly, to hold the door

for a large woman who didn’t thank

and he didn’t blink

entering with graceful beating

Summer folk

streets like open air markets or LCD bizarres

rolling down windows

for the sake of Friday spirits

anticipating some energy

and giving themselves up to a chance parking spot

And encounters

with a long lost friend, perhaps

sometimes pretty women

or just the bottles, guaranteed

By night, by god

this music is god damn good

pop stomping

sanded symbols

word snake chords

It crosses my heart to see someone made it

Thus Far

Like any good story it began with a girl

In the way a stone is cast into a shimmering body

And breaks the surface and ties the splash

Of sinking innards as long winded letters

Bound to a dumb brick

The first slaving nights were nothing more than therapy

An attempt to digest an impregnation of eyes and finger

Foolishness

To be cured with a kiss or so told

By the gut of an ever polishing stone

Among these damp nights resurfaced a memory of homework

Assigned in 7^th grade to write ten pages of poetry

Half plagiarized or run through words for rhymes

Silly, yes, but oh what it was

An awesome demolition of the LCD display

A removal of the virginity of time

Transplantation to a virgin playground

-There I played till the second black book came

With a lovely introduction like I love you

To be filled with words of angels carved by motion and heat

In the whitest snow where boots had yet to tread

And the polishing stone became my rocks off-

Bird shot hipshot everything

To the air of my green mountain homestead

And the loss of mind to sex and tissue tundra

And loss of time without anywhere at all X3

Lost and gained and left and gained and lost again

And loss of time without that monument creation

Lost and gained and lost again

Turns out the pen was left in the room of an old friend

After all his door ajar and walled in note cards

And caffeine till dawn

DC for inspiration

And someone to forget your name

A cruel addiction to think you’ve got something going

And lots of thinking

X3

But that was long ago

Or so it seems from thus far

Today, an orange recap

I think “all comes roundly as all goes”

And I can see my work looming on the horizon

Summoning a bittersweet taste like the back of my tongue

In time to write a proper story

September 1st

Nod to the familiar
tang of glass on glass

be it champagne salutes
or pint or pipe on the surface of the coffee table

so see through
to some shitty paint job
or accumulated clutter in preparation for coming nights

though it turns your stomach
always to tang and smile