REALLY

FUCKING
PRETTY
At the very top of the world

you cant see very much
mostly you can just see
places that are close
to the very top of the world.
Hearing that Ive been there
people are always eager to talk to me
they ask questions like
I bet it was really something, right?
and they ask me to tell them about it
and I give them answers like
The very top of the world was alright,
but I prefer Albany.
They are almost never satisfied with this
some are so unsatisfied
that they become determined to journey
to the very top of the world.
When they return I ask them how it was
and they give me answers like
The very top of the world was alright,
but I prefer Sacramento.
After a while of this
I started telling people,
when they asked
that the very top of the world
was better than it was,
I started telling people
that I was thinking about going back.
And some of them became determined to journey
to the very top of the world.
When they returned I asked them how it was
and they told me
that the very top of the world
was better than it was
they told me
that they were thinking about going back.
Now Im sitting at the very top of the world
and I cant see very much
and Id prefer to be
in Albany.


The wanderer roams for ten months out of the year
and rests during the other month.

Iconoclasms
I was in the middle of a
seminar I was giving about
the seven bridges you must
cross and the one bridge you
must burn to attain true
love when someone in the
audience interrupted and
asked about my qualifications
about why should I know
about this and I pulled out
the tabloid my romance
being the most well
documented the most well
photographed of the
decade, but the audience
member was fractious
and stood up and walked out
in protest. I dont know if
they were protesting me
or true love
or what the difference would be.


The farmers boy had never been off the farm
in his life. Since you can only dream of the things
youve seen, the farmers boy dreamt of corn stalks
with cows heads. When the farmers boy would
lie in a field and look at the clouds, all the
clouds would seem to him to resemble sheep. The farmers
boy knew every fish who lived in the duck pond,
he had caught each of them at least three times,
even that old, shy, fat catfish, and always threw them
back. The farmers boy had a rock collection, he would
keep every interesting stone he turned up while
plowing the farms fields; one of the stones looked like
a pig. Another looked like a duck.
AUTUMN LEAVES
and winter shuts the door behind it.

The War
When the war came Caseys brother
signed up quick to do his duty.
It seemed like it was only the day after
that two officers showed up to present
his mother with some medals and she cried.
It seemed like every mother around
was crying with some medals.

Then the war came closer
and soon there was no sugar
and then it crept closer
till you could hear it from your bedroom,
but you can act like its not there, easy
if you just turn up the dubstep.

The Handsome Mouse
Please, wont you psychologize me?
he pleaded.
We wouldnt and he started acting up,
yelling Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
until we had enough and went
downstairs to watch TV.

Murder/Arson
Twelve detectives examine a crime scene

Theres been a murder says the first.
Yes, to cover up the arson says the second.
Theres a lingering smell of burnt cash says the third.
They were trying to cover up the counterfeiting says the fourth.
But where is the body? Asks the fifth.
We are detectives says the sixth.
I have a badge but no notebook says the seventh.
I have a notebook but no badge says the eighth.
We are all covered in blood says the ninth.
One of us must be lying says the tenth.
Not all is as it seems says the eleventh says the eleventh.

Yr fleshs turning into miniature cattle.
The miniature cattle realize they are on
a giant & stampede off and out of sight.
This mostly happens under yr clothes.
The girl youre talking to @ the bar is
kind of impressed by this ostensible
magic, but later when you bring her
home she is less impressed by the
exposed sinews and veins that populate
yr form and says maybe we should just
sleep with our clothes on. She answers
yr text for five days, then stops


the problem with your whole life is your floors are dirty
every headache youve ever had could be fixed with a mop

Greeting Card Poem
We walk around with greeting cards
introducing ourselves to everyone we meet
Our greeting cards are decorated
with unnecessary representations of flowers
All of the people that we know have received
one of these greeting cards.
We fill the cards with unnecessarily
specific information about ourselves
so no one comes away with a wrong impression of us,
but our writing is also long winded and verbose
so no one comes away with a right impression of us.
During our downtime we watch reruns
on daytime television, or, if it is not our
day to have the A/C
we hang out by the pool.
Topics that we have exhausted include our mothers
There is only one taboo subject during our downtime:
our greeting cards.
We talk to the children at the pool,
and, as stand-in authority figures, have meticulously
documented
the top 50 cannonballs of the summer.
Each of the children from the pool have received
a personally addressed greeting card
detailing precisely what they can do
to improve their cannonballs.
These are always mailed to their home addresses
in order to avoid downtime conflicts of interest.

