birthday poem read with dinosaur enthusiasm at last night's open mic. the people rejoiced.

KSM

an illegal badger moving upstream to swallow children
the difference between hollow and handyman
totally spooky astronauts singing to foxy Martian babes
three kinds of haberdashing in New Guinea
a fork in the shape of a middle finger
your dancing badger pancakes
may i pummel your dance move credit card
may we take hands for a prayer about farming
to make out pleasurably hold chin like coffin repeat
what ho! crayon-eating winchester with optional his-and-her levers
tally ho! forgettable glaciers and caribou of the blah blah blah
once we busted this buck for flogging the forest, he was like "cheerio, later bitches"
you kissed a bucket of deer heads, singing "yakee doodle fuker-roo"
did you think you'd get away with it? are you, like, on the pill??
i call back the big mac and he's all bullshit like "shit ya'll i'm flossy like all hell"
we take all the white out of the equation or better yet, dangle barbiturates out our verandas for all the typhoons to notice
"put it back in your pants" they say, those beetles on steroids, those acid Julys

forget mom's bashful olive garden and hola, assholes, just please drink faster

this is no time for stingy goodbyes

is important for fertilities sake to pound apple sauce, like Napoleon on meth

thank you, your majesty, a cranial hopper plethora winking for animate sex

O majestic fetusis parleying in the dessert, hopping over fragrant hams

try to upstage fragile thinking of ready-made treason for clappered regimes

my colonoscopy medieval volcanic on ghost doctor and he was all "parle vous francais fucker?"

run, filling station motherfuckers wadded up lightly for transit appeal

hold me grandpa sugar cane, one last blue light to send to god with my puppy Tipper

duck up and freestyle-hairstyle-lo-style for cranberry-banana fanpop trixie mclandable

philately my dump truck slaps a fortnight on noggin con breakfast and keep running Artax on and on

don't panic don't froth right don't gallop in tightwads don't ask a gypsy "how lightly, how regal or trans?"

i am ok i am fucked i am ok i am fucked, the trains leave fuck and i am not with it

POEM THAT I WROTE IN SRI LANKA 1.1

Catching a breeze on the noon train toward cancerous mountains with ivy retinas,
lapping the thin film of trust on the floorboards like salt-candy ribbons,
super-sleuthing a crack out the brushed leather ceiling tilt,
cracking our heads against windows to rust-covered landscaping trestle,
rushing the glass till it bends into liquid for melting a classroom of thieves,
waiting the day to a speck on the tracks to derail all the letters we wrote to the sky,
trusting in treetops delivering sermons to critters that worship the rain and its faults,
channeling arabesque reruns in dresses stitched up with thread from the mouth of a crow,
losing connections from jail time to hammering lethal vernacular bones,
preening for daybreak (the tremulous daughter) which winces at cartons of laud rushing by,
tricking coals into bed with the maiden of feverish homework for hours on end,
all to prepare for the turning of seasons on end by the hand of murderous friends.

Flailing, mashing about, in the murk brown of the "sea", I began wishing it was noon somewhere.
I dream of noon in a foreign language, mostly, and with my fingers all out like little fish.
People start saying "I love you" with exclamation marks or little fish, shaped like exclamation marks.
People start marking my messages important, and saving them,
putting them all in little brown tins labeled THINGS I AM TRYING NOT TO FORGET
Forget about mishandled bank deals for a minute, and look at me!
at least tease out your hair and traipse around my villa like a burning flamingo.
I found all this news in a heap called "Give me a dollar or I'll cut off your dick!"
It was not good news. It was not a good exclamation. I do not own a villa.
I am burning. It is still hot.

POEM THAT I WROTE IN BOLIVIA 1.1

I am generally running away from Providence, Rhode Island.
My parents invested in the bleating of hammered goats
and that sad magenta runner laying outside my sisters window
is the same magenta of this woman's scarf.
I slid under the feet of the locals
through the broken glass and unequal square sides
but lost her and turned around and around,
until I could barely find myself and then I breathed out
some names and one was yours and I was sure you could hear it.

Providence wrote me a letter saying Where have you been?
Why are there orchids blooming in winter? but I don't go in for riddles.
I tried to write a letter with a hammer but just broke up some windows
and the glass reflected you twenty times (I was happy for it). I was happy
like the things we talk about never doing. I am happy
even back in the Providence shadows, pushing pennies along with my toes,
wondering how you put your hair up with so little to hold on to.

POEM I WROTE IN BEIRUT 1.1

I told her, she never ever hears between the saltwater and the blacklights.
Fuck is the only religion she clings to and in the tight spots,
the ugly light wimpers, haired fingers ginger-up snappy collar and calls off the sun.
Quit shitting in my lap!
Quit telling Dad I can's swim!
Sometimes if I squint tight enough, I can swim up falls and down canals.
Every time hope it takes me to the ocean,
mostly it fondles the folds and peaks.
This is the worst fucking sandcastle I have ever seen.
I want this place to split and open up to the ocean.
With my hands towards the sun, I split the mountains
and hail the retainer-clad to the promised land.

