come so cheap. I’ll start where I start,
but given the bulk discounts,
why not go for it all. Just think of it –
trust and love and, failing that,
at least one of the two.
Here, let me get a pin for you.
The pleasure’s all mine.
♥
If you can’t hear the sound of a heart,
half-buried, grinding like a pulp mill
then try a stethoscope. In one valve
and out the other, as the textbooks say.
A capacity for sadness is an incredible letdown.
I’d rather see the whole litter
of puppies neutered and be done with it –
where was I going with that?
I told you I get lost in low light.
Cute little thing with your use of both hands,
help me finish this off. Puppies:
you can’t take them to the museum,
no matter how much the kids plead.
Just imagine the bones they’ll drag home.
I THINK IT JUST MOVED
They’ve been digging in the backyard again.
Like a cavity, the ground near the fence
has opened wide. From the kitchen window
something was spotted: a sky-blue promise,
a flirtation, an x.
The world is full of people
who get their teeth pulled. The world is full
of people who pray to odds, who close their eyes
when they sign. There are several other things
I would like to tell you, but not here.
There are rumours of gold, rumours
of a French maid buried somewhere near the compost.
In the moonlight you can see her garter belt,
so lacy a man could curl up in it and sleep.
They’ve been digging. The first one to tear a strip
off her thigh-high skirt and make a flag of it wins.
HIT AND RUN
Swing a hefty wrench against a hollow pipe.
The result sort of sounds like foul.
This sort of thought can fill a lifetime.
It can also occupy hours while high.
Approximate Major League action everywhere!
Let the toilet run and swing away. Like dusk
lurking in the corners of a room, higher minds
are unwilling to focus on anything in particular.
The fun I’ve had robbed me blind.
LIKE LIONS
we mostly slept.
Lounged on the stripmall’s runway,
little concrete villa, all aluminum sides
and neon light. So pretty in the dark.
Thin-lipped weather in the plaza’s shallow avenues
with its low curbs and garbage cans of different sizes.
We all shook hands and grinned.
She invited me over, or I her; the details
are whitewashed with style. We hung around,
dim and cool like a bunker before the war.
Practiced taking our clothes off
in a silence crisp as a pressed suit.
Thumbed the buttons on the shirt
of the room around us. We took big gulps.
Like a trust fund, we became more luxurious
with each passing day. Certainty fanned out
like a search team. A general consensus wavered,
broke, re-collected itself. Things got boring
and one of us left. With apologies to those of you
waiting for the payoff, I guess this is it.
HANSARD
The unacknowledged legislators of this evening’s meal
insist we acknowledge our sources in the grandest style.
They insist that when we grow up we become narrative poems.
I’ve dined beneath Roman arches in a lightning storm.
I’ve dined by the banks of the Arno, the Tiber, by three
creeks you’ve never heard of. There are several other
meals I could tell you about while we’re here.
My belly swells with the music courtesy of SiriusXM
Satellite Radio. Courtesy of modern plumbing,
your water glass is filled. The unacknowledged legislators
would like you to tip 15%. They would like
you to return the cutlery. The unacknowledged legislators
would like to thank Hollywood Records for the appearance
of Miley Cyrus, who will be checking your purse at the exit.
SYNDICATION
Lassoed by one of those syndicated afternoons.
If you want to get poetic about it, I was bound,
gagged and leashed by the soft light of Cheers,
Sam, Woody and the gang playing a game
of Twenty Questions with me Abu Ghraib-style.
Mostly, I wore boxers, through which
I attended to dry skin. After Seinfeld,
Law & Order. I could go on.
During the commercials I hear a night court of mice
in the walls, scratching and alive; gavels clap
as they conduct awful trials in camera.
LITTLE MISS HALTON REGION
I confess to having cried in a legion hall
as the local rag’s reporter/photographer point-formed
my reaction to the indecency of being called runner-up.
I confess to this reaction being anger at, among others,
other contestants’ parents, though they were guilty
only of an overzealous pride despite their children
finishing several removes from the ‘LITTLE MISS
HALTON REGION BEAUTY QUEEN’ sash.