The Wedding
At first sight some of the
children were most drawn to
the pony ride, a few however
tumbled over towards the moon
bounce where other laughing
munchkins in face paint were
somersaulting etc, with cotton
candy halos round their mouths.


We should turn around they said
thats not the way
but they were wrong
that was the way

Parrot
The cries of the Arctic winds
blend with the shrieking of the ice.
My friend told me she bought a parrot.
I thought about that on top of the glacier,
shivering.

The Grey Palace
I live in the Grey Palace

sometimes my hands smell like feet
and not even when Ive just put on shoes
sometimes long before
or long after
sometimes from the balconies of the Grey Palace
I watch the stars or
passing cars on the street

in the springtime
the new greens leak into the Grey Palace
and the old greys leak out

In the basement of the Grey Palace
there is a slide
that goes to the center of the Earth

Hanging Out
I was in the treehouse by myself when you came up
cant even let me be lonely, I said.
Whatre we gonna do? you asked, so I got out the telescope.
Im tired of looking at the naked ladies, you said, so I
aimed it at the fat mans window and we watched him,
his belly lolling out like a panting dogs tongue. He had
a naked lady over, though, so we got bored and stopped watching.
Since there was nothing else to do I brought out the liquor.
We took turns drinking straight from the bottle.
Neither of us spoke as we passed back and forth
until your grasping hand didnt grasp quick and it
slipped and spilled.
Even though youre here Im going to be lonely anyway,
I said, so you passed out to make it easier for me to
do it. I didnt even have any old love letters to read
or burn. I talked to you while you were sleeping.
I told you all of the things I didnt like about you.
Then I felt bad so I told me all of the things I did
like about me. Then I looked through the telescope
and the naked lady had left the fat man so I watched
him, his belly lolling out like a panting dogs tongue,
all by myself and it wasnt boring.


Though Im not sure how it ended up under the couch cushions,
I couldnt help but appreciate the new family dog

The Sing Song Days
On the sing-song days we sang together,
all of us. the sing-song days were good
cleaning-the-dishes days
and also good
decorating-the-house days
since we could just sing what we were doing.
Sometimes we had quiet-all-together days
which were much better than quiet-separately days,
when everyone just did quiet-things on their own.
On the quiet-all-together days
whoever woke up first
would wake up every else like it was Christmas
with a shh-finger in front of their mouth
and everyone would have to wear slippers.


My mother died. The War came. Were
getting a divorce. Jesus and The Buddha
are helping me cope. My hair is falling
out, the kids dont call, Im putting on
some weight.

Song Goats
Up in the mountains
you can hear the song goats sing.
The song goats sing the
same songs over again
over and over
the same songs.
People from the nearby mountain
villages go up into the mountains
to go crazy.
One villager went to teach
the goats a new song
but came back crazy
singing the song goats songs.

I THOUGHT I SAW THE SUN SHINE
We do not believe in miracles, one said.
We like to hear the sounds of falling snow, said another.
We imagine ourselves within an infinite afternoon, said a third.
We breathe on frozen glass, put our eyes to its thawed circles, said a fourth.
We do handstands in green grass in summertime, said a fifth.
Our whispers always echo.
Our birthdays make us anxious.
Our parents dont remember us.
Our nights are soon forgotten.
The last was silent.

Half a lemon
if you were a houseguest
and i were a host
i would feel bad
for having left you in the fridge
for two weeks.

Grumble

Shrimp & Tuna
You will be costumed as a tuna
i will be costumed as a shrimp.
our costumes will perhaps be made largely
out of paper matche but also partly
of fabric. Though my costume will
appear larger than yours, because
i am the larger of us, we will act as
though we are the size of our
respective sea dwellers
and i will act like you are a giant
and run from you
and hide in the shadows eating dead things
and you will be caught on
one of those lines that
require multiple men to reel in.
And your body will be eaten by cats
and my inedible tail will end up on
staten island under a diaper.

