making sounds with my roommate and his friend, who had smoked a great deal of marijuana

the controversial seven-pointed leaf
that they had ground with little knives
and rolled and lit on fire
and breathed and breathed --
it took effect.

and then they asked me to make sounds with them,
sounds from our favorite metal strings,
blue sounds, and gritty sounds,
but later smooth
sounds, smoother sounds.

and when the bar of steel touched steely strings,
it slid, it wavered in my hands --
they thought it sounded like
an angel or
another world.

the time was not right on between the strings,
nor was it accurate inside
their fuzzy heads within
and fuzzy heads
also without.

but it was good and fuzzy, in and out,
fuzzy and clear, the sounds, the strings,
their heads but not my head,
giggling mouths,
mystical sounds.

Stale Bread

i will speak to stale bread,
because i know now
what it's like to be stale bread
and have no one talking to you
(it is bad).

A True Story

This poem is made up of real observations, and that is all it is. No symbolism, metaphor, irony, or other so-called literary device will be found in it, unless these things occur in nature and in the events described in the poem. Do not take this poem to be a creation, but rather as a record or document of meteorology, or just of general things.


Today was the spring equinox,
the first day of spring.

(actually that may have been
a few days ago.)

It ought to have been warm --
that's what you'd expect

from the first day of that season
of growing, and that's not

to say it was entirely cold,
but it wasn't too warm.

The buds on the cherry trees,
those blossoming pink buds

have started to unfold themselves,
showing me their white innards --

they hope to meet the bees
who'll help them have sex.

(plant sex, that is. i shouldn't
say it's much like human sex.)

Snow crystals fell on the buds,
first sloppy wet,

but then some legitimate
fluffy snow on them.

This past winter it snowed one time.
And melted in the night.

Questions About a Dream I Had

The stones in the streams
were mostly of blue hues,
and red and gold and green gleamed, too,
but was the royal color there?

The stones in the streams,
were fragile as glass,
but were they attached,
or was each its own
separate stone?

Why did the man have a hoverboard
when he came in through the window?

Until i know the answers to these questions,
i will not know what God is saying to me.

Of Apricots in the Late Spring

Armenian dirt, Hawaiian dirt, Indian dirt, and water --
I fumble to scoop them up with a knife
and spread them on my toast,

and when I do this, I do it in remembrance of home,
of the gurgling sweet goo in the brass-bottomed pot
and the old blue ladle stained brown
by years and years of soup,
of the banged-up metal funnel
and the rubber-rimmed lids bouncing in hot water,
of the foam, the soft stuff spooned,
gleaned from the top of the pot for ritz crackers,
of the popping and the turning upside-down
and the storing-away downstairs
in the dark, dark store room, and
of you, walking in the door with one million pounds
of apricots in the late spring.

By the Thousands

By the thousands they come down
to the sandy and stoop to pick
up seashells and tiny scamperers,
up the jellies and skies between
and I do not blame them, because
interesting, only I wish they'd less obtrusive.

After asking me quests they come
for my and they try to pick
up my arms and legs,
up me brain and my mouth between,
but evade them by clareshling,
by xracti and frgusz,
ti bloooy obn cl'o'aclothing.

Powers

The math professor
is a wizard, he's
not a god, but
he's a wizard.

He didn't say,
"Let there be light,"
instead he said,
"I just wish we'd get some sun today."

And lo! out came the sun.

Lights Bouncing off the Willamette

The factory lights
reflected on the river:

they shimmer and quiver
and turn into long, widening strokes.
They dance
upon the water,
they glimmer and shiver,
swaying and jumping about. And
the longer I look, the less I see.
They turn into blurs, into fuzzes,
and the branches in front of my face
turn into part of them. Then
my eyes re-focus and I keep watching:
the flat river is somehow transformed
and the lights don't shoot across,
they plummet down
into somewhere deep that
I don't know (how
did the river get turned on its side?).
That's what it looks like. Then
my eyes re-focus and I think:
If I were closer to the light-beams on the water,
say, if I were suspended only two feet above them,
it would not be beautiful.
It would be frantic: when the water angled just right,
it would be one sudden flash of too-bright light,
but this happening all around like some obnoxious something-or-other,
and I wouldn't want to be there

(And I didn't even notice it's chilly outside).

Luke suspends me two feet above
the woman of the greater love:
she is not beautiful:
her hair is matted
as it wipes His feet,
her tears are cloudy
as they fall on His feet,
her lips are dry and cracked and bloody
as they kiss His feet. But
then i never want to cut my hair again,
tell me how to turn it into a washcloth,
and i want to purchase ointment in an alabaster flask
and ask and ask and ask

(And i didn't even notice i wasn't breathing).

