Memorial Day, 2019

Hottest memorial day on record,

okay, so I’m making that up, but could

still be true. The Marine who never

really talks about it sits at the bar

he makes jokes at and posts

a poem on insta; it’s how I know

he’s there, I’m not there.

My Grandfather and Uncle and several

cousins have all carried guns for

America and lost or seen things I

never want to, at least, I assume.

There’s a lot of not talking about it,

but if the things that they’ve seen

are like the bodies in the documentaries

I’d bury myself in science fiction

and whiskey, or never want either

ever again.

Hottest memorial day week to date, well

probably not, but I wonder if I ever

have a child, will they be sent to the same

war I avoided with essays about

Pacific Northwest  imagery in the works

of Raymond Carver. A bit like

the skit about the ice cream taster

and the heart surgeon. The soldiers

I know are always the first

to tell me what I do is necessary

and usually I believe that they

believe that, and try to write honestly.

I do not know what music to

play in the bar tonight, since most

people will be making jokes

about bar b ques or anticipating

returns to different types of

drudgery. All I know is that

it’s the

hottest day in the history of days

and there are machines and technological

advances that mean I may get

to fight in that war yet, and the music

here is a bit on point: the entire

empty coffeeshop just burst out

in a singalong to “Is there life on maars?”

Cold Snap/Sunshine

Bill Withers on the stereo

a cold, dry November.

Just enough before work.

The coffee alcohol spectrum.

I miss everyone, but do not call.

It is okay for it to be okay

to be sad, I have convinced myself.

Time is running out before

I am legally required to smile.

It is dark inside and outside.

The lights are low because

brightness is ridiculous.

The song that played

over the credits of a fifteen

year old movie

about teenage awkwardness

makes its way before I do.

I can’t not care, and I’ve spent

so much of my life putting a premium

on detachment.

A stylized canoe hangs upside down

from the ceiling. I don’t even know

what this song

is  called.

29/30: Body Acknowledgement Poem

My ears gunked up and packed in

by the headphones I use to

drown out the reggae in the

rich white coffee shop that

has become my home for

free wi fi.

Hairs on the backs of my hands

stand up as the songs that

I love fills my skull gaps

and a left wrist itch, tickled

by headphone wires.

The balls of my feet

solid against new shoes,

my arches gapped between

them and the back of my

neck and arms

cold every time someone opens

the goddamn door.

My heart pounds and twitters

from the espresso and

each sentence I type quickly

my fingertips shoot directly

to my guts and heart and

all the internals that squick

and gulf with excitement

and jitters and involuntary

misspells.

My gut sucks in on itself

as I hunch over and squint

automatically; equal parts

sun and screen. Shoulders

always need popping,

toes curl and uncurl, bald

strips colder and itchier than

the sides of my head

where the hair still disobeys

orders of comb or hat.

My ass squishes comfortably

against the wicker chair, my thighs

just fat enough to flex

when I run. Knees that aren’t

sore from that. . . yet. My dick

snug between boxer briefs

and thigh in jeans that

only count as tight

when I sit like this. Spine

curved and straightened

like roads on a city map.

My shadow stretching out

over the table and floor

where it meets

the chair’s shadow

and with a cloud

disappears.

Treatise/Treaties (rough)

A treatise on spiced
pork shoulder, the correct
way for a sandwich to
fall apart:

in your hands, before biting.
dripping down Denny, spreading
lettuce with my gait, I am in
no hurry to get anywhere:

I am in a hurry to get 
everywhere. 

Half recollected bounce back
of a Ludacris song. Wind chimes
in the city like phone
dings. A future child
mocks the tortured novelty
of ringtones:

Why would you- how could you-
possibly think that was
cool?

Down the hill and up again,
ten dollar street food, plastic
fork. Ten miles between trash
cans.

Clouds and heat disagree,
there is no truce in the weather,
there is no energy in this protein
there is no welcoming handshake
at my destination:

dirge, dirge, dirge.

30/30! New Puffs!

Three kids in cat ears
dart across

Lights start high
end low.
We trail. . .

Minute splinters in the wood.
Stacked always

nearly ready

burnt out joints
on sidewalks

4/20! In Restructuring! 4/21! Escape From Green Lake!

