p l a i n e r

last february

WE'VE HAD IT with

the go the go soft

the go hard go softly and hardly.

Because

I meant what I said when I said it

but I don't mean it now.

Or

As in I missed my train but

the trains stopped running here

way long before I ever. 

And

I hardly ever rode them when I could.

So

Some of this is a soft fiction.

It goes cheap. And it goes Have you thought

how you might not like coffee after all.

But 

I go Sure all the time.

And pretend none of these sirens are for me.

Well

We hardly have time for it now

that the engines go Moo and the windows go

hard and go 

for us

now 

for these shaky corporations.

here at last

the way a hawk … lights up

            suddenly nothing … solitude

    as important ... not to stare

or stay put

of when they constellate a home and how

they

take their language with them they spend

it 

on not understanding or so texturizing themselves

they

put our sexes or categories to use in pronouncing

all

good to go for now through next december

 

we

seem to be exchanging breaths for twins

yours 

for a minute of mine so no damage to

mine

after some feast in the bounty of 

yours

what they did they upset me

now carelessness … thinking money

                    had an insight

                                        & poems of

nothing to do with as or like

                    lying down but not dead …

                                        archeological punctuation ends 

me … well … that search for 

                    a workman like … assortment of glyphs

                                        … hidden relations in my theory …

as with the bird … i don't kill it …

                    as with the road … i let it tremble …

                                        like … you said it once & rhymed 

"Greet Ben & Anthony who risked 

                    their necks for me … " all one

                                        then capable of … the play comes off

in silver lines & busted wings …

                    always busting … the strings …

                                        just … before the radio goes

"Here's your chance to hit it big"

                    … you can do everything at once

                                        as like broken & like fixed

one reason

w/out degree 

                making strange

Murphy "writes out of his experience of"

"potent poetry topics" The New

Attention requires notation

of the ordinary and "extravagant" 

                respiration just below the actual 

breath it took to climb this far

 

Said notes found

illegible in dream journals. "I practice

listening against

impending blindness" resistant

                in places 

"turning one's back on every

and any priesthood."    

                                    Make your own

way up the sacred stream. Make

your own. My ordinary

                pushing into the wilder. Did you say God looks

                especially handsome today. I thought

                you did. And accomplished something.

No poem until something happens 

                and later is found 

                        waking and walking or waltzing

up the banks of everything

                        I forgot

from 07/29/2006

NEXT IT

pertains to circumstances none of us are handling well ...

in which later on a dog collar is found in the dresser drawer ...

in which one unmarries the other on that very night ...

in which a stranger comes breathing fire ...

in which one must learn facts ... only facts ...

in which the robots refuse to work ...

in which the partisans rest on the hill grey for days ...

 

Listen HERE.

from 11/11/2010

SOME FOOTING

Why you just say it and mean it. 

The world will stand for your invisible children. To a point.

Talk to something that is not human. This will demonstrate a mentally healthy shift toward biotic engagement.

My rock, you are older and better looking but are you wiser yet than me?

See. A rock isn't.

Speak with conviction about that area of matted grass where deer slowly turn their shiny heads to secrets after a day full of eating sunlight and pooping out sturdy round bundles of the residue of their delirium.

Now on to the pores.

There's nothing not invisible available to my sense that you just looked away. I was talking and you looked away.

Take up singing.

dude you don't have to listen
dude you don't have to rearrange or reacquire
dude you don't have to sing so loud
dude put it there put it here put it anywhere
dude we've got a whole bunch of perforations already
dude the apples the apples

 

Listen HERE.

from 11/26/2009

ONLY LATE IN LIFE

Something happening. Rhetorical forestry.

Moon in the cave of a sea drift log. Not mine.

Its ugly world drove me to buying. Then.

Nothing. So I approached its limited light. 

