Lifting the Lid

Ferrari thought, baroque thought,

beneath the surface,
models in leisure suits flatten cities.

We’ll sift among them, our gills billowing.
Hello, happy vampires.

Hmm…look up: notice the light
in which a great ship is riding.
Will it brave the deep
and take us,
over dormant lacquered waves?

Of what do I speak?

The receptor cells quake
taking in the last hours
businessmen roasting on spits.

Worry is my tequila.

Here's a link to the NPR story about the recent alien visition here in Chicago. Who will ever know what it was? I doubt that United employees would put their jobs and credibility on the line for no reason, however. Only after a Freedom of Information Act petition was filed did the FAA have any official comment on the incident. United denies their employees even reported that anything happened. Where are Mulder and Scully when you need 'em? The X-Files was a pretty good TV show. I'd rather not see any UFOs around here anytime soon, though.

Suspended

Here beneath precisely
words are bracelets

eyes of snapdragons
a roomful of mercury

bamboo exoskeletons

just another day in
the Deep South

I insert a comma
like a yacht

there in the liquid absence
of that taunting vertigo.

Apt Antlers

Your maze is a trust of tornadoes. At last my hands are the receiver, electric gestures pleasantly current. Just beyond the blackberry, the container yellows. Come out of the bath, I wanted you nicely. Dutch simplicity doesn’t rhyme with Zukofsky. Fate is a wingy flame and a ruffled jungle. I need buffalo but I’ve never been a bystander. Some breathe loudly, I parse instances. Within which the poem operates. It is dark, this Republic of Ireland. Yet, your lips have a number of linings. Wolves are clean and flying. What prompts meaning in the moonlight? Moon, moon, why don’t you leave me alone?

The other day I deleted the entire archive of this blog...so now I'm starting all over (!)

Polyester: An Ode

Dormant volcano,

I love

you.


Comb the

porn from

your hair, beautiful as

concrete.


Someday, your

joi de vive,

you say

sipping an empty

bottle of hours.




Could it be

that we’re

lunch to

some

unseen

hand?


Silence, gallop

across the

land.

Charisma Is no Picnic

Poet Kenward Elmslie’s collage effort titled “Nite Soil” is funny, furious, and even a bit frightening albeit on a cerebral rather than visceral level. This collection of postcard size artworks is a funhouse of visual hijinks that is puzzling and appealing simultaneously. Housed in a box, these 41 cards are a colorful departure from the book as medium and the unspoken implication is that these cards could be sent through the U.S. mail to friends, enemies, confidantes, lovers, strangers, you name it. That each card contains a cryptic message as part of the collage presentation makes them all the more unique because they are to the point, tongue-in-check, humorous, and so brief that the reader wants more. I read through the stack once with the thought that the entire collection is a cohesive whole and then flipped through again considering each in the context of the bits of magazine photos, cartoons, and newspaper clippings that make up each collage. Some read like puns and others seem to be flippant swipes at consumerist American life. However they’re viewed I’m happy to have been sent this curious set of Elmslie’s art. These have been out a few years and can be ordered by contacting Granary Books.

Sekhmet

Sekhmet

You planted the seed of desperation and walked
lonely, these fables as they grew
miraculously told were like attics in the ear, as
golden as sleep and loud as blinking
dank night is your blanket, and you drift
through the centuries

Sekhmet

your breath a desert wind, and death and
destruction are balm for your
heart, but a battle is being fought in your
eyes. Released upon earth
savior of the wise, destroyer of those who lie

Sekhmet

daughter of Ra, your thighs
two columns of fire, like a lion you rise
to harvest men only

_____________________________________________________


To pacify Sekhmet, festivals were celebrated at the end of battle, so that there would be no more destruction. On such occasions, people danced and played music to soothe the wildness of the goddess, and drank great quantities of beer. For a time, a myth developed around this in which Ra, the sun god (of Upper Egypt), created her from his fiery eye, to destroy mortals who conspired against him (Lower Egypt). In the myth, however, Sekhmet's bloodlust lead to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra tricked her into drinking beer mixed with pomegranate juice so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter and became the gentle goddess Hathor.

—Wikipedia