In Restructuring
In remembering the brand name beer on the bar glass, there is a noticing of the dyed
hair of the woman with the corgi, taking in the grilled onions and burnt brat.
In taking bartenders advice, the whisper about plumbers crack on stools. In the
grains of the wood. In trying to describe an evergreen to a recently blinded
desert transplant who sings an old song not a minute too soon in an ally and a dark
warm minute. In restructuring life to re-include collections, of salts, of blinds, of who to
complain about to your landlord, who to complain about to your uncle. In retiring phrases
from you vocabulary upon return and holding judgement for a later date. In rewriting
a popular account of your failure as an adult. In stoping your self from fastdancing in
a slowdance bar.


Escape From Green Lake
I don't want to hear about your
cleanse.
I don't want to hear about your
new joggable
stroller or
the ways jogging
and yoga pants
work the same in
kegels.

I just want to paddle my way off beaver island, where I've lived
off nuts and berries for the last ten years, occasionally impersonating
an emaciated sasquatch, and find my way to the concrete path
where
I got swept with babysitting
skaters, their clean smiles
and taught
thighs and
screaming eight year olds back into
the fray of failed body surfers
drunk fishermen
and ducks.

I wanted to get free
but like gilligan
there's no getting off
of this island.

County Werewolf (draft)

What do we do with the county werewolf? The rows and rows of potleafs bristling in the draft of the tattered greenhouse, the cash crop that cuts to/
                                                                                                fleeing brides in torn veils collapsing under drooling fangs, moonlight just cracking through the hydroponic lights.
Also, the odd fleeing groom, his tuxedo catching fire as he smokes a joint he knows will be his last,
but as the claws descend, he just wants something for the pain, man.

Some days its medical, some days it’s a fucking feast. Hairs in the meat. We held a vigil at full moon, but no one went wolf. We watched the mountains for howlers, but only a fleeing elk. We use our phones to find the way back, on roads that’ve been here for fifty years.

This towns not that small, that’s the problem. There could be any number of college kids turning
to beasts and tearing the throats out of chickens. Any number of crucified ghosts getting ground on in ritual/

Ground up by ritual.
What do we do with the scratching, screaming women? What do we do with the teeth-red wine?

The sherriff proposed an execution, and a would be mayor suggested treatment, but the pastors said that’s witchcraft, witchcraft, as no one is sure who’s really turning, getting hairy, bearded

What do we do with the hairy, bearded howling men at  midnight, throwing their glasses and pawing at bodies? What do we do with the pastors who say this is never a thing, except for satan, that this is never the cold joke told in the morning, the scattered bones from a chicken dinner, then a scattering of other things, more horrible, between the plants. Bones.

Three Ticks Away From Another Renewal

The last day of September should mean something besides a sweatshirt.
The last afternoon clouds, shredded by a setting sun or God's wrath, whichever comes first.
The last of an old lease, clothespiles, the floor, the futon, paperpiles, the breakfast table,
the lamp table, the desk, the bookshelf, bookpiles, the bookshelf, the lamp table, the floor.

The next bus on the last day, full ebola.
The next bus on the last day, masked riots.
The next bus on the last day, late

late
late.

The last stop of a new old season should be something besides calendar page loss. I used to send flares up for apartment changes, the gathering of things, the significance of pizza on an empty floor in a room full of boxes, songs chosen for long laughs, cheap looks. So much peperoni, gathering in corners.

The next day, a first day.
Another three months til the moving trucks, if that,
the last bus of the first day, rolling cartons of torta.
the last bus of the first day, hiding cider in to go mugs.
the last bus of the first day, fist bumps with gloved strangers.
the last bus of the first day, just found twenty dollars,

the last bus of the first day,
late
late
late

late, but rolling.

Three Through Oregon

1.

For a while, we thought we were in Seaside.
The crags spiking from the water, the earth’s dome edge
visible beyond the pacific. The tidepools drying,
leaving dead jellyfish, plankton baking with maggots.

Then we thought we were in Pacific City,
with the houses all slung low and cute
over the sand, the road wandering and ending
near the hill we climbed last year,
and it sure has eroded since then,

Huh?