After the War
There wasnt much left.
it looked apocalyptic
maybe it was.
You smeared ashes on your face
your arms your tattered clothes
I wore an apron that said
Kiss the Chef
Those ashes from all those burnt
down buildings are probably going
to give you cancer, I said.
You laughed and asked if I wanted
to play hide and seek.
You won every time
You blended in perfectly with the
burnt down buildings.

Skinny Love
we are starving
to death
and you are hot for me
i dont have any energy, i say
looking at the dirt
we will die soon anyway
you assure me
i am only a sack of bones,
i tell you, but you dont care
and start saying dirty things
in my ear

i am hot for you too
i cant stop thinking about
biting off a piece of your ear
or leg

The Number One
I am a traveling salesman
everywhere I go is exactly the same
in the exact same way
Every night as I am waiting to
fall asleep in some motel I am counting
to one million. Every night
I resume where I left off
the night before. When I get
to one million, I start again at one.
My favorite number to count
is 37,563, but I also highly
enjoy 137,563
and 437,563.

The Haunted House
down the street
burned down
or did it?

Significant
in the postcards you wrote
you dotted your is with dots

everything mattersor nothing does,
is some peoples point of view

you said in the postcards you wrote

Dead Horse Fucker
What do you know of gallop?
Yeah, in a field. Where else?
Under sky.
With my footprints in the mud I spelt out love.
A hoofprint next to mine; love.

Heart Beat Frantic
We are playing space bandits;
I am the bandits robbing your caravan.
The sound of my magnet boots on
your ships carapace
makes your heart beat frantic.
The strobing lights of space cops
are planets behind us. Give up your
precious cargo, I yell, those space
cops will never catch up.
Drats,
you sigh, looking at Sven, panting,
a hundred feet away.
What are you carrying,
anyway? Open it up.
Instantaneous
Transporter Devices, you say,
unzipping your backpack to let Sven
through.
I wont go out like this,
I tell you, pulling my space blaster
from its holster.
Not like this.
I shoot and we are ripped from
the caravan.
I float around your
backyard for two hours,
staring
into far off galaxies
until the stars comes out.

The Falls
You are standing on or in a waterfall
and you are beckoning to me
and I can hear my mothers voice
in my head saying
if someone jumped off of a bridge
would you jump off of a bridge too
but this isnt a bridge
its a waterfall.

The Stage Donkey
Hes just a stage donkey, you said.
He wont just carry stuff for you,
its not in his contract.

So I wrote a script.

Act I, Scene I

Donkey carries things.

Refrigerator Love Story
A refrigerator is an end of a love story
shared lives shared shelves
they say
we shop at a store at the top of our street
to keep our shared shelves stocked

A Marxist-Leninist walks into an analogy
where the train is late and everything is scarce.
The night is dark and sitting on a cold bench
the Marxist-Leninist struggles to stay awake.

To fall in love is to trip into a hole.

While doing some shopping we discover
Our favorite cashier has quit the job
Will we ever see you again? I ask
No, says the cashier

A Marxist-Leninist falls asleep on a train
and misses their stop. Then Our favorite cashier
gets on the same train and sits next to the
sleeping Marxist-Leninist.

The store at the top of our street
is now understaffed. Their new hours
are as short as winter sunshine.
We wake up after dark.
Our end of a love story has empty shelves.

Our favorite cashier and a Marxist-Leninist
leave the country and become adventure capitalists.
Their trail is a locusts.

We keeping digging holes in our back,
then our front, yard. But to trip
into a hole is not to fall in love.

Two adventure capitalists are wolves
and the world is their caribou. They buy
a banana plantation in the Caribbean.

We went to the store at the top of our street
and bought a bunch of bananas. Putting them
on our shelves we found a note attached:
I told you youd never see me again.

The Orphanage
we barely see kids anymore
once they have parents
maybe on a birthday
or running into each other
on the street.

The Hoarse Race

We run around the track
screaming as loud as we can.
Our friends watch from the stands;
one of them is taking bets.

