Refer also to...

www.edpicasso.blogspot.com

Ed by the Sky and @Ferrini/Kaplan Poetry Reading in NYC

Turns, Like in a Screw

Eons ago, the mimosa grew on the thorax to squat
As we roared into this clearing,
Which not hard to do, was the throat, a uterus
Pushing words out with all her strength, to extricate
Everything but the one part, what lodges there
Has rights to - the human turn toward earth.

The moment our feet sunk in, like hungry animals,
We knew the bluff on our backs, carried up that bevel,
The grudge the universe will not forget, wanted back
The missing something that was jagged & unswallowed.

The only thing certain: something in the skull,
A tap on the shoulder, accusing as a lone hawk
In the neglected sky, perfidious like a floating lair.

It counts that we remember when we did not
Mean to use words or the jaw for that, that
Chewed up itself & the world with it, smooth
Enough to swallow whole.

There contains a forest in us no one can find
Or conjure but is a polished lie, a soft breeze
Which offers the faint smell of a truth
Leaving you pleasured without the trouble nor able to
Take credit for it, so that we must invent as we do
Every standing blade of grass.

We are on a rock
Listening to the sun speak into it, to grow.

www.tableofthepermanent.blogspot.com

Power of Appointment

Indiana night driving in heavy snow
a single car stretched across route 74 at midnight
a truck two miles back slides out of the mirror
fierce wind & onelight houses by the highway
bones of prehistoric animals & lovers & theorists

100 miles of crowded solitude & jelly beans to stay awake
tossing cigarette ashes on the floor

we are salesmen in the thirties with belted luggage
we have families back home
it's Thursday January 24
Indianapolis to Cincinnati

the brain is one third fat
two thirds extravagant gold sash

you are therefore never alone
angels are deft & spidery
drawn to drapes & lampshades
sit like parakeets on our shoulders or shadows

standing out in the cold between a satellite dish
and a double vision

as in love
as in death
as in the organized sex of our red bandanas
as in the serious theatre of her blood
as in being alone in the middle of a country at night
as in forest

I am surrounded by a ton or two of man's rigor
peeling off into the organ moon as we always did
constantly surprized in our trauma
it's a kingdom of crabs chains mace plums
emeralds brats and the unretrievable
the wood in the trees
the wind in the wind

The Port Authority Poem

the woman in Walgreen's whose hands had butter
or something wet and not alive
who saw through her puddle of eggs
to the basin
it's wild murmurs
bruised saucers & cups with significant chips of struggle
floating in the fallacy of suds

her arms clipped
rattle as she twitches
mad as a goose
like anyone is
waiting for the bus
the animals waiting to be fed
and for no other reason
going crazy

or the black woman whose socks are slipping
her ankles like the skeletons of tiny birds
paces the floor like a peacock on fire
an experiment
something to do with electricity
a clinic
her hands frenzied
constantly explaining shoving protecting praying
her eyes reliving whatever it was
and though there are no tears she's crying

or the cowboy who can't exhale for fear
he'll lose a precious something that's irreplaceable
a rose
a lapel
his eyes full of buffalos

and me
the cyclops
the ticket
bound to express the corrupt geography of our bodies
bound for some reason with crossed laps
bound as spawning fish are
in the freak contrivance of language
the port authority
where no ships dock nor seas touch
the vibrating sand

Arctos the Bear She is North

on which the mermaid rose
a connoisseur
a tail is healing
the past
precocious
sebaceous
a hatchery
eyes of kerosene ignite
of which the moment now
is a window
is a perfect match

we the crop imminent
between parentheses
of circumstance
in transit
life stenciled
deathless in the past
which is north of us
we throw our eyes back
who are captured
on the surface

a bear is hugging you
now filing your ribs

pepper hay ermine

rows of us in marble
belonging to the morning

on her elbows
swung two gods
one with donkey-eyes
one with tenacious jaws
an oil spin in
the flaunting cave she is
up to her fins in ice
at that rainbow
frowning in the sky

Something There Is Doesn't Love A Stone Wall

Dutch florals
A crisp bond:
the knot continuous
the Atlantic most resembles love.
the khaki leaf salty far away
pressed to the ground
listening for fish : your life
convolutes in the head of mine