2.

I am killed by ultraviolet.
I am toast in a broken oven.
There is no water for my feet,
only an icebox and pick.

I am grounded by seafood,
swam by late night Frisbee chase
and not good enough at ping pong
for family occasions.

The Mo’s in every town,
the pirates with their coffee
curving 101, I hug the side
of passenger vans,

Tipping but never rolling,
swerving but never crashing
rocketing towards oncoming camrys
sliding back over double yellows just

3.

Riding back from the edge of the earth,
free of coastal chains, or national, through
pine bluffs and mini valleys and every
third mile someone with an “Ie” ending
their name runs a family diner, every sixth,
an ammo store.

Salem looks like a slice of Portland hot-injected
with South Everett, Hear No Evil’s Car-Audio store
crowned the king of roadside wordplay, the
trailer park a few blocks from the state capitol
and the freshmen ahead of me chattering about
the day awaiting them in Portland, whether the
Smiths are still alive.

Don’t blame me for sleeping, don’t blame me
for staying awake. Killed in the body, mind swimming
and the days weight settling in at the base of my neck,
as we roll into Oregon City, “Welcome to Historic Oregon City.
The end of the Oregon Trail” across from a
Home Depot and McDonalds.

But wait--

There’s more.

Jerk eyes open
Verizon wireless theme song in
digital slap

base operations across from
Zeek’s pizza glowering billboard
skating by on borrowed

internet, a sarlac pit
of creased envelopes,
a deletery of e-mails.

That is not all;

Past the white windowless van with the electrician’s name on it, past the backward baseball caps and scarred arms leaning over the freight trains, past the giant clock by the lamp store, past the testicles all bouncing in green, and the ghosts of brewers, all coming back with hooks for hands, there is another smoking hole in a wall, or the asphalt, cigarettes or asteroids.

That could be all,
but holiday specials forbid it. Towerless searses forbid it. Postal delivery drivers, presumably werewolves, forbid it with pork between their fangs. ALSO! Veteran vetrinarians, presumably evil mermaids, for-fucking-bid it. So there is more—

--a swift mop up
before leaving work,
a death threat bus 

stop, running on borrowed

fares, a deathstar
with its lights on,

but wait--

Hat Trick

Curtains and tights.

Doves and canes.
Caps, cufflinks, gloves,
shining.
We were that joke about
the truck, who turned into
a cornfield.
                                                  HEY ravens! HEY crows! these stalks aren’t for ignoring.

Pendants and saws.
Repurposed coffins.
Lights so bright or
none at all.

                                                  (crystal, but with a joke about balls. A twitch and a wink)

Capes, capes, capes.
This knife can cut through an
ordinary leather sofa in
ten minutes. Think what
the whole set could do.
These shoes were the finest
taps in all the land, we
can be your cobbler.
Keep in mind, we used to
be people who used to be
a truck.
                                                      HEY! Rally, motorcycles! HEY!
                                                      Rally, flamethrowers! Rally, chrome-                                                                                                                    winged-donkeys.
it is so unfair that these
things repeat themselves.
Nonetheless, we were velvet curtains,
waxed goatee, blazer. Twirling
a rabbit on our finger, blowing
a kiss in sparkling blue pastel,
what they wanted to see,
harsh realities not withstanding.

                                                (this knife cuts through cob)
                                                                                           WHEELWHEELWHEEL!

The Day After Christmas

the bus driver swerved
tailgated a truck with political
stickers all the way
from Everett

to somewhere called Newberry Court,
a small city nearly lease ready

while a Russian woman laughed
loudly at the girl who asked if she was German.
"Oh, svweethhchaart, I vish."

Crashing and Brackish (rough)

the town still flooded

                         tendons unspooled

across the arterials,

your arms, finally.

(in the manual,
we are the wires.
in the manual,
we are the charge.)

your legs deregulate

                        across from union station

and the armies of

neighboring cities

                       rally in mortar against

the grating.

(in the police report
we are the wires.

in the police report
we are the charge.)

hire a better crane
                          girders for monuments
rebar for rebar
and salt and Norway rats
                          running down the ropes.

I carry my entrails calmly,
though this is not how it was

supposed to go.

Forward/Backward.

