top, girl, best, sung, Bellerophon, goggles, tied, only, the, bomb, cry, me  ‎240 Days  Whip it to the top my  pin-up girl or the dirt crowds in and the best joke Is not told but sung To be both Cadmus and Bellerophon I drop my goggles with a note tied there Only for you my Andromeda The start of the alphabet Is heroic, is a fucking bomb And if I cry you’ll Forgive me whip, pin-up, joke, told, Cadmus, drop, note, only, start, alphabet, heroic, if, forgive   go ahead, ply the whip, i won't move any faster than a pin-up i am my own joke and buttress, flying and when it's all done and told, not even Cadmus could understand, since he chose to drop phonics like acid i'd make a note of it - if only i weren't such a slob don't start on me again. i can't recreate the bleeding alphabet and i don't want to be heroic, besides even if i could, it would take too much energy. forgive me, i even gross myself out.   ply, success, private, understand, acid, make, slob, again, bleeding, want, energy, gross   i like how you ply, even plow, and with success, these private stabs, askance attentions; how you're no longer afraid that someone might understand that you are generous, that your babyfaced acid grace can make something. you pry the slob free so he floats but will you do it again? hardly anyone is really bleeding these days. their want is a drape, plain energy crisscrossing without combining, gross and logical as our own.   like, plow, askance, afraid, babyfaced, something, floats, will, days, drape, combining, logical   i like to hear me cry it proves the plow is still held in steady hands, not running the rows askance. i don't mind being afraid because that babyfaced innocence quickens the core like something sharp with purpose all its own only the cream floats to the top but when will i settle? when my days come home to roost? when my skin is a fabric draped over my bones, the lines on my face combining into the most revealing of harvests? nothing logical is ever said in a decent argument with self. AND Like a corpse before the flies, mountainous range stands before compassionate plow boulders askance, the straddling attitudes of shrubbery afraid. Those babyfaced brown hills of untilled innocence yearn for fresh furrows, to feel something. Wet stones dispatch a redolent come hither that floats and simmers. Will your wind sing the song of the furrow? Days  drape clouds on the shoulders of bluffs. Light and life combining a swirling fertile stew. With expectant thrust our logical plow unearths a blazing iron heart.   corpse, straddling, shrubbery, fertile, blazing, range, simmers, thrust, fresh, shoulders, iron, with   you're no corpse. i see you there, straddling life and wanting the waking. peering through the shrubbery and leering at the fertile promise of living, your eyes blazing with the promise. there's no limit to the range or the keening need to go on breathing that simmers under your frostbitten skin. not in my power to thrust you into it. i am fresh out of trust, there's no room on my shoulders. between your heart of iron and mine of stone, who could carry us?we'll have to make do with we.   see, waking, promise, keening, frostbitten, not, power, trust, room, stone, carry, we see here now the waking is slower these days don't forget your promise to keep don't go keening for what's broken what we had is only frostbitten and with warmth we'll thaw but the freezer burned taste will not be forgotten no matter how high the power   i trust you enough to throw you   i won't turn my back on you in the room but i'll toss you like a stone that i carry in my pocket we eat slowly the things we are ashamed of   here, i'll, slower, keep, warmth, ashamed, taste, toss, only, go, pocket, eat   Oh here I am, do you see me? I will make a sudden shift, I'll try who cares. I could take slower steps so stop asking. It isn't enough to keep voices ambivalent, or the warmth of bodies forbidden. I am ashamed I lured men to their depth, that I agreed to taste their innocence, stop laughing and toss me your keys. I swear it is profane only don't ask why. You shouldn't go just yet, if you look in your pocket you may eat my secret.   see, shift, asking, ambivalent, bodies, lured, agreed, stop, why, yet, look, secret   I see You shift lightly Asking why always. Ambivalent is at least bivalent. Bodies like ours are lured. It is agreed that we might stop but why? Yet look into the secret.    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ crimes, violent, wires, feet, firth, rhythm, alone, throne, thing, pinkness, part, saying   crimes of my own perpetration against the violent crush of loving all that i hold using fraying bits of copper wires to bind it all to me, while i dance on feet calloused and narrow along a desolate stretch of firth. i keep the rhythm with my hands alone, beating time to a lonely procession to the throne, that thing i hurt and where i try to sit. too big for my britches, the pinkness too bright. but i may yet part the waters of all the rubbish. i'm not deluded or cocky,  i'm just saying... using, crush, bind, narrow, desolate, keep, hands, beating, procession, hurt, britches, cocky   Using the dark window the crush that happens when ice is seen, is made to bind a narrow animal math, a desolate bright boundary to keep on hand to the hand, beating against  the procession against the hurt repetitions Your britches are too big for this, your cocky bland vacancy   window, happens, made, hand, bright, math, repetitions, bland, vacancy, boundary, against, animal   i see thru the window of your old soul what happens when they get that close? you weren't made for making connections your hand wasn't made to hold isn't it bright, and isn't it lucky that no one here can do the math they fail to see your murderous repetitions and you keep so bland but there is no vacancy behind your eyes i will cross the boundary of your stare, though i've got nothing against being afraid