The Most Famous Poem in the World

Roses are cool.
Violets are a'ight.
Some people love
some stuff, I guess.

If, Then

Everybody's got a crazy uncle,
and if
they don't have a crazy uncle,
then
they want one,
and if
they say they don't want a crazy uncle,
then
they're lying,
and if
they're not lying,
then
they're in bad faith.

The point is, there's
something about crazy uncles.

Delicacies

99 delicacies, pissed off delicacies,
not delicate, but delinquent, I think.
When I pick up my fork (left hand)
and my knife (right hand)
and go for the Cornish game hen
(seasoned with excellence by my chef, George)
it snaps back at me.
"Too long," it says,
and so I throw it out.
I then begin to cut into my
gold-leaf-wrapped-filet-mignon,
and feel my knife (right hand)
slide through the"Hey!
We're fed up!" The hen again.
"You're fed up, well let me feed myself."
"You mean feast yourself. Everyday
a feast, I guess it's
a man-eat-man, man-eat-food world."
"Cool it, game hen, or
I'll send you back to George."
"Give me my money."

I stand up,
all alone
in the dining room
and stomp on
that stupid piece of meat
and its juices
splatter all over the room.

Inner Demons

I struggle
with not eating
a peanut-butter-and-honey-sandwich
five times a day.

Two

Today I witnessed two things with no explanation.

The first was a man turning into a cat. He was a man probably in his mid-fifties and turned into a black and white cat with bright yellow eyes. I tried to make friends with him in his cat form, but he was scared and ran away.

The second was the moon with a perfect, huge circle of a kind of wispy light around it. I had to stop and look at it and I wondered if my eyes were deceiving me. I found out they weren't when another person told me about it.

We tried to explain these things with science but we could not. And even if we could.

I don't see how they'd be any less extraordinary.

10/29/11

Out of my mouth, billows,
not words, just smoke, just like
the fog, rising from the
river, clouding the hills.

Out of my mouth, pillows,
not smoke, but fire, but like
the machines up-river,
it burns the air, then sleeps.

Stale Bread

I feel like stale bread,
which is no good, no good at all. But
I have my words, they are electric coils,
and with them I toast myself.

Toasting can take stale bread
and make it good again,
especially when you've got
some music-butter and picture-jam
to slather and spread on top.
I also consider croutons
(with that music-butter and some sculpture-garlic)
as an option for my future.

Christ the Teacher

Christ the Teacher, across from me,
Christ the Teacher, behind my back,
and there are always circles,
circles when I'm sitting here.

Christ across from me, the Teacher,
in the shadow of Mother Nature,
lowly under Father Time,
squatting over there.

Behind my back, the Teacher, Christ.
I licked the snow off of his back
last night, or at least
a few nights ago.

The Plan

– I have a plan, and I think if I follow it I will reach enlightenment.

– Hm, okay. Well, what’s your plan?

– I have a plan, and it is this: I will crawl into a cave.

