from Madding Wheel Poems

* I flew my imaginary girlfriend Velvetine Leopoldis in from Louisville for the weekend. we discussed the confused minds of cultural vandals and how to better their lives through the charity of quicksand. perhaps they will become detonation ferrets instead. I couldnt have been more pleased. I couldnt have been more male. some tragic heroes adapt their traits more successfully than others. she held the tabulator in her wreathly forehands. analyzing the village is always an aphrodisiac. your firm and inspiring lotus makes me a worried man, I said. I am not your kinswoman you villain of the loom, she replied. we have all made love just like this to a thousand dour sorcerers in these college towns bereft of skylines. spectral umbrage, bee spiral, remastered goadings, opal sleep, zeft blue, I pray for noise and a howling intoxicant greets my ears, half-machine, half-skeletal plumage. my head salvo blooms and spadeth true. america is the best country to die in.

* honeysuckle on fire. deer screaming from the ledges of hell. I am writing you through reams of hermaphrodite. the merging of nacreous and asterigo invokes the fatal law. a cow accidentally licked my ass in the history of consciousness there is another just below the surface respiring haltingly his name is Steve his hands are full of gold-capped teeth his dead brain is six red horses. oh look a bottlecap. oh look the trashes and the urban decays. oh look at the slate gray life of my life life. the pools were advertised as bottomless. I had to practice to become an interrupter. fly-flare and ol timey without great durability the celestial patron is still just like that is still such things happen is still it is quiet in this cell. out of the various forms of redundancy an organ bomb is planted in the anchorite. but first let me describe my native element how we sacrificed everyone except Marlene because she was a volume smoker and said once after experiencing a benastied vision I am in solitude with the dog and these are things that frightened us. everyone knew the pageant was in the dogs brain. everyone knew Mr. Meemers sexual practices were popish with squid. with a flashlight I am looking for a multifractal termite in the dark. this is my hopelessness. I whistle the tune of the rovin gambler and the stolen grandfather clock. instead I find your beautiful face. the lord does not have a sinus cavity but by god if he did. * it was a murderers sunshine. every house green. cumulobone and rule gill in the liver. but then starlite intervened. I am the pharaoh worm I will not drink your blood. I SAID I AM THE PHARAOH WORM I WILL NOT DRINK YOUR BLOOD. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. Lets go to the park. Lets go to the store. anyway I was thinking we could just be friends. I lived in a gulley. I lived in a briar patch. it is safer for you that way. I lived in a gully. I lived in a briar patch. I lived in a gulley. I lived in a briar patch. I lived in a gulley. I lived in a briar patch. I lived in a gulley. I lived in a briar patch. I lived in a gulley. one time I drank some Drano Liquid Clog Remover. one time I ate some fire. one time I drank some Drano Liquid Clog Remover. one time I ate some fire. I lived in a briar patch. * I putintane the mission they is so many shades of green it overrut my nerves on the one hand I am delighted that someone identify with me on the other hand ye should burn in dog like hell and miser up the ditch with your fancy rucksack because no one give me nothing and I dislike your lark-voice and your persimmon smell a voice without its dead thing is worth nothing if I was a dog I would bite your ass and shit in your yard if I was a mackle-fish my being would be the same as your being the vision universal but some kinds of rancidness cannot be breeched and knife against my cheek Id rather just fuck myself and dim into sipsy on the black lit porch and tree frogs smiling is dying and dying just like me and you a shit king a miracle in the shit lorn mythiverse brew this white city brew this roctilucent cloud

wargle and hold onto the breathly light you shitbeam rusted out crotch and whine fiddlestick whine day light up your face only so long and day light up your face only so long allocation of the toxic ringlet and blue handle and beautiful dress worn to thinnest air get on over yourself while you can. * metachoral in blue. sliderule amphemimene. torsion true and slake it through. kindheart past and lesson-dressed. a porg of sugar. dundle flue. muslin anchor. green bean snapped. ruerusted trailer, deported clap. blessing rake, spindle flared, suspiring lake, thicket air. clothesline fiddle, snake in tow, machine trembles, timeworn plow. a rick of jam, bumblebee dare, extortion lordly, amen hair. grace in shortly, tresses rapt, nonchalance surely, a springworn vow. bearded trestle, overwine star, strow blessings, about the yard. bilious ecstasy, grass spire rancor, lye soap clotted, several rats. a nib of germ, egress of crowlings, soretuned berm, God made them ornery. sunspun drethers, wing and row, furrows roaring, metachoral blue, flick and thimble, eternal hue. * each addict is a military system. I have auditioned auditory and I have auditioned tactile. in the shaking, heavens forest, a spray can, foul fiend exceptionally dapper, I mislabeled my apprentice and for that simple error he is dead. mister dogdick live inside your dick. your prosperity will continue unabated. I got the turkey bird blues and the night is a wing flapping against my cheek and seabrine clusters are forming on inanimate objects near the ocean. we are living inside and pretending to make thousands of dollars from rearranging the dictionary. fire ants inside the hay bale. I used to be your yard gnome and firefly catcher and caricaturist of higher moral law. we are living inside the bed God made for us. emoillent fish and unified sex drives. I ate a go-kart one piece at a time I lost my taste for cornbread but otherwise I am fine. * these dumplings are redolent of blood. sentences as straight as a railroad in Kansas and as infeffable as the pantaloons you once wore in the style of a murderous jongleur. we have eaten the magical beans. we have eaten the magical catfish. I was perhaps astonished by the graveling interstice of your smile but not too much and not for too long. one persons revelatory facial massage is another persons ancient Redwood is another persons steeple moon and basset hound. when I hear the cuckoo song, its first stirrings, I sleep faster, the day not yet come, into the woodchipper my flowery spinster drops all the stylish chapeaux, see this the earth has seeds she says, this earth we are ant ribs in its gullet, this earth is vomiting our wishes into space, this earth is a hirpled virago, this earth is your dead fucking momma, and I sleep faster, as virtue is an expensive operation and my other heteronym is a Dodge Dart, uniquely in love with her fierce and naked mane.

* this doubling informs us. this tripling reworms us. this sanctity blooms us. this rancid perfume. I experienced a reduction. Dead mice filled the tub. I did some temp work. I estranged myself from my fellows. I photocopied a chemical fire this delineated me. I decided to race cars instead. I won every race. My tires climbed the mountain. The engine roared like a magical cynosure. They called me Mud Hen and Elvis but something about it did not feel right. I needed to get back in touch with myself. I returned to my roots in the visual arts. I painted women and turned their hair into asparagus I would say to them you are very pretty but your hair would look much better as asparagus. I painted on every man a beard and a stovepipe hat I called the series 21st Century Puritans Now Today. I am Giacomo de Profile de Andrade. I have never ridden on a subway train. The universe at first imparted its secrets to me one by one, and pared my brain gently, as though it were a picnic fruit, and then came the alluvian glut and the straightening of all the wire coat hangers inside my house.

Tim Earley is the author of two collections of poems, Boondoggle and The Spooking of Mavens. His work has appeared in Chicago Review, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review, jubilat, Cannibal, and Bestoned: The New Metaphysick. A chapbook, Catfish Poems, is forthcoming from Delete Press in July 2013. He teaches at the University of Mississippi and for the Fine Arts Work Center's Online Writing Program, 24 PearlStreet. He'll be moving to Glenville, West Virginia very soon.