or coming unglued and wild, like an animal ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ o, expose, flames, martyrs, throne, pink, feet, poured, may, fickle, contained, beauty   O, your nice pink butthole, a gondolier in thigh-highs, you expose the naked want wending its live wire from calyx to malphigian pyramid, from youth in flames to holy martyrs wearing their enormous hurt you carry the throne of sorrow on your back those pink feet poured into roseate blocks of statues feet and hammered free, the roseate crystals shining in the rock the earth once poured may comes with its whores flowers and its crown the fickle bureaucrats weave annually from concentration camp paperwork with no name contained in its numbering happiness is bollocks. there is beauty in suffering. love, verbiage, bone, sing, working, magic, gone, ideas, dead, cake, squatting, passage   Love in its jungle home observes the grazing verbiage through a lattice work of bone. To Thee I sing, tiny neighborhood where love lives hunting words, working itself into a magic spasm where I have gone to forget you and your collectable ideas. Because I am dead enough for cake to displace me squatting in the crater that was my name offering you safe passage. presence, imposed, seekers, must, illusion, go, long, ideas, scurry, third, blocking, passage   why should we love what is without presence? imposed verbiage, nothing seen or felt or heard. seekers, turn away from this dry bone called poem. why must there be so much trying? just sing. that you are working is an illusion, your real present is blank, here we go magic and long gone already. backwards. why are you so afraid of ideas? the dead don’t scurry. your obfuscation is a third tier cake ball roundly squatting, blocking the passage AND with only a bit of practice i too, could develop the art of subterfuge draping the dim light of deceit around me like a cape, a covering for the naked truth beneath if i truly wanted, i could bend a word strangling it until only a small "pop" escaped with its dying breath i could hold the last breath of that word in my fist and rend a gaping hole in the meaning for what have i to fear from a dead language? if i stretched out my hand, i could pluck the eye from the vestibule of society and offer it up to the world, as a gift practice, subterfuge, light, naked, word, pop, hold, gaping, fear, eye, vestibule, world   known or not, practice is always present in our own presence, despite the self-subterfuge imposed on this truth. if seekers of the light we are, stripped naked we must be, to see the word as the illusion it is, and then make it go POP!! Yet we hold... for so long, to ideas with gaping holes, that let fear scurry into our third eye, blocking this vestibule that is our only passage to see the real world.... amorphous, mask, fuel, varicose, breath, crystalline, water, chain, truth, slight, jar, dissolves   Otis Vs. Keats o, amorphous love i expose you, a mask! you are fuel to the flames burning those martyrs  heaped upon the pyre of your altar. varicose and tentacled,  you watch from your throne, breath hot pink breath to befuddle and daze. crystalline understanding is confused at your feet; stupidity poured over the head like water. Strong men may be bound by a chain, or by Love. Fickle, impermanent, sans truth - all true! But only slight. Only in part, for there is bliss in your madness. Would that You could be contained in a jar to be used when youthful beauty dissolves. glass, skin, harrowing, fingers, burden, shattered, swells, dragging, told, crunch, growth, pillar   Bits of glass collected, amorphous, brittle, muted over sea time, baked and stinging sweat skin of a mask jagged, harrowing cliffs between the tides fuel a nagging quest splayed varicose fingers rummage in the sand, breath releases an old burden of a shattered recollection crystalline in the fading light sea water swells around slender ankles dragging seaweed, a crazy kind of ball and chain not so difficult if truth be told a slight twisting crunch before the leap of faith and growth in a jar out on the rim of dusk a ghost of a pillar dissolves exquisite, taking, lovingly, sea, lads, pillar, sweat, grindstone, most, salt, sold, noses   the exquisite  taking, the crush and crunch of each layer giving lovingly and taking the burden of shattered glass time sea swept  lads dragging fingers through salty sea swells I stand as a pillar  of sweat  a grindstone for growth  to be most the salt on my skin  to be sold my harrowing lads with noses at lengths foretelling the truths to be told   schadenfreude, caligula, archipelago, gulag, heads, together, ruefully, looks, otis, charm, lost, snuffing   To the dark and vainglorious days of democracy! schadenfreude most requisite for Caligula's prosperity in the taking of land and sea, archipelago and plain the Gulag, too, lovingly represses, its long arms reaching Come on lads, heads down, mediocrity awaits! join together, noses to grindstones neither ruefully nor with sadness for a pillar of sweat and salt, will be the man with backward looks. our comrade Otis leads the way, and charm is neither sold or spared in the lost  snuffing of individuality rest, awhile, simple, accomplishment, forever, idiot, nemesis, schadenfreude, stupidly, sense, past, together   Otis looks ruefully out over the earth Give it a rest, death merchants. It's not exactly funny, with the stuff of our conjuring snuffing us, think awhile, just about out now, that something as simple as love, not some fancy accomplishment just being as smart as we are, seems to evade us forever. Somebody's being an idiot, maybe it's me or The State, who's the same guy ultimately. Hey Nemesis! Hey boss! Hey Caligula! Get over yourself! Drop the schadenfreude routine. The life she is short, and stocky. Living stupidly, for all its' folky charm, has lost its' charm. There's no sense in this narrow animal calculus, as if anybody could ever get together in the gulag archipelago we've made of our heads.   