            Well, okay, first I have to find the cave, and of course I will spend a period of time (not too long, one week at most) wandering in the mountains looking for a cave to crawl into. Then, once a cave is found, once the cave is found, I will crawl into it. It will be dark, dark, for the entrance to the cave will be only as big as the widest part of my body, and it will face the north so that no light shines directly into it. So into the cave I will crawl, and even though the entrance is small, it will really be quite spacious inside. I will spend a good amount of time wallowing in this darkness (for wallowing is a healthy thing in small amounts), wallowing in this coldness and wetness (for, like all caves, it will be cold and wet as well as dark). I will deny myself food and I will drink only what I can lap up from the tiny stream of water pouring across the floor of the cave. Likely it will be quite painful, but I will afford myself two luxuries: I will be able to dance, for the cave will be spacious and after a couple of days of bleeding my feet will be calloused enough to prance and frolic around the cave for hours, swinging around the stalactites and the stalagmites and jumping as high as my weakened body will allow; I will also be able to sing, and I will sound better than I do when I sing now, for the echoes and reverberation in the open cave will fill the space with a thick, rich, colorful reflection of my voice. My time will be occupied by singing and dancing and painful wallowing (mostly the latter). Then, in an epiphanic moment of dancing and singing (the only two luxuries I will afford myself), I will realize the folly of wallowing in the darkness and crawl out of the cave. It will be sunny on the day this happens, and snow will be on the ground so that as I come out from the darkness I will be blinded by the light all around me shooting into my eyes. But because my epiphanic moment will be ongoing, I will not be afraid of this blindness. I will seek refuge in the shade of a grove of pines that will be nearby (which I will name Ananias), and in a few days something like scales will fall from my eyes and my sight will return to me. I will decide that although dancing and singing are great features of the dark cold wet cave, it is unreasonable to live as an ascetic. Therefore, I will begin gathering food and supplies to make a fire. Once these are gathered (enough to cook two or three hearty meals), I will crawl back into the cave with them. In the cave, I will build the fire and, famished, cook my food quickly, a little too quickly (it will be a little bit burnt), and devour it like an animal. Once I have eaten and am full, I will see that the way the flames dance on the walls of the cave is beautiful, and I will see further that there are paintings on every wall of the cave, breathtaking paintings of prehistoric mammals and of the primitive horde. I will reflect on the ancientness of these paintings, how they are older than Rome, older than Greece, older even than Sumer, which I’ve been told is the oldest civilization we know of, then I will cry for three days. I will stoke the fire so I can learn the paintings, absorb them, experience them fully with my whole self. I will eat and I will drink and I will sleep and I will cry. Then, I will wander outside of the cave looking for some pigment, something to paint with. I will find red berries and remember the charcoal from the fire, I will crush them and mix them with water to make paints. First I will think about practicing my painting on chunks of wood, for I have never studied painting and I think that my best, most practiced artistry is deserved by the prehistoric painters to whom I will speak through my paintings, continuing the oldest discourse on all the earth. But then I will consider how the rawness of my unrefined painting should be a part of the thing I create, that the practice of art is a part of the art itself. And I will then begin painting. Above, below, all around, I will put my images next to their images and I will cry for ten days as I do this. I do not claim to know what I will paint, for I will be moved by the moment and in a fleeting reverie make my unplanned strokes. When I am finished, I will spend three days seeing the flames flicker on the paintings, the old and the new, all outside of time. I will see that it is beautiful and climb out of the cave. This will be on the fortieth day. Having reached enlightenment, I will return to civilization with a new heart and live in a way those prehistoric painters, my comrades and collaborators, would have seen as wholesome.

– How can you be so sure you won’t just find an ordinary cave, wallow for a couple days, and then run back to the comfort of the city?

The Things that are Happening

Last night I licked snow
off of Jesus' back.

Tonight, sitting in the circle of statues
on a rock, polished and placed there for me
:Him, huge above and beside me:
He was growing,
i do not think it was an illusion of the light.
His head, his chest, his heart inside,
the broken heart inside
becoming greater
for me.
-- Are you okay, Philip?
-- Yeah, just smokin' my pipe.
Not just, that is not just what i was doing.
-- I thought you were one of the statues.
-- Nope, just sitting here.

Oh my God, i want to be one
of the statues, cast
me in bronze, that day-glow brown
i'll be, cast
me in the best position,
whatever that may be
(eyes up or eyes down
hand on knee or hand in air
or touching the least of these),
but place me on this rock, please,
not across the circle, not
on the distant rock.
Let me see you become greater
and oh my God, i want to be
one of the statues.

Salivary Glands, etc.

When we were boys we would
spit in the river.
Why would you
spit in the river?
We would spit in the river, but
we did not know why, but --
Will you ever know why?
-- but now we know why.

When we were boys we would
spit in the river, not so much spit
as stretch our necks and lean our bodies
over the river and let it gather
on the slippery smooth insides of our lips
and let it drip
down to join the river,
sort of like the prodigal son
returning to the father, or something.

Why would you spit in the river?
We would spit in the river but we did not know why.
Will you ever know why?
We will never know why.

Is Is Is Is Is

"It is as if it is of us."
"It is of us."
"It is off of us."
"As if it is off of us!
It is of us
as it is of Sisyphus,
but I've always hated allusions to Greek mythology."

A Treatise on Meteorology, Climatology, Geology, Botany, and Agriculture; also, on the Setting of the Sun

Puffy, white rabbits with no shape
dive, chasing the explosive expansive
orange-juice-ball out of
the upside-down ocean
and into the unseeable land
beyond the tall mounds
of dry brown sugar.

A naked man with a thousand arms
(nearer to me) watches in awe;
he is forty feet tall, truly.
There are shorter men also,
one of whom has tied wobbly silver
to a handful of his many arms.

The rabbits, it appears,
have soiled themselves.