Stephen Paul Miller
ARS
It’s time to science out.
People have had dreams
But what is identification-
It can’t be good,
it hasn’t spoken to me for two weeks.
We had an extremely
Expensive hotel room in Soho.
From Narrative to Landscape,
We filled up the neighborhood.
We came across the bridge of landscape
To the desert, reducing the frame
To a nature reserve for lizards,
Strings tied to it everywhere.
I unstoned my head.
The past rose through its patch of desert.
The figure was not hot
But comparison is what?
THERE'S ALWAYS EXTRA HAMLET
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s favorite so
he opens the Globe with it and writes
so much Hamlet actors
can always find stuff that works.
The real Hamlet is incomplete.
I bring this up because everything is Hamlet.
Something is just not right. I can use options.
Sears fixes my tire and
the next two times I drive
the same tire
goes flat.
The Sears manager says it must be me,
no question.
That should be the worst thing
like that. The big point is unthinkable, even sleeping
with your mom just a symptom.
Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero
transposes Hamlet’s father’s ghost into shell-shocked
World War II marines daring Eddie Bracken
to take back his town
from the bogus mayor who
symbolically kills
his father.
Sturges laces his script
with ghosts, things being rotten, and Denmark.
In the contemporaneous (1943)
Shadow of a Doubt
Hitchcock
likens the Depression’s
lifting from the small town
northern California of both films
to something needing to be “watched”--
the last word in Shadow,
government detectives and
market watchdogs
necessary
for everyone’s freedom.
Many Hitchcock characters are like
the murderers
in Rope. They feel
above everyone else--
entitled to murder
cutting to the chase of
privilege, fantasy, and laughter.
You can’t buck power period. Don’t even think…
Hamlet is flummoxed by what stumps everyone.
JOHN CAGE OFFERS A SPECIAL HERBAL TEA
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“Very much,” I overstate.
“It levels you,” he tells me.
“Some people like caffeine.
They like the bump it gives you.
I don’t like that feeling.
I’m feeling better all the time.
When I die
I’ll be in perfect health.”
FATHER OF CRITICAL INQ
for W.J.T. Mitchell
“My logos,” says Herodotus, “likes to digress.”
History’s dad, in Herodotus’ time:
“Father of inquiry,” probes further and further
And further back--
to Egypt and beyond.
Inquiry does not start in medias res.
It goes all deep background on you.
Nothing can keep Inquiry away from the
Opening of his little sister’s history
Exhibition. There is ritual politeness in
The enjoyment he takes in helping. Inquiry drops
Everything to help History install the show
in her gallery
at precisely the place
where the Torah is read aloud from a
Native American pitching mound.
A north light, taking itself for granted,
Full of itself in fact, refers and refers and refers to itself
as if there were
Nothing on the other side of language and phoning
still our phone’s dominant feature.
SYLLOGISM
If A is B and B is sea….
SOMEWHERE ON THE FENCE
deep green is a shade of black.
You come down and pass through X,
the opposite of Achilles
always near but never quite
up the turtle’s butt.
BUMP
John Cage Emerson, Walter Benjamin Thoreau,
The twentieth century plays itself.
GET AN ADULT TO READ THIS IF YOU CAN'T READ
Baba is a bird on roller skates.
No one knows how fast Baba is.
He’s a fireman with no time for a fire
so he just yells fire and leaves.
Baba has us over for dinner and staying in his hotel.
Baba is a tiger carrying your suitcase.
God would be boring if he wasn’t Baba.
Five men were walking down the street
when a comet hit.
Baba is a comet
Baba is a dog with a sweater on.
And Baba is the elephant whose house he visits.
And Baba says to Baba, "Smile –
don't worry about anything,
aren’t you warm?"
Baba is the funniest animal in the world.
Baba is a pig who knows how to tell a joke.
Baba is a proud duck.
Baba is the most beautiful animal in the world.
Baba is a reindeer.
Baba is a lion with a hula hoop she can’t fit into.
Baba is an act of God and maybe even the insurance against it.
Baba is a light bulb you wear on your coat like a flower.