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    once, guy, sick, parade, television, landlord, moonbeam, success, anatomy, kicking, real, pilgrim   There was a lot of stuff here once. Now the stuff turns its back. Now, for a guy, there is the whispering wind. There is a sick gallumphing together of the present and past, like a parade passing itself. It is for you to bear the lonely television of your life and its idiot singing; the absentee landlord that is the soul pocketing a moonbeam to use against you later. In case of success break glass. Friend, there's always anatomy. Around here schadenfreude's a popular choice. Kicking them, also, is one way to make things feel real. Another is to be a pilgrim in each one's abyss. beating, fed, night, flourished, food, jugular, rustle, justify, called, conquest, indiscreetly, smoke   What a beating that poem gave me.  Fed me to my wishes. Night, you look a lot smaller on television.  Still, I flourished suddenly. Then I didn’t.  Beware of food.  The skinny one is my co pilot, La Flaca, phantom landlord,  white palm where the stars succumb. I was to be the jugular  in some drowned anatomy. I thought, "Why not?" I am I think because of the rustle  hunting me. I cannot justify or can but won`t. Oh parking lot, be fair, I`m your only pilgrim.  Called by your consoling flatness to collapse.  Conquest la de da. Indiscreetly kicking up dust, as if we were real.  Go ahead Poem, smoke me. I`m home.   poem, me, wishes, look, television, landlord, stars, succumb, anatomy, kicking, real, pilgrim   once there was a poem. ok, so it was just me and some other guy,  quietly making wishes like sick kids on television while we waited for the parade to start. look, there were a lot of parades back then, on television and within. now, the landlord of the night shimmies down from stars, wrapped in a moonbeam, only to succumb to your dumb success. you were born like that, with anatomy, kicking at the rented night, a real pilgrim. impalpable, phantom, smoke, foreign, see, thinking, penumbras, emotional, box, dust, live, extinct   Impalpable as phantom's breath You sit and smoke those foreign cigarillos And I see the cops aint got nothing on your way of thinking Tied as it is to penumbras happily lacking emotional goo It seems a box was left in the dust of an attic And that's where the goo will live until the moon blinks extinct   getting, toil, family, crisscrossing, shrinks, cliff, devotion, combine, soft, enough, visit, several   After the Car Accident, Otis Receives a Visit from the Speech Pathologist OK Otis, I'm now getting a rough translation from your swollen esophagus: Toil- et rings need teepee, avoid family movie night (like crisscrossing the interstate drunk), my (your) shrink’s mind… a receptacle for feminine products. Cliff   dive naked into a pond of vaseline. Endless devotion   to hand salve, or combine sweat and spit. Soft erections are useful: look at your (my) face. Ok, great, thanks Otis. I think that’s enough. Anything else? Visit hours are almost up: I (you) still have several moves on the dance floor that would kill small children. and   Impalpable ways you have of getting behind the night, phantom toil going on with this impossible family crisscrossing smoke changes addresses in foreign cities. My name shrinks and so does yours. I see the cliff its house sits on, thinking. A sort of devotion you combine with useless penumbras. So you get all emotional, soft as a box of dust. You've had about enough. Visit the extinct in their boxes of dust, live out their several penumbras. over, falling, weep, mysterious, sheer, coveting, splinter, country, limping, crutch, heritage, vanish   there is no getting over all the toil and falling we’ve done as a family that doesn’t weep about mysterious crisscrossing wires, that shrinks from the sheer cliff of coveting and devotion which combine to form a splinter in the memory, a country in soft focus, where there is never enough time for the limping who come to visit with their one crutch or several. must this be my heritage then, to vanish?   Afghanistan, syphilis, face, chimneys, echo, exhaust, man, dark, alley, city, shot, rage   Get over it Afghanistan what about syphilis? Or this face full of falling stars I weep for? Mysterious chimneys keeping their secrets from me from sheer meanness?  And this echo where I keep meeting you cloaked in the exhaust that haunts stuff and man? A splinter coveting it's dark for want of country?And the alley where people go to vanish but never leave? Limping city your crutch got shot out from under you. Now you have no heritage but rage. promised, broken, motherfucker, down, worse, bullet, mute, shrunken, burn, hurts, sun, cinder   He promised to bring back small red chilies from Afghanistan. Instead, his face was broken without rage. He brang back Syphilis and didn’t know it: “Motherfucker” Is how she ended every thought of him. Staring down the alleyway, from the apartment, was worse after nightfall. Thoughts like bullet shells: fallen, buried, forgotten, dug up again and shot with a mute blast. Every night the shrunken sounds of the big city landed without echo in the alley. The slow burn off: exhaust into haze. The stiff hurt in the suit of the man who entered the alley before the sun, who left in the dark, before the cinders of chimneys.  