May 31, 2012
#59

A Beautiful Day For Coming Home

If the plane goes down.
If I talk too loud.
If I want too magnetic.

If I pant too pathetically
After pulling out. I squeam.
If I should fall from the balance beam

Into your reckoning. Into your lore.
I unload the in-flight magazine and stare
At the maps on the back pages. I stare at Montevideo.

I see the lips of my high school Spanish teacher
Who died of cancer
Shortly after I was excommunicated.

I look out the window into the high sunset glare.
I smile at the evenness, the nothingness that’s there.

4:39pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMVG1Ib
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: poem-a-day in May 
May 30, 2012
Taken with instagram

Taken with instagram

11:04am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMQMBAj
May 29, 2012
“Whose side you on?!” (Taken with instagram)

“Whose side you on?!” (Taken with instagram)

8:50pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMORerw
May 29, 2012
#58

After Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life: Manhood

The storm cuts the power in the hotel for a moment.
In a flash of darkness, we eat our dinner by candlelight.
I call upon the Muses for a damn good time.
Wind gathers confetti at the far end of the road.
(Deeply inhales a drag from a cigarette)
She never really liked me then. At night           
(Exhales) I convince myself I’m in sublime reverie.
The truth is that I’m nearly empty.
I drain the Lone Star can nearly Erato
And pinch it like crinkling castanets.
I smell the after dinner smells from the kitchen.
I talk about the small towns I’ve lived in.
I’ve gathered several things to talk about with strange
Faces forming in the storm clouds.            

11:52am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMMWxnX
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: poem-a-day in May Lone Star Thomas Cole 
May 28, 2012
#57

We Are Missing People

The heart, fragile as tin foil,
So thinly terrible.           
How sad is a lion
Who is dying
Of old age isn’t the question.
Yesterday, thinking of the artist Robert Smithson,

Who died doing what he loved
When his plane fell down from above.
Like an egg detached           
From a tree and hatched
Prematurely. Took a turn for the worst.
Climaxed fast and burst.

Highway 79 is lined with American flags.
The hotel awning so filled with sunlight it sags.
It is Memorial Day in a small town in Middle America. The fulcrum
Where all the soldiers come from.
Where the wind and dry heat are especially heavy.
Where the sky swings open like a door. 

12:37pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMIfZDc
Filed under: poem-a-day in May texas memorial day 
May 27, 2012
#56

Closing Time

And how the porch swing glides my insides, I don’t know.           
How does anybody meet anyone anyway?
I’m happy to be just looking at the stop sign and
The lavender bush in half sunlight, half morning shadow.
Happy to nibble the rim of this porcelain coffee cup.

Last night I drank New York right
Out of me. The lines I composed in late evening
I drank right out of me. I’m happy to be
Partly gone in the heart. I’m happy
As a stranger waving at my alien face.

12:38pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMEhXqI
Filed under: poem-a-day in May 
May 26, 2012
#55

The Real World

A woman stares into the sunset and has an epiphany.
She collapses at how beautiful the world is.
The Black man as Ronald Reagan portrays Hollywood equality.
The man playing the Indian raises his arms in prayer and after a moment
All the white people surrounding him do the same.
Their prayers have come true. Digital whales have been saved.

The conductor taps his wand like a blind man approaching
The sunken orchestra pit. Whales splash through Arctic cold.
It is Christmas Day, 1914, and we have called a truce.
The money is in the account. The check went through.
The actor who plays the president says the world is safe.

7:50pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxMCENNY
Filed under: poem-a-day in May the real world 
May 25, 2012
#54

A Hero Is

The names of the fallen
Will be engraved
Beside his
Brothers.

I press the call button hard on
A flat screen cell phone
Leaving no impression
On anything.

I place a Turkish apricot on my tongue.
I love the feel of its little wrinkles.
I lick it all the way around.
This is what I’ve come here to do.

I sit and think and type and
Delete. No ink is wasted.
All the trees are saved.
I wake up and depart with aplomb.

11:22am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxM6m9Ka
Filed under: poem-a-day in May 
May 24, 2012
#53

Lust For LA

And so on I went, deciding not to sleep,
And by not sleeping, adding another day.

Slowing down the getting older. And so on.
And so the lightning flashes over Manhattan.           
Each day connected to the last and so on.

I tore Hockney’s A Bigger Splash out of a magazine.
I taped it to my wall. It was the perfect image of memory.
Flimsy and still. Barely there.
I swam in the memory of a painted pool.

Lightning flashes over Manhattan.
I’m watching it from an unobstructed window of an office in Harlem.
I’m tearing out the window and taping it to my wall
To make the rain stop.

Each day connected to the last and so on.    
To freeze the lightning.
(Each day connected to the last and so on.)

2:43pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxM3YFIX
Filed under: poem-a-day in May harlem hockney memory 
May 24, 2012
Jimmy Cliff. Outlaw press photo from “The Harder They Come”. Done right.

Jimmy Cliff. Outlaw press photo from “The Harder They Come”. Done right.

1:05pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxM3ID7u
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: jimmy cliff the harder they come the confirmed bachelors 
May 23, 2012
#52

At Washington Heights

I once moved to New York to become a singer.
I once moved to New York to win a girl.
I once moved to New York to escape sunshine.
I once moved to New York while looking for the light switch.
I once moved to New York so nobody would find me.
I once moved to New York so I could be alone.
I once moved to New York because I saw it in a movie.
I once moved to New York so I could steal a saxophone and play it all night long from my windowsill.
I once moved to New York so I wouldn’t have to listen anymore.
I once moved to New York because I couldn’t stand the ocean.
I once moved to New York so I could walk along a river under lamplight.
I once moved to New York to get covered in snow.
I once moved to New York to buy fruit from a fruit stand.
I once moved to New York to buy cowboy boots no one would see me in.
I once moved to New York to drink wine from a bottle on a rooftop and be sad.
I once moved to New York just so I could come home occasionally.
I once moved to New York as a love letter to my family.
I once moved to New York with three thousand dollars in my pocket.
I once moved to New York to wear a denim jacket.

7:12pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxM0ntay
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: poem-a-day in May 
May 23, 2012

About a great artist, John Baldessari, narrated by a great artist, Tom Waits.

6:52pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxM0iaDp
(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: tom waits john baldessari 
May 22, 2012
new track. 

new track. 

1:43pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxLxo_KJ
May 22, 2012
#51

Movies Without Cell Phones

In my movie there are no cell phones.
When someone is lost, they’re really lost.

Rain is always falling on Broadway, reflecting
Streetlamps like a strung line of gasoline fire.
A crowd of men in trench coats and women in stilettos
Huddle beneath a marquee. I see you there alone,

Waiting for someone I’ve already written out of the script
In an earlier scene. He’s not coming.
The red light on your machine at home is blinking.

In my movie, the girl is always mine to lose.
And I do, over and over. And then I get her back.
But this girl is too beautiful. The cameras don’t see her,
Just people standing around her.
The phone call is from the hospital. She’s dressed

Like a ghost right after the accident that made her
A ghost. She’s always there and slipping through my arms.

1:22pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxLxlX3I
(Notes: 2)
  
May 22, 2012
"In all our years, we never heard anyone shout out from the audience, ‘Turn it down.’"

— Nigel Tufnel, Spinal Tap

10:58am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZwlTxxLxQdZU
(Notes: 1)
  
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