poem containing only vowels that is also in the shape of a vowel which if intoned could never be stopped and its ringing would persist beyond the limits of the known universe even through the expansion and contraction of all universes wherein the big bangs and the big crunches become just a form of breathing and the new vowels come forth on this breath and the speaker of that poem too would be rendered into a vowel opening to the future forever
let’s make a plant
grow where you wouldn’t
expect like in the wheel well
of a well-kept
or oft-driven minivan
or at the crevice where
my concept of a pot
inverts into a mound
underground there is
more ground
which is of course
exactly where we need it
every word has a wick or fuse
but you don’t know which
until you light up
I can wait
and wait
desire burns down to a little pebble that falls now from the palm
I don’t love you
I lifted a flood
and found another
flood sleeping underneath
what I sprained
in the forest
was not myself
what I pried
was truth
from your ribs
watched it fall
into a real river
loving and not loving
along the riverbed
my hand does
the normal thing
of seeking and finding
my ear does
the normal thing
of peeling pears
Ayla’s story:
transcribed exactly as my 3-year-old asked
there was a woman statue
she didn’t do anything
she was frozen
there was magic
that the witch
came and froze her
into a statue
nothing else happened
I don’t know how
she saved herself
simulation
if I fall in my sleep
the trees will know about it
and immediately begin preparing
the funeral procession
should we be worried
about the close helicopter flyovers?
there’s an app for that
but then I’d be worried
about the app
my daughter draws a 1:1
replica of our family
on the stone wall
by the garage
and I’ve never seemed
more threatening
the clock tower on my breast
pocket proves that I voted today
even if it was for UNCOMMITTED
a gesture as empty
as any
a clock can make
the italics of italics should lay flat like our bodies
you smell like a bridge
to go under
in the valley
there is always
another valley
only more so
a dream of loss
and pleasure
a green dream
weighing nothing
my love you becomes
a mouth and says
forgivable things
lately I am levitating
through normal environments
or fucking you
through abnornal ones
but always the dream
is in motion the landscape
frictionless and us
the damned
on the rise
wild blue yonder
I plugged my ears into the ocean
it said long things told love stories
from before our skies
before the miracle
of the past
every process
should have been
called breathing
there’s a machine that weaves me open
I couldn’t want to endure
the cicadas that come to sing
their dirges and sad songs
so I push the storm clouds underground
cowering is an option
unending is another
this place is ripe
for right history
I described my desires
as they transpired
it was just thigh and moan
and more
they’re charging
per name now
a little more
if they bury you
in yours
plum blossom
if you take my words
I won’t have them
time does its things
in secret but everywhere
and the funny thing is that
I get flirted with more now
that I’m older and doughier
than ever
still puts some speed
on my rivers
I don’t know the scientific
definition of life
these days and
harbor a suspicion
that no one does
I can tell you
if the word for water
isn’t alive then I’m
going to reject your theory
the way memory
can be so thick
you can’t pull your boots out
and other times
it’s all just one night
punctuated by flares
and good food
and sex
and spring
the page of wands
stands in a desert
devoid of life
and yet a leaf sprouts
miraculously from his staff
as if he’s willed it to live
you’ll just have to
take me at my words
where I’m most vulnerable
mute horn
wand up
sprouting leaves again
as a symbol surpassing itself
my cock grows
from my hand
to the lip of the sky
and then becomes the sky
the earth the hand
the clit the skin
fluttering
on the kind of day
where you
can see people’s thoughts
as glowing spheres of light
I go out
to get a tattoo
of all things
simply because I have time
in the afternoon
my first piece in fact
everyone outside
for little reason and
the sun a distant metal
probing its color
through the outer clouds
is it boring to say in a poem
that I walk down Brown
to 2nd but turn
early onto 3rd out of habit
and gravitational pull
so have to pivot back a few steps
much to the confusion of the guy
dollying drinks up the sidewalk and
of cars honking unfriendly notes
even though they wouldn’t
have stopped anyway
yes boring
unbearably boring
especially in an erotic poem
but the mistaken turn
and its small circle
makes a mute horn of my path
the sun rises and falls
in its old slots
incisor and eye tooth
grazing the earlobe
cash only
say plenty of signs
peppered among the old-school
flash tattoos plastering the walls
like we are outgoing postage
at the ATM down the block
my debit card has expired and
I’d left my credit card
at Tattooed Moms
the other night
funny enough
so I say I’ll venmo
the guy and we get started
without any form
of payment whatsoever
the first stencil attempt
has a doubling effect
maybe because I moved
or he did
and I say yeah great yeah
just maybe not that echo
so we go back to ablutions
whole session’s over pretty quick
