Fable Reject

allegory
of gods and demons with paper
hats and paper swords
while you and i
tow sagging boats across
purple rivers.

someone warned me once
of wetted lines,
the smudge of objective
shape into subjective

mirage. so i
soaked a graph
in the river
and saw Nandi abandoned
in a paper plane adrift
and empty in still wind,
its crumpled nose pointed
toward the smear between
the line of i and
the curve of u.

this metaphor condensed
is now too wide,
this river stained with
blue blood of fables and red
guilt of their failures was lost
in the last
text.

i am either
smooth as stone
beneath the tide
or floating easy
as cement.

where you come into all this
is hard to say, but the ink
sags with your weight.


(Nandi is Shiva's [the god of destruction] constant and most devoted companion.)

How Not to Regard a Man

(The infamous highly uncomfortable poem premiered as part of Molly Jones's trio suite. Seeing on the page makes it even worse. So naturally I have to include it on this blog.)


Oh my bubble baby boo,
my crooning coodoll,
my pooky punkin!

My luscious lovepop,
my lolly lionpurr,
my wiggle cuddleworm!

Oh my giggle ticklefish,
my little hisssnake,
my darling dicksicle!

My frolicking flowereater,
my buoyant pogoboy,
my humming firefurnace!

Oh my fickle fuckbird,
my googoo goopie,
my sly slipperflap!

Oh, duke of my dawn!
Oh, lord of my landscape!
Oh, prince of my prostration!

Oh, you groaning gunman,
before you fire your pistol -

Oh! Get me
to a nunnery.

Subway Suite, Movement II

(A part of a three "movement"-long poem. This particular movement, or at least a more finely crafted version of it, will be featured in a piece of mine for the Arbor Composer's Collective.)


Say
you're in a tunnel.

Say you are standing
barefoot on the subway tracks,
metal expiring between
your toes.

Above you,
the oasis of yellowhite lights
left slowly roasting
since the dawn
of man
and machine.

Say the hour has shrunken
past utterance.
Say you are alone
except for a man
shadowed against stairs,
blowing beyond breath
into his horn.

He plays pop songs,
but only the chorus.
He plays notes,
but only beneath grunts.
He plays his loss,
but only to himself.

To you,
he is just
murmuring.

Say you hear
laughing.
But there is no
one there to laugh.

You stare
into the tunnel's abyss
that exists in theory
but cannot be proven.

Say inside
is everything:

the hollers of your mother
as you slipped from the womb,

the hairs of your father's mustache
honed to a point in reprimand,

the sweat sighing on your lost
lover's brow past dusk,


the sharp yelp of your bones
as your knee cracks,


the cackles you can't hear
every time you center
yourself.

Say you scream.

You scream louder
and shriller than
you can.

Say you wait

and the loss of echo
is more piercing
than an answer.

Pawan Putre

(from the Kirsten in the monkey temple in Jaipur, Rajasthan)

sunset quiet

a white temple shines whiter in shadow

she is gentle with the smile
she conveys in her fingers
unveiling beneath my brow
an infant drip of red
in prayer to her ancient birthmark
dark as her offering
to the sun

she steps aside
her reverent hands dissolve skyward
as the mountain heaves her
towards her god

my pale skin
glows dark in her temple

i bow dim to the shrine
the suncrowned face
shines with sinking light
from its limbs manifest

centuries below
the city echoes with haze
each inward cry impatient horn
dirty fingernail and pleading tongue
evaporate past the valley

beckoned by burnt stones
i descend
into the sun shy shadow of cities

warm in silent solitude
a poet emerges
and a quiet love appears

For Jaco

(an oldy, but a goody)

Jiggery pokery
Jaco Pastorius
could be erratic but
sang with his bass.

Experimentally
with electricity
built up his boasts and was
punched in the face.

The Strange Unstrange (Or: Escaping the Habit) (Or: Mires of Memory) (Or: To America)

Hold.

Your voice betrays you -
each crack lulls tongue
and issues arrows
rustling clambering
toward sheen of cloth
behind glass.

I thought I slipped this,
melted numbers letters
subtle exclamation points
as waste on foreign roadsides
sweet stench of compost.

Turns out
I just

left.

I, farcical judge,
call my stoop to court -
the unswept swaggers around ankles.

What have you to offer me?
The itch of avidity,
raw red meat
and juice seeping down thighs
until low moan?

You don’t know me at all.