I have watched you sleep
rings of you

nothing can ever stop now : your hand in incredible ways
holds
to no ends
nor Logos
the wrist be named even if
you throw at a stone wall
something
you will not come out on
without me


back into the sea floor & the mellon breasts of dolphins

all we are

the ligament of the wing
the indefinite bell in
the hips of night
the cold skin of an unbargaining
sky

loose and soft and crazy
with flesh

New York Bends

[a broadside by Tightrope Press, back in the day]


Arthritic hip, midocean, flounders in a sofa
MacDougal Street, incorruptible, sand
On which the old white man burns
A young poet, into, staring into the sun
The lunchcounter depth, at, heartbreak
Welcomed, flares of jelly shoot from
A donut with bad hips rolls from the place
Sinks to his knees, pours out
From his future, the floor like crabs move
He, at his place, a note on the linoleum
Wash the fish.

In My Religion

Everyone is created as they get serious.
Each person will sense when in each person.
Animals are not sacred as a group; individual
Wholes blazenly surmount the human bias.
Recriminiations must be sung through a
Lamb's wool curtain, in triplicate
Open to rebellious warmth.

At any given moment things can get black or white.
Special itinerants itemize pessimisms.
In the city people are praying all the time on their feet.
A man makes no bones about it.
In my religion there are still responsibilities.
What is ordinarily true you find hard to believe.

I remember no further events from that night.
Busy being innocent, he confessed a wall between him & the
Blond - the animal again.
I'm saying we must expect interruptions.
The government is willing to make priorities.
Each is assigned a brain from which t travel.

There are gods who run on impulse.
Many schools of thought apologize for struggle.
Consuming restlessness fuels the interference.
Witchcraft takes years to learn.
In my religion no one will
Feel futile to be perfect.

The Turtle's Brain

the turtle's brain
looks like an ink spot

with trapdoors

vents

stalks

bridges

a single protruding driveshaft

Woman With A Crow

week-old white fish sewn under the first cloud
the sheer sun alights on its back
runs through the thick air
breathless into shadows
those shadows the faceless crow

gives up its head to the cradle
her giraffed fingers like cables
tall as pools sticking the balloon sky

the woman with a crow
Picasso that day in 1904
suddenly aware what it's like
to be a woman in her giving
birth dies

his anger hoists her shoulders up
his grief transforms her hair to rock
her ears are delicate shells with ash ground in
her eyes stare at the crow's heart
a black moving ball to make peace with

it's filled in with plain blue
her wrists are neither tiny nor substantial
the lips inside the crow's feathers by an inch
are talking like two women talking
as through a door garbed in panther skin & veils
hold on to cats babies & she-crows
planted plainly in front of a tired light

As Olson lay convex

As Olson lay convex his liver
the ruling part
caught the attention of the Angel of Death


he tried deception
wanted to make the Angel
a fool
said
touch me & I will spoil

he tried accepting authority
Angel as physician
said
please don't hurt me
you are a permanence
whose function it is
to terminate life on earth

he tried moving the cruel Angel
with his enormous need
to persuade her to shed a tear of mercy
he was a young girl
on the knees of an old gentleman
imploring
take her life instead of his
he used all the food at his table

his bones his animals his herbs his interior
a giant in the courtyard grabbing the fountain to his mouth
as if it would fit & quench

ran wild out of the ocean into jungles

a man who got taken in by lights & smoke
who was too damn heavy for the roof
he wouldn't think of standing anywhere else

Preface to a First Step

- for donald powell

a tie
between the same things
rising together
its one love is us
and the beast
coming out of
the flatness

a generous offer
to wash each other's hands in the
acrimony of fortune
to share all outcomes each is the
pull toward


timing saves us
I said
from a world we molest into being
with our patience

I don't have all the time back now
I threw out of me
let alone the exact amount

time doth percolate
to the beat of a pluvial watchtower
our brains are
painted by the salt of a short time

folded impatience inside another day

furious heels on the
furious heels of its
gift
enough to watch the sky breathe
a will of yours up so she
pushes against any good reason
not to

whatever works your pace & mine

I can set the sun myself but I
feel slightly rushed

it took that tree
200 years for me
to be here