Baba wasn't a philosopher but if this poem must have philosophy it can say:
“God alone exists,” “This world is like a shadow,” or “We live in the mirror God is
looking into.” Baba is BINGO! Meher’s God’s
way to say “hello” to us because
Baba was the first one to say hello to God.
God and Baba, Baba and God are just FLAVORS.
Baba loves you so much He’s
the sun under your umbrella.
THE BIG CRAYON-COLORED MOUNTAIN
a children’s book
Baba is a man reading a book to you.
But he’s fooling you. He hasn’t written
the book yet.
You listen for a while and then you realize
the book is about you.
Baba gives you a crayon and
asks if you want to write it for a while.
“Don't worry,” says Baba,
“I'll be a little bit of fire
on the end of the crayon.”
All of a sudden, in no time,
you and Baba write a million million books.
In one you have a toothpick in your mouth
and drive a car down the biggest bowling alley in the world
when a policeman stops you
and gives you a driver's license.
Your car goes straight up
and docks at a party
a few angels are having
over Cleveland. Baba says
that Baba was there too
writing a book for kids about your age.
You try to see the book he’s
writing and think you see
a story about a dog
who makes himself invisible
to follow the little girl
who loves him.
“Where's my dog?” she asks everyone.
The dog can see she’s scared
and is so sorry he reappears
although he still often becomes invisible and might be here now.
Another story goes like this:
You are a mirror.
People stand in front
of you and you give them
their picture back.
Then one day someone
reaches behind the
mirror and takes the
dark piece of
cardboard away
from the glass.
People go through you
like light through a window.
They see the big crayon-colored mountain behind you.
You want to see it too but are turned in the wrong direction.
So Meher Baba comes down
the mountain
and paints a picture of you as a child
on the window. Then he
holds a mirror up to
the picture of you
as a child.
Baba holds the hand of the
child in the mirror,
and you both walk up the
big crayon-colored mountain.
THE MOST FAMOUS HORATION ALGER STORY
is “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross even if it
hangs on Chic going up against itself
like crazy behind her.
BCE
That August
It rains nine days.
Nixon steps down
and it really rains.
She tells me, “Lighten up.
People who don’t like
you don’t exist.
Not yet”
WHY NOT?
Some teachers don’t want to be policemen.
Some policemen do not want to be cops.
They’re the best teachers.
AN INCONVENIENT POOP
Mother Nature is a dachshund.
WHY ARMS EVOLVE
CIA mole on radio:
“Who likes being occupied?”
I walk into
a TV cop shoot
at Washington Square arch.
Guy with clipboard:
“OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET”
But my hot dog loves the park
I ask the man in blue
brandishing automatic rifle:
“Are you an actor or a cop?”
He looks serious
then trills:
“I’m a policeman who can DANCE!”
Everybody’s a dancing cop.
SLEEPING WITH DEATH
Sleeping with death
which is an action painting
Clearing its throat
While going
up ‘n down a ladder
Unpeopling its causeway
just don’t argue
Sleep with death
its distance
its streets
its coffee
Coming in, warm
Kissing your soft
Upper lip parted
in Horror Scope
the Swan
outta element
Clumsy, Crazy!
YOUR CONCEPT OF A CONCEPT IS NOT MY IDEA OF SENSE
Any lie you
tell will be
the truth, unless
it takes into
account the freckles on
a gallery’s face
or a small
cigarette close-up
dried-out matches
the color of dust,
the orange price-tag.
James Schuyler says “a few days
are all we have,” but
I say a time machine is
all there is.
TIME MACHINE
I was watching the full lunar eclipse
on Thompson St. when I heard
a kid behind me
compare it to Pac Man.
His friend said “God Bless Pac Man.”
DEEP ROOM
Galway and his brother
Yahweh Kinnell
Think being apolitical
Is a value oddly
Coexisting with politics.
Good for them.
Our moon turns down Foggy Corner.
Christ was innocent but
A detective "likes him" for it.
Better give it up, kid.
Jesus reconsiders,
Big surprise,
Pleading guilty on
Two of three counts.
The guitars and the girls go wild.
It’s in your court now, Pops.