heads, wild, wasteland, severed, predatory, rain, smoldering, sun, fear, breakfast, Indian, grass   barrel of shrunken heads, more fun than wild a little canned still Faith only in the wasteland where nothing`s promised and everything`s severed predatory night in your palm you can hear the ocean in it or rain on cinders that are never extinguished smoldering bullet of sun of love this life has broken me down this fear eats my breakfast worse than indian burn this motherfucker hurts be mute in mute grass in grass sunrise, ripe, discussed, taxidermist, planet, once, predatory, melted, glazed, finally, those, flavor   You Won't Understand The Night As sunrise has burned down our open heads for years, nothing shapely, ripe as blazing wild flowers, has come from the night. We have discussed pilgrimages to wastelands, come back with severed heads for the taxidermist. Seen the planet rotate from the inside, an axis of dissolving sand and heat (eventually glass statues with delicate arms in protest). Once maybe, the predatory urge to eat oneself has lived long into the day. Or the melted gaze of a wild Indian dying in the tall grass glazed our own souls with fear, like rain that appears without falling. But what wild claw, or hanging ape did you take finally, with words To the breakfast table. Those torn out buildings remain smoldering, ready to fall with the sun into themselves. Their foundation of ash you will taste again but you won’t understand the flavor.    should, times, island, bathing, under, told, law, beyond, sugarpie, fixed, own, catch   We should have baked the sunrise into those cupcakes, The times were ripe, and our eyes were hungry mouthes. Instead we discussed inert philosophies and circled our island, We spoke of the taxidermist then saw him bathing Out under the red planet closest to the moon. What was truth once told dropped all its feathers And flightless freedom pierced us with its predatory law. Beyond our obsession we each melted alone in some lies, glazed sugarpie, ever so glazed. Then finally comes a time of reckoning, fixed to these broken arms. What those holding hands in the confectionary discovered on their own: How the catch the sunset for flavor in their cupcakes.   eye, cookies, ocean, themselves, milk, morals, waves, on, christ, vision, spilled, mine   Your eye would never look the other way or shut like a good eye should. So you saw me gorging on too many cookies too many times. an ocean of them, and me the island. They were bathing themselves in the milk lapping my shores and you next to me under parasol~you with your big dry eye and morals. You told me a story, once. And called it law. Waves of your words rolling relentlessly on in my mind and beyond. You're such a christ, Sugarpie. You with the fixed big eye and tall tale vision of your own spilled heart blood. I catch it in my chalice and drink it as mine. frame, bigger, phosphorescents, cliffside, flour, diamond, milked, brother, criss-crossed, everything, jacked, bolted   Otis Says: The frame of the eye is bigger than vision: Ocean! Too often waves phosphoresce themselves to the cliffside. The flour that spilled on the floor is forgettable: Cookies! With diamonds for eyes shove a hand through the fridge for the milked. Brother of mine criss-crossed with vice or christ: Morals! We are here together through everything. Jacked up or bolted down.   wonder, mascot, difficult, wind, legs, glomming, natural, love, sightless, tidy, vice, valley   I wondered at the clover that made up the perimeter’d picture frame. For so long I had bought into being a mascot to the bigger limmerickers. It was a slow dab at my phosphorescents that made my sole transition less difficult. A sharp wind whisped the clover to cliffside memories and my legs went through the frame, one, then the other. And I lifted the frame to my mid-section, it glomming at the starch and flour sacks tied to my waist, like satchels. Ah! The natural agreeableness of the clover navigated its diamond form to accommodate these necessary fats. I felt it synchronize and the love milked, casked, and mammaried through my pulsing brain like ocean on sand. Sightless clover, make your way, Make Your Way Brother. A tidy memory of my billie-goat doing a hoof’d jig in the morning criss-crossed my headspace. Into vice went the clover and everything was understood. I jacked the frame thru and up, over my head, ungrasped – it bolted like a lunar module into the valley below.   terrible, angel, molt, beetles, wings, dark, vanished, masks, laundromat, flightless, lament, augury   a terrible wonder pervades us now. our mascot is the angel. in this game (which is the most difficult), a winner must molt his or her wings like beetles in heat,  must wind ‘round with wings and legs  in a kind of dark glomming until he or she is vanished (vani-shed) into natural masks and ancient night. another (easier) game is called ‘love in a laundromat.’ it is flightless, sightless, lame, and ends with a tidy lament about augury and vice, sung down in the valley. boulevard, plague, bleating, friends, hard, haircuts, soiled, disown, oranges, clump, living, practice   Otis Listens to the Lament of the Augury It is on that terrible boulevard that the cold angel will begin to molt.  A plague of shiny beetles, shells of cockroaches  bleating out of the wings into the dark. Friends, when an angel leaves its light for the mouths of the flightless, and begins its walk into hard earth, small things, like your last haircut, will be forgotten, your soiled suit will have vanished from the laundromat. You will be tempted to disown the masks you hang in the hallways of your daily routine. Look for oranges to ripen suddenly and out of season, people's thoughts becoming trees, the tops resembling clumps of cloud and sky. This will be your living lesson: to practice falling upwards and for no reason. asshole, enough, inside, swarmed, toxic, decimation, passe, still-life, poets, mess, critical, fool   christmas on a boulevard of assholes, a plague of them, which is to say: enough. go inside a cafe to escape their bleating, and swarm there with your new toxic friends who are calling for the decimation of boulevards under passe haircuts, above soiled hearts they would rather disown. on the wall hangs a still-life of oranges and fish. this clump of poets will make a gorgeous mess out of anything. making something out of anything is of critical importance,  fool, you who have been living too long without practice.

