Is This Glastonbury

Alight sound of bending branch and caramel

light, auspicious or anticipation of auspice.

Last night we slept in a handicapped bathroom

with; where might we have gone off track,

did Carolyn return and leave in the night (it was a well

worn notion), things like this. What amounted

to breath between us, and our thinking is this

Glastonbury?

Still several large piles of stuff battening down

the sluice choice of attendants. Struggling

goodheaded asceticism and attendant on

what amounted to saltpeter of ground outstretched,

brutalist of civic amphitheater construction, sugar

plums of all-weather maroon seats extruded and

bolted into cement steppes; that this should be

lauded amongst us? with a clearview of life ascendant?!

The mexican stoneware giving way to porcelain?

Slush to glacial ice? This to Glastonbury?

·

By advantage of some years hence, the week

bested us. Neither apparent risk of sleeping rough

or going seeming the good choice, now is dross,

gravel, soporific, it is hard to now work up.

Or an absence amongst the returned us.

Yet, whomever we then lost. Glastonbury, it was.

to the Ocean

in defense of easternizing west, west east. Stone sewn
until accidental scraping-over incites—on flat ground! even
sanguinity of gold and rust on a hill side, sloping down
to the city—on one side—and ocean on the other.

You ruddy maximalist. Wearing a toggle navy blue pea coat
and combing the beach, cigarette smudging the blush
of your pate. It is never easy making self-sustaining
diets of disparate threads undulating like fissile seagrass.

And then you are even in love! with the jewess daughter
of a wharfman. And as distant as the tribe now felt; old
maiding, perhaps, but willing to do it up in a cigarette dress
of starched black cotton. Brother-in-law to the butcher,

to the ocean.

Scrub

Scrub, eked out
in a tableau, thus

as if Morricone had
given up the ghost.

So, back. 'Way two
conveyances playingly

race-draft. One
in front for some time

then curtailing back.

To the point that pupil
indistinguishes from iris,

shirtsleeves give way
to a bit of calf?

and what next?

Eagles mating with silt?
Pinecones and foals frolicking?

I am getting drunk.

Right. Could've thought
it would be $750,000

from here on out, that
the disturbance was

evidence of a human path,
not the confused starling

failing to launch around
in underbrush for some time?

Even this 4x6 color printout,
garish with it's back and white

affixed with color blush,

an old photograph grainily
reproduced us. And

how the way we were
then; affecting a buffont,

cleaning under fingernails
with the emory board hook

from a set of clippers,

gesticulating uncomfortably
in the snow, just

having sullied something.

This was hard fought; we
wrought a sculptural mountain

of it, Tatlinly; babbling. He

was not so much a scrub
as lacking in some capitals

as we all are.

Black Hellespontus

Black Hellespontus
to the west,
splash of scree
in a moire
so that an impossible
carbon fiber exists,
shifting.

Scrumbrush aloft
on an updraft
where isobars coming down
shift from still-lit side to
ruddy twilight. As if
an aftereffect
of broken institutions

newly, freshly
broke them. Not
that, say, the mix had not been right;
that the nitrogen economy
was a dangerous external force;
that we bought
upheaval cheaply.

Of course
this.
Until nostalgia for
homesteading is
all there is. The
turned aside
earth,

warm milk.
And the carrion call
which is this: not
only had we brought it all
with us, but
made it up.

Midwestern Life

That which a midwestern life wrought;
unclaimed dignity of a hard fought living yet

not bloody-handed slaughterhouse work,
what failing a third coast left is that surety

that the blood forthcomes.

Flu

The flu short-shrift of kindling.
For as a fever goes
the body follows, straining
after the healthy ineptitude we all know.

Wading, thinking always
of the pant leg.
Is this the hairsbreadth
to threadbare? Clearly

each use diminishes
the usefulness. Rack
of greenware
having gotten wet; wick

drowning itself in wax
and is extinguished.
Once mendicant
in a sea of other mendicants

until possession breadth
comes back up.

Self Death

Soulmate, dividend.
Lover of nothing, liver

of life leaving, daughter
of Ungoliant and Nought. Yet

leeching sweetness
from the air.

Such is the toothache's will.
Supplanting

the patriotic devices
of Enlightenment with

magic, we are a well-fed
throng of penitents; livery lifters,

india ink drinkers,
takers of popped-off buttons

from the half-pint mason jar
where things like that are kept.


Absurdity quadrupled,
love leavened,

maven exemplified
unto unintentional self death.

Fruit Flies in the Bathroom

Not cleanliness
nor it's long absence.
Fruit swoll
with sweetness,

time tacked
to ripeness
and is temporal
and attendant

what,
flocking up to greet you,
in threes, bodies balloons
of sickly orange-green.

Small, yet antiseptic
forces
brought to bear
there

and there and there.
Until orderliness gives
way
to fruit flies in the bathroom.

the New Poem

I would employ a tool would and make work
but have pause to think.

Sweet-corn silk
riven into furrows  or salt.

Situated that new poem
on a walk

over a berm of cold
soil and husks. And

it is presumably
still going.


Whether the prospectuses
piled upon themself

is not bellwether
yet.

Whether the cloud kept
riding the horizon, &

saucily laid the far side
waste in rain

shadows, tumbling,
drawn over that round side

past the last door on left
is a real mess.


Feeding young
is feeling deft as if

the obstacle course life
climbed out

of card tables and casserole
dishes. And of the appeal

of the cold porch.

a Mountain Slope

If feeling eggs
and sowing oats
and nationalism for it's sake

green growth
triangle accident. Not
falling down a mountain slope

but not climbing fully up it.

Sapphat

Sapphat, latinate
greek which broke.
And lo did this day
and week not go off.