Thank the judge that you’re not the judge.
The bells go off near
The end of a wall
Close to the ceiling.
A super string leaks something
Between Cream
And Joni Mitchell.
Man, Chicago is on.
Is this the president?
Yes, but I don’t have enough
Money to prove it.
I’m sandwiched between
A receiver and microphone.
We give ourselves no attention,
A giant Staten Island.
The whole borough goes inside.
TAP DANCING POTENTIAL
There’s nothing wrong with it but the identity theft.
ROMAN HANDBAG
We always ask if a time machine is possible
but is anything else possible?
HOME RUN
Someone was doing a really
great job of hugging me.
That’s all I remember of the so-called dream.
CLEAR DIRECTION
It’s not every little thing that’s
Sad or collapsing. I’m ob-
Serving better now so
Recalling better later:
I see a time of day. I like
Giving the concept of individuals
A new name like “jiva.”
I can’t think about myself
Without thinking I shouldn’t.
I promise to be true and
Basic to the round operations
of whatever.
.
At three AM there’s bursting
Truck noises on Tenth Avenue.
Funny, I hear it this
Far into my apartment.
I’m sitting in the kitchen.
The floor curves up toward the east.
I just wish it could go on and on forever.
When I don’t understand
I should take a stab.
Is that you behind
All that make-up?
You’re my favorite jiva
And always will be. The perfect
Jiva is composed of various
incisions upon
Nothing. I go into my miniscule
bathroom,
Tap on the lever
To stop the water pressure
Noise, relax, and feel taken care of.
WHO'S THAT GUY WITH APHRODITE?
An angel wearing perfume
Clothes us in backwards
Light. Aphrodite opens
To herself not as a
Touchy-feely thing
Or a dangerous transgression
But as a baseline injunction to
Watch yer sorry self--
An injunction by the way
Applying also to Olympians.
I charge you with the charge
I make when I
Do not know what
To charge you with:
Corruption and denying
the Gods exist.
Oh, I forgot you are divine.
So be it. You need not make sense
But can be a great lawyer,
lawgiver,
Judge, poet, or prophet.
Odysseus’s dog is so old
He is the only one who knows him.
And I am so old I am nothing
But a voice slapped on a body of light,
A voice to which a full-bodied goddess speaks:
“You make too much mush
Of me. My divinity’s another layer
Within the delightful
Theatrical realm
Of not being oneself
Or just not being at all--
a place
To bump up
Against the wine god though not
Wine—an important point--
Nectar gets me off, certainly.
What a drink.
I need it.
I am a prize
Zeus palms off.
He has to--
Sleeping with a goddess never
Ends well
And I am quite a goddess.
That is all I can say, but what are you doing
For the last fifteen minutes of your life?”
SHALL I TELL YOU EVERYTHING
I am supposed to see a beautiful dark-haired woman
I met on the ferry at her
home on Thompson St. (Staten Island).
As a freshman I am supposed to get on the subway with
to her place with Helen.
. And in Portland (Oregon)
I’m supposed to
call the model
in the drawing
class I’m
magnetically, literally
drawn to. I still don’t get it.
I’d be living in
ecstasy.
I’d have
engaged
recklessly
with whatever
came along,
fit perfectly into
bottomless
wet caresses
in that house
on Thompson Street,
nuclear reacted
with that nice
model in Portland.
GOAL
I fell in love with a juggler.
THERE'S AN UPSIDE-DOWN IN YOUR VAGINA
It’s a clitoris.
DON'T FORGET THE AREA OF HER AREOLA
Focus.
BLESS YOU
Easy is the head on
Which the vulva rests.
READ MY NEW LIPS
You’re going to like this sauce on your face.
LINDA REDACT
Without the person
Names are just effective
compositions
As are descriptions of things
But what could be more--
A disorderly house,
nature? The
Person is a subject
I’d like to think of and
It would seem like
a humiliating joke to
“Talk” about people except
so little is known about
them.
Being interested in our
own thoughts is like
laughing at a spoon.
MILKING HONEY
What is it? Manna it is
for general readers,
the Lord with them
more than anti-Moses-
Aaron factions.
