I
Here in the town of the common and the good,
only the flashes reach us. There’s no thunder
rumble, no sound to savor, no low music
to score the out-of-favor soul. No, first
it’s the din, carried air away east, then rain
broken in waves on main street curbs
where urges are nearly two blocks long.
Homines urbis mundi,
park in the lines [...]

“It was intelligence and nothing else that had to be opposed.” – Søren Kierkegarrd
The wind is against me
on my pedaled way to work.
A bus almost clips me
cutting in to its shelter at the curb.
A Benz would prefer to run the light
and me over to waiting one second more.
The finger inside shows off its white
length [...]

Alert as the light that changes color
with the weather atop the building
some mistake as electric, we’re mingling
our blood and juices without the dolor
that ought accompany a great big age
of disease. We are lovely here and welcome
the change we bring to each brown room.
In the phone booth, we tear our pages
from the musclebound book, feeding each
to [...]

There are four legends concerning Prometheus.
According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was permanently renewed.
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself [...]

BURIEDFED
This is my last song about myself, about my friends
Found something else to sing
Try and patch it up with tape and twine
Maybe I’ll just break everything that’s mine
They wheeled out my casket,
They said, “Boy, lay down your head”
I said, “Aw shit, man, I ain’t even dead”
I won’t be buried for I’m…
My friend, who’s a real [...]

BEFORE THE GAME
Shut one eye then the other
Peek into every corner of yourself
See that there are no nails no thieves
See that there are cuckoo’s eggs
Shut then the other eye
Squat and jump
Jump jump high high
On top of yourself
Fall then with all your weight
Fall for days on end deep deep deep
To the bottom of your abyss
Who [...]

Soft stockings coddle them by day and nail-bossed leather shoes buttress them, but my toes refuse to pay attention. Nothing interests them but emitting toenails, horny plates, semi-transparent and elastic, to defend themselves–from whom? Stupid and mistrustful as they alone can be, they never for a moment stop readying that tenuous armament. They reject the [...]

When I’m done, love, when
the impalpable me has made his sullen exit,
scrape clean the meat from my bones. String it
in ribbons in the back yard trees. Wait
for morning rain and hear the glorified pigeons
attempt to sing. Summon then the odiferous
ones, the shunned ones, the old utilarians
who speak to no one, but whose sense
of dread and [...]

Left hanging
will be a saying
in the destined nation
a millennia or two since my aching feet
and palms are ripped from this rare piece of reused tree.
I thirst
for better revelations
than bumper stickers promising
to free machines from their manifest sins. Sorry
friends. No rapture will come to your four-horsemen town.
I am that I am
a haggard rabbi with no burning
bush [...]

“Unable as yet to walk, or even to stand up. . . he nevertheless overcomes the obstructions. . . and, fixing his attitude in a slightly leaning-forward position, in order to hold it in his gaze, brings back an instantaneous aspect of the image.”
- Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage
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My baby rolled over and squirmed back [...]