I scream I cant do this anymore.
This is useless. Im tired of screaming.
My wife comes down from the stands
and tells me
that she is leaving me for Frank.

At first I am elated that she
put her money on me, but,
as her and Franks silhouettes disappear,
together, into the horizon,
I am less and less certain.

The end of the world blue sky.

cloud in days? Who hasnt seen a
Easy connections, but faster to change, the
birds hop, where is metaphysics? A one dollar tomorrow, our
jackets stained with mud, out from once again we arose.
Time now, your face is obscured by shadows? ha, weaver
and choice. I am trying to find my way into and out of
the forest.
Direct and inmistakable, here will change
Where are you going? She asked me
and I didnt know how to reply
I thought
of saying
nowhere to the cloud cuckoo land of color wheels
a happier star than this where the weather suits my
clothes hell
and instead walked to the bathroom and climbed
out the window and up and onto the neighbors roof and
onto higher and ever higher buildings until I reached the
moon.
After we realized we couldnt make the hole any
deeper we began to make it wider and wider.
If you
average the weight of every sidelong glance you ever
got youd find out exactly who you were he said
No one
ignored it and no one spoke.
They sat in silence.
A cat yawned.


I was talking about kissing a baby
You were tying your shoes
You were tying your shoes for a very long time
and when you stood up
they were less tied than tangled
It would take you weeks to unknot those tangles
We ate hot dogs together under a tree
You got a lot of mustard on your shirt
I couldnt stop thinking about it
It was too much mustard
I couldnt hear anything you said
for the rest of the day
I couldnt talk to you for weeks
I couldnt talk to anyone.


Your peach tree is barren,
it has not grown a single peach
in all the years youve had it

a few cherries,
some pears,
a passion fruit
have appeared on its branches
like adopted children, but never any
peaches

You keep cultivating the tree though
and one day you find,
growing from a low branch,
a field mouse.

The people on the streets,
I looked into all of their faces.
None of them looked alike:
I made a love radar, but,
I cant tell if it doesnt work or does.


Helen walks around with wet cement.
Occasionally, when she sees something she likes,
shell smear some cement on it.
Helen would like to be made out of cement herself,
she thinks, some days.
Helens liked a lot of her neighbors things.
Her neighborsve put up a fence.
They were appalled when Helen cemented
their cat. Their cat didnt seem to mind the
cement too much.
Helen mixes cement in the mornings in her
underwear.
She is quite attached to this morning ritual.
It is when she feels, even if only briefly,
that she has the most control over her life.
In the garage next to the old bikes with
flat tires, gray-blue light straying in
through two small windows, Helen might pause,
for a moment, over the bucket
with a soft glow in her eyes
and her face will relax, just a little
until she comes back to herself
and finishes mixing the cement
A flight, a flying. There are no terrified.
Tintanabulation
One after another are years, and snows
coming down quiet to quiet. The throughrushing rivers thawing
and freezing; your boots fading and breaking, all your
footsteps are gone, sand or snow or mud, are gone now.
You are not always even into imagining, some days the twine
ball in your head sits on the floor under furniture, with the
dust. You would like to sit still so long you were covered
in dust. You would like to be at the end of a rainbow,
covered in dust. You would like to carry around dust with you
to dust the things that should be dusty.

i will count to ten on your soul
until you remind me of my mother and I cry
until i think of dying flowers in pots by the window
that i dont know how to save
until my voice gets soft as the ground
after the snow melts
whenever i celebrate your birthday in my head
it looks like a childs party
everyone wears conical hats with white elastic
and bright balloons conference in corners
and i feel embarrassed
i wish i could draw on the sunset
with my finger,
i dont think i have anything on the Creator,
and the sky would like like amateur hour,
it would be like
pounding on a piano i dont know how to play
i will count to ten on your soul
until the birds come back in Spring
until the water gets warm
and the leaves drop

The Case
It was a classic murder
whodunnit.
(the detective over
breakfast eggs, toast, drinking milk
felt it coming)
At the detective office in the
morning the report came in.