Refreshed by the shower in Psycho,
a third category of reader is poised
in Zen wonder at flummoxed
sand-flies sensing the bottomless
air from Transjordan
to the Negev buckle.
California nights rub an
apotheosis of Hitchcock’s
birds from their eyes.
McGuffins (sometimes MacGuffins),
what spies, not audience, desire,
the birds in The Birds
just shorthand for the
edge like everything
in this poem, anything
crucial for milking honey.
FASHION OF THE CHRIST
If I could sleep with Scarlett Johansson or you
I would sleep with you
Because I have found the one
In whom my soul runs amuck.
My hand is always up in your classroom.
TABLECLOTH
The wedding cake
Dolls in the
Fog of
Crazy centerfield
Where someone
Runs out and
Actually punches
Mickey Mantle in 1960.
I had to report
This for the Times
But when questioned
Mantle told me
Fuck off.
I sail through
Balmy magic
Where resourceful
Peppercorns
Line the pillows
Of Mary
With heinous
Honey.
Bob Hope and I
Try our new act
With feathers and
Balloons
But my armpits smell sickly.
My underwear slides off through the doorway
And atop fanatic red sugar
The silks and linens of the crow are so soft
Bridesmaids don’t want to stop so
The triple names have been changed
To protect the gilded.
VALENTINA
Isn’t intimacy the thin ice
of address?
I mean if we become one another?
Am I living through you?
No, I just want to show you things.
I’ve seen everything w/o you.
Didn’t Nilsson write “Without You”?
I know it’s a Randy Newman song too.
Nillson died on Sat.
I have to find the Times Obit.
I wish you were here, not Philadelphia.
You could lead me on a tour
Through Valentina’s world in New York,
In my apartment, my bed.
I couldn’t have found you when Bush was president,
Absolutely nothing happens when a Bush is president.
But this is a Valentine,
The best lovemaking maybe ever
Because it’s nothing but that
But not confined to that
Val looks at me from an aerial view.
It’s like everything is going in the opposite direction.
Time is coming toward me.
My life is in there, in Val.
Everything floats
or finds its spot
Valery puts everything
in perspective.
Objects find their
points of rest--
their homes
where they
feel happy.
MY PROBLEM IS
I'M ALL SURFACE
The trick would be
handing all the
Surface over to
to the depth.
Then what would
happen?
You are my sweetie and
You should let your vulva breathe
Your presence
Speaks hot air balloons
waving red kerchiefs
Drying air on
Potted plants sharing a dip
In Thailand just now
It’s not and you’re not
Like the group
Penguin Villa.
Do you know
them?
They’re the world’s juicy secret.
Stone cold crap.
MIRIAM V
The prototype smiled a bit girlishly.
“I’m in the morbid phase of a love affair,”
I seem to say with a workmanlike air,
Raising my level left palm for some kind of emphasis.
“You’re creating honest stories about
How little faith you really have,”
She said, “and it’s cute.”
Meanwhile I was kidding myself outside.
“We’re passing a mountain with pointy head,”
My guide said about the nation’s entire countryside.
“You know it’s funny,” she continues while
St. Francis looks at a small piece of earth
Suspended in air as high as his knees with
A barren tree growing up to his knelt head.
He approached it as you or I would.
“If I’m so great why do I do miracles,”
He thought and then forgot,
The thought and tree vanishing.
MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT
I am so into
you no one
has ever
been more
into
into but I’m
also
detached
MY ETERNAL THANKS
It's like Great Expectations.
My benefactor
George W. Bush
In chains,
An incredible success,
Don't laugh!
WITLESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Dick Cheney’s remains are markedly improving.
IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU REALLY LIKE ABOUT RICK PERRY ANYMORE
It’s hard to explain what you like about poetry anymore.
RELOADING THE BASES
“Baal’s closing in,” Baal says,
But it’s a centuries-long process.
Indeed, the prophet Samuel also,
Like Bob Dole, speaks in the third person,
As if he doesn’t know who’s talking.
THE BIBLE'S CHEWY CENTER
I’m actually writing poems that mean something
(unlike ones that do)
pinch yourself
don’t tell
It’s time to science out.