I acknowledge giving over to a grief that was swirling
and sharp, and the locus of pain was obvious –
Debbie Miller, who smiles like a hood ornament
and smells like peppermint schnapps.
I confess to the greater part of my anguish burning
like a tire fire, which is to say in the months that followed
I considered awful Debbie in ways that could be described
as detailed or criminal, but however you classify
these thoughts, they were without a doubt scaly and prehensile.
And I confess to understanding the relevance
of the phrase put out to pasture in its relation
to the Platonic ideal of a capital-H Horse,
and now admit to the flimsy laws that govern our talents
and the evaluations thereof, namely, how in the moment’s
I’m-rubber-you’re-glue equation I was what’s led into an Elmer’s factory.
Mostly, I confess to visiting a certain vehicle
in the McDonald’s parking lot while Debbie sat inside
and watched her boyfriend eat, and what I did then
was a study in contrast regarding a box cutter
and a rear right tire, and all of a sudden I got old real quick,
wielded that knife like a rough dollar-store comb,
and while considering what to do next, the moon,
in an effort to describe the world the way my painstakingly
straightened hair described the asphalt,
bled generously on my innocent scalp.
SMOKING INDOORS
Hooks empty. A shed of bent sheet metal.
The sun tweaks your brain’s stub, flicks it,
and a bylaw arm wrestles with a head full of splinters.
Given the chance to ignore the elbow
lifted from the table, most do.
We do what we think we need to.
Fingers printed with yellow ink, a fake tan
nicotine drew. A cigarette’s papery rope unravelled.
One headlight, weaving hand to mouth.
Smoke half, butt the other half out.
TUMOUR
Little tumour, you’re a blip
on the radar, corner of the body
dust is swept in. If a mirror
took negatives, archived them
in a blender and let it dry – that would be you.
Indifferent continent where metaphors go:
zebra mussel, surgeon’s golf ball,
a connect-the-dots dot.
Death on a rusty tricycle.
Claustrophobe, you ask for a little light –
lungs open like a pair of hands attached to a kid
at the beach, open-palmed, saying, Look what I found.
AT HAND
Think of life as taking a bath.
We end up pickled and cold.
Think of gravity as taking a bath:
it’s hard to stand without slipping.
Think of gravity as gravy,
that urge to smother yourself in it.
It’s after dinner and your uncle
has loosened his pants by the light
of the football game on TV.
A vague shame circulates
like a draft. Grab what’s at hand.
Think of professional sports
as a simile: there are so many
teams, they’re so damn likeable.
HOT MESS
It is noon in the sweat glands of the gorgeous
and the pheromones are doing their thing.
But we are hungover and have to work in an hour.
And you’re a tall drink of water because we’re so fucking thirsty,
as lonely and out of reach as a balloon beached on the ceiling.
Dear heart, tensored by spandex, uttering a saint’s lament,
shiny side of a dime in the corner of a pickpocket’s eye. Well then.
The boiler room has sprung a leak and it’s getting hot
in here. We could click the like button on you all day.
LOREM IPSUM
Here on the island of umbrella drinks
we make our own fun. Cocktails at three,
cocktails at four, etc., with real fruit in the drinks,
real plastic instead of glass. Pull out that ruler
and draw me something straight-ish, won’t you?
This is about grief, as it is, empty as a storm-haloed beach.
It’s a wonderful button that holds your shirt tightly.
From this room full of different-sized drawers
I can hear the sound of torrid fucking next door;
it’s not the motion of the ocean, as they say in the biz,
but the belly of the whale you’re in.
TAKING THE FUN OUT OF FUNCTION
It was the season of car alarms. Things ached
to get out. Things crawled from one hole
to another. When brushed against,
things scurried into bloom.
Of the decade, thick as coleslaw,
I think we can say, better luck next time.
But who needs luck when what’s out there smells
like cherries and sunscreen, urine and Tic Tacs.
It was the season of visiting the mechanic.
Sugar crawled out from the fuel lines;
the wheels didn’t come off, they restructured.
Of the one-liner, I think we can say, get the fuck out.
That’s what the one-liner wants,
it wants to get out.
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID
The morning torches your face with a new crease;
if you’ve been up all night, you’ll know what I mean.
In the brush country of your skull a butterfly flexes
and you wake up hard-pressed to say why.
My stomach has invented several new knots
and named them all after you. I’m so happy
I could burst into flames. That’s what she said.
Falling asleep is like climbing a tall, leafy tree.
The branches get narrower – spot me.
LIKE CLOCKWORK
This in drudgery, like a cold lightning-bolted
to your immune system. When playing
tennis with your desires, whose knees
do you take a crowbar to? Anapest, Budapest,
vintage crabgrass makes bad lemonade.
Looking back, there are clearly three muddy
prints: one-legged invisible dog,
do you smell something burning?
Let’s waltz through this mess of a mess
together and if someone says, Excuse me,
Ms. Harding, your triple Axel is no good here,
you’ll be speechless. But it’s okay,
the vagaries you’ve been toting
around in your high school gym bag
have been saying it for years.
XO
There you are, skinny as the day’s first hour.
And here I am, stalking you like the breeze
hunting picnickers in the summer grass.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s clear
this isn’t working. You think of us as xo.
I think of us as a three-act drama
starring a small child and a jar of aspirin.
Under the bright stage lights, it’s like
you’re not even here. And then I’m ushered
to my seat. Twinkle in the pilot’s eye,
twinkle on the wing. Think of it as the new style
of living: we come and go in the reflection
of a heart monitor’s flatline. How swell.
You should really put some ice on that.
THIS TIME WITH FEELING
Another night in the gator pond,
quick splash, the plush of it,
the flurry of hands – not your own –
it’s a pleasure to meet you, it’s a real
pleasure. A common theme runs through
the night like a streaker. We strain
for a glimpse then look away.
We’re all tied up with nowhere to go.
In bars, boys yell, Show us your tits!
and girls say, No! World of soft
bodies, world without in/out privileges,
I dedicate this year to grief, the next
to mild contentment. I dedicate
these two hours to a tub of ice cream
and wrestling reruns.
A flu-like sentiment hangs over us
like a hung jury, staid and pleading –
Salvation Army tin, no, collection plate,
no, the plated voice of Collections: I know,
I know, just send us what you can.
MEAN MATT
He grew up in the woods without a lake in sight.
His mother was a hellcat and his father was an itch.
What’s good is rarely good.
His Kmart aesthetic is infectious – he comes over once
and your curtains are floral patterned and stained for weeks.
Always flushes so you don’t know what was there.
He’s a slow waltz with a gorgeous someone across a floor of tacks.
Loves like a Brillo pad. Attentive as an empty fridge.
And what, exactly, did you expect?
He labours through rain season, mud season,
sailing a sharp-blue kite through the middle of the night.
This is what we think of when clouds appear.
Once worked as a dentist on an oil rig. He’s what’s
fresh rust and what’s dried blood.
But he’s good at what he does.
Sees daughters as spare parts, sons as useless legislation.
Watches our sisters from a webcam no one knows is there.
It’s always our fault for not knowing better.
He has a bulldog’s jaw, the heart of an old engine.
And here he is singing a song of apology
for arriving late to your birthday party.
He brought a present, and his intentions are as clear
as a sliver of glass in chocolate cake.
This will only be hard on one of you. Guess who?
A case can be made
for bookshops known to stock
vistas of desolation: long hills,
swamps, barren sand, the bone-white
charm of a lost wallet.
I like the fresher breeze,
the way you lift up your hands
and tell me you know where you are.
All this we burned or traded. The bills,
the paycheques. A stereo speaker, the new dishwasher.
A radio, always present like a limp body
at the bottom of one of the meaner lakes.
I should be grateful for the noise, the smell of gas.
If you’re smart you’ll dowse yourself in it
as if that was all there was…
But that wasn’t enough – we moved
off College, just north of the noise
trying to make sense of, not regret, exactly,
its copper trap, but the way a fluke bull’s-eye
in a dirty pub slipped by unproved.
It has its attractions, but.
We flicked our butts and later
crossed the whole thing out.
NOTES ON A THEME
Need Machine Page 2