So Shane Guthrie first appeared in my life when I was about 15, he a couple years older, as part of a teen writer's group. The first thing I heard of his was a poem that scanned both backwards. He had pieces that proposed a viewpoint one way, and an opposite viewpoint the other (Christian/Atheist being my favorite, natch). For the Filthy Jerry kickstarter, he demanded a forward/backwards piece from me. It's taken me this long to write it, with some false starts and scrapped efforts (I decided it didn't need to present opposing viewpoints, but should attempt some sort of sense) and I do some fiddling with the punctuation from one version to the next. But this is the first piece of this type I've completed.

Tasty! (maybe inspired by politics. Or not.)

Saintly ,again, disappearing into water.

Turning expectations, repasting billboards

All good deeds, all charity drives, all blessed returns.

Saintly, again, rewritten histories.

Bodies, bulldozers, cremations, buyoffs.

Pitchshifted. Rebeats. Chopped, screwed.

Again, Saintliness as moving goalposts.

Stories fit headlines. Splashed page full.

Halos glowing shinier, for flashbulbs.

Searching, a finished writeup, new review.

Again, bowing. Saved great act for last.

_____--____

Last for act. Great. Saved, bowing again.

Review new writeup, finished a searching.

Flashbulbs for shinier glowing halos.

Full page splashed headlines fit stories.

Goalposts moving as Saintliness, again,

Screwed, chopped. Rebeats. Pitchshifted.

Buyoffs, cremations, bulldozers, bodies.

Histories rewritten again, Saintly.

Returns blessed all, drives charity all, deeds good all

Billboards repasting expectations, turning

Water into disappearing again, Saintly.

Geo Concerns

They're building a crater
in the lot behind the bank
concrete gives way to clay,

unexpected tidepools.
someday, hundreds of people
will stack on this pit,

shopping and eating new ripe fruit.
jagged edges waiting
under below grade parking

for the big one.

Postcard View Dailies (draft)

This is what I read last night at Da'Daedal X in Everett. This is an initial stage, a bunch will change. Feel free to pop off with suggestions, love, or haterade.
__________________________________________________________________

to work. To walk. To work. To walk to work.
Seventeen if I saunter, five if I run.
on the way, deconstructions:
neighborhood, city, country,

as if my pen would floatme above, ride a crane into new calamitous conclusions,
let me become the judgement I sit in, the crash I swing toward..

But better writers have tried to strike out against the gentrification that their
own romanticizing kicked into gear; spur, stronger activists, more upstanding pastors, etcetera.

I take streets that get me there quickest
and undetected, unreconstructed, unspied,
so I can grab the shakers slap my face into public form.

Kris tells me I have more Face than any other bartender he knows personally. The thick mask of unflappability. The workface.  Is this is a fakeness?  If I were a hunter, I’d become the bear. If I were a fisherman, I’d become the plankton. If I were an excorcist, I’d become the little girl.  If I walk too much, or not enough, my legs become
spokes. Shaking drinks and staring buildings and marking time, I become the salt on the rim,
the laugh at the jokes. My face sags and limbs crawl to a warning spot. Kris tells me that I didn’t recognize him when he showed up, that I and all my returns came back in manila envelopes, unmarked.

To past work. To memorial.
The postcards take three weeks,
two days on express,

Over the oceans where I became the Shark. Through the tubes where I became the
cracks, not recognizing the water leaking, the water, the water,
the darling struck soaked like standing by puddles meeting bikewheels.

To home, from work. To home. To back,
lets say we can’t call it a home, lets say
it’s a place where I sleep and cook eggs
and masturbate with the door closed
and window open because it doesn’t face anything.

Takes longer, to get there, get home
after work, after the face, after betraying
endless friends with professional nods,
 through the collapsing buildings and the deep built
pits, where the dog care was.

Now all the dogs are filthy and barking up park trees.
Now I no longer cut through the park,
Now I no longer think about meanings
Of signs with cartoon bycicles.

Every  3 a.m. couchflop a victory and surrender.