People have had dreams
But what is identification-
It can’t be good,
it hasn’t spoken to me for two weeks.
We had an extremely
Expensive hotel room in Soho.
From Narrative to Landscape,
We filled up the neighborhood.
We came across the bridge of landscape
To the desert, reducing the frame
To a nature reserve for lizards,
Strings tied to it everywhere.
I unstoned my head.
The past rose through its patch of desert.
The figure was not hot
But comparison is what?
THERE'S ALWAYS EXTRA HAMLET
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s favorite so
he opens the Globe with it and writes
so much Hamlet actors
can always find stuff that works.
The real Hamlet is incomplete.
I bring this up because everything is Hamlet.
Something is just not right. I can use options.
Sears fixes my tire and
the next two times I drive
the same tire
goes flat.
The Sears manager says it must be me,
no question.
That should be the worst thing
like that. The big point is unthinkable, even sleeping
with your mom just a symptom.
Preston Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero
transposes Hamlet’s father’s ghost into shell-shocked
World War II marines daring Eddie Bracken
to take back his town
from the bogus mayor who
symbolically kills
his father.
Sturges laces his script
with ghosts, things being rotten, and Denmark.
In the contemporaneous (1943)
Shadow of a Doubt
Hitchcock
likens the Depression’s
lifting from the small town
northern California of both films
to something needing to be “watched”--
the last word in Shadow,
government detectives and
market watchdogs
necessary
for everyone’s freedom.
Many Hitchcock characters are like
the murderers
in Rope. They feel
above everyone else--
entitled to murder
cutting to the chase of
privilege, fantasy, and laughter.
You can’t buck power period. Don’t even think…
Hamlet is flummoxed by what stumps everyone.
JOHN CAGE OFFERS A SPECIAL HERBAL TEA
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“Very much,” I overstate.
“It levels you,” he tells me.
“Some people like caffeine.
They like the bump it gives you.
I don’t like that feeling.
I’m feeling better all the time.
When I die
I’ll be in perfect health.”
FATHER OF CRITICAL INQ
for W.J.T. Mitchell
“My logos,” says Herodotus, “likes to digress.”
History’s dad, in Herodotus’ time:
“Father of inquiry,” probes further and further
And further back--
to Egypt and beyond.
Inquiry does not start in medias res.
It goes all deep background on you.
Nothing can keep Inquiry away from the
Opening of his little sister’s history
Exhibition. There is ritual politeness in
The enjoyment he takes in helping. Inquiry drops
Everything to help History install the show
in her gallery
at precisely the place
where the Torah is read aloud from a
Native American pitching mound.
A north light, taking itself for granted,
Full of itself in fact, refers and refers and refers to itself
as if there were
Nothing on the other side of language and phoning
still our phone’s dominant feature.
SYLLOGISM
If A is B and B is sea….
SOMEWHERE ON THE FENCE
deep green is a shade of black.
You come down and pass through X,
the opposite of Achilles
always near but never quite
up the turtle’s butt.
BUMP
John Cage Emerson, Walter Benjamin Thoreau,
The twentieth century plays itself.
GET AN ADULT TO READ THIS IF YOU CAN'T READ
Baba is a bird on roller skates.
No one knows how fast Baba is.
He’s a fireman with no time for a fire
so he just yells fire and leaves.
Baba has us over for dinner and staying in his hotel.
Baba is a tiger carrying your suitcase.
God would be boring if he wasn’t Baba.
Five men were walking down the street
when a comet hit.
Baba is a comet
Baba is a dog with a sweater on.
And Baba is the elephant whose house he visits.
And Baba says to Baba, "Smile –
don't worry about anything,
aren’t you warm?"
Baba is the funniest animal in the world.
Baba is a pig who knows how to tell a joke.
Baba is a proud duck.
Baba is the most beautiful animal in the world.
Baba is a reindeer.
Baba is a lion with a hula hoop she can’t fit into.
Baba is an act of God and maybe even the insurance against it.
Baba is a light bulb you wear on your coat like a flower.