A weighty metal clenched her to a sand flat.
I didn't point for fear of fever (her karma's sort of crooked)
but opened a salt pocket for a sinkhole.
Don't fuck up the siding, Laney!
Stop with the peek through the curtain!
Dad's gonna be so mad when you hit the ocean and I'm gonna laugh
like a heartache in a sandstorm, eyes wide for pitting,
holding the round middle of me until I spread out on the concrete.
I'm not like you, Laney. I don't pray to general touching.
I prefer the backs of my eyes to wrinkle.

POEM THAT I WROTE IN UKRAINE 1.1

try this Orthodox hammock for your illegitimate grandchild
it pertains to the arithmetic of satellite love and communist daughters
a lot of the time we just cram jackrabbits into the landscape
and several hours go by in hexagonal silence, creeping through the cellar
arid flies take Sundays for a joke about the stairwell vacancy
alas, chipper vanguards of backwater trout move slowly, swelling with the tide

trip lightly, young sailors! fine use of a lanyard makes good with the waves
mortgage your betrothed, house fires! band fans flipper out like a trampoline family
and fly down the ceilings and keep close to land with hairpin precision
therefore, the pancake arms and flipper eye-lashes need no explanation
they've built up the tracks toward a mystic-clad transfer to older believers
together we hold clogs on our hands and ice to the back of our eyes marching towards nettles
elaborate figures for all the blond crash tests, the crenelate bebops, the cancer in cans
tomorrow we will sign language to the road signs and figure assholes into the saddle equation
clandestine, you might say, a regular candor for translated fingers

secondly, thy biggest blasphemy was comparing twin fathers against their merit
train-wrecked a while at the corner with every piece hanging softly, a fainted parade

POEM THAT I WROTE IN HELSINKI 1.2

here we've gone to beauty, wow, it's
tanned the children outgrowing their jeans
a paper pocket, full with paper things?
better make a backup plan, lover
find a brighter tree line in the water
boring death-smells into everyone
the tropical, the quick -- shit, why bother?
the back of the eat-in kitchen is practically sideways
with you, probably you, always you

the canopy of aquaintancehood on the fire-edge oh!
the heartthrob, we are of all the things oh!
of bored, we hold in our mouths tan cranberrys
and we, the will, the stars for all their craving
a little song hollow today not found
i sang your ear
i take it in

POEM THAT I WROTE IN BANGLADESH 1.1

All these spice drums have tiger stripes.
I followed small dark shadows
down down down to the daft bay singing like the moon
or like a ten gallon drum of tea-oils.
This town, this town shivers in the sun like nubile teens,
but now I feel sick. Sick deep down in jungle-vined pit
where date seeds have taken hold and strangled my guts.
(To clarify, everything in the vision was red.)
Luckily I have guts to spare, luckily I have guts to spare.

Too many tricky thumb-beats for a wretched spot
where tiptoe is a dirty word.
The weave of spinning numbs a soft crack in my eyes,
a remnant sick with candle vines. A remnant,
not the wealth of drink. Gulping is an angry sport
from digging like you're motorized. Digging here.
A shovel for a moonbeam. A moonbeam for spitting up the afternoon.
Hold on, insides: a tricky ride. A leafy grin.

POEM THAT I WROTE IN LATVIA 1.1

They tried to sing the rain away
(this is different from the movie, you see,
it's like a buffalo in a bull pen. no? were you
there already?). Got a ways down
the road in short pants, hatless, absorbing
heat through the holes in their heads,
absorbing the dirt in tandem.

In each little bat's heart
stood twin armies, thumping in synchronization
with my iPod, fully prepared to drink dead to silence,
to eat a member of the opposite party.
The place stinks like a prison for rocks
and hits like a Saturday where the beach is empty and cold.
These rocks spit goulashes and sway to fiddle-drums.

POEM THAT I WROTE IN HELSINKI 1.1

oh wow, it's so beautiful here
I am so tan and there are teens
we have trees here, do you have trees?
I will love you better here
everything is blue or green
no one ever gets bored or dies or smells
except, we only eat coconut and lizard
will you eat lizard off my tan backside?
it is all for you, probably

oh! the canopy of cranberry heartthrob
oh! the bored, tan aquaintancehood
we are on the fire-edge of all the things we hold in our mouths
and we will not take the stars for all their craving
i sang a little song today
i found it in the hollow of your ear

sweet sassy bole-legged midgets

this place is awesome.

there should be poems here soon (Jess).