Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
A storm wind but no storm, just the leaves showing their backsides to each passing breeze. The muggy heat makes me feel I’m losing my grip, slippery with sweat, anxieties germinating in my gut. Deep sleep eludes me. Again the dream of being toyed with by my cat. Again the dream of becoming a prey animal, a human resource.
I cannot get this ocean out of my ear. It roars. It pounds. My nestlings clamor for worms, but I feed them fingers that the cat brings in from the jail next door, bloodless and gray. Somehow I’m OK with clammy things. I’ll lick the sweat off a brow just for the salt.
if even the sacred heart of a high-
minded pilgrim is for sale
let me be the highest bidder
oh lord of chaos
I’m in the market for martyrs
their futures are prized as reliquaries
I’m in the market to feel
at least alive
as the poet said
the first green is gold
and so green am i
my beard has gone haywire
engulfing my face and erasing
anything human
My familiars are growing too familiar. Under what cushion have I left my wing of bat? Let all members remember their proper places: I conjure you, you conjure me. The most enduring fictions emerge from consensus—and we’re a family. Talk to me, my long-lost caricature! The armrest has claimed my right hand, as well it should. And my viper has appointed himself to the search committee for a new rat.
muggy night the shadows under a sheet
give a breast
to the best beast
feast in a fetid nest
on the flesh of mushroom
like every clever hypha
cleave to a root
shoot up with chlorophyll
leave everything to bees
I am too tired for amazement
at the way I’ve been played:
once lionized as a prize ram,
now cracked as old leather.
On a board stippled with pins,
the only move is all fall down.
They’ve pinned a six-pointed
star to my chest. If it’s the first
you’ve seen so far, make a wish!
The googly-eyed olives
in the hors d’oeuvres tray
are tracking your every move.
Everyone is in a bubble
but me—a toast!
To more of the bubbly elixir.
Because here at Bubble, Incorporated,
our main product is you: your trove
of data. Your special snow globe
waiting to be disrupted.
Every thought bubble
from your comic strippers.
But as king of the beasts, I’m afraid
I must insist on my prerogative
of the first pinprick.
I have held back my shadow
long enough, like a sheepdog
too long among the sheep.
It has learned only how to obey,
not how to bay for blood. I will stop
hiding it in the folds of my costume
like a chained watch.
But what
is this conspiracy of a mirrored floor
to unmoor us and flood our secret
parts with light? What other
oppressive heaven has sent
this self-on-a-shelf?
It’s always such a gift and an honor when my artist friends make adaptations of my work. Marc Neys surprised me with this yesterday: a complete and I think effective re-imagining of the original poem. You know, what any attentive reader does. But most readers aren’t crazy-brilliant Belgian artist-composers.
north has lost its allure
to the great unsettling
mist lingers later in the day
storms smell like the tropics
the sun cedes ever more
to thieving ravens
and shimmering on a far shore
that magnetic field
traveling so light
even the songs stay behind
but home has grown
beyond elaboration
mountains don brighter plumage
berries ferment like sunsets
first a mellow burn
then the whole of the night sky
dark and speckled
as the inside of an egg