Baba wasn't a philosopher but if this poem must have philosophy it can say:
“God alone exists,” “This world is like a shadow,” or “We live in the mirror God is
looking into.” Baba is BINGO! Meher’s God’s
way to say “hello” to us because
Baba was the first one to say hello to God.
God and Baba, Baba and God are just FLAVORS.
Baba loves you so much He’s
the sun under your umbrella.
THE BIG CRAYON-COLORED MOUNTAIN
a children’s book
Baba is a man reading a book to you.
But he’s fooling you. He hasn’t written
the book yet.
You listen for a while and then you realize
the book is about you.
Baba gives you a crayon and
asks if you want to write it for a while.
“Don't worry,” says Baba,
“I'll be a little bit of fire
on the end of the crayon.”
All of a sudden, in no time,
you and Baba write a million million books.
In one you have a toothpick in your mouth
and drive a car down the biggest bowling alley in the world
when a policeman stops you
and gives you a driver's license.
Your car goes straight up
and docks at a party
a few angels are having
over Cleveland. Baba says
that Baba was there too
writing a book for kids about your age.
You try to see the book he’s
writing and think you see
a story about a dog
who makes himself invisible
to follow the little girl
who loves him.
“Where's my dog?” she asks everyone.
The dog can see she’s scared
and is so sorry he reappears
although he still often becomes invisible and might be here now.
Another story goes like this:
You are a mirror.
People stand in front
of you and you give them
their picture back.
Then one day someone
reaches behind the
mirror and takes the
dark piece of
cardboard away
from the glass.
People go through you
like light through a window.
They see the big crayon-colored mountain behind you.
You want to see it too but are turned in the wrong direction.
So Meher Baba comes down
the mountain
and paints a picture of you as a child
on the window. Then he
holds a mirror up to
the picture of you
as a child.
Baba holds the hand of the
child in the mirror,
and you both walk up the
big crayon-colored mountain.
THE MOST FAMOUS HORATION ALGER STORY
is “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross even if it
hangs on Chic going up against itself
like crazy behind her.
BCE
That August
It rains nine days.
Nixon steps down
and it really rains.
She tells me, “Lighten up.
People who don’t like
you don’t exist.
Not yet”
WHY NOT?
Some teachers don’t want to be policemen.
Some policemen do not want to be cops.
They’re the best teachers.
AN INCONVENIENT POOP
Mother Nature is a dachshund.
WHY ARMS EVOLVE
CIA mole on radio:
“Who likes being occupied?”
I walk into
a TV cop shoot
at Washington Square arch.
Guy with clipboard:
“OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET”
But my hot dog loves the park
I ask the man in blue
brandishing automatic rifle:
“Are you an actor or a cop?”
He looks serious
then trills:
“I’m a policeman who can DANCE!”
Everybody’s a dancing cop.
SLEEPING WITH DEATH
Sleeping with death
which is an action painting
Clearing its throat
While going
up ‘n down a ladder
Unpeopling its causeway
just don’t argue
Sleep with death
its distance
its streets
its coffee
Coming in, warm
Kissing your soft
Upper lip parted
in Horror Scope
the Swan
outta element
Clumsy, Crazy!
YOUR CONCEPT OF A CONCEPT IS NOT MY IDEA OF SENSE
Any lie you
tell will be
the truth, unless
it takes into
account the freckles on
a gallery’s face
or a small
cigarette close-up
dried-out matches
the color of dust,
the orange price-tag.
James Schuyler says “a few days
are all we have,” but
I say a time machine is
all there is.
TIME MACHINE
I was watching the full lunar eclipse
on Thompson St. when I heard
a kid behind me
compare it to Pac Man.
His friend said “God Bless Pac Man.”
DEEP ROOM
Galway and his brother
Yahweh Kinnell
Think being apolitical
Is a value oddly
Coexisting with politics.
Good for them.
Our moon turns down Foggy Corner.
Christ was innocent but
A detective "likes him" for it.
Better give it up, kid.
Jesus reconsiders,
Big surprise,
Pleading guilty on
Two of three counts.
The guitars and the girls go wild.
It’s in your court now, Pops.
Thank the judge that you’re not the judge.