top, girl, best, sung, Bellerophon, goggles, tied, only, the, bomb, cry, me

‎240 Days

Whip it to the top my
pin-up girl or the dirt crowds
in and the best joke
Is not told but sung
To be both Cadmus and Bellerophon
I drop my goggles
with a note tied there
Only for you my Andromeda
The start of the alphabet
Is heroic, is a fucking bomb
And if I cry you’ll
Forgive me

whip, pin-up, joke, told, Cadmus, drop, note, only, start, alphabet, heroic, if, forgive

go ahead, ply the whip, i won't move any faster

than a pin-up

i am my own joke and buttress, flying

and when it's all done and told,

not even Cadmus could understand,

since he chose to drop phonics like acid

i'd make a note of it -

if only i weren't such a slob

don't start on me again.

i can't recreate the bleeding alphabet

and i don't want to be heroic, besides

even if i could, it would take too much energy.

forgive me, i even gross myself out.

ply, success, private, understand, acid, make, slob, again, bleeding, want, energy, gross

i like how you ply,

even plow, and with success,

these private stabs, askance attentions;

how you're no longer afraid that someone might understand

that you are generous, that your babyfaced acid grace

can make something.

you pry the slob free so he floats

but will you do it again?

hardly anyone is really bleeding these days.

their want is a drape,

plain energy crisscrossing without combining,

gross and logical as our own.

like, plow, askance, afraid, babyfaced, something, floats, will, days, drape, combining, logical

i like to hear me cry

it proves the plow is still held in steady hands,

not running the rows askance.

i don't mind being afraid

because that babyfaced innocence quickens the core

like something sharp with purpose all its own

only the cream floats to the top

but when will i settle?

when my days come home to roost?

when my skin is a fabric draped over my bones,

the lines on my face combining into the most revealing of harvests?

nothing logical is ever said in a decent argument with self.

AND

Like a corpse before the flies,

mountainous range stands before compassionate plow

boulders askance, the straddling attitudes

of shrubbery afraid.

Those babyfaced brown hills

of untilled innocence yearn for fresh furrows, to feel something.

Wet stones dispatch a redolent come hither that floats and simmers.

Will your wind sing the song of the furrow?

Days
drape clouds on the shoulders of bluffs.

Light and life combining a swirling fertile stew.

With expectant thrust our logical plow unearths a blazing iron heart.

corpse, straddling, shrubbery, fertile, blazing, range, simmers, thrust, fresh, shoulders, iron, with

you're no corpse.

i see you there, straddling life and wanting

the waking. peering through the shrubbery and

leering at the fertile promise

of living, your eyes blazing with the promise.

there's no limit to the range or the keening need

to go on breathing that simmers under your frostbitten skin.

not in my power to thrust you into it.

i am fresh out of trust,

there's no room on my shoulders.

between your heart of iron and mine of stone,

who could carry us?we'll have to make do with we.

see, waking, promise, keening, frostbitten, not, power, trust, room, stone, carry, we

see here now

the waking is slower these days

don't forget your promise to keep

don't go keening for what's broken

what we had is only frostbitten and with warmth we'll thaw

but the freezer burned taste will not be forgotten

no matter how high the power

i trust you enough to throw you

i won't turn my back on you in the room

but i'll toss you like a stone

that i carry in my pocket

we eat slowly the things we are ashamed of

here, i'll, slower, keep, warmth, ashamed, taste, toss, only, go, pocket, eat

Oh here I am, do you see me?

I will make a sudden shift, I'll try who cares.

I could take slower steps so stop asking.

It isn't enough to keep voices ambivalent,

or the warmth of bodies forbidden.

I am ashamed I lured men to their depth,

that I agreed to taste their innocence,

stop laughing and toss me your keys.

I swear it is profane only don't ask why.

You shouldn't go just yet,

if you look in your pocket

you may eat my secret.

see, shift, asking, ambivalent, bodies, lured, agreed, stop, why, yet, look, secret

I see

You shift lightly

Asking why always.

Ambivalent is at least bivalent.

Bodies like ours

are lured.

It is agreed

that we might stop

but why?

Yet

look

into the secret.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

crimes, violent, wires, feet, firth, rhythm, alone, throne, thing, pinkness, part, saying

crimes of my own perpetration against

the violent crush of loving all that i hold

using fraying bits of copper wires to bind it all to me,

while i dance on feet calloused and narrow

along a desolate stretch of firth.

i keep the rhythm

with my hands alone,

beating time to a lonely procession to the throne,

that thing i hurt and where i try to sit.

too big for my britches, the pinkness too bright.

but i may yet part the waters of all the rubbish.

i'm not deluded or cocky,
i'm just saying...

using, crush, bind, narrow, desolate, keep, hands, beating, procession, hurt, britches, cocky

Using the dark window

the crush that happens when ice

is seen, is made to bind
a narrow animal

math, a desolate bright

boundary to keep on

hand to the hand,

beating against
the procession

against the hurt repetitions

Your britches are too big

for this, your cocky bland vacancy

window, happens, made, hand, bright, math, repetitions, bland, vacancy, boundary, against, animal

i see thru the window of your old soul

what happens when they get that close?

you weren't made for making connections

your hand wasn't made to hold

isn't it bright, and isn't it lucky

that no one here can do the math

they fail to see your murderous repetitions

and you keep so bland

but there is no vacancy behind your eyes

i will cross the boundary of your stare, though

i've got nothing against being afraid

or coming unglued and wild, like an animal

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

o, expose, flames, martyrs, throne, pink, feet, poured, may, fickle, contained, beauty

O, your nice pink butthole, a gondolier in thigh-highs,

you expose the naked want wending its live wire

from calyx to malphigian pyramid, from youth in flames

to holy martyrs wearing their enormous hurt

you carry the throne of sorrow on your back

those pink feet poured into roseate blocks

of statues feet and hammered free, the roseate

crystals shining in the rock the earth once poured

may comes with its whores flowers and its crown

the fickle bureaucrats weave annually from concentration

camp paperwork with no name contained in its numbering

happiness is bollocks. there is beauty in suffering.

love, verbiage, bone, sing, working, magic, gone, ideas, dead, cake, squatting, passage

Love in its jungle home

observes the grazing verbiage

through a lattice work of bone.

