ski masked thingys w/ feathers

                                                                  For TLF & JLF

as if spoken in rose or magenta ironic sentences

white chains drag her thru

hard sleep

watching pots boil tardy poets demonize her

line breaks

ing

so like a poet

the held air holds feathers

at 7 Fat Tuesday 

intrepid melancholia man let slip

he wears socks when he bathes he reads: Hope—is a thing with feathers

as I write this I prey

not on one knee knocked over by a feather

or anything 19^th C. 

but writing & trashing line

after line

concerned only w/silence

not the representation of reality

but the articulation of its limits—the living out of

sequence

chaos!

the disruption of

order!

so plastic

so featherly

I wld Not, sd otis

I wld prefer to expurgate & ban & censor

obscene & creepy Mao II

acting out The Magus for price

of single featherbed

admission

beyond which a white

blaze of white feathers

is a dangerous thought

Poem Ending with Instructions from Man Ray

My cell phone dials rio a pizza hut pizza

Hang up on’em, sd nietzsche

But michael flatterley…blonde on the staircase?

Dear john of the cross

I am in the city headed to buy coco puffs

Do you want a good read?

Read main road is distant room

Read spine-stapled smut on a stick during indian summer

It’s all swiffers full of tiny mice droppings

Objectified egg meat breaking down

Over rob

Or juan gris dancing in zulu land

Julio sd, andrei popov was hegel’s answer to fleet st

I believe he meant

Shovel hell’s belladonna

Or nothing lasts like a timex

With spicy brown mustard applied to each axle

Return yr vehicle to the outlet guy

Dear Søren: Either/Or

Dear Søren,

Either I dream but cannot sleep

Or I sleep but cannot dream

While death’s bizarre postures

Give shape to lovers

Caught in the glare of meaningless

Self re-invention

Either my tortured self immolation

Or a dark hand

Erasing my dream life

*

Dear Søren,

Either you rail against winter

Or you are locked in a theater

Groping the actors

Either you cut & past the idea of self

Into the annihilating darkness

Of a shut off monitor

Or you are the shaved experimental subject

Staring at ice collecting on a wing

*

Dear Søren

Either a bad name

Tattooed like a night—

Gelid human tear drops

On yr wrist and neck

Or you are nacht itself

Either winter is cozy

As a book or a poem or a fire

Or you piddle back stage

Yr mind half asunder

The phrase: Ibsen is God

Scrawled on a chair

*

Dear Søren,

Either landing gear has dropped

And we arrive still groggy at 3 am

Or we are “Fab”

Either we are forced to mock our own captivity

Or we are Borg

& hailing from Liverpool

(Re: Hard Day’s Night)

*

Dear Søren,

Either confusion

Or the stills I took are a little bit grainy

Either a purple blurred face

Or what is it really, if not exactly?

Either I’m too real for Realism

To shadow

Or my own sick-looking image

White and pasty—

A figure of death in the mirror

*

Dear Søren,

Either you imagine a city of loss

In the arms of Colossus

Or you phone up a girl

Yr life an epitome

Seeming anything but

A gallows offering

Either a pittance is paid to the calliope tender

Or the sounds

Of a mother and daughter

Sopping wet

& running from the rain

*

Dear Søren,

Either the ravens

& fences speak stolid images

Of night to night

Or I am the poet who wakes & rises

Thinking of sleep

Either sleep

Or death

A barrage of mundane napkins

& spoons

& bowls steaming with oat meal

But where are my feet?

*

Dear Søren,

Either the “human element”

Or running off to the river

Iced with the moon’s sad reflection

Never go easily into night

Or sleep in the moon light

*

Dear Søren,

Either my breathing has stilled

Or the acts of a dead man

Take refuge in ice

Either a man is a thought

Shattered like crystal

Or he hallucinates a woman

Of haughty pretense

*

Dear Søren,

Either I believe what I’ve written

Or a man in a jungle

Is setting out his traps for me

Either brown eyes

On a banner’s black field

Are life’s ultimate metaphor

For life

Or a paragon of fictions addressed

To “The Man”

*

Dear Søren,

Either my boots falling off

My feet shrunken from starvation

And lack of sleep

Or I murder by reading

Either time is a dragon

Act 1, Scene 1of something called

Eating Yr Shadow

Or my good eye is blue

& my blind eye is blank

An existence half dark

“Protect Me From What I Want” (        ) —Jenny Holzer

Ecstatic ambient

Violent FLASH!—

The mouth taken

—THUNDERclap—

& [“dies”]

[ tv ] crackles

like it is brkn—

disfunctioning

dot

excreting into

drowning out

focus-less glass glare

in universe

center nowhere

Something-sausage

sours my esophagus

[ tv ] save me from

What I can’t control

myself!

Signal returns

Ghosts itself

2 seconds, 3 seconds

Now dis-pixelates

Resolution —un

Then back—

Beyond image-less

Lethe—

A life!

Inte rvals ina  brken

chai n l etter dis aster

More determined

this time—

a snow cap of improbable

dreamscapes—

To make a meal of

“roast potatoes”

We’ll return wth more clues

After these messages

Let’s see—Lantern, check

Radio, check

Spice-whetted lips

Seeking knowledge

That they would not teach

Me of

In college, check

Storm has all but

Doused—

blind melon chittlin’ hour—

digital city listens in

talking tongues

Dali’s corpus

delecti

as perverse & as odd

egg salad? potato salad?

lodged in my knee cap

musical hair THUNDER clap hair!

Riotous pretend(?) Cubist (?)

Soup off flesh—

Two heads a conquest

a foot is a rib

Ten toes a relish off

neck in a buttock—

The all dark

subsets

all but reset

[ a fetish for ginger

is something to watch ]

We have reservations

We are eaten

regardless