Tram Spark

Sunday, July 18, 2004

For as long as it takes
them to walk
into and out of sight,
I am thinking
of boning the daughter
and of deboning the mother.
This is natural,
I think. This is natural
history. Even me.

Then a mother
and two daughters,
a mother and a daughter,
even a mother
and a daughter
and a granddaughter,
twenty forty sixty
or so. All are going
the same way,
to the source of the bags.
It is a demonstration
of the infinite
inflatability of people
and of the sizes
of clothes and of
the strength of seams
and of our eternal
double-blinded lust.

I am thinking of
how this common
spotted housedaughter
is fine, how a set
of identical bones,
bones to the bones
identical under
the daughter's smooth
skin, must also
do for the mother.
How enlarged
and how unlike
herself the mother is,
how now she is
a tented menagerie,
the girl one fast thing.
¶ 12:57 PM

Rear Projection

I'm only fucking saying,
bullets do not ping or spark.
Tires do not squeal on dirt roads.
And no car, unless maybe
the fucking thing is booby-trapped,
would ever just fucking
blow up at any little thing.

I don't even mention what
the guy would have really done.
Cause what he really
would have done
is fucking dumped her ass
and those fucking kids.
And none of them would
ever fucking ever
have been them anyway.
¶ 12:56 PM

Saturday, July 10, 2004

A highly charged poem

A mall chick's out of the rain. She hits the Party Store aisles one two three with a checklist and leaves with her noisemakers and ribbons and a mug with a ceramic erection poking up from the bottom. This is just right for her sister. This is so cute. This is a riot. She is psyched. She requires failsafe devices. She is a highly charged system. She wears her red shirt with 57 blast-molded to her breasts. Bowls she checks out. Men she checks out. Shine back at her. Shine back at her, bowls and men she checks out. This is a highly charged political system. This is a charged political poem. She has noisemakers and ribbons and a mug of ceramic penis. ¶ 10:38 AM

Friday, July 09, 2004

Elm Peg Leg

I am pulling your leg. I am
pulling your leg. I am pulling
your leg. I am pulling your
leg. I am pulling your leg.
I am pulling your leg I am.

Iam puulling yr legg. Yam
puling yore leg. I am pulling
your leg.

I am pull

ing
your leg.

I ampoule in your leg. I am
pal in deleg. Pull in your leg.
(I am.) I am pulling your leg.
I am Paul in the League.
[gelruoygnillupmai] Pullet?
Or Egg?

I wish I could say I
am not pulling your leg but
pulling by me is exactly what
your experience is in the
leg department right now.

I.M. Pei in Den Hague. Iron
pellet in lead. Ion pill indolent.
In a pool in Duluth. I am saying
yar (Hep.) Eye exam in your
head. I am pull and you're lead.
Shrike impaling a wren. I impel
and you're led. I am poling your
log. I am polling your league.
I am pilling your Lab. I imploring
you: lag! I am poor in Gulag. Eye-
impairing noir log. I am pulling
your leg. I am Peleg. You're preg. ¶ 8:56 AM

Monday, July 05, 2004

How I killed Mattie Stepanek
in case you missed the news
was inspired. It was like this:
aiiiiiiiaiiiiiiiiii aiiiiiiiaiiiiiiiiii
die die die die die die die die
click.

I'll write a lament for myself. ¶ 10:07 AM

Sunday, July 04, 2004

Our local Mike Mulligan
and his faithful orange diesel
Weimar R700 buries orange
PVC beneath our lawn.

Our lawn is deepest greens,
the rains have been hard
and the oh look rainbows
harder. The sun, like
Jim's grandmother's hair,
falls everywhere at lunch.

A mole falls in love. ¶ 1:50 PM

Thursday, July 01, 2004

I am in the same chair.
You cannot do this
without the first person
who held a feather
to a smooth surface
and spoiled it. ¶ 8:33 AM

Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Quarters

All day the aliens fall
it's my job, its my job,
to save the moon again.

She will move through a maze.
She will eat through a maze.
She will be eaten
to a brief falling song.

Wake to rocks coming in
too near to
Wake to rocks coming in

Am I Pyramis? Or Thisbe this time?
We exchange. Either of us could
be the missing stone. We exchange,
we exchange. ¶ 9:11 AM

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

My trousers come off, they are
falling, they are lowering as we
speak, almost without
my knowing, my trousers
bunch, my trousers wear
along the hemhems, my
trousers come off at the drop
of a dime. But it is hard
to say trousers. Pants. Pants. ¶ 9:46 AM

Monday, June 28, 2004

Referent mother,
how can I
wholly write? ¶ 11:06 AM

Monday, April 19, 2004

You ask me why I live here,
but how else could I live?
I sit down at a cherry table
built with my own hands
and hex nuts and instructions,
lean my temple for a minute
on our lemon-yellow wall,
which is the other side
of someone else's kitchen.
The cinder block is cool.
A neighbor vacuums upstairs.
Our kettle blows a cloud. ¶ 9:51 PM