The bells go off near
The end of a wall
Close to the ceiling.
A super string leaks something
Between Cream
And Joni Mitchell.
Man, Chicago is on.
Is this the president?
Yes, but I don’t have enough
Money to prove it.
I’m sandwiched between
A receiver and microphone.
We give ourselves no attention,
A giant Staten Island.
The whole borough goes inside.
TAP DANCING POTENTIAL
There’s nothing wrong with it but the identity theft.
ROMAN HANDBAG
We always ask if a time machine is possible
but is anything else possible?
HOME RUN
Someone was doing a really
great job of hugging me.
That’s all I remember of the so-called dream.
CLEAR DIRECTION
It’s not every little thing that’s
Sad or collapsing. I’m ob-
Serving better now so
Recalling better later:
I see a time of day. I like
Giving the concept of individuals
A new name like “jiva.”
I can’t think about myself
Without thinking I shouldn’t.
I promise to be true and
Basic to the round operations
of whatever.
.
At three AM there’s bursting
Truck noises on Tenth Avenue.
Funny, I hear it this
Far into my apartment.
I’m sitting in the kitchen.
The floor curves up toward the east.
I just wish it could go on and on forever.
When I don’t understand
I should take a stab.
Is that you behind
All that make-up?
You’re my favorite jiva
And always will be. The perfect
Jiva is composed of various
incisions upon
Nothing. I go into my miniscule
bathroom,
Tap on the lever
To stop the water pressure
Noise, relax, and feel taken care of.
WHO'S THAT GUY WITH APHRODITE?
An angel wearing perfume
Clothes us in backwards
Light. Aphrodite opens
To herself not as a
Touchy-feely thing
Or a dangerous transgression
But as a baseline injunction to
Watch yer sorry self--
An injunction by the way
Applying also to Olympians.
I charge you with the charge
I make when I
Do not know what
To charge you with:
Corruption and denying
the Gods exist.
Oh, I forgot you are divine.
So be it. You need not make sense
But can be a great lawyer,
lawgiver,
Judge, poet, or prophet.
Odysseus’s dog is so old
He is the only one who knows him.
And I am so old I am nothing
But a voice slapped on a body of light,
A voice to which a full-bodied goddess speaks:
“You make too much mush
Of me. My divinity’s another layer
Within the delightful
Theatrical realm
Of not being oneself
Or just not being at all--
a place
To bump up
Against the wine god though not
Wine—an important point--
Nectar gets me off, certainly.
What a drink.
I need it.
I am a prize
Zeus palms off.
He has to--
Sleeping with a goddess never
Ends well
And I am quite a goddess.
That is all I can say, but what are you doing
For the last fifteen minutes of your life?”
SHALL I TELL YOU EVERYTHING
I am supposed to see a beautiful dark-haired woman
I met on the ferry at her
home on Thompson St. (Staten Island).
As a freshman I am supposed to get on the subway with
to her place with Helen.
. And in Portland (Oregon)
I’m supposed to
call the model
in the drawing
class I’m
magnetically, literally
drawn to. I still don’t get it.
I’d be living in
ecstasy.
I’d have
engaged
recklessly
with whatever
came along,
fit perfectly into
bottomless
wet caresses
in that house
on Thompson Street,
nuclear reacted
with that nice
model in Portland.
GOAL
I fell in love with a juggler.
THERE'S AN UPSIDE-DOWN IN YOUR VAGINA
It’s a clitoris.
DON'T FORGET THE AREA OF HER AREOLA
Focus.
BLESS YOU
Easy is the head on
Which the vulva rests.
READ MY NEW LIPS
You’re going to like this sauce on your face.
LINDA REDACT
Without the person
Names are just effective
compositions
As are descriptions of things
But what could be more--
A disorderly house,
nature? The
Person is a subject
I’d like to think of and
It would seem like
a humiliating joke to
“Talk” about people except
so little is known about
them.
Being interested in our
own thoughts is like
laughing at a spoon.
MILKING HONEY
What is it? Manna it is
for general readers,
the Lord with them
more than anti-Moses-
Aaron factions.