mostly painless then
as if in a dream
my venmo fails as well
and I have to put the guy
in the position
of trusting a stranger
I say sorry I didn’t mean
to put you in the position
of trusting a stranger
walk back to my house
for cash with the new ink
boiling dimly in my arm feeling new
the arm and me both
like I’d dropped my old ghosts
and was out gathering more
but I still start down 3rd
instead of 2nd
accidentally following the trumpet’s
loop yet again
Tina has a yoga group night out
so it is just me putting
both girls down
first time for that actually as well
because Kitra at 8 months
still breastfeeds before she sleeps
and we’re reluctant
to try formula for that last meal
in particular and pumped milk
isn’t an option for boring reasons
that still exceed the poem
lately Ayla’s been opening
her own door and going
about the house
at night
which scares the shit out of me
just now when she appears
beside my bed saying
I can’t sleep daddy
we tell each other stories
hers is once upon a time
there was a boy named daddy
and he had a brother and a sister
and he met Santa Claus and then
there is a complicated series
of events involving a bow on a present
when I leave she is crying again curled
like a boulder under her pillow saying
you’re making me
sad just one more story
and as soon as I close her door
the baby starts crying
behind another
and there’s no quiet
anywhere in this house even my
bluetoothed spiritual jazz is on the fritz
making weird industrial pops and hisses
that might almost be interesting
if it weren’t Pharaoh Sanders’
clear horn I so desperately
needed right now
I’m reading Midwinter’s Day
by Bernadette Mayer on an e-reader
with atrocious formatting
or at least I have to doubt
each line’s ending
from intention or from accident
of conforming to this machine
mostly getting distracted by this
my own poem of thanks
thinking one measure
of art is how far it takes you
in the path of your own art
and for that Mayer
has been pretty solid
this poem at least
or at least this part of this poem
stretching out as if it were a bird
migrating south
Tina returns out of the night
trailing the dark with her
like ink she
straddles my lap
lightly bites the lobe of my ear
and the base of my neck
stretches out her body
so that her arm
is a lightning bolt
between us to caress the ridge
of my cock
that place where sensation
and body meet like
the mountain and the sky
she says the tattoo is sexy
wandering its lines
but later says it is weirder
than she would have thought not
bad weird but weird all the same
says you’ve introduced
this new thing into our lives
onto our bodies forever
into our sex and intimacy
and you’ll die with it
not that I don’t like it
but suddenly here’s
this new entity
in our lives
I don’t believe I write
stream-of-conscious
poems because consciousness
or even thought
are rarely the mechanisms
doing the driving
sometimes even the letters
themselves put down their oars
and paddle out to the middle
of the lake or unfold wings
and fly south
for instance I am meandering
through the day out of order
because there are no beginnings
and no endings but not
in the way that time is not the circle
as you might have just pictured
but a mute horn of time
the circle hurts the most
as if he is digging out a circle
but the pain is surprisingly temporary
stopping the moment
he lifts the needle
right when I get home
I ask Ayla if she notices
anything different
and she says you got a tattoo!
that’s so cute!
I ask her again at night
and she says
you already asked me that!
I shouldn’t be trusted
with an open bar tab
should stick to single transactions
same as with an open poem
I’m bound to leave the card
in another night
and just hope it’ll be there
when I return
for instance by now
we both know I started out
with the intention of writing
an erotic poem but am
instead stuck thinking about
sympathetic resonance
the mechanism by which
vibration of the lips
joins the assemblage of brass
and air in an instrument
to produce music
but there are fewer words
for the sympathetic
occurrence of music in the mind
the way in which we ourselves
become the instrument
Merleau-Ponty says
there is an objective sound
that resonates outside of me
in the musical instrument
an atmospheric sound that is
between the object and my body
a sound that vibrates in me
as if I had become the flute
or the clock and finally a last stage
where the sonorous element disappears
and becomes a highly precise
experience of a modification
of my entire body
Tina and I at midnight
watch the new
live-action Avatar while lying in bed
my cock hard against the cradle of
her bare thighs
fingers sliding across the cool skin
of her naked ass and grabbing as
she curls and pushes into me
I even venture out
with teeth and tongue
down to the wet center of her
to form an embouchure
and though she mmms she says
not that I’m not interested but
it isn’t going to happen tonight
she’s too drunk and tired
and besides my erection
fades in and out
I’m distracted by the show
and it’s intense violence
they just immolated
an earthbender and we watched
the full cycle of his death
from catching flame to
his charred and flaking corpse falling
to meet the unmoving earth
it’s been said plenty but PG?
