I'll be reading a section of the novel On the Road, Wednesday, November 5th at Columbia College .

Time: 8:00 pm
Place: Columbia College,
Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash
Chicago

Babel Fruit

Thanks to Ren Powell for inclusion of some work from my new chapbook Disharmonium at Babel Fruit.

What softening deep

stews night

hears the invi-
tation of the rain
in dust-bin mind:


climbs your
hindsight: reclines there


(inside the ear.

I sleep then eat details

first person is served in New York
not in Chicago, we sigh
high on the loveliness of time,
the way it billows
purling, streets
deep as Lethe,

fields of concrete
with quests,
occasional cops
who gallop by

lights singing
the street is a
June thesis on ease.

Like Woody Allen
in Bananas, I want
1,000 deli sandwiches
chips no fries though
at Billy Goat.

Traipsing Western
later we use the
aleph* to scan
all directions simultaneously
on the lookout
for stray poets.

Ed Dorn’s Illinois,
lag and sway
drunk on summer
er days.
I’d like to live to
70, too, I guess.

______________



*Aleph or Alef, is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the number 1 in Hebrew. Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the theological treaty Sefer-ha-Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the "primordial one that contains all numbers".

I'll be performing at Brown Rice with Daniel Godston (pictured) on Monday, July 21.

Time:
To be announced.
Location:
4432 N Kedzie Ave
Chicago IL 60625

I'll be one of the featured readers at Brothers K coffeehouse, at Main and Hinman in Evanston on November 21 at 6:30pm. Come out to hear some of my new poetry.

Talisman

There you will glimpse the portal to the self and cherish it. Your excuses were nailed to a tree then resurrected.

You well know about my penchant for dismay. This night is a lamp in the moon.

The doors of autumn are rusting. What miracle plays hide-and-seek with the afternoon?


__________________


She walks half-mad statues. A thick smoke of reckoning collides against her sky. Where he’d lost it.

Close the ghostly curtains of dimes.

Every tremor in the sea is an exploration of eternity.

You left your heart at the theater and never went back for it.

Scenes from summer, like a frieze. A reef of pillows lines the bed.

Solemn hour of newborns, birds insult the air. My lust is a picturesque pier.

How to describe a life’s cleavage? There is a silly hymn called ecstasy with white, aquatic eyes.


__________________



There are bridges in my pores and blades in my blood.

The legendary beauty is a transparency of the first magnitude. Of circular robes and occasional stars.

Blueish is the sky of artifice above the ruins of history.

Scissor arpeggios from your favorite song. Tread water in his memory.

Lunch on Time's jambalaya.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky

—after Lorca


Foist the molten day
upward into surf and let it
drown there, in the greenest
eye. Shine the moon, so
due for cleaning.

Let's liaison in the fire.

8 Wikipedos

Elena Yevgenyevna Dostay,
the Russian archer,
shot not arrows
but Freedom.



My woebeg-one
what have you d-one,
like a country s-ong
about an archeoastronomer.



Hey you, why not try
latent semantic analysis?
Just the sandwich,
not the meal.



The secret cheese that
powers Hollywood
comes in two varieties,
blockbuster and huh.



Tom Clancy, your
Debt of Honor—
stop writing
prosthetic fiction.



Footballer Hugo Gatti
nicknamed “El Loco”
was known for achique
& plain weirdness.



Shibata Zeshin
did nothing much to
stand out from
his contemporaries.




Bronx martyr
last of the Mo-ricans,
Carlito Brigante
in Carlito’s Way.





Österdalälven,
future sports drink
& also beautiful
river in Sweden.



______________________________
Wikipedo : Term coined by the author to describe a new type of poetry written using the “random article” feature on Wikipedia, our modern-day equivalent to the oracle at Delphi. Short poems meant to be written, and forgotten, as quickly as possible.

Nice to be included in this collage with such good company. This image is from the Here Comes Everybody blog--a great resource filled with many interesting interviews. Too bad that the print version was sidelined due to copyright disagreements among the interviewees.

I'm working on a series of ekphrastic poems with the photographer Jelena Glazova. This is the second in the series. The photo is an image of a woman dancing -- blurred. It's interesting as I write these that they begin based in the image and then find their own path of associations, without much of an explicit meaning --

________________

This is a melody, composed of flesh,
that shreds each moment of specificity.
But North of what nowhere is this night?
What cavern inside us did we mine of dream?
What guides the lips that dine upon our
minds? Eaten to ward off superstition,
our fingers visited the origin of myth—
transfixed. A limousine or shadow calls
to us to dance like gristle, incognito.
Your tongue pronounces whims
uncontrollable (as through our lives we fell).
Blurred bones twist like wan guitars
in the mists of transparent speech. Yes, you
are out of reach. I orchid against you, are
you listening, but tropic climes deride us.
Train your eyes to quit their leash.

Dance

in the brambles
of the mind
there
to
a
soft gathering
we go

but of our
lapses
and
what shore-
line at the
edge of
sight

this, a
moment upon
which we

To the Nearly Living

I am summoned from my bed
to the ancient city of the dead



Over the archway
to the doorway
we float upon a myth.
Howling toad called race,
disappear in the assurance of immortality.
Stricken match called consciousness,
cool yourself upon the coals
that this knowledge of our similar teeth
allows us all to eat the same caves.

Favola

There are lives awaiting bread
An empty village in the sun
Knowledge has a face
The water takes her time

There is a gift inside your eyes
There is a mirror in the breeze
A quick philosophy to stones
The water takes her time

There is a luster to the earth
And an echo in the vine
There is such envy in the clouds
The water takes her time.

Metropolis

As heretical coat hanger
looks like Michael Jordan
summer of was and slushies
shudders in the early stages
I can’t believe you brain-
checked Madonna but look
la belle dame sans merci
faints accordingly at the Met
zilch version diabolized
thanks your moral authority for
another ukulele election night
basic needs go unmet but
city poignant weird big
middle finger glowing
Ross and Chandler implode
$2,300 is cheap for a brutish
erstwhile facsimile else
we quarter each other and,
cues blazing, become
lifeless bulldozers at O.K. Corral.
Lights, or fists, awaken.

It's surprising -- reading a Guardian article and finding they've linked their Philip Lamantia reference to a page on milkmag.org.

Chicago Tribune - Printers' Row Book Fair
@ Dearborn & Polk

Sunday, June 8
Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Stage
From 12:30 - 6:00 pm / Maxine Kumin, Li-Young Lee, Sonya Arko, Margaret Brady, Esteban Colon, Larry O. Dean, Kristin LaTour, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Patricia McMillen, Erika Mikkalo, Raul Nino, Ron Offen, Donna Pecore and Larry Sawyer.

I'm last in the lineup and understand that we're closing the show.