And forgot to sigh its unmanly sighs just

Because the boys expect a timber tone. Just

For gentle's sake. I traveled off-world to

Specify which crow had spoken aptly to

One of us who had come upon the book

Of speaking crows. These trees are not 

So numbered now. Some chilly orations.

 

Listen HERE.

 

from 11/23/2008

INVITATION TO THE SUNNY AIR AGAIN

Moving from here you expect you have what you need.

[the new poets are young and/or handsome and/or pretty]

You suspect they've come with the best boxes, the surliest protective pads.

[the new philosophers are invisible]

And we'll get to our end without the extraordinary bruise or the catastrophic goof.

[the new president]

You might have failed, for example, to acquire the right paper, but this you know is not failure but opportunity.

[the new artists take long walks]

As the sun today hardly bothered the air.

[the new parents are with child]

It can get away with anything specific and not too expensive.

[the new fat people are more portable]

Spitting in the grass, and such.

[the new film-makers are in parentheses]

The insurance people come to gape.

[the new discussions explode]

So we pack.

[the new]

We want to bring it with us.

[the new]

We just do.

[the new disclosures are less offensive]

Our desire isn't the hubbub we thought we needed, and the end's a comfort even as improved oral hygiene is.

[the new farms are beautiful in morning overalls]

It's a convenience.

[the new delight congeals around a sentence]

And we're on our way

 

Listen HERE.

 

from 11/27/2007

SECOND OR THIRD GENERATION

My engine wasn't the public school. It was

A private infantile devotion to becoming &

Turning into. That which rhymed with. Here.

I earned my wax by burning my fingers so.

And excluded. Sense in a full blue bottle of.

Fragile thin maps made me a beachfront.

I turned warlike & popular as a far cliff & you.

Later found in county records a score of me.

 

Listen HERE.

from 11/25/2006

TO THE SEETHING ON MERCY'S ACCELERANT

Hadn't been a fraud long

But long enough for reasons

Feeling myself to be an Optical

Knot, faithless, a cork

In time. But fraudulent as

Pork. Making whistles &

Whispers of what was not

Ink. Out-scale juicery.

This then the next and so on.

Unequal to the national

Challenge to be

More a new shirt than

An extra one. Artless.

A loss I couldn't count.

 

Listen HERE.

from 05/29/2010

MY VOICES WILL NOT SHOP

This following was found on a rot-splintered log and transcribed last fall by one of the factors of the place. It was almost awake when he found it and pulped it with two capable alphabet stones. Its corpse expresses an other-worldly scent of cultic purity within which some can only sit and shiver. 

Our autopsied said … chocolate or …

In … tenders … to open … grow on in … 

Of exile … unpublic … himself of … 

One agent … qualms … ethics … as one … 

O blue beans … tell me … a new bowl … 

To pay up … blood use … pretends to … 

As it was the last of its brand, we thought it fitting to arrange this mechanical service; and now, thank Jack, our duty's done. Vivat Coagulate!

 

Listen HERE.

 

from 01/10/2010

FOR THE SERIES WHERE NOT ENOUGH GOES ON

Blow the sun

to gadgets. Why. 

Then a landscape. 

 

Burnt upside brown. 

Just. Find verbs. 

Go prettify. As

 

genius has to

guess. I'm now 

telling you to.

 

A list of

new cleansing agents

bold as sunlight

 

organizes our sleep.

So tells us

it's inexperience

 

that breeds these 

death cults everywhere.

And now. Here.

 

Listen HERE.

 

 

from 08/19/2010

OR ADVISED

Journalism 

to dissolve nature into three

conversations 

toward the vile separation

of what it means to or

for political poetry

or how it came from

cities big enough to know

you know better

Journalism

to underestimate this

year's skin and bone

as the

broken audio at the end

or an appendix to Greed

Journalism

to be thrown off

the complimentary wine

easing some of us

into zombie days of

attraction to our

solar parts

Journalism

to have written 

all that 

and 

still

not be 

free as one 

disappointment

 

Listen HERE.