The Bipolar Express

I'm gonna name my kid Sycamore
or Mulberry if it's a girl.
Nectarine, if she's blonde.

I had an abscess on my molar
the "doctor" said it was
from solar excess, I replied:

You been riding the
bipolar express,? Alas
I digress - seriously,

I might name my kid Baltimore
like the Ravens, incidentally riding
the Kyle Boller express

straight to second place
in their division
which is not at all bad, I still really
like their chances for the wild card.

The Polar Express Motif Begins

Walking home was filtering through orchids. At 5 AM I left the green den. It was gloriously foggy. The city lights and buildings were straight out of Polar Express--Welcome to the North Pole. A Christmas-lidded parlor yonder, and over there, the community center, where you took pottery classes with your girlfriend, who isn't anymore your girlfriend.

Moving on, down the road, we'll ignore the Peking Garden, and go to my car. The Santa dorms in the distance are quite spacious-looking, brilliant-lit and lovely.

To be continued. 

It used to be

Swimming in the orchard;
Swimming in the rain;
Swimming in the flood!

It kicks in—so, like a
shot of vodka to the throat
I believe in somebody’s vision
of holy—it wasn’t mine

My eyes have once again proven that
your cloud, blanket and my 50 cents
are raining on your front lawn.

Carry on, until it’s gone.

It always was
after all.

Rad Ideas

1) Life is the result of unprotected sex; the result of the best feeling you can have, during the act which you cannot perform unless you want to have a child (i.e. create life)... or are for sure your girlfriend is taking birth control medication... or are a lesbian.

2) New Restaurant for Champaign, IL: "Fuck Illinois." This fine restaurant/bar would serve as the hotspot for all a manner of non-Illini fan. Possible motto: "A great place to watch your team lose to Illinois," or something like that, to compensate for the whole "This-place-is-called-'Fuck-Illinois'" thing.

3) More later.

My Dear God Pastrami

My pastrami is off the chains, young-blood,
this movie's about freed pasta, the kind that'll cost ya
because it isn't slave labor honey,
we keep our liberty about us;

like scarves or cloaks,
you'll find me in muddlin sheets
meaning swaddling clothes
sheets for the dead.
A baby arrived for adult business
parallels an
infant scoping the porn industry
and finding it wanting.

Why I'll Learn Mandarin

I should have said
"...became a diminished lake,"
which is what it all becomes
in the eyes of the old

I smelled my China-maid hat today and imagined it smelling of its home country. Myself, the hat and I had a little discussion: can I embue the hat with my essence regardless of its material? I mean, I like the hat. But there are details: Preferably I would know where the material came from... the patch of land, the grower, etc. That is the natural way of things. And fuck you if you don't agree. Also, what soul does it have? Were the plants grown in good conditions, those which gave this hat it's material? What kind? What color green are they? What type of farmers are they? Kind? Honest? Does it matter?

Of course not. Going too far there. But you see what I mean. The point is: where was the hat made? By whom? Were they pregnant? Do they hold hands on first dates there? Can you really only have one child?

All our materials
come from foreign meals
and flights of fancy
we shall never comprehend.

Oh the hat. So the point is: is the hat just an empty vessel, in which I can instill it with my essence? Eventually the hat becomes "mine." Obviously, from a financial point of view, it's mine. But spiritually--not quite yet. For one thing it doesn't probably smell like me yet. I haven't "broken it in."

Is all this just bullshit? Things I think
retain value because we give them it
ghosts of spiritual handshakes
around every corner.

More Like PolterGeist Reservoir

You'll find PolterGeist Reservoir in Indianapolis. She was birthed by underpaid immigrant laborers in 1943 by damming Fall Creek. This breezy beer pond became the second largest lake in Indiana, providing residents 7 billion gallons of water (all of it with a healthy trace of atrazine). Nobody asked the salamanders what they thought about the loss of habitat, but we hear they're... dead.

The damming also killed all a manner of veteran woodpiper and sand-creek fir, whose heavenly (and intoxicating) redolence was never sniffed again.