To Thee I sing, tiny neighborhood

where love lives hunting words, working

itself into a magic spasm

where I have gone to forget you

and your collectable ideas.

Because I am dead enough

for cake to displace me

squatting in the crater that was my name

offering you safe passage.

presence, imposed, seekers, must, illusion, go, long, ideas, scurry, third, blocking, passage

why should we love what is without presence?

imposed verbiage, nothing seen or felt or heard.

seekers, turn away from this dry bone called poem.

why must there be so much trying? just sing.

that you are working is an illusion,

your real present is blank, here we go magic

and long gone already. backwards.

why are you so afraid of ideas?

the dead don’t scurry. your obfuscation

is a third tier cake ball roundly

squatting, blocking

the passage

AND

with only a bit of practice

i too, could develop the art of subterfuge

draping the dim light of deceit around me like a cape,

a covering for the naked truth beneath

if i truly wanted, i could bend a word

strangling it until only a small "pop" escaped with its dying breath

i could hold the last breath of that word in my fist

and rend a gaping hole in the meaning

for what have i to fear from a dead language?

if i stretched out my hand, i could pluck the eye

from the vestibule of society

and offer it up to the world, as a gift

practice, subterfuge, light, naked, word, pop, hold, gaping, fear, eye, vestibule, world

known or not, practice is always present in our own presence,

despite the self-subterfuge imposed on this truth.

if seekers of the light we are,

stripped naked we must be,

to see the word as the illusion it is,

and then make it go POP!!

Yet we hold... for so long,

to ideas with gaping holes,

that let fear scurry

into our third eye,

blocking this vestibule that is

our only passage to see the real world....

amorphous, mask, fuel, varicose, breath, crystalline, water, chain, truth, slight, jar, dissolves

Otis Vs. Keats

o, amorphous love

i expose you, a mask!

you are fuel to the flames burning those martyrs
heaped upon the pyre of your altar. varicose and tentacled,
you watch from your throne, breath hot pink breath to befuddle and daze.

crystalline understanding is confused at your feet;

stupidity poured over the head like water.

Strong men may be bound by a chain, or by Love.

Fickle, impermanent, sans truth - all true!

But only slight. Only in part, for there is bliss in your madness.

Would that You could be contained in a jar

to be used when youthful beauty dissolves.

glass, skin, harrowing, fingers, burden, shattered, swells, dragging, told, crunch, growth, pillar

Bits of glass collected, amorphous, brittle, muted over sea time,

baked and stinging sweat skin of a mask

jagged, harrowing cliffs between the tides fuel a nagging quest

splayed varicose fingers rummage in the sand,

breath releases an old burden

of a shattered recollection crystalline in the fading light

sea water swells around slender ankles

dragging seaweed, a crazy kind of ball and chain

not so difficult if truth be told

a slight twisting crunch before the leap

of faith and growth in a jar

out on the rim of dusk a ghost of a pillar dissolves

exquisite, taking, lovingly, sea, lads, pillar, sweat, grindstone, most, salt, sold, noses

the exquisite
taking, the crush and crunch

of each layer giving lovingly and taking the burden of shattered glass time

sea swept
lads dragging fingers through salty sea swells
I stand as a pillar
of sweat
a grindstone for growth
to be most

the salt on my skin
to be sold my harrowing lads

with noses at lengths foretelling the truths to be told

schadenfreude, caligula, archipelago, gulag, heads, together, ruefully, looks, otis, charm, lost, snuffing

To the dark and vainglorious days of democracy!

schadenfreude most requisite

for Caligula's prosperity

in the taking of land and sea, archipelago and plain

the Gulag, too, lovingly represses, its long arms reaching

Come on lads, heads down, mediocrity awaits!

join together, noses to grindstones

neither ruefully nor with sadness

for a pillar of sweat and salt, will be the man with backward looks.

our comrade Otis leads the way,

and charm is neither sold or spared

in the lost
snuffing of individuality

rest, awhile, simple, accomplishment, forever, idiot, nemesis, schadenfreude, stupidly, sense, past, together

Otis looks ruefully out over the earth

Give it a rest, death merchants. It's not exactly funny, with the stuff

of our conjuring snuffing us, think awhile,

just about out now, that something as simple

as love, not some fancy accomplishment

just being as smart as we are, seems to evade us forever.

Somebody's being an idiot, maybe it's me

or The State, who's the same guy ultimately. Hey Nemesis!

Hey boss! Hey Caligula! Get over yourself! Drop the schadenfreude

routine. The life she is short, and stocky. Living stupidly,

for all its' folky charm, has lost its' charm. There's no sense

in this narrow animal calculus, as if anybody could ever get together in the gulag archipelago we've made of our heads.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

once, guy, sick, parade, television, landlord, moonbeam, success, anatomy, kicking, real, pilgrim

There was a lot of stuff here once.