Saturday, April 10, 2004

Have a cigarette, won't you?
Until I knew I was invisible, I could not walk here.
This mud is held together with wire.
Now walk with me and you will be safe.
Men rose from holes in the wood.
"Surrender!" they shouted, "No surrender!"
we shouted, and we died
and rose from holes in the wood.
"Crikey!" cried a cockney lad. "Crikey!"
Have a cigarette, won't you?
Then some fellow says cease fire,
for God's sake, we are here,
but how is one to tell?
This mud is held together with wire.
On one occasion their escape
was due to the cunning
of a young lieutenant who spoke German.
Our "tanks" are a lark, but when one
takes a direct shell, mind you,
bones rattle on the inside.
Stay with me, I am immune to shell-fire.
When there is no visibility, they ride
to Amiens for a "binge."
Have a cigarette, won't you?
They drink cocktails and cheap champagne
and roar and flirt with girls.
If not allowed out of their tents, they play
the gramophone, read novelettes.
It's simply mind over matter.
Look just there! Our brave salamanders in action!
It was a narrow shave. A beastly shell
covered me over with a ton of earth.
And here is the last hotel.
The girl here knows my particulars
better than I know myself.
Have a cigarette, won't you?
The Kaiser's cousin is said to be
in a secret grave under the monastery,
though the Kaiser has petitioned the pope.
What the Germans call unternahrung,
a devilish business.
Children, consumptive girls,
men from whom all vitality has gone.
Let me show you.
We have won a place the shape of a map
of South America, roughly, to another scale.
The windmill, the chalk pit,
the wood, the sugar factory,
all have fallen or will fall in time.
Have a cigarette, won't you? ¶ 4:08 PM

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

(Post something, post anything, post pieces, babble. Just get your nerve back. It can all be fixed or deleted.) ¶ 11:49 PM

"Undone"

[tinkling piano]

When the man I've stilettoed for
Bedded in petto for
Faked a falsetto for
Kneeled down and froze...

Heaven knows, heaven knows
what I've done and undone
Heaven knows

When the man who I've waited for,
Starved and bad-dated for,
Crouched and fellated for,
Wouldn't propose...

Heaven knows, heaven knows
what I've done and undone
Heaven knows

Now I'm changing my tune. [music shifts here, of course]

I'm no longer in denial
White gowns ain't my style
Won't be dragged up the aisle
By some smirch.

But forget being married,
the way that I've carried
on I won't be buried
in any church.

God, forgive me,
but I'd rather live
with a temporary man... ¶ 11:49 PM

Dear Thomas Merton,
I'm your number-one fan. ¶ 11:47 PM

We sang Hawaiian songs on the beach
Remember wickie-wickie-wickie
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Wickie-wackie honeymoon

You rolled up your trousers
and beat me blue in a floral shirt
the last time you looked at me ¶ 11:46 PM

xxxxxxxx

On the first day, the first of July,
Lieutenant Zeno went over the top.

xxxxxxxx

On the first day, General Haig
spread twenty thousand brains,
fifty tons avoirdupois,
of raw human brain
on a thin slice of France.

xxxxxxxx

It's not as if they hadn't
thrown enough brains at it.

xxxxxxxx

A chaplain, who looked,
found no atheists in foxholes
or saints in the field ¶ 11:46 PM

Saturday, March 27, 2004

This is why they blind their slaves.
I read this again in the fourth book
of Herodotus where he describes
the lives of Scythians.

In Scythia they blind the men
they capture in their wars to use them
to prepare their milk, to have them stir
great vats of horse's milk.

This and how they milk their mares:
one Scythian slides a hollowed bone
"not unlike our musical pipe"
into the mare's vagina

and puffs. (In another translation
I remember, it is the anus. Is this
vagueness in Herodotus or Greek,
translation or me?)

This fills the animal's veins with air,
induces pressure within the udder
as another slave milks the horse.
This makes a fine sense.

The Scythian rides a horse as you
might say the Scythian rides a horse.
As you might say Bosphorus or Persia,
the Scythian rides.

The Scythian does not cultivate
Scythia, but rides it over the Steppes.
They drink the milk of their horses
and blind each slave.

The men of Scythia rode away
to war with the Cimmerians.
For twenty-eight years they chased
Cimmerians across Asia.

Their women remained to tend herds
of horses and watch their blind captives
milking, stirring, skimming cream from
casks of mare's milk.

When the Scythian men rode home,
they found an army waiting for them,
the sons of their women and blind slaves
holding Scythia.

The enemy army bred of their women
outfought the riders with spears and bows,
but dropped their weapons and vanished
at cracked whips.

This is why they blind their slaves.
I read this again in the fourth book
of Herodotus where he describes
the lives of Scythians. ¶ 1:04 AM

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Animals refuse to move. We spook them all,
even, it is feared, the Porcupine herd
round the edges of Alaska. So a man saying
someone's got to do it in a bird suit
in an ultralight aircraft chaperones
whooping cranes abroad. From hatchling
to whoopling they hear the small noise
of the motor stroke flaps they will follow
from Canada to Florida. What this means
for the whoop, "purported to be audible
for two miles," I cannot pretend to say.
For the amateur pilot who might stray
into whooping crane space, what this means
I can't suppose. I would walk the distance,
though, if they wanted the company, if they
forgot to fly, if they were in no hurry. ¶ 10:07 PM

Sunday, March 21, 2004

Be careful, lady,
I see your partridges
in the grass
and quiver in the tree.
I can see your
grotto fountain pool
white city too and
what might be a fish face. ¶ 9:01 AM

You come upon Ophelia
afloat among the weeds
with just her face and hands
above the surface? Then
you dunk her and she jumps
up and says hey! ¶ 9:01 AM

It looks like elbows and fish sandwiches
for everyone and everyone is well lit tonight
and don't look now but the place is haunted. ¶ 9:01 AM

Why do I write science fiction?
Women might have two heads,
for all I know. ¶ 9:00 AM

Angels are swimming at treetop altitude
—Don't fall on those rocks, angels!—
Rubbernecking another senseless death. ¶ 9:00 AM

God is not on our side,
God is on the other side.
Still, let's inventory.
We have the wind-up lamb
and one good arrow.
And we've got John here.
The man is bugs.
So we've got John and
the wind-up lamb
and one good arrow.
Still, God is on the other side,
you may object,
God and all the invisible
things that fly.
But they are women to us
And are we men or what.
Come on, we're golden. ¶ 8:59 AM