you crazy? burn a man to death
all good but one single nipple and
we’ve got to protect the children
and Tina points out
after reading a draft of this poem that
our kids see our nipples all the time
there’s horrifying context to Avatar too
they’re committing genocide
by fire while all of us already
feel so helpless already seeing bodies
of burnt Gazans
fathers carrying their 3-year-olds
through the streets wailing
and kissing their lifeless cheeks
only a few hours from now
Aaron Bushnell stands in front
of the Israeli Embassy in DC
pours lighter fluid from a metal
water bottle over his head
saying I will no longer be
complicit in genocide
I am about to engage
in an extreme act of protest
and as he lights himself on fire
he yells Free Palestine! until he
falls to the ground
flesh rendered to the air
as if it was always made
for fire
burning a hole
through language
black smoke
becoming his voice
water earth fire air
long ago the four nations
lived in harmony
[action music swells]
I have to say they’re doing
a good job with the live-action
treatment towers explode
in fireballs as if hit by comets
falling onto the airbending masters
Fire Lord Sozin walks calmly
through air trailing his own flame
and I really feel for Gyatso
as the elder monk dies protecting
the children
at least his death
is less gruesome
just a consuming wall
of sparks
and I have to say
it’s remarkable but the crook
of her hip and the way
my fingers fall into it
how they grip and pull
the upper thigh in
does get me hard again
my fingers wandering crevices
there’s no zero street
anywhere as far as I know
there’s not even a first street
in Philly just Front
too bad we can’t find
the zero point
of the pendulum
of this city
maybe the river
where all of my words
are heading
eclipses of the flesh
eclipses of the word
having the somewhat common
mute horn from Thomas Pynchon’s
The Crying of Lot 49 as a tattoo
very visible on my right biceps
isn’t demystifying in the way
I would have thought
sharing tattoos might be
more like a kinship
I know at least
Becca in the crook of her arm
Corey in the pad of flesh
between thumb and forefinger
Drew presumably just based on
the name of his bookstore
and that I’ve seen scorpions
crawling his forearms
but I’ve yet to ask
Graham’s friend on the outer wrist
where Graham stick-and-poked
the shape himself
looking now
it is almost a diagram
of my arm below it:
upper arm
elbow
forearm
hand
fingers
like a road sign
warning for what’s ahead
my daughter and I
accidentally wear matching
Mars rover outfits today
years ago in a class on existentialism
I asked yeah sure he’s got being
and he’s got time but what does
Heidegger have to say about space?
I mean I probably asked much more
eloquently I was a lot smarter back
then and it got an aha
from the prof with a knowing smile
you’re looking for Merleau-Ponty
his perception of space
really is remarkable
I told a friend getting a tattoo
was like gaining a sense
the ability to feel an aesthetic
imbalance on the skin
and I’m already there
gotta do the left side ASAP
or I’ll be stuck doing right-hand
turns in circles forever
but I was also concerned
that I was already consumed
by the poem that the poem
was doing my thinking
and that this would be evident
in my text message
but as Merleau-Ponty would say
the body is our general medium
for having a world
and so it’s also the flesh
of the poem becoming
my flesh
there is so much space on
the canvas of the body
and not nearly enough art
in the world
I bite Tina’s shoulder hard
during some boring dialogue
in the airbender show
our bodies forming the shape
of the title of the poem
making worlds together
you never know when i’ll lie down on my own flowers
god in his gouted goodness
dangles conclusions
into the ocean
to cool and salt
clear as a palm tree
stainless as a castanet
modern preservatives
for modern predicaments
no doubt nooo doubt
nada
the modern era
swells like a sea wall
smells like a burnt onion
stutters like a ghost
timer goes off
but everything is already burnt
which is a kind of prayer
for the salvageable
I’m self-diagnosing as still dead
I’m self-medicating
with a belief
in joy
absolute limit
Tina points out a guy wearing a vest
possessively groping a woman
just as they are standing up to leave
and are replaced
by another man in a vest
possessively groping a woman
these suburb bars are weird vibes
it’d be fine if they both seemed into it
but the women in the scenario
are pure neutral
but I don’t know
maybe still there for it
I can literally count a dozen vests
even the guitar player
is torso-wrapped and armless
“Vest!” Tina shouts too loud—
drawing attention—because
as we leave we immediately see a
couple approaching
down the sidewalk
with matching vests
she hasn’t even seen
the ones coming up
from behind
tonight I’ll lift her
calves to my ears
and ask for their secrets
how to live
soon I’ll be reborn
into the land of
I don’t know whats
the intelligence of the wind
is above reproach
a vibration occurring
in a passive body
near to one that has been struck
is said to be sympathetic
I could have given you
vast skyfields of vultures
in synchronous circles
just did
my poems will have subtitles
the subtitles will give away
key parts of the mystery prematurely
ruin jump scares
describe the music playing
as tense and dark
and then playful and upbeat
quiet now
my rivals are closing in
Ayla’s book
he went up the hill to a bad wolf
and the bad wolf went away
and the girl went all the way
home in her cover
I don’t know how to write your name
she says I only know
how to write poems
you have a lot of reading to do
it’s called the poem of the story
of Cinderella Elsa this is a poem
of wire cars it is instructions
instructions for you
I am miles away
you are happy I am true with KitKat
and your dad and mom on a boat ride
these constructions say we’re going
to the ball can you write
everything I say?