Now the stuff turns its back. Now, for a guy,

there is the whispering wind. There is a sick

gallumphing together of the present and past, like a parade

passing itself. It is for you to bear the lonely television

of your life and its idiot singing; the absentee landlord

that is the soul pocketing a moonbeam to use

against you later. In case of success

break glass. Friend, there's always anatomy. Around here

schadenfreude's a popular choice. Kicking them, also,

is one way to make things feel real. Another

is to be a pilgrim in each one's abyss.

beating, fed, night, flourished, food, jugular, rustle, justify, called, conquest, indiscreetly, smoke

What a beating that poem gave me.
Fed me to my wishes.

Night, you look a lot smaller on television.
Still, I flourished suddenly. Then I didn’t.
Beware of food.
The skinny one is my co pilot, La Flaca, phantom landlord,
white palm where the stars succumb. I was to be the jugular
in some drowned anatomy. I thought, "Why not?" I am I think because of the rustle
hunting me. I cannot justify or can but won`t. Oh parking lot, be fair, I`m your only pilgrim.
Called by your consoling flatness to collapse.
Conquest la de da. Indiscreetly kicking up dust, as if we were real.
Go ahead Poem, smoke me. I`m home.

poem, me, wishes, look, television, landlord, stars, succumb, anatomy, kicking, real, pilgrim

once there was a poem.

ok, so it was just me and some other guy,
quietly making wishes like sick kids on television

while we waited for the parade to start. look,

there were a lot of parades back then, on television

and within. now, the landlord of the night shimmies

down from stars, wrapped in a moonbeam,

only to succumb to your dumb success.

you were born like that, with anatomy,

kicking at the rented night,

a real

pilgrim.

impalpable, phantom, smoke, foreign, see, thinking, penumbras, emotional, box, dust, live, extinct

Impalpable as

phantom's breath

You sit and smoke

those foreign cigarillos

And I see the cops aint

got nothing on your way of thinking

Tied as it is to penumbras

happily lacking emotional goo

It seems a box

was left in the dust of an attic

And that's where the goo will live

until the moon blinks extinct

getting, toil, family, crisscrossing, shrinks, cliff, devotion, combine, soft, enough, visit, several

After the Car Accident, Otis Receives a Visit from the Speech Pathologist

OK Otis, I'm now getting a rough translation

from your swollen esophagus: Toil-

et rings need teepee, avoid family

movie night (like crisscrossing the interstate

drunk), my (your) shrink’s mind…

a receptacle for feminine products. Cliff

dive naked into a pond of vaseline. Endless devotion

to hand salve, or combine sweat and spit.

Soft erections are useful: look at your (my) face. Ok, great, thanks Otis. I think that’s enough.

Anything else? Visit hours are almost up:

I (you) still have several moves on the dance floor that would kill small children.

and

Impalpable ways you have of getting

behind the night, phantom toil

going on with this impossible family

crisscrossing smoke changes addresses

in foreign cities. My name shrinks

and so does yours. I see the cliff

its house sits on, thinking. A sort of devotion

you combine with useless penumbras.

So you get all emotional, soft as a box

of dust. You've had about enough.

Visit the extinct in their boxes of dust,

live out their several penumbras.

over, falling, weep, mysterious, sheer, coveting, splinter, country, limping, crutch, heritage, vanish

there is no getting over

all the toil and falling we’ve done

as a family that doesn’t weep

about mysterious crisscrossing wires,

that shrinks from the sheer cliff

of coveting and devotion

which combine to form a splinter in the memory,

a country in soft focus, where there is never enough

time for the limping who come to visit

with their one crutch or several.

must this be my heritage then,

to vanish?

Afghanistan, syphilis, face, chimneys, echo, exhaust, man, dark, alley, city, shot, rage

Get over it Afghanistan

what about syphilis?

Or this face full of falling stars

I weep for? Mysterious chimneys

keeping their secrets from me from sheer meanness?
And this echo

where I keep meeting you cloaked in the exhaust

that haunts stuff and man?

A splinter coveting it's dark for want

of country?And the alley where people

go to vanish but never leave? Limping city

your crutch got shot out from under you. Now

you have no heritage but rage.

promised, broken, motherfucker, down, worse, bullet, mute, shrunken, burn, hurts, sun, cinder

He promised to bring back small red chilies from Afghanistan.

Instead, his face was broken without rage. He brang back

Syphilis and didn’t know it: “Motherfucker”

Is how she ended every thought of him. Staring down

the alleyway, from the apartment, was worse after nightfall.

Thoughts like bullet shells: fallen, buried, forgotten,

dug up again and shot with a mute blast.

Every night the shrunken sounds of the big city

landed without echo in the alley. The slow burn off:

exhaust into haze. The stiff hurt in the suit

of the man who entered the alley before the sun,

who left in the dark, before the cinders of chimneys.

heads, wild, wasteland, severed, predatory, rain, smoldering, sun, fear, breakfast, Indian, grass

barrel of shrunken heads, more fun than

wild a little canned still

Faith only in the wasteland where nothing`s promised

and everything`s severed

predatory night in your palm you can hear the ocean in it

or rain on cinders that are never extinguished

smoldering bullet

of sun of love this life

has broken me down this fear

eats my breakfast

worse than indian burn this motherfucker hurts

be mute in mute grass in grass

sunrise, ripe, discussed, taxidermist, planet, once, predatory, melted, glazed, finally, those, flavor

You Won't Understand The Night

As sunrise has burned down our open heads for years,

nothing shapely, ripe as blazing wild flowers,

has come from the night. We have discussed pilgrimages

to wastelands, come back with severed heads for the taxidermist.