Turn of the fruit. Dark
in at you. Apples as
fast as will. Branch
which, poem. Where

at most there is an
out in animals; it goes.
The story to leave is
not completely. Returned

a true loving-sense.
Talks of a down fighting
word. Feels experience
broken. Story turned,

love leaving. To paraphrase,
say the sharpest thing
quietly. Parting from
friend and teacher

of which an emotion
is the opposite. Standard
usage refers to this passage,
meaning doubled. Terribly

we have multiple meanings:
deep feelings, all the
possibilities there is,
great sadness superimposed,

this compressed, no way
out but separate intent.
Girls has been speaking
love we had. Neck and touch,

girls loose, comfort and
tearfulness mixed. This
. . . .lovingness, unknown
which is good. Pointed, her.

Whereas young boy aright
pleasures, as equals, by
a society their own. So
shown as knit. And even

awareness, which pitches.

Consonance

Seemingly sea, ipecac river.
"Mother, I am a ditherer."

"Lifted the livery from the livid;
said: 'Ecstatic: Look At.',"

which was of course titular
and yet less florid rosacea than

sitting in a bath of epsom.


If I could whet some moderate
mess in the corner, raise an ear

—yes, sound a clarion
of hops and ash; only.


If I weatherer, never near. But
for offal, bed sores, consonance.

"I"

"I" will carry a candle for you.
A leg over or two.

Metaphor of extended pain did once;
rose wielding cunt.

the Compromise

Yes, this is a perfect life,
bubbling plasticene strife.

If immolation, it is a slow
one. "Maybe the hectare further,"

to "or at least mental absentia
turned to much sleep." in the interim.

The cul-de-sac is indignant, yes.
"Maybe there is a third side

of life." The reaffixed bonnet's
bundled under. It is quite cold.

Met you when I'd come to on
the waning half. Picture this;

me, maybe fiveteen percent to
ineptitude with a nosegay of irises.

Let's compromise: you can have
the whole city if I can die.

Compartmentalize, obfuscate, lie
to yourself and everyone else. Skin

spate when there is a shortage
of flesh. Flash mate when

it is dark and we have strobing eyes.

Gliese

On Sunday we gnawed
blood and chokecherry.

The platelet bore
phosphorus to arsenic

and we ate nightshade.
On a colder heath than

one supposed.


Braised boulders in
wizened eye-corner skin,

metal, threadbare Lem.


And this is an anxiety thing,
too, flash of bright red hair;

talons of it. Then we
macerated galloping reams

of numbers ticking up.
What was ground dust

was not dust, but verdurous.
Cataloguing what chlorophyl

strobed back: "green/
green/green/green/green."


Evenings we foundered.
Having rounded some

inanity corner and
doe-faced the grins down,

feigning ignorance
of one another.

As though we were all
clean-shaven, irony gone too.

"Yes." "My, you have
a special that," "I think

you would really enjoy
this record," or, "track of land."

And it's reciprocal!

Earth

The paradigm is
life ended in parts;

no extraneous tree
pulp, increased

purview of machines
(for numerous reasons),

fewer trips
to the theater—

fewer theaters.
Children would say

“You are so old now,”
dividing things up like that.


You came back. Know
what cement set?

Quite flat. With horizontal
scrape marks on it.


This was us.
More dense, if

judging things like that
makes any sense. Blittery

rabbit cooked on speed
and crystal meth,

(That is a blatant attempt...
and all that) rhombus

or a parallelogram;
this was our house.

Transparent, platonic
line segments. Then

lifting the foot over
the bootland to fair

farther foothills and
flat land fractally

explosive with
things that grow.


Designs for cities in the Gulf.
The seagull joke,

neither we
were “aqueous” people.

the Long Haul

Stumbling out
done with the

existence
responsibility.

"I don't even know if this
is worth it anymore."

Bradley began blathering
after hibernation.

The good air
was either too hot

(jockey shorts) or
unmitigatedly frigid,

(the toggle wool coat
and leather duffle bag) but

it kept moving.
From the solar

north pole
into night.


Cruel crunch of
not putting the finger on it.

Something was not right,
yes.

If murderous,
the implication must oblique

into a late morning meal.
Everyone huffing eggs.

"I did not offer you the scarf
to be the boss!" the latrine is

a ways off south. Maybe
Div going there accidentally.

Maybe the social tree
grew deep roots in dust too fast.

And! between
twilight,

leaning left
if going west!

the sun will set
if you let it.

Less jouisance
than was talked about

because less vitamin D
from the ultraviolet light.

Brass fittings, the D-
ring opening. And

through a hard vacuum or
gravity, Div Bradely-Notworthit

faded into death. His desiccated
husk in the saltfields between

the great northward
rivers.

When They Evacuated the Louvre in Advance of Nazi Troops

You, barefooted beauty.
Winged Victory, you

descent fast.

Creeping past old embers
and broken glass back.

That that

happened years ago
was not immediately

apparent.

It seems to be
going on still.

Precipitous Drop

Broke, did not know
the handmade catamaran
was full of reedworm, not
in love, overriding the first
stanchions, little red book,
breathe deep when "what're
you doing now?" whether
the good IPO went south
and you couldn't get out
or did—with fungal aplomb
—and balls to the wall and
making "being very famous"
and "life easening" of cold
photographic chemicals and
and an old Helmut Newton
coffee table book.

David

The primary pulmonary embolism
started in the leg

and moved to the lung later,
after two weeks of bed rest.

Increasingly the healthy corpus
is not the healthy corpus one

remembered leaving
on the sofa (yellow leaves and

paisley orange, a little brown).
You fell down.


Irradiated you,
staying a long time,

as though Elijah had arrived.
You died.