all lies
my skull is actual
the surface of the actual
is called distraction
I read somewhere people enjoy
the story more if it has been
spoiled ahead of time
which is why poetry is
a divination
which is why I erase every memory
and leave only the word or
I saw someone we both knew
in our past but who did not
know us in our futures
we share a death it is a good one
we must all study it
and the ways of its approach
on the way to
the ice cream spot
I got lost in the trees
carried away
what I need is routine
a little wood paneling
for when I snow out of season
if only I could be less
like the oil industry
vis-a-vis the drilling
and the destructive theft
of language
we have to assume
every character is dead
before the opening of
their narrative e.g. Hamlet
as the obvious case
or me prior to this line
dogs like me
some cats too
death picks me up
in a fireman’s carry
saying whoa
whoa there
big guy
poem concerning the hypothesis of space as a latent sequence
after zhong fang
birds leading birds to the next tree
good thing I have to work tomorrow
what’s out in the world
that I’d actually experience?
I finally pull out all my science
from the limbic system
of my god
of clouds
inventory the grains
of my mistakes
I must at one point have desired
a clean slate desired fishing lines
hooked on the horizon
desired daydreams
in the language of birds
light finds me yet again but
what am I supposed to do
with all this entertainment?
tomorrow
I will write
another small poem
curved forms
finally loving everything
I am rewarded
with fist bumps from the sky
just look at Big Blue and me now
with our past hatreds forgotten
under the bridge
so to speak
if I name what I see
it’ll be a membrane
and not what I see
for instance the pomegranate
teeth of this evening
the way I hold the ground down
for everyone but everyone had
to teach me how
painting curved forms
realistically is the name
for the lecture
the cumulonimbuses are giving
never sharp
never sharp
is their mantra
repeated back by
the crowded lecture hall
and it really is something
of a revelation
photorealistic edges
are blurry
because they’re always
falling away from us
so say the clouds
gotta love it love em love
how silence is the question
in every alphabet
love when that’s
not our baby that’s
a TV baby
thank god
thanks to
those clouds arriving
pink with prognostication
on this day
my dog learned
to spell W A L K
my toddler B A T H
a vessel
I search my own name
again and I shit you not
get back people also search for
“the mind is not a vessel
to be filled but a fire
to be kindled” meaning?
as an alternative search suggestion
which is so flattering
thank you algorithm
though I don’t
understand my connection
to Plutarch
but now even this poem
struggles to distance itself
I hang meaning off of
fog leave nouns
to find their own way
I haven’t thought about figs
while drunk
I guess I’m just not
that kind of person
I once hollowed out
a flower and found
a newborn deer
standing at its core
still knock-kneed and wobbling
they recreate themselves as owners
of the country reinvent themselves
as its native population
the deer says
in a throaty growl
quoting Ilan Pappé
from his book
with Chomsky On Palestine
other days
we lie down
with our ideology
tunnel into the core
of the flower
sing harvest songs
and finally look up
in the tall grass
somewhere where the singer
cracks I magnify the crossing
if you cut the night down
like a lawn
with the machines we become
you could transform the whole
emotional landscape
could end up building a house
in the tall grass
is the music box working?
yes but what does its work
produce? we all have to play it
bring me a golden apple
but assume it is an envelope
and what it contains
also contains
I was at a hidden local beach
a blurred spot in the real
tourists pulled the sun down with
their red and white umbrellas
I wandered in the sand dunes until
the sand became grass
and I walked through the front door
of the grass house where everything
was growing and the sun ached
green with sleep
hello I said hello came a reply
I was both a witness and a guide
the king of wands
my brother had alligator skin
we invented a language
and wrote
back and forth
in it’s new emotions
the alligator grew
outside of him
even while inside
locusts bloomed
I had to kill him
or my mother
would start
the new holy war
it was the only way
I explained
it all
laid out for him
our pain
like a river
to swim in
our words black moons
hovering invisibly
through every night
and his skin
oh the rivers
that lived there
and died there
and he was willing
ready for the poison
but I wasn’t
Ayla tells me a secret
babamochiaconckle
akitchyconkobab
dadadoorbekitkat
moomookeynarwin
ahcutecutemochielocha
that’s my dragon name
monomyth
see through
skin see leaves
and branches see
an ontology
of weeping see
a world
without time
see time emerge
naked and flawless
from a body
of water
see a voice
see a call
for beauty
see wings
my wings
over the blue
world