Refreshed by the shower in Psycho,
a third category of reader is poised
in Zen wonder at flummoxed
sand-flies sensing the bottomless
air from Transjordan
to the Negev buckle.
California nights rub an
apotheosis of Hitchcock’s
birds from their eyes.
McGuffins (sometimes MacGuffins),
what spies, not audience, desire,
the birds in The Birds
just shorthand for the
edge like everything
in this poem, anything
crucial for milking honey.
FASHION OF THE CHRIST
If I could sleep with Scarlett Johansson or you
I would sleep with you
Because I have found the one
In whom my soul runs amuck.
My hand is always up in your classroom.
TABLECLOTH
The wedding cake
Dolls in the
Fog of
Crazy centerfield
Where someone
Runs out and
Actually punches
Mickey Mantle in 1960.
I had to report
This for the Times
But when questioned
Mantle told me
Fuck off.
I sail through
Balmy magic
Where resourceful
Peppercorns
Line the pillows
Of Mary
With heinous
Honey.
Bob Hope and I
Try our new act
With feathers and
Balloons
But my armpits smell sickly.
My underwear slides off through the doorway
And atop fanatic red sugar
The silks and linens of the crow are so soft
Bridesmaids don’t want to stop so
The triple names have been changed
To protect the gilded.
VALENTINA
Isn’t intimacy the thin ice
of address?
I mean if we become one another?
Am I living through you?
No, I just want to show you things.
I’ve seen everything w/o you.
Didn’t Nilsson write “Without You”?
I know it’s a Randy Newman song too.
Nillson died on Sat.
I have to find the Times Obit.
I wish you were here, not Philadelphia.
You could lead me on a tour
Through Valentina’s world in New York,
In my apartment, my bed.
I couldn’t have found you when Bush was president,
Absolutely nothing happens when a Bush is president.
But this is a Valentine,
The best lovemaking maybe ever
Because it’s nothing but that
But not confined to that
Val looks at me from an aerial view.
It’s like everything is going in the opposite direction.
Time is coming toward me.
My life is in there, in Val.
Everything floats
or finds its spot
Valery puts everything
in perspective.
Objects find their
points of rest--
their homes
where they
feel happy.
MY PROBLEM IS
I'M ALL SURFACE
The trick would be
handing all the
Surface over to
to the depth.
Then what would
happen?
You are my sweetie and
You should let your vulva breathe
Your presence
Speaks hot air balloons
waving red kerchiefs
Drying air on
Potted plants sharing a dip
In Thailand just now
It’s not and you’re not
Like the group
Penguin Villa.
Do you know
them?
They’re the world’s juicy secret.
Stone cold crap.
MIRIAM V
The prototype smiled a bit girlishly.
“I’m in the morbid phase of a love affair,”
I seem to say with a workmanlike air,
Raising my level left palm for some kind of emphasis.
“You’re creating honest stories about
How little faith you really have,”
She said, “and it’s cute.”
Meanwhile I was kidding myself outside.
“We’re passing a mountain with pointy head,”
My guide said about the nation’s entire countryside.
“You know it’s funny,” she continues while
St. Francis looks at a small piece of earth
Suspended in air as high as his knees with
A barren tree growing up to his knelt head.
He approached it as you or I would.
“If I’m so great why do I do miracles,”
He thought and then forgot,
The thought and tree vanishing.
MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT
I am so into
you no one
has ever
been more
into
into but I’m
also
detached
MY ETERNAL THANKS
It's like Great Expectations.
My benefactor
George W. Bush
In chains,
An incredible success,
Don't laugh!
WITLESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Dick Cheney’s remains are markedly improving.
IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU REALLY LIKE ABOUT RICK PERRY ANYMORE
It’s hard to explain what you like about poetry anymore.
RELOADING THE BASES
“Baal’s closing in,” Baal says,
But it’s a centuries-long process.
Indeed, the prophet Samuel also,
Like Bob Dole, speaks in the third person,
As if he doesn’t know who’s talking.
THE BIBLE'S CHEWY CENTER
I’m actually writing poems that mean something
(unlike ones that do)
pinch yourself
don’t tell