Seen the planet rotate from the inside, an axis of dissolving sand

and heat (eventually glass statues with delicate arms in protest). Once

maybe, the predatory urge to eat oneself has lived long into the day.

Or the melted gaze of a wild Indian dying in the tall grass

glazed our own souls with fear, like rain that appears without falling.

But what wild claw, or hanging ape did you take finally, with words

To the breakfast table. Those torn out buildings remain smoldering, ready to fall with the sun

into themselves. Their foundation of ash you will taste again but you won’t understand the flavor.

should, times, island, bathing, under, told, law, beyond, sugarpie, fixed, own, catch

We should have baked the sunrise into those cupcakes,

The times were ripe, and our eyes were hungry mouthes.

Instead we discussed inert philosophies and circled our island,

We spoke of the taxidermist then saw him bathing

Out under the red planet closest to the moon.

What was truth once told dropped all its feathers

And flightless freedom pierced us with its predatory law.

Beyond our obsession we each melted alone in some lies,

glazed sugarpie, ever so glazed.

Then finally comes a time of reckoning, fixed to these broken arms.

What those holding hands in the confectionary discovered on their own:

How the catch the sunset for flavor in their cupcakes.

eye, cookies, ocean, themselves, milk, morals, waves, on, christ, vision, spilled, mine

Your eye would never look the other way or shut like a good eye should.

So you saw me gorging on too many cookies too many times.

an ocean of them, and me the island.

They were bathing themselves

in the milk lapping my shores and you next to me under parasol~you with your big dry eye and morals. You told me a story, once. And called it law. Waves of your words

rolling relentlessly on in my mind and beyond.

You're such a christ, Sugarpie.

You with the fixed big eye and tall tale vision

of your own spilled heart blood.

I catch it in my chalice and drink it as mine.

frame, bigger, phosphorescents, cliffside, flour, diamond, milked, brother, criss-crossed, everything, jacked, bolted

Otis Says:

The frame of the eye

is bigger than vision: Ocean!

Too often waves phosphoresce

themselves to the cliffside.

The flour that spilled on the floor is forgettable: Cookies!

With diamonds for eyes

shove a hand through the fridge for the milked.

Brother of mine

criss-crossed with vice or christ: Morals!

We are here together through everything.

Jacked up

or bolted down.

wonder, mascot, difficult, wind, legs, glomming, natural, love, sightless, tidy, vice, valley

I wondered at the clover that made up the perimeter’d picture frame. For so long I had bought into being a mascot to the bigger limmerickers. It was a slow dab at my phosphorescents that made my sole transition less difficult. A sharp wind whisped the clover to cliffside memories and my legs went through the frame, one, then the other. And I lifted the frame to my mid-section, it glomming at the starch and flour sacks tied to my waist, like satchels. Ah! The natural agreeableness of the clover navigated its diamond form to accommodate these necessary fats. I felt it synchronize and the love milked, casked, and mammaried through my pulsing brain like ocean on sand. Sightless clover, make your way, Make Your Way Brother. A tidy memory of my billie-goat doing a hoof’d jig in the morning criss-crossed my headspace. Into vice went the clover and everything was understood. I jacked the frame thru and up, over my head, ungrasped – it bolted like a lunar module into the valley below.

terrible, angel, molt, beetles, wings, dark, vanished, masks, laundromat, flightless, lament, augury

a terrible wonder pervades us now.

our mascot is the angel. in this game

(which is the most difficult), a winner must molt

his or her wings like beetles in heat,
must wind ‘round with wings and legs
in a kind of dark glomming

until he or she is vanished (vani-shed)

into natural masks and ancient night.

another (easier) game is called ‘love in a laundromat.’

it is flightless, sightless, lame,

and ends with a tidy lament

about augury and vice, sung down in the valley.

boulevard, plague, bleating, friends, hard, haircuts, soiled, disown, oranges, clump, living, practice

Otis Listens to the Lament of the Augury

It is on that terrible boulevard that the cold angel will begin to molt.
A plague of shiny beetles, shells of cockroaches
bleating out of the wings into the dark.

Friends, when an angel leaves its light for the mouths

of the flightless, and begins its walk into hard earth,

small things, like your last haircut, will be forgotten,

your soiled suit will have vanished from the laundromat. You will be tempted to disown the masks

you hang in the hallways of your daily routine.

Look for oranges to ripen suddenly and out of season,

people's thoughts becoming trees, the tops resembling clumps of cloud and sky.

This will be your living lesson:

to practice falling upwards and for no reason.

asshole, enough, inside, swarmed, toxic, decimation, passe, still-life, poets, mess, critical, fool

christmas on a boulevard of assholes, a plague

of them, which is to say: enough.

go inside a cafe to escape their bleating,

and swarm there with your new toxic friends

who are calling for the decimation of boulevards

under passe haircuts, above soiled hearts

they would rather disown.

on the wall hangs a still-life of oranges and fish.

this clump of poets

will make a gorgeous mess out of anything.

making something out of anything is of critical importance,
fool, you who have been living too long without practice.

Gallery of Distinguished Otises

Otis Nebula started out as a writing prompt. This page showcases some of those early experiments. In the olden days, otises were always unattributed. It felt important at the time.