Clarence PolterGeist, a former owner of the Indianapolis Water Company who foresaw a deficit in Indianapolis's water supply, first envisioned PolterGeist Reservoir to preemptively address the problem. Unfortunately, a gang of cocaine-addled hydraulic workers attacked PolterGeist's mansion in Carmel. They succeeded in scaring his family and burning down his house. PolterGeist was never seen again. Some say he became... a spirit.

Geist Reservoir

Geist Reservoir is a reservoir in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., constructed in 1943 by damming Fall Creek to provide water for Indianapolis. Upon completion, Geist Reservoir was the second largest lake in Indiana providing approximately seven billion gallons of water.

Geist Reservoir was named after Clarence Geist, a former owner of the Indianapolis Water Company who foresaw a deficit in Indianapolis's water supply, and envisioned Geist Reservoir to preemptively address the problem – but not without a casualty. Planning for the reservoir began as early as 1913, when hydraulic engineers estimated that White River and Fall Creek would not provide enough water for the increasing needs of Indianapolis. Geist gradually bought some 5,000 acres in Fall Creek Valley in the 1920s and 1930s, including the small town of Germantown, which today lies at the bottom of the reservoir.

Although controversial, the reservoir was completed in 1943, five years after Clarence Geist's death. In the 1960s further controversy arose over plans for commercial and residential development in the area around the lake. A proposal in the 1970s to triple the size of the reservoir was defeated, and a housing boom began in the lake area. In recent years the Geist area has experienced rapid growth. The area is noted for its unique topography and the reservoir. Reservoir.

The dam which creates Geist Reservoir is located at the lake's southern end. Fed by Fall Creek on the north, the lake overflow is directed into the creek again at the south. The reservoir is mostly rather shallow (ten feet or less). The area has undergone rapid development, and many high-valued homes now line the reservoir's waterfront. Including Peyton Manning and Peyton's bi-sexual friend named Janice.

Poltergeist

Flowing like a free
style
reach for the dial

reach for the vial-
a vile concoction
of whiskey and beer

and whiskey, as well.
my relationship with vodka
is on the rocks, you see

I keel over - or, more aptly,
I try not to vomit. There are
people around.

Rightfully stifling my right to revival,
but I'm a lifer, rife with survival.
Triflers, travelers - meet my rifle.

Call me a criminal, smoothie king
I was suspended for scooting
too close to the front of the class

professors need their personal space

Scorched Unicorn

Larry, what'd you do with the hammers?
Asked Ed, who was looking like a dead-ham
dad, it's the dead hamster alert,
everybody freeze,
it's the internet speaking. Don't believe
anything you read, just some
of it, some of it's bound to be entertaining
or, hey, Ned, how 'bout a microcosm
meaning he's another steamblood
regression to the unicorn state
humbled, no blood
one horn,
magic.

Lemon Pepper

This fucking morphine drip- I don't think it's working
stir-fried muffintops, Tom Gugliotta,
maybe it's working.

Cold pony jumping jacks
I've got the waffle house blues
kayaks and canoes

slivers of jam
dam rivers
and livers.

Snubbery

I had an idea that as a prank my law school friends and I would snub someone in our group of friends. Just completely ignore them in the halls and in class, ignore phone calls, texts, gchats, the whole deal. Total alienation. I really feel like Jason – um, I mean the person we would snub – wouldn’t take long to confess to something horrible he’d done. He would take me aside after a day, maybe two of the snubbery, and say something like “dude, is this about me farting in your toaster? It was a joke!”

Mangrove Ascot, Possibly

Everybody seemed
to remember me. As if
I had some solid selection
where i'm posed like a brilliant root
to the hoi paludal, swamps emerging
out of every suggestion.

Every breath, indeed, becomes reduced
to something understandable;
imagine, for instance, that she's a new bride
a-shower in her matrimony
glaring but forgetting
for whom her glare recedes.

Animal, OK?

More than it has ever meant. There are large levers
where the people lived before, where they people the
ledgers of the brass war; the tally still mounts.
Like slowly the crows they reveal
(of/from what i hear)
they are shrewdness moreover animal
akin to none before displayed
or whosoever mount whereupon
we declaim a claim upon you!