On leaving, Greg decided it was important we eat hilarious chips, almost blow ourselves up, hear some old Nick Cave songs. It was important. We talked about buildings in cities we will never live again and the holding belief people have that their friends will all one day live on the same block as them.,, and we didn’t dwell on leaving at all, as he walked back through a neighborhood, the same one, but through different eyes, when was the last time I made it to boston, street-statue performers and all, and I gravitate myself away from thinking too hard about the number of things that are ending in a promise of postcards.

Two weeks, three, a pit of faces. I become the mailman’s papercuts.

#29: Merman

There is no use for tenacles on a community college campus. The muscles for walking and muscles for swimming are unique to their elements and suction only goes too far. The day I sprouted four had also been the day I donned my three piece suit for an interview with the dean about possible improvements to the enrollment structure. I couldn't walk anywhere, just flail at passing students, three of whom thought they were doing a favor when they tossed me in the campus fountain, just starting to fill for spring.
But my lungs hadn't gone fishy, my skin wasn't scales, my thirst remained untouched. Obviously, I missed the meeting and my suit was ruined. There'd be no promotion in my future, no raise, no commendations or plaques. Some people started crumbling up crackers and dropping them on my face as the suit tore and night fell and it inevitably started to rain. That was so stupid. Crackers are for goldfish, get it right, I yelled, shocked at the pride I had in my new traits. I tried to dial my phone, but it was ruined, tried to beat people away, but even with flailing I wasn't too good. These were brand new and I didn't know how to use them yet.

#5 A Tool Breaks Its Promise

You tricked me, leafblower, out amongst
the lawns, admiring my own arms for

their usefulness, peeled bark, owned houses,
guidelines toward mulch. I wanted you

to be the wind, harnessed, finally, I wanted
you to make me God. But like the firehose

or blender or hangglider before you, this is a
clumsy toy, a dignity steal for men in buttoned

shirts even on their day off. Listen: my home
is my castle and the lawn is my moat and the

leaves, they are alligators, even in the fall.
You've punchlined me, set me to the neighborhood

council in apology rags, contrition tie, shame loafers.
I drive back, my savnat malfunctioning, Joe,

over there, on his riding mower, grinning,
near asleep in his beer.

#3 Take Care, Sincerely, All the Best.

Take care when crossing the street not
to be run over by the stampeding hippos
let out by the fired zookeeper in one last
act of vengeance against the shrinking animal budget,
no time for larger cages, only endless
lemur apartments, meerkat holes,
while the elephants and grizzlies
were set afire for a host of incoming
green space.

Take care when dodging the eagles
swooping down, they haven't had fish
for days and you live in Seattle, you'll
always smell a bit like cod, you only
wish it were Salmon, get over yourself.
The real take at city hall was that too
many laughing children offset prime-view
prices, so they beheaded several ostritches
and sold their fried bodies on hoagies
from repossessed trailers.

Take care of your knees and elbows this
summer, as reports have ten orangutans
swinging directly toward you,
rumors are they're infected. Probably just
a cold, you know, the rain, hahaha,
but seriously, save your tarzanning for
the gondola ride, get out the smelling salts
and remember banana-based diversions
only work on chimps.

Take this elbow grease. Keep your most wrinkly
parts smoothed and savvy. Take this muscle relaxant
and helmet for your skate down the hill. Take
a minute to think of your family, and what would
have happened if they'd agreed to meet you
for brunch in the path of charging rhinos. Circumstance
is a speeding warning when you expected
the baton. Take your jelly legs to a bench,
and take the next bus out of here. This place
has become a real shithole since the Zoo burned
down and all the families were eaten
by tigers.

April 1st, 2013 (Napowriyolo#1) Pogopogopogopogo

The fiends! Normally I wouldn't go out in a rainstorm without my foil helmet but drastic times, measures. They were running down the block with my giant plastic santa claus-- the one I got for the halloween party-- and I had no choice but to mount my pogostick and hop after them. There were lightning crashes. There were thunder strikes. There were traffic jams. There were wage hikes. The bastards! How did they know my pogo would run out of spring so soon? I was stuck in a growing puddle as cars whizzed around me sporting Star Wars Political Slogans. Nothing mattered any more, though it might later, I reminded myself, catching the first ghost train to another planet and ripping out my spleen. It'd not done much for me anyway, since the deventing operation.