There was an heiress.
There was an old lady with furs.
She had a small dog.
Someone had an aristocratic
British accent.
It was the detective.

The detective was assigned the case
but with a caveat from
the detective office sergeant
"Don't guff this up
if you pull another one of your stunts
I'll put you in the evidence locker."

The detective was a good and thorough one
but possessed some unfortunate behaviors
including certain opportunistic interpretations of
'the protocol'
and perhaps a few matters
skewing towards vigilantism,
which were disparaged in the force -- as was assignment
to the evidence locker.

Already at the scene of the crime there was another
detective.
"Some place here, huh?" the early-arrived detective asked.
"Amazing how much blood there is everywhere"
said the
disparaged detective.
"Amazing how much everywhere there is."
The mansion
was abundant.
They gathered, bagged, photographed
evidence.
A bloody trail led through half the rooms
and terminated with bloody handprints on the first few steps
of the imperial staircase, as if the deceased had
stopped
trying to hold themself together and begun trying
to pull themself up,
to apparently die at the bottom of the stairs
where an oriental rug slowly absorbed a large
pool of blood.

Another detective arrived while they worked. They greeted each other
somberly and divided up the workload.

"I'll dust for fingerprints," said the first detective.
"I'll write up all the evidence," said the second detective.
"I'll line up the witnesses," said the third
"from shortest to
tallest."
They agreed to reconvene in
the ballroom
where the third detective
would line up the witnesses.

Two more detectives had arrived and
were standing in
the ballroom
when they reconvened. All the detectives lined up
from shortest to
tallest.
"We could dance if only there were music,"
said a detective.

Just then four detectives walked in, carrying their instruments,
and started playing.

The first detective waltzed with the heiress.
The second detective flamencoed with the old lady with furs.
The third detective fox trotted with the butler.
The fourth detective tangoed with the maid.
The fifth detective jitterbugged with the lawyer.

More detectives arrived as they danced.
The fifth detective, being the most acute, saw the problem.
Handing off the lawyer to one of the newly arrived
detectives, the fifth detective said
"I'll go fetch more
witnesses"
and ran out.
The other detectives stood against the wall
waiting
for their dance partners.
"I don't really dance," said
one.
"It's all in the hips," said
another.
When the fifth detective arrived
with the new witnesses the detective band felt a renewed energy
and launched into
a hip jazz number.
More detectives made their ways into
the ballroom,
following them were more witnesses. Everyone was dancing.
Detectives dipped and twirled witnesses.
Witnesses dipped and twirled detectives.
Everyone was dancing.
"You know who would really enjoy this?" asked a detective.
"The detective office sergeant."
So they called him up,
told him to come on down.
He arrived in a fabulous pair
of dance shoes, and began to tear it up
he later admitted
he hadn't danced so hard since his sister's
wedding
One of the detectives was a close friend and confirmed
that the detective office sergeant had indeed been the talk
of the wedding. The dancing lasted until well after midnight. It
was hard for
the detectives to sort out
whose shoes were whose
the detectives all being the sort who
wore nondescript shoes.
The witnesses mostly found their
shoes without any trouble and trickled out.
As the last witness giggles faded away from the manor,
and the sound of the last engine pulling away faded too
a quiet came over the ballroom.
"Detective!" called the
detective office sergeant, over the hush.
"Yes, sir?"
responded an aristocratic British accent.
"I'm giving you a medal."
"Thank you, sir."
Then all of the detectives walked home barefoot
rather than put on the wrong shoes.

L/only
We are afraid
will you comfort us?
No
you must learn not be afraid.

Were you never afraid?
Are you never afraid?

Know thyself,
there is comfort in love.

When will we know love?
& will love know us back?
or will love know our backs?
Do not tell us, do not lie, that you cannot walk out on love.
what of those absent fathers?
what of those scorned lovers?
How can we stop those stories from being our stories?

I don't know.
I don't know.

We hear that love is always different.
We hear that love is always the same.
We hear our heart beat when we cover our ears.

I am nauseous to tell you anything
you are yet like clay.

There must be something?

There is sun and there is cold.
There are good days and there are others.
If I told you more I might be lying.

There must be more?