Frail Boy In Woods

Frail boy in the cedars
talks about Michigan Wolverines
(not the animal but the football team).

Drake in the AM

Every morning, Drake Googled himself, then looked in the mirror, then went to the bathroom. First he'd make himself three to four cups of coffee. And drink a beer or two. Then he'd jog. A great, phantasmal jog, sweat profoundly effusing from his joints, his rancorous heart, his long problematic legs. They were more like chisels then legs... they were too long, they swayed to one side or the other. In short he had trouble getting not where he wanted to go, but deciding upon anything. It was if his heart were in remission, recovering from a glaring transmission of something as deadly as cancer or as innocuous as childbirth.

In other words, Drake was a maniac. After the 7 AM sweat-run, he'd take a shower and pound out an orgasm or three in the confines of his dusty apartment. He didn't believe in pornography and instead relied upon the graphic interior of his mind, all swelling and contingent upon strange continents for its fragile alignment. The jogging helped this all, of course.

Then, around 8 O'clock, he'd start talking to himself.

"Time get out of the shade of the weeds," was a common cat-call to get the morning started. "Time to pull myself out of these acrimonious suggestions of lament."

Then, he'd run down the stairs, careful to duck lest he hit his head on a jutting short part of the ceiling, and explode with laughter upon bottoming out. He routinely couldn't stop himself and tripped through the glass window. For this reason he was badly scarred and nobody could stand to look at his face, always scarlet with duress and battle.

Eventually he got up, dried off the blood, and went to Aroma, a local coffee shop hot spot amongst the sexually active and middle-aged laborers.

Touching & Reading (PG)

Change my ways.
When I’m trying to get something done, I pray
for better luck next time.

Or when I try to explain I instead rely on magic
to bely my failings: fall, the season
of the tailback

covered-up gardens and a betrayal we couldn’t stomach
astonished

we do not rely on ourselves,
but are stewards of something great:
a deeper cannon,
a stauncher true
wherein nobody is shot
but our dreams just continue into day;

Perhaps
a song somewhere will catalogue
everything I’ve ever thought
and I’d have no reason
to any longer live.

Meanwhile, the boys
are playing at the anatomy game
in the corner, can’t you see?

We believe in the colors true
which relieve us of our
doubts and shouts and strands of cord
are falling on us now.

Whoever reads this
touches a person.

Murder

There's nothing funny about murder.
But tonight, I killed a man.
I think his name was Jordan.

Not only do I not regret it,
but I will forever wish we had never met.
Which means: I have never loved.

Everything Burns

I owe no excuse to anybody

this pile of dead saplings is livid enough
alive enough, groused ruffling
those who disturb are disturbed,
you know...

so i light the pile and let the whole
goddam thing go. nobody respects
you until the blaze rends, & oh,
how they stare! when up in flames
it goes

Adam Smith's Invisible Hand

"It takes a chicken-thief to catch a
chicken-thief," said FDR
about Joe Kennedy. That's actually true,
she said...
hello.

& when you said,
"I don't know. What is it?" I know you meant,
"I don't know what it is." Meaning:
don't take me to the opera
if I don't wanna go, honey.

Talking about rats here. How culpable are
the feeder funds? That word has several meanings.
Culpable. Legal or moral?
Not illegal unless they were directly involved.
The prior court decisions said they weren't culpable.
But we know they are immoral.
They do little research and fall for the same thing
that we fall for, us non-smelling masses.

Project Jennifer

Jason's sister.
Shoulda known.
Wouldn't count. Could have grown
plants this summer but I didn't. Might've
saved some face but I didn't: YOU ARE MY
FACE, she said, in the sandy windy and exclaimed,
"You don't even need water, here!"
(She meant for bathing)

And it wasn't about Manganese nodules after all,
was it, Mr. Hersh? Not those little presents
of chemistry fresh and unsettling and intimately
slow though they grow... they are alive, as alive
as Russian submarines and Dan Marino's Id.
The bottom of the ocean, Mister Hughes.
The last place you would expect.