from Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision {soon to be available from Pilot Books} * Writing for cities, the yellow Austin air, morning in my beard, falling on the cracked high sidewalks, I promised 100 poems. Writing for cracked mattresses and one dirty towel, dusk falls, plunges: we make terrestrial pacts. (In the bird-stuffed summer past.) Loving was like a crossword, putting numbers into boxes, filling the grid as a stretch of dotted skin. Across, down. My long-limbed nine by nine. * Things you do when you’re in love and simultaneously certain of love’s demise. I promised 100 poems. All day we did Sudoku puzzles on the plane. * to wish one had never been born is a remnant of “the old thinking” the old thinking we’re trying to get over we “sing the whole day through” to the other side, el otro lado border music border eats the border between you & the other you whatever you call it makes me sad & lovely wish again abjurations of hope, the full bright woe the day’s got a hole sky’s a bride to the sea & together we fail to rise & we rise nonetheless (tell me you don’t) (minnows, wrists) take your little dog & climb inside your little boat & make it to the shore [3/21/06] * Will Oldham, “Ohio River Boat Song.” Sad and lovely. * you are temporarily suspended between here & the other I used to be a gangsta, but now I’m John Dear Aaron, I’m all for “Socratic needling,” which has its place or perhaps I’m just a (choose one) (replicant, cog, asshole) is this some sort of joke to you? absence softly brightening this room where you lived this room this room this room [3/24/06] * John Lennon, “God.” (I think.) In-poem conversation with Aaron Belz. “is this some sort of joke to you?” from Whiskeytown’s “Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart.” * Blessed are the wretched at least they’re well- connected God quota met, Friday, April the 21st You have a vastly superior higher power. I’ve got a good parking space together we will have hot sex & still look pretty in the morning This is a seduction note, by the way. Take off your dress. Your slacks. The beach was indeed full of sand & shells of marine bivalves. It was there I tried in earnest to be “the real thing” but only managed to drink Coke & watch the girls, straight out of the 50s Blessed are those well